Detroit begins crafting plan to downsize

Detroit --Mayor Dave Bing and a majority of City Council members are on board with the concept of downsizing the city to save it and may soon move closer to choosing which neighborhoods to target for help at the expense of others.

A first step in the controversial process began this week, when Bing was briefed on a block-by-block study of conditions in the city's 133 square miles. Surveyors for the "Detroit Parcel Study" drove every street and logged details about every house, 350,000 parcels.

The report, which was made public Saturday, is seen by backers as a key tool to prioritizing viable neighborhoods and accelerating discussion about downsizing. The process could eventually move into a politically uncomfortable -- but necessary -- debate about providing incentives to move residents from desolate neighborhoods, said City Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown.

"We know that we have neighborhoods that aren't viable," said Brown, who took office in January. "I'm very much for prioritizing viable neighborhoods."

Bing and others acknowledge the city faces a reckoning. The city is big enough to contain all of Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan and was built to contain 2 million residents. It now has about 900,000, property values are shrinking, infrastructure is aging, but the need for services remains.

For some, the answer is finding a way to shrinking the city in order to help it grow. Most agree it won't be easy.

Even debate about the topic is the "third rail" of urban planning because it involves relocation, said Rip Rapson, president of the Kresge Foundation, a Troy-based nonprofit that has poured millions into revitalizing Detroit, backs downsizing and helps fund the city's Office of Foreclosure Prevention and Response that commissioned the street study.

"Who decides who gets the money and why?" asked the Rev. Horace Sheffield III, a political activist and pastor of Detroit's New Galilee Baptist Church. "The real issue is no matter what you tear down, we still have an inordinate amount of poor people."

"What do we do to improve the quality of life ... and how do we accommodate all citizens?"

Bing's staff said the mayor is in the beginning stages of forming a plan and cautioned it's too early to exclude options, including closing parts of the city, using condemnation or seizing land through eminent domain.

But Bing is beginning to employ a targeted approach. His staff is already targeting neighborhoods with most of the roughly $60 million in stimulus money the federal money has provided for demolitions and rehabs. Staffers say Bing is considering earmarking federal block grant funds -- which fund nonprofits that provide everything from tax preparation to mentoring programs -- for certain neighborhoods.

"The first priority of any plan will be taking down buildings that pose a public safety threat," according to a written statement from the mayor's office. "The plan that follows will have broad input from city departments, the community and land use experts outside city government."

Every house surveyed

The land survey by Data Driven Detroit began shortly after Labor Day. College students and community members surveyed every house in the city by car to determine which were vacant, which homes need demolishing and which are salvageable.

The idea is to create a "base line" of data, accessible online, for the city officials, neighborhood groups and others to use in urban planning. The effort was funded by Living Cities, a national philanthropic collaborative of 22 of the world's largest foundations and financial institutions.

Steven Ogden, executive director of Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative, is using the group's data to come up with a plan on which neighborhoods his nonprofit should target for time and money. The initiative was launched by former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2007 as a division of the city but has since morphed into a separate, privately funded, nonprofit concentrating on stabilizing six city neighborhoods.

The group is in the midst of crafting a proposal for Bing to again work more closely with the city to help stabilize the once viable neighborhoods that are now slipping, such as East English Village and Grandmont Rosedale Park. It could mean city funding or the nonprofit changing into a quasi-city agency, like the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation.

"You can't spend limited resources over great distances and see a great impact," Ogden said. "We have to be strategic about how we invest these limited resources."

A need to get started

But picking "winning" neighborhoods implies the obvious. Others may "lose."

"There is sometimes controversy if only a few areas are prioritized," said John T. Metzer, an urban planner who has taught at Michigan State University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Political consultant Steve Hood said he predicts that downsizing could work for Bing, as long as Detroiters don't view the movement as coming strictly from white suburbanites without the backing of the city's black powerbrokers.

"It would be a huge problem," said Hood.

Ted Phillips, executive director of the United Community Housing Coalition, a legal advocacy group, said city officials have talked about that targeting federal dollars for certain neighborhoods for years but he has concerns that it may leave people with the greatest need out of the loop.

"From a planning perspective it sounds good," Phillips said. "But letting some areas of the city and projects go down the tubes ... isn't necessarily the best route to go."

But John George, who runs Motor City Blight Busters, said he believe it is "time to get serious" about downsizing the city, saying that some areas may be left out but change needs to happen.

"If you don't start somewhere, you will never finish," George said. "It's so easy to stand at the side of the road and throw rocks at the parade."

"We need to remove what we can't fix and fix what we can."

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