Harnessing the public realm for equitable development
Fitzgerald, Detroit: Stories of Success
For the last month or longer, most American cities have been instituting and managing stay-at-home orders to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For most of us, the ways in which we interact with each other in the spaces outside our homes has been severely limited. At the same time, our appreciation and use of public spaces has increased during the pandemic as a necessary part of managing the isolation and restriction of this crisis. The value of reimagining the civic commons to connect people to nature and each other is being reaffirmed.
This article, written prior to the pandemic, provides insights on how Detroit has equitably invested in and activated formerly vacant spaces for the benefit of nearby neighbors. We share it with you as a useful guide for when we can return to public space, to connect, begin healing and move forward together.
News about Detroit’s comeback seems to be everywhere these days. And while close-in Downtown and Midtown are bursting with retail stores, new housing developments and entertainment venues, it is the surrounding neighborhoods that are set to become Detroit’s crowning achievement. These places may not have the attention of the individual interests that have stoked the resurgence of Midtown and Downtown Detroit, but they do have the attention of a cross-sector partnership and engaged neighbors, all working to make them truly inclusive communities with a shared vision for a vibrant and sustainable future.
Just 8 Miles northwest of Downtown Detroit investment and revitalization are changing the physical landscape of the Fitzgerald Neighborhood. A great deal of this is due to the Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative, which has developed a new way of working across neighborhoods and sectors. Over the past three years, the Detroit Civic Commons team has been driven by the four outcomes of our work: value creation, socioeconomic mixing, civic engagement and environmental sustainability.
In reaching these outcomes, we have not followed a particular formula, nor can we recommend precisely how others should approach this work. However, by focusing diligently on these four outcomes — and by working to ensure inclusion and equity building at the neighborhood level — we’ve seen revitalization begin to physically and socially transform the neighborhood.
Value Creation
The Detroit Civic Commons work takes place primarily in the Fitzgerald neighborhood, located in the northwest corner of the city. Throughout the initial three-year civic commons process, the project team has created a network of diverse communal assets which are geographically linked within a quarter-square mile area. These sites include a new park in the center of Fitzgerald and a nearby commercial corridor.
Building from the 20-minute neighborhood concept, it was imperative that all of the sites contributed to an active pedestrian friendly community, where people could meet basic needs within a twenty-minute walk from their home. Ella Fitzgerald Park is now a 2.5-acre city-owned public park that started off as a collection of 26 vacant lots. The five remaining fire-damaged houses were demolished and the lots cleared through a green-collar job training process led by local non-profit, The Greening of Detroit. A key partner in the workforce development component of the project, Director of Workforce Development Devin Buskin, reflected on the park’s success:
“The Greening of Detroit recruited, trained, and employed twenty residents from the community to not only be a part of the revitalization project, but a part of history. These individuals worked extremely hard in all phases of the project, which they were able to not only witness, but actually put their hands in the dirt and be a part of the community’s rebirth.”
Additionally, the team worked with residents and Detroit artist Hubert Massey to design and build a key aspect of the park: a colorful 100-foot-long mosaic retaining wall. Residents also received funding to program and activate the park through a summertime series featuring free food, fun, and entertainment. To connect the park to nearby anchoring institutions (the University of Detroit Mercy and Marygrove School), Ella Fitzgerald Greenway was completed in 2019. This cycle and walking path creates a safe and secure thoroughfare better connecting residents to their neighbors and nearby amenities, which is especially needed given many of the neighborhood blocks are a full quarter mile long. This greenway will eventually connect to other bike infrastructure and streetscapes city wide.
Adjacent to the neighborhood sits a commercial corridor — McNichols Road. The vacancy rate of commercial buildings along McNichols (colloquially referred to as 6 Mile) was at about 70 percent when the Fitzgerald Revitalization project began in 2015. Today, we are seeing signs of market recovery and growing interest in restoring the local small business community and infrastructure. The Live6 Alliance, in partnership with the University of Detroit Mercy and Detroit Collaborative Design Center, rehabilitated a storefront on McNichols that now serves as a coworking space and community resource center called Neighborhood Homebase. Opened in 2019, it serves as a visible location for community associations and block club groups to meet, engage with the project at large and host their own set of programs and activities.
Homebase is having a ripple effect in the geography of the neighborhood by attracting others to share a stake in the action. Two new businesses have opened since Homebase and another five are anticipated in 2020. The capital projects highlighted demonstrate a commitment to equitable development and hyper-local capacity building. The goal has been not only to reactivate vacancy — turning liabilities into assets — but also to share value and wealth building with the generations of Detroiters who never left the city.
Socioeconomic Mixing
The Detroit Metro region is amongst one of the most racially segregated in the country. Within city limits, social and economic disparities also persist. Perhaps one of the most interesting civic commons outcomes requires us to bring diverse people together into public space across income classifications and social delineations. The interest in de-segregating urban environments fosters an ideology that we learn the most and grow from interactions with people who are the most unlike us. Newly erected public spaces create passive opportunities for neighbors to meet and connect across racial, economic and social lines. In many ways, the Detroit civic commons spaces are working to combat social isolation and encourage an active public realm that is inclusive and thriving.
The Detroit team has tested many forms of intergenerational programming, and hosted forums and events which aim to build relationships amongst a diverse set of local stakeholders. Some examples of successful programming are The Live6 Alliance’s Market on the Ave, a bi-weekly summer market featuring local vendors and produce stands run by urban farmers and Storefront Stories, a monthly dinner series held at Homebase that encourages fellowship, dialogue and skills-sharing.
Civic Engagement
Rebuilding trust in a city post municipal bankruptcy and political scandal comes with its own set of challenges. Skepticism, disbelief and apprehension best describe the sentiments felt by residents towards new development projects in Detroit. The team has worked to ameliorate these challenges by including residents throughout the planning process and conducting business in earnest transparency. Through collaborative designing of a vision for the neighborhood with people who live there, local champions have emerged. These champions serve as ambassadors for the project and reach a much larger audience than any practitioner on the team would have been able to. As more residents become involved in the project, we experience an increase in trust and improved perceptions toward local government and city officials. Resources, neighborhood framework plans and project timelines are more accessible than ever and we are experiencing an uptick in civic interest and engagement.
Resident capacities, stewardship and advocacy are also growing and evolving. Mini grants given to select neighborhood leaders for their own programs and events are instilling a sense of ownership and responsibility. There is now greater neighborhood participation and involvement than when the project first began. Adolescent populations are intentionally being engaged within the project and revitalization process. Youth development and mentorship programs encourage younger residents to participate and have their voices heard. The goal of youth programming is to build momentum, neighborhood pride, and the next vanguard of leadership in Northwest Detroit.
Similarly, localized organizational capacity is being built. The Live6 Alliance serves as the primary community development organization in the neighborhood and is spearheading many of the new community initiatives. Founded in 2015, Live6 is growing and becoming the primary convener in the area, connecting key stakeholders and partners in the work, ultimately aiding the long-term sustainability of these new public assets.
Environmental Sustainability
Connecting assets via the Ella Fitzgerald greenway promotes greater walkability and bike-ability, increasing both physical activity and people’s connections to nature. MoGo, Detroit’s bike share network is expanding to the neighborhood in 2021 once streetscaping, which includes a two-way cycle track, is complete. Ella Fitzgerald Park ambassadors have also been trained to be MoGo advocates, spreading the word about ridership, and system navigation. More multi-modal transportation opportunities in the neighborhoods create more incentive for people to shop locally and source goods and services more responsibly.
Vacant lot transformation in the neighborhood promotes access to healthy foods and aids in environmental education. Investment in urban gardens promotes local entrepreneurship and green-collar skills development in a neighborhood where people are eager for jobs and opportunities for themselves and their families. Wildflower meadows are being installed at Ella Fitzgerald Park, along the greenway and on other vacant lots in the neighborhood in between houses. Passive native landscapes not only beautify the neighborhood and add to the regions biodiversity, but also reduce maintenance costs and burden on residents. These meadows simultaneously serve as green infrastructure, preventing stormwater runoff, sewage system back-ups and basement flooding.
The team has also partnered with Walker Miller Energy to conduct free home energy audits. Audits provide residents with an energy usage score and a set of recommendations as to how families can reduce monthly energy costs for households and incorporate greener technologies into the neighborhood’s aging housing stock.
A New Way of Working
All of the signs of success in Fitzgerald come from a new approach to working collaboratively across sector and silos. The organizations that have partnered in this endeavor are working together (mostly for the first time) to solve neighborhood challenges and thereby change the way that we conduct business in Detroit. In many ways the Fitzgerald model is the playbook by which other neighborhoods in the city will undergo equitable redevelopment. Investment in commercial corridors, parks, streetscapes, and housing stabilization is being made in nine other neighborhoods through the city’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund. Lessons from Fitzgerald are being applied throughout the city, and new partnerships and alliances are fueling inclusive development.
The Civic Commons Learning Network has also been paramount in shaping the work and informing best practices on the ground, helping the Detroit team learn from cities like Philadelphia, Akron, Chicago, Memphis, Copenhagen, Toronto and Dallas. Strengthened relationships between practitioners across these cities have encouraged our Detroit team to both “think big” and “work local.”
Most importantly, we have successfully made the case for capital investment in public space as part of inclusive neighborhood development. The city of Detroit now recognizes that having active public spaces is critical to the quality of life in neighborhoods. It is not enough to invest in commercial buildings or housing within key areas to create economically viable and sustainable communities. Through teamwork, a shared vision and adherence to the four outcomes, we will create vibrant neighborhoods and a vibrant city.
The Detroit Project Team includes The City of Detroit’s Planning and Development Department, Invest Detroit, Live6 Alliance, Detroit Collaborative Design Center, The Greening of Detroit and The College Core Block Club. The first phase of the Reimagining the Civic Commons project spanned from September 2016- December 2019.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
