A 12 Semblance by Agora Journal of Planning and Design

PROGRESSION

SEMBLANCE

AGORA

2007

GROWTH MANAGEMENT

2008

CHANGE

2009

DETROIT

2010

ENDURANCE AND ADAPTATION

2011

CONNECTION

2012

PUBLIC | PRIVATE

2013

ALTERNATIVES

2014

DIVISIONS

2015

PROGRESSION

2016

PERSPECTIVE

2017

SEMBLANCE

University of Michigan

A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design Volume 12, 2018

The Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design is an annual, student-run, peer reviewed publication of the University of Michiganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2069 USE www.agoraplanningjournal.com

ISSN 2331-2823

LICENSING This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike 40 International License

TYPE Avenir Next, Gotham Book, Gotham Medium

PRINTING ULitho Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Printed in an edition of 500.

DISCLAIMER The views and opinions expressed in this journal reflect only those of the individual authors, and not those of the Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. All figures are created by authors unless otherwise noted.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The publication of Agora 12 was made possible by the Victor Gondos, Jr. Archives Fund We would also like to thank the following individuals for their generous support for Agora 12: Joel Batterman Laura Brown Richard Bunnell Dr. Lan Deng Dr. Harley Etienne Dr. Robert Goodspeed Dr. Joe Grengs Dr. Larissa Larsen Dr. Devon McAslan Dr. Richard Norton Dr. Ana Morcillo Pallares Robert Pfaff Wendy Rampson Naganika Sanga Matan Singer Dr. June Manning Thomas Camie Turner We would like to give special thanks to our faculty advisors, Dr. Scott Campbell and Dr. Julie Steiff.

AGORA 12 STAFF Editor-in-Chief Karen Otzen Creative Directors Emily Burrowes and JP Mansolf Deputy Editors Michael Friese and Emily Smith Symposium Director Jonathan Riley Director of Distribution and Finance Eric Krohngold Director of Fundraising and Outreach Jessica Wunsch Managing Editor of Special Projects William Doran Manager of Communications Karis Tzeng Staff Editors William Doran Michael Friese Gwen Gell Karen Otzen Jonathan Riley Emily Smith India Solomon Matthew Tse Karis Tzeng Jessica Wunsch

Layout Editors Colin Brown Emily Burrowes Andrew Moss Bradley Kotrba Eric Krohngold JP Mansolf Gregory Monroe Maria Karina Pazos Peter Swinton Sarah Stachnik

TABLE OF CONTENTS Creating an Inclusive Public Space Karis Tzeng

The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai Tithi Sanyal

Sidewalks of Conflict Laura Devine The Health Implications of Public Transportation A. Camille McBride

40 60

Islands of Light Tyler Fitch

Aspirations of Economic Resilience Grace Cho

Practitioner Perspectives, Equity, and Tradeoffs Prathmesh Gupta

The City of Tomorrow . . . Today Ryan Schell

100

Making the Middle Peter Swinton

108

Social Cohesion and Economic Justice Christopher Rodriguez Racially Restrictive Covenants in the United States Nancy H. Welsh

122 130

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR A

s Agora moves into its 12th year, a team of 20 graduate students carry on the tradition of cultivating a forum for open and cross-disciplinary dialogue about the most pressing urban planning issues and ideas of our time. After receiving an honorable mention from The Center for Architecture’s Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals in 2017, Agora has gained recognition as one of the most professional student-run journals of urban planning and design in the country. The opportunity to lead a team of talented individuals to produce a journal that lives up to Agora’s reputation for excellence has been both humbling and exciting, and I am so proud of our work. This year, Agora has broken new ground! We welcomed a record number of staff members, exceeded our fundraising benchmarks and goals, increased our social media presence, and received our highest levels of attendance at our annual salon. The Agora 12 staff has worked hard to make Agora not only a platform for excellent work, but also a training ground where students can gain new skills and refine their existing abilities in writing, editing, and design. The title of this year’s journal, Semblance, speaks to the complexities inherent in planning for communities where everyone can thrive. In choosing this theme, we acknowledge that things are not always as they appear, and actions do not always have their desired effect. Thus, planners have become increasingly aware that they must challenge the assumptions that underlie the initiatives, policies, and systems shaping our society. For example, Christopher Rodriguez asks us to consider whether the market truly illuminates the preferences of our community members, or whether it largely reveals the desires of a powerful few in “Social Cohesion and Economic Justice.” In “Practitioner Perspectives, Equity, and Tradeoffs,” Prathmesh Gupta examines whether our definition of resilience inadvertently allows inequities to persist. While our efforts as agents of community change grow out of the best of intentions, we may struggle to achieve even a semblance of equity or long-term resilience in our communities. This year’s 11 selections ask the tough questions that help planners hold themselves accountable for the outcomes of their work. I would like to thank the staff of Agora 12, who worked tirelessly to produce this outstanding work of art; its authors and photographers for their inspiring perspectives; our benefactors who make this journal possible; and our faculty advisors and peer reviewers for their guidance. It is with your help that Agora, for the 12th time, serves as a gathering place for innovative and critical thinking about our roles as planners and future community leaders. We hope you enjoy it! Karen Otzen Editor-in-Chief

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR P

lanners today face a world that has changed dramatically in about a decade. Since 2007, financial crisis and the Great Recession plunged markets across the globe into severe decline, with cities and their most vulnerable people still in recovery. Recurring natural disasters are reminders of the urgency of climate change, yet while much of the rest of the world has made commitments to address it, the United States remains in denial. The prevalence of killings of African Americans came to light through social media — at the hands of police in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, and Cleveland, and at the hands of a white supremacist in places like Charleston. School shootings far too often leave a nation numbed and frozen in inaction. Planning students today are learning their craft within dangerously divisive national politics that openly denigrates women, stokes racial hatred and Islamophobia, vilifies immigrants, insults other nations whether friend or foe, and tolerates white supremacy. Many students are young enough that they don’t even know a world without a global war on terror. Political leaders continue to assault the value of the public sector and heap scorn on the role of government in delivering collective goods. As if all this weren’t troubling enough, public discourse is damaged beyond recognition. Sure, some politicians have long been dishonest, but never has our nation seen such brazen use of outright lies as a daily tactic of policy making. How should aspiring planners respond to such damaging shifts as they enter this uncertain terrain? Planners have much to offer. They’re good at making linkages across disciplines and perspectives, at enabling democratic decision making through broad participation, at collecting evidence and bringing knowledge into action, and — with a profession that has embraced an ethical commitment to social justice — they’re obligated to address diverse needs and promote a fair distribution of benefits. And planners are good at advancing open dialogue with the critical issues of the day. This volume of Agora shows how a new generation of planners is eager to accept the challenge of bringing fundamental change to a world that desperately needs it. You’ll learn about innovations that range in locale and scale from a single block in Ann Arbor to sprawling informal settlements in Mumbai, and in topics that span from strengthening economic development tools to dismantling racial restrictive deed covenants. Today as much as ever, we need planners engaging in critical public discourse. Thanks to the authors and editors for another inspiring volume of Agora. And congratulations on continuing the tradition that just last year was recognized with a Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals. Joe Grengs Chair and Associate Professor, Urban and Regional Planning

Naples, Italy by Nathan Chesterman

Creating an Inclusive Public Space KARIS TZENG Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2019 Karis Tzeng is a first-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student at the University of Michigan. She grew up in Northeast Ohio before moving to Philadelphia, where she attended school and worked in community development and education. She hopes to use her education in urban planning to foster thriving, healthy, and equitable communities that meet the holistic needs of all of their members.

TZENG

A B ST R ACT Public spaces, done well, can become the most cherished parts of a neighborhood or urban area. In the absence of public parks or plazas, quasi-public spaces such as cafés, beer gardens, and restaurants can function in the same way that a public space would, at least for those who can afford to patronize these establishments. Using the theoretical lenses of public plaza design from William Whyte, Reagan Koch, and Alan Latham, this paper uses a case study of a block of Downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan to argue that commercial streets, too, can help people feel at home in the urban environment. While this block welcomes potential patrons, no current space welcomes people who cannot afford to be patrons. Despite challenges in navigating this public/private space, welcoming a wider demographic into the space could provide both social and economic benefits.

pleasant public streetscape improves the walkability of a neighborhood, encourages physical activity, and creates a stage for building social capital. Yet oftentimes, symbols and messaging in the space explicitly state who is welcome and who is not. Given the benefits of public space, I consider the elements of the 100 block of West Liberty Street in Downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan and how users engage with the space. A successful public space provides shared benefits and demonstrates inclusivity, as represented through Reagan Koch and Alan Latham’s theory of domestication, in which users feel at home in public.1 Focusing on methods that the block’s businesses employ to attract potential customers, this study finds evidence of William Whyte’s suggestions for a variety of seating options and common points of attraction.2 However, while retail establishments on the 100 block of West Liberty Street engage pedestrians’ senses to attract them into their shops as customers, the block avoids an opportunity to invite all users of the space to linger. Simple design strategies could create a more welcoming streetscape for a broader demographic of users, allowing more

people to share in the benefits of this public good. The 100 block of West Liberty Street sits towards the western edge of Downtown Ann Arbor. Specifically, the observations focus on the southern side of the block, which faces the street with storefronts and backs against a parking lot. The corners bustle with activity, particularly on warm days. At the west end of the block, outdoor patio seating at The Beer Grotto on West Liberty and Ashley Streets fills during evening and weekend hours with customers lounging on colorful chairs at mosaic-topped café tables. At the eastern end of the street, Starbucks creates traffic at all hours of the day, with patrons grabbing coffee to-go or lingering to chat, read, or work. These corners draw activity at various points of the day, yet the block itself serves as a thoroughfare for downtown pedestrians and patrons of the South Ashley Street parking lot. Other players on this street include residential apartments and a mix of retail tenants: Vin Bar, West Side Book Shop, Salon Vox, healthcare offices, and the Ann Arbor Art Center.

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Creating an Inclusive Public Space

SE N S O RY STRATE GI E S AT T R ACT CUSTO M E RS

displays to beckon pedestrians to their storefronts and into their stores.

Businesses on this block employ design strategies that attract passersby – when such design strategies align with their economic interest. William Whyte offers two theories, triangulation and self-congestion, that describe how people interact with design and spaces. William Whyte’s theory of triangulation explains the connection between strangers over a common attraction, such as interesting sculptures or street performances.3 Whyte’s theory of self-congestion explains that “what attracts people most . . . is other people.”4 Simply, people go where other people are present. Business owners try to leverage these complementary phenomena by carefully arranging a variety of seating options and

On a typical afternoon, one can witness triangulation at the 100 block of West Liberty Street. One particular mid-week November afternoon, two pedestrians photograph hanging ornaments in the window of the Ann Arbor Art Center (Figure 1). Other passersby respond, slowing their gaits and pointing their gazes in the same direction. Strangers exchange simple expressions of appreciation, extending their focus to the strategically placed holiday display, towering with festive blown-glass spheres and colorful cupcake ornaments. Next door, Salon Vox extends its atmosphere beyond its walls and onto the street with music that welcomes passersby into its space. In warmer seasons, Salon Vox

Figure 1: Ped e s t r i a ns p h o t o g ra p h h a n g i n g o r n a men t s i n th e A n n A r b o r A rt Cen t er w i n d o w.

TZENG

Figure 2: Pe d e s t r i a n s p a us e t o b ro ws e t h e West S i d e B o o k S h o p â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s o u t d o o r b o o ksh elf .

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props open its double doors, reducing the barrier between the sidewalk and the store. West Side Book Shop, a rare and used book store, continues the trend with a display of literature on an outdoor bookshelf, situated at a natural height for pedestrians to browse (Figure 2). These three businesses create a collective atmosphere to encourage pedestrians to wander into their shops. In addition to extending the sensory experience of the shops onto the street, businesses make space for customers in the public realm by providing a variety of seating options. Doing so facilitates self-congestion, whereby patrons attract additional patrons. Vin Bar and Beer Grotto situate street furniture on the sidewalk, providing additional tables for customers. Vin Bar’s outdoor seating expands its customer base to a wider set of lifestyles. The wine bar’s narrow footprint would otherwise restrict a group with a dog and a baby stroller from choosing Vin Bar to unwind on a Friday evening. Instead, the group socializes on Vin Bar’s street furniture. Vin Bar even allows them to consume their own snacks, which likely allows this group with children to linger longer. This accommodation not only expands the establishment’s clientele but also adapts to its context. This flexibility and adaptation allows more of the population to feel at home on this block, at least the population who can afford the price of offered goods and services.5

This stretch along the 100 block of West Liberty Street distinctly lacks available seating for non-customers. Beer Grotto includes an array of comfortable seating options, but a black wrought-iron fence and stone wall separate the street from the patio (Figure 3). While regulation for liquor licenses requires this separation for the consumption of alcohol, the foreboding black bars with thin, sharp ornamentation warn away individuals who may be seeking a seat without buying a drink. This fence reflects a technique that urban sociologist Mike Davis calls a “fortress effect,” which incorporates certain architectural styles “not as an inadvertent failure of design, but as deliberate socio-spatial strategy.”6 Whether truly deliberate or not, the fence design signals a warning against sitting or leaning against the structure. The exclusive provision of privatized seating prevents low-income and homeless populations from “becom[ing] legitimized as valid users of the space.”7 Instead of inviting pedestrians who may not necessarily be patrons to linger in this streetscape, seating options serve only paying customers. One can also observe this trend at the Ann Arbor Art Center. Outside its entrance, the organization has two beautifully tiled

U N R E CO GN I Z E D O P P O RT UNI TI E S FO R LI N G E R I N G Despite this observation of accommodation, retail establishments seem to engage the public only when users serve their economic interests. The domestication of the space does not extend to the public as a whole.

Fi g ure 3 : Th e B eer G ro tt o ’s w ro u g h t -i ro n f en c e d ef i n es p u b l i c s t reet s p ac e an d p ri v at e c o m m erc i al s p ac e.

TZENG

benches dedicated to major donors, but the benches face the South Ashley Parking Lot rather than the West Liberty Street entrance (Figure 4). The bench location at this auto-centric back entrance serves students or visitors traveling by car, providing no respite to passing pedestrians. Aside from these furniture options, the site does not integrate seating options in the architectural features along the street. Though benches and chairs are standard seats, “the best course is to maximize the sittability of inherent features.”8 As Whyte indicates, people will sit on ledges, planters, or steps, so long as the height and size of the flat space allows sitting comfortably. In addition to a lack of non-privatized public seating, this block omits suitable “integral sitting” space.9 Planters on the street stand too high for sitting or even leaning against as a table (Figure 5). Their ledges are too narrow. A mixed-use office and apartment building, 101 West Liberty, has a space next to its door that could accommodate a bench or two. Instead, property management owf the residential building has filled the bench-sized nook with three concrete planters (Figure 6). These planters’ ledges also do not extend far enough to accommodate sitting. This building’s entrance avoids the creation of sitting space and signals exclusion with a controlled entry callbox.

Fi g ure 4 : Th e A n n A rb o r A rt Cen t er ’s b en c h es at i t s b ac k en t ran c e, f ac i n g t h e p ark i n g l o t .

R E CO M ME N DATI O N S From the business owner’s perspective, design strategies to avoid loiterers may be intended to protect employees and customers from potential harm or discomfort. Private businesses do need to safeguard their property and potential to increase revenues. Furthermore, private businesses must operate within the

Fi g ure 5 : Pl an t ers al o n g t h e f ro n t ag e o f St arb u c ks s t an d t o o h i g h f o r s i tt i n g an d h av e n arro w l ed g es .

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Creating an Inclusive Public Space

framework that permits and codes allow. However, on the 100 block of West Liberty Street, the boundary between public and private space blurs. Businesses privatize the public realm by creating sidewalk cafés and messages of who belongs (or not) on the street. Even if people can experience a dedicated seating area as a customer, they lose space as a non-patron pedestrian. A tradeoff occurs for the public. Instead, private actors should give back to the public realm, and planners should encourage these opportunities. Koch and Latham argue that successful spaces provide all users with the dignity of belonging in a public space. Beyond improving the social good, such a successful space would yield a stronger supportive network of stakeholders that could increase revenues for businesses as well. In order to encourage street life, the streetscape must encourage a sense of belonging for all users, not simply potential customers. Koch and Latham indicate that “when public spaces work well, these relationships are inclusive, convivial and democratic.”10 In order for such shared domestication to occur, spaces require a foundation of the “ethos” or goals of the space, furnishings that allow for activities, invitations for users “to make themselves at home,” and accommodation to the context of the site and the ways people actually use the space.11 As mentioned above, this site should continue to extend invitations to pedestrians through sensory engagement. However, retail managers should combine these efforts with invitations to those who may not be frequenting their shop. Simple acts of putting out water bowls for dogs include additional users. Expansion of ledge widths or signage that encourages sitting would create “collective legibility” for a larger population.12 Planners could also

engage in these simple acts, adding street planters that could serve as extra seating. While businesses have the right to promote their own sales and attract potential customers, additional space on the street should embrace the greater public, particularly those people whom businesses may seek to avoid. In San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Grand Rapids, cities work with private businesses and non-profit organizations to take back the public realm with one possible strategy, “parklets,” which are seasonal on-street platforms that transform curbside parking into public space. These spaces are distinctly public spaces, available to any pedestrian, biker,

Fi g ure 6 : Pl an t ers o c c u p y t h e l ed g e n ex t t o t h e 101 W. L i b ert y en t ran c e. Th e ed g e o f t h e b ri c k w h ere t h e s t reet s l o p es d o w n w ard o ff ers o p p o rt u n i t y f o r s i tt i n g , d es p i t e t h e p l an t ers .

Fi g ure 7 : Pu b l i c u s ers o f s p ac e c l u s t er o n t h e c o rn er o f M ai n an d W. L i b ert y St reet s , c reat i n g an i n f o rm al p u b l i c s p ac e.

On the 100 block of West Liberty Street, businesses effectively privatize sidewalks for café seating, eliminating this space from the public realm. In exchange for private café seating, planners and cities should partner with businesses to support a public parklet on the block. In fact, the City of Ann Arbor already includes recommendations for parklets in a “Best Practice Findings” draft document accompanying the adopted “Downtown Street Design Manual.”14

TZENG

or passerby, though private businesses may maintain or sponsor the space. Chairs, tables, and plants foster pockets of vibrancy on the street. A study by the University City District (UCD) in Philadelphia finds that parklets welcome families with strollers, providing space to lounge, eat, or socialize around businesses that they would otherwise have too much difficulty navigating. The study also demonstrates that business owners adjacent to parklets see up to a 20% increase in sales after parklet installation.13 This study suggests that attracting people, even non-patrons, through self-congestion, can benefit business sales through the improvement of vibrancy on the block.

users that the private businesses choose to exclude cluster on the corner (Figure 7). Panhandlers sit and chat, and a vendor sells Groundcover News, a newspaper that people experiencing homelessness write and sell. A street performer brings his own seating – an upside-down crate. Rather than deterring customers, this activity occurs outside of Starbucks, which sees the greatest amount of traffic on this Thursday afternoon. As an example of self-congestion, travelers with suitcases stand in this location while they determine their next route. The 100 block of West Liberty should extend this example of activity to the remaining stretch of the block, welcoming a broader range of people to inhabit the space through invitational symbolism and sitting space. ■

Even without the implementation of parklet strategies in Downtown Ann Arbor, one can find inspiration in the ways that users already improvise on this very block. Despite the complete lack of seating options, street users sit on steps and stoops after businesses have closed. At Beer Grotto, despite the fence that warns away people seeking a seat, pedestrians have worn smooth its stone wall corner as they sit and wait for crosswalk lights to turn green. People have strayed from intended design and adapted to the elements of the street available to them. At the end of this block, at Main and West Liberty Streets, the very

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E n dn o t es 1. Regan Koch and Alan Latham, “On the Hard Work of Domesticating a Public Space,” Urban Studies Journal 50, no. 1 (2013): 14, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098012447001. 2. William H. Whyte, “Introduction, The Life of Plazas, Sitting Space, and Sun, Wind, Trees, and Water,” in The Urban Design Reader, ed. Michael Larice and Elizabeth MacDonald (New York: Routledge, 2013), 198-213. 3. William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, New York: Project for Public Spaces, 1980. Video. 4. Whyte, “Introduction, The Life of Plazas, Sitting Space, and Sun, Wind, Trees, and Water,” 203. 5. Koch and Latham, “On the Hard Work of Domesticating a Public Space,” 17. 6. Mike Davis, “Fortress L.A.,” in The City Reader, ed. Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout (New York: Routledge, 2011), 199. 7. Ibid. 8. Whyte, “Introduction, The Life of Plazas, Sitting Space, and Sun, Wind, Trees, and Water,” 205. 9. Ibid. 10. Koch and Latham, “On the Hard Work of Domesticating a Public Space,” 14. 11. Ibid., 17. 12. Ibid. 13. University City District, “The Case for Parklets: Measuring the Impact on Sidewalk Vitality and Neighborhood Businesses,” 2015, https://issuu.com/universitycity/docs/the_case_for_ parklets_2015?e=4547788/11667837. 14. Ann Arbor Downtown District Authority, “Draft Best Practice Findings for Street Policy and Management,” 2015, http://www. a2dda.org/current-projects/downtown-street-framework-plan/.

E s s e n , G e r m any b y Ni c k K i m 21

The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai: Story of Urban Sprawl

TITHI SANYAL Master of Architecture 2018

Tithi Sanyal is a student in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Michigan. She received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, India in 2015. Shortly after graduation, she joined Anukruti, an NGO that develops community and play spaces in the slums of Mumbai. The organization transforms micro-pockets into creative and safe places, adding considerable value to the “blue-collar” communities of Mumbai. Her interests lie in understanding children’s behavior and tendencies in order to inform design that fosters learning through creative play.

A B ST R ACT SANYAL

In Mumbai, informal dwellings such as slums and tenement housing, or chawls, are an outcome of the exponential increase in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population after the upsurge of mills and industries during 19th-century British rule in India. Due to insufficient housing for the migrant working population, slums and pavement dwelling conditions came up at the doorsteps of factories, mills, and workshops within the city in the 1940s. By looking at the two distinct time periods, Colonial (1858-1947) and Post-Colonial India (1947present), this paper intends to compare the living and housing condition of the so-called slum neighborhoods to the chawls of the city. Slums and chawls create unique living and resting scenarios that blur public and private spaces and are understood as informal and flexible, yet extremely functional living possibilities. This paper depicts how chawl settlements, as established and influenced by British colonialism, gave rise to slum settlements and public sleeping, and inspired different living scenarios in formal, informal, and pavement-dwelling conditions in post-colonial Mumbai. Further, the paper investigates how the chawl, through the administration of the state, has not only restructured the overall urban fabric but has also given way to non-conventional ways of living in both formal and informal settlements.

n Mumbai, there is a vast array of unconventional living conditions that arrive out of necessity. Chawls and slums are two striking examples of such unconventional housing arrangements, both being products and producers of flexible living within the city. Overcrowded living conditions in these dense neighborhoods promote social habits like public sleeping in communal areas, people bathing in the open, storing oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s belongings in common spaces, and even the sharing of civic amenities such as water taps and toilets. Originating during early 19th-century British colonial rule in India, these housing conditions have evolved to accommodate a growing population within a limited footprint. The advent of a robust and economical public transportation system in the mid-19th century led to rapid urbanization in post-colonial Mumbai.1 This urbanization has resulted in a range of housing conditions that are observed in the

city from mere tents, one-room concrete structures, and brick units, to chawls, apartments, bungalows, and high-rises. The paper is structured in a documentary format that begins with a brief description of the chawl, slum, and pavement-dwelling conditions in Mumbai. The paper then contextualizes these unique housing types and their conceptual shifts through historical narratives during the Colonial Period (1661-1947) and the Post-Colonial Period (1947-present) of India. The city historically was known as Bombay during the colonial times and is presently known as Mumbai in post-independent India; for clarity, the city is referred to as Mumbai throughout this account. Additionally, the analysis is carried out from the standpoint of the individual, the neighborhood, and the state. In doing this, the paper seeks to communicate how boundaries between public and private spaces are perceived

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by locals in an informal, flexible, yet extremely functional living condition within each settlement type. The paper closes by illustrating a unique way of living: “Body as Home,” a form of dwelling that draws inspiration from the chawl, the slum, and the pavement dwelling housing types.

H O U S I N G M U M BAI KARS Mumbai’s geography is characterized by blurred territorial edges arising from the city’s organic growth of formal and informal developments. Social-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai articulates the current nature of socially negotiated housing arrangements throughout Mumbai in his paper Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai (2000). He writes, . . . there is a vast range of insecure housing from a six–foot stretch of sleeping space to a poorly defined tenancy situation shared by three families, “renting” one room. Pavements [transition] into jopadpattis (complexes of shacks with few amenities), which [transition] into semi-permanent illegal structures . . . Another continuum links these structures to chawls (tenement housing originally built for mill workers in Central Bombay (Mumbai)) and to other forms of substandard housing. Above this tier are the owned and rented flats of the large middle class and finally, the flats and (in a tiny number of cases) houses owned by the rich and the super rich.2

Figure 1: H ari Bag h C h awl , M u m b ai . A t yp i c al t h ree s t ory c h awl wi t h a c ou rt yard s erv i n g as a s oc i o-c u l t u ral s p i l l ov er s p ac e.

In this description, these kinds of housing are not neatly segregated by neighborhood boundaries for one simple reason – the insecurely housed poor are everywhere and are only partly concentrated in bastis (slums), jopad-pattis, and chawls.3 Over time, the chawl has had a significant influence in generating informal housing types and living conditions within the city. The chawl is a single, continuous building with either a linear or a courtyard formation. Chawls typically include two to six vertically stacked, identical floors.4 Multiple neighboring chawls often come together to form a courtyard, known as a wadi. Historically, these larger courtyards have been sites for social and political gatherings.5 Each level of the chawl is comprised of a series of single rooms along a gallery or a corridor. Residents on each floor share common toilets, washing areas, and other public spaces, such as staircases. Each single-room unit is generally eight by eight feet in dimension, with a floor-to-ceiling height of nine feet.6 These already cramped conditions are commonly condensed even further when residents use ceiling spaces for bunks or additional storage. Further,

sho w ing a three-b y- th re e - foot ope n was h in g area- mori w it hin the k it chen (Raje s h Vora, Th e Ch awls of Mu mbaiga ller ies o f lif e, 20 1 1 ).

each room contains a three-by-three-foot washing area, or mori — a water tap or a corner space to store water. Today, the mori is sometimes converted into a private washing and bathing area within the unit. At the ground floor, there are communal washing areas for utensils and clothes that are also equipped with a shared water tap.7 Like the chawls, slum neighborhoods also have overcrowded living conditions. However, slum settlements are much more diverse in their construction; they range from tent dwellings to mud and thatched structures to cement and brick rooms.8 Each unit is generally under eight by eight feet in size, with no civic amenities. In contrast, slums are typically inhabited by a socially

SANYAL

Figure 2: Int er io r vie w of a room in th e Jam Mill ch awl

and economically mixed population, without a defining political identity. Usually, “slums provide shelter to the poor, lower classes and . . . migrants who come to the city in search of jobs.”9 However, it is not uncommon for slum dwellers to remain in these units even after securing a steady income. During the colonial rule, slums were architecturally understood as temporary squatter housing situated near places of employment. However, in independent India, these settlements have gradually shifted to undesirable areas in and around the city, such as wastelands or marshy areas adjacent to railway tracks. Appadurai mentions that the slum also transitions into pavement-dwelling conditions via the use of ephemeral materials such as tarpaulins. Theorist Madhura Swaminathan (2003) defines these dwellings as a “small space enclosed on two sides by gunny sacks or old saris [women’s attire], and covered on top by sack cloth, old sheets of plastics or occasionally, tarpaulin, and held up by a couple of wooden rods. The walls of the buildings adjoining the pavement provide a third wall to the pavement dwelling.”10 These units are generally four-by-five-foot shelters sufficient to seat no more than five members in each. These pavement

Figures 3 & 4: A narrow alle y s pace be twe e n two lin ear c h awl s s i mi l ar t o t h e n arrow al l eys wi t h i n s l u m s ett l em en t .

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The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai

dwellings derive their name from their location – insecure spaces throughout the city such as on the sidewalks or in front of gutters.11 Overall, the informal living conditions in Mumbai can be theorized under the categories of chawls, slums, and pavement dwellings. While the clear distinctions between each category have become more and more blurred over time, their origins can all be traced back to colonial rule in India.

WO R K I NG-CLASS HOUSING IN CO LO N I A L M UM BAI The Portuguese bestowed the city of Mumbai on the King of England in 1661, and in 1668, the East India Company leased the city for industrial pursuit. At that time, Mumbai was comprised of three entities: the main castle on Bombay Island, the Mahim annexation, and the eight villages of Mezagaon, Varlu, Parel, Vadadla, Naigaum, Matunga, Dharavi and Colaba. With the growth of Bombay Island’s castle population, a fort wall was constructed in place of the castle in 1715.12 The increased encroachment of village dwellings towards the fort area – along with the Great Fire of 1803 that damaged a large portion of Indian merchant property – led to the restructuring of the city. This restructuring initiated the movement of Indians north of the fort wall.13 It further led to the British “distilling” the fort area of native groups and expanding development beyond the walls.14 North of the walls, the British set up textile mills. Such industrialization triggered the rise of chawls during the 1850s and during the 1860 Cotton Boom. These mills were located

in present-day central Mumbai in areas like Tardeo, Lalbag, and West Parel.15 The expansion of industries in Mumbai resulted in a demand for both commercial space and housing for the working class.16 Poverty drove lower- and middle-class workers to live in the least desirable spaces, which were often near industries. This process led to countless migrant mill workers taking residence in undesirable areas, forming segregated enclaves within the city.17 In 1863, the British orchestrated the construction of a robust and affordable transportation system of local railways. In 1872, the addition of trams, trains, and bus routes throughout the city allowed people to move into the suburbs post-independence.18 However, during the inception of public

Figure 5: H i s t ori c al map of M u m b ai s h owi n g t h e f ort areal s i t u at ed s ou t h of M u m b ai (I n di a Wat er Port al ).

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transportation, local trains were available only to the fortunate classes. This led to further inequity throughout the city; in 1911, approximately 80% of Mumbaiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population lived in chawls.19 Continued industrialization throughout the early 20th century caused exponential increases in population and contributed to the continued growth of chawls and slums beyond the wall. According to Adarkar, Pendse, and Finkelstein (2011), living conditions and the fate of working-class dwellings are closely related to urbanization in Mumbai. Industrial land during the early 1900s was inexpensive due to its proximity to the outskirts of the fort area.20 It was necessary for both workers and employers to have workforce housing within an accessible distance from the industry. It is estimated that at one time, almost 75% of workers lived within a 15-minute walk to their workplace. Incidentally, many textile mills arranged for some social commodities such as bathing areas and barber shops within their premises.21,22 The chawls were originally permanent housing for male workers and were either mill-owned, constructed by Bombay (Mumbai) Development Department, or privately owned as an investment property. The chawl was meant for both blue- and white-collar workers, though they lived in different buildings.23 Each chawl formed an unofficial â&#x20AC;&#x153;neighborhoodâ&#x20AC;? in and of itself, where occupants were typically people of the same origins, dialects, occupations, or classes. This organization has remained the same over the years. As the population gradually increased, timber and brick chawls soon became overcrowded, and slum settlements began to develop into temporary clustered units.24 Dwivedi and

Extents of Mumbai Network of Trains

Figure 6: Map of Mumbai, showing phases of development. Redrawn and edited by author. Original Drawing: Bombay the City Within Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd.

Mehrotra (1995) describe how these overcrowded conditions made renting space more difficult. This difficulty led chawl owners to seek creative ways to accommodate new members or migrants, such as partitioning single rooms, installing folding wooden planks to serve as bunk beds, and constructing mezzanine lofts for storage and sleeping.25 Further, British introduction of reinforced cement concrete (RCC) as a construction material dramatically increased the rate at which developers could build chawls, demonstrating how Indian and British contractors actively promoted these living conditions.26 Though cement was imported initially, the readily available sand for concrete mixtures paired with cheap labor in Mumbai made RCC an ideal solution

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The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai

Figure 7: Int er ior vie w of a room in a workin g clas s cha w l, Digv ija y ch awl (Raje s h Vora, Th e Ch awls of Mumba i-ga ller ies of life , 2 0 1 1 ).

Figure 8: Int er io r vie w of a s h are d room for s in gle male migra nts, Spr ing Mills Ch awl (Raje s h Vora, Th e Ch awls o f Mumba i- ga llerie s of life , 2 0 1 1 ).

to the local housing shortage. In short, high-rise structures could now be easily and cheaply constructed. Soon, this cement material selection and high-rise structural design became a hasty template for housing that was not limited to the working class but was now also used to house the middle-class group, consisting of educated clerks and professionals. Claude Batley, a renowned British architect from the 1930s, describes chawls constructed out of RCC as “single-room tenements with concretelouvered-faced verandahs, from which neither heaven nor earth can be seen.” 27,28 Both the British-controlled state government and the privately owned East India Company administered the construction of the mills and housing,

effectively dominating the lives of the workers beyond the work place. According to Adarkar, Pendse, and Finkelstein (2011), during colonial rule, the mill-owned tenement housing was quite unpopular, though considered to be the most convenient accommodation at the time. Adarkar (2011) writes, “Absence from work could not be easy if you stayed in one of these chawls. The owners could (and did) threaten to cut off electricity and water supply to the chawls if the workers were on strike, particularly what was termed ‘illegal strikes.’”29 The overcrowded scenario of the chawl, with its bare-minimum civic amenities, would become a reference for the layouts of slum dwellings. Similar to chawls, slums during colonial rule were also an outcome of severe housing shortages throughout the city. Lack of housing led new laborers to construct dwellings near their places of work, forming networks of huts and sheds without any civic amenities. These slum neighborhoods were symbolic of the surplus of cheap labor: laborers’ housing needs were neither supported by their employers nor the state; thus, residents, viewed as dispensable, were under constant pressure of eviction. Indeed, during the 1890s with the addition of

Figure 9: I n t rodu c t i on of rei n f orc ed c em en t c on c ret e

(R CC ) as a c on s t ru c t i on m at eri al dramat i c al l y i n c reas ed t h e rat e of c on s t ru c t i on of c h awl .

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70 textile mills in the city, it was estimated that around one million people slept on roads or footpaths.30 In the 1940s – with the end of World War II and in the midst of India’s independence and partition – Mumbai experienced yet another influx of migrants and refugees who would find themselves living in slums and pavement dwellings.31 The census of 1911 shows that 69% of the population lived in one-room dwellings; by the 1930s, an average of around four people lived in each tenement, with over two million tenements throughout the city.32 Within this context, slums during the colonial era were intended to be only temporary squatter settlements.

Figure 11: Col on i al c h awl s as ref u rb i s h ed f am i l y dwel l i n g (Raj es h Vora, Th e C h awl s of M u m b ai - g al l eri es of l i f e, 2011).

WO R K I NG-CLASS HOUSING IN P O ST- CO LO N I AL M U M BAI Unlike the worker-occupied chawls of the 1900s, post-colonial chawls are occupied by families. While workers had little incentive to convert these dwellings into homes, families make continuous efforts to transform their units into a habitable living space.33 After moving into the chawls, families gradually invest in improvements

Figure 10: Slums alon g th e Dockyard. Lack of h ou s in g dur ing co lo nia l r ule le d n e w labore rs to con s tru ct dw ellings nea r th e ir place s of work, formin g n e tworks o f huts a nd sheds with ou t an y civic ame n itie s . Th e s e co ndit io ns co ntin u e today.

Figure 12: Th e op en m ori t ran s f orm ed i n t o an en c l os ed b at h room (Raj es h Vora, Th e C h awl s of M u mb ai - g al l eri es of l i f e, 2011).

that display qualities of permanence and stability. Common spaces such as corridors, staircases, courtyards, and roofs change with the needs of the occupants.34 Today, modifications tenants make to their chawl units allow them to express their identity as stakeholders of their dwellings. At the micro level, the renovations to the unit may include the removal of connected doors between dwellings and the addition of interior furnishings that represent the individuality of the occupant.35 At the macro level, the Bombay Rents, Hotel, and Lodging House Rates Control Act 1947 that was introduced due to the acute shortage of housing prevented the exploitation of the tenants and designated them as the

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The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai

active stakeholders of their buildings.36 In post-colonial India, there is a clear distinction between pavement dwellings and slum settlements. A pavement dwelling is a temporary housing condition for an individual or family before they move into a more permanent setup; the slum settlement is a neighborhood living condition akin to the chawl, where ethnicity, origin, class, and occupational identity are given value.37 Appadurai (2000) explains slum and pavement dwelling conditions as different means of self-organizing in post-colonial India, stating: There is a vast and semi-organized part of [Mumbai’s] population that lives . . . on pavements, and others sleep in the grey spaces between building and streets . . . “pavement dwellers” and “slum dwellers” are no longer external labels but have become self-organizing, empowering labels for a large part of the urban poor in [Mumbai].38 The housing shortage evolved into a major concern for independent India with the advent of both migrants and refugees in the years that followed World War II. By 1951, the average occupancy of the living spaces had risen to six persons per room.39 Slum settlements were the physical manifestation of this crisis. As Shashi Shekhar Jha (1986) notes in “Bombay Slums: A Profile,” the British administration did not show concern towards slum development. It was a lucrative scheme, as the cheap labor supported the economy with negligible investment by the state. After independence, the Indian government declared it would provide “conventional” houses for the labor class in efforts to remove the slums.40 This conflict of interest

Figure 13: Sl u m dwel l ers c on t i n u e t o p ay f or b as i c n ec es s i t i es s u c h as wat er, wh ereas t h e f ort u n at e c l as s i s n ot c h arg ed f or s u c h am en i t i es .

between providing improved housing for slum occupants and allowing permanent homes for slum dwellers within their (legally or illegally) occupied land continues today. Further, the slum population still continues to pay for basic necessities such as water, whereas the fortunate class is not charged. Additionally, the State government and other civic bodies often promote an “urban cleansing” agenda that is frequently manifested in the form of communal violence, eviction, demolition, and other means.41 For instance, the 1992 communal violence that was orchestrated by the political party Shiv Sena served as a means to establish a Hindu-dominant city.42 This event is similar to the 1803 Great Fire in the fort neighborhoods of Indian merchants mentioned earlier.43 In countless similar narratives, violence has become a tool for controlling population density, leaving a history of totalitarian methods used to restructure the urban fabric.

BODY A S HOME So how does the sleeping and living situation in the chawl differ from how slum and pavement dwellers live in the city?

This understanding of public sleeping as a “spectral home” is associated not only with pavement and slum dwellers but also with the understanding of the “negotiated spaces” within the chawl.45 Public sleeping

still persists even today despite families moving into chawls and combining adjoining rooms to create conventional apartments. Common spaces like galleries, stairs, and corridors provide sleeping spaces for family members, guests with negotiated rents, or individual migrants. Galleries have an unwritten reservation for sleeping spaces, as every possible inch of the chawl is used to spread out sleeping mats at night, including terraces, the staircase landings, spaces under the staircases, and the steps of the ground-floor shops.46

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Some of the possible answers lie in the perceptions of permanence and the types of rents that are paid for living or sleeping space. To understand the boundaries between public and private spaces and the agency of the individual upon his dwelling, we need to recognize the concept of “body as home.” There is a culture of public sleeping and the spatial construct of home and dwelling in present-day Mumbai, where “home” is considered to be any place where one can sleep. For the poorest residents in the city, sleep is the sole form of security that connects them to their jobs and families, a necessity for those who can be at home only in their own bodies. 44

The notion of spectral housing is not limited to the urban poor. Rather, it is a lifestyle common to a wide range of people of different economic standings — anyone who cannot afford to buy or rent in a city where space is a premium. The ideas of being and dwelling experience “complex

Figure 14: The chawl is on e of th e reas on s for th e fin e line b et ween t h e “ b ody as h om e” an d h om e as a p h ys i c al co nstr uct , blur r ing bou n darie s be twe e n pu blic an d privat e s p ac es .

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The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai

transformations in transit,” that is, when one travels a long distance from home to work. Public sleeping or, rather, the idea of “body as home” becomes a necessity rather than a choice. Thus, “homes are often unstable products” for the middle and the working class as they identify themselves with their secured places of work.47 Overall, today's idea of the slum varies significantly from the slums of the 1900s. Previously, the slum, the pavement dweller, and the body as home formed a single concept. Presently, however, the slums of Mumbai are established as a state of collective permanent living scenarios while pavement dwellings are only temporary housing scenarios. Architecturally, the slum units are constructed of RCC or brick masonry, and the tenant pays rent to the owner. On the other hand, the pavement dwelling is a camping situation that lasts until the state demolishes the establishment. Lastly, the “body as home” is inert, a state of pause with or without a shelter. However, pavement dwellers and people living in their “bodies as homes” are still paying for their spots, whether in monetary transactions or acts of service.

Figure 15: G alleri es i n t h e ch a w l h a ve a n u n w ri tt en re se rvation for sle epi n g s pa ces , a s every po s s i ble i n ch o f the chawl is used t o s prea d o u t s leepi n g m at s at n i g h t .

IN RET ROS PECT This paper analyzed the living condition of chawls, slums, and street dwellings through their historical origins, and their manifestation into Mumbai’s current formal and informal living conditions. To mitigate the problem of overpopulation and housing, the solutions do not lie in government-initiated acts of violence, demolition of settlements, or mass relocation of communities. Even though formal housing strategies in Mumbai aspire to fulfill housing needs for the people, they still promote overcrowded units without basic amenities such as daylight and water. Planners, architects, and the State need to acknowledge the way people live in these neighborhoods and address the civic and infrastructure requirements of these housing types rather than promoting another entirely different way of living. The slum and the chawl are physical manifestations of a way of life for the middle and the working class that has not only brought about large-scale restructuring of the urban fabric, but also has given way to newer concepts of living, such as “body as home,” at the micro scale. This understanding of dwelling, from the small scale of a house to the overall British-administered planning of the city, is carried on by Indian governance. As Michel Foucault, philosopher and historian, notes in the book Society Must Be Defended, “the biological came under State control, that there was at least a certain tendency that leads to what might be termed State control of the biological.”48 Yet even as the British and the Indian administration in a sense dominated the individual resident until the early 20th century, such regimented living conditions have since evolved into more flexible living scenarios — a sort of lifestyle

normal to families residing within each unit. SANYAL

The construction of the chawl, which was intended to attract laborers to work in the textile mills and industries, has now become an ordinary way of living in post-independence India. The chawl is one of the reasons for the fine line between the â&#x20AC;&#x153;body as homeâ&#x20AC;? and home as a physical construct, further blurring as it does the boundaries between public and private spaces. In retrospect, colonial dominance promoted cramped conditions for the working class despite the ability to accommodate more spacious units when the original chawl design was first implemented in the city. This compact living condition may not be acceptable in the present day, yet it is continuously included in newer formal and informal developments to accommodate large populations within a small footprint. Though the slum and the chawl are outcomes of the housing shortage and colonial rule in Mumbai, chawls are legally established, permanent constructs, whereas slum dwellings are defined by their state of legal ambiguity. However, both these types of housing are continuously under threat of redevelopment. The slums appropriated both the land and the technique of construction from the British rule and continuously adapt themselves to the changing times and needs of the occupants. In contrast, the chawls have reached their pinnacle and are now in a state of dilapidation. â&#x2013;

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The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai

Endnotes: 1. Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within (Bombay: Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., 2001), 124-125. 2. Arjun Appadurai, “Urban Cleansing: Notes A Brief History of Decosmopolitanization,” Library 12, no. 3 (2000), 627–51, 637. 3. Ibid. 4. Neera Adarkar, “Salaries and Wages: Girgaon and Girangaon,” The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life, (Gurgaon: ImprintOne, 2011), 16.

28. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 198. 29. Adarkar, The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life, 5. 30. Ibid., 2. 31. Prodipto Roy et al., Urbanization and Slums (New Delhi: HarAnand Publications, 1995), 77.

5. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 211.

32. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 196.

33. Kaiwan Mehta, “The Terrain of Home, and Within Urban Neighbourhoods (A Case of the Bombay Chawls),” The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life, (Gurgaon: ImprintOne, 2011), 83.

7. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 211. 8. Madhura Swaminathan, “Aspects of Poverty and Living Standards,” Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 92-93. 9. Rajendra Vora and Suhas Palshikar, “Politics of Locality, Community and Marginalization.” Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 172. 10. Swaminathan, “Aspects of Poverty and Living Standards,” 92-93. 11. Ibid. 12. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 44. 13. Ibid.

34. Prasad Shetty, “Ganga Building Chronicles,” The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life, (Gurgaon: ImprintOne, 2011), 61. 35. Mehta, “The Terrain of Home,” 83. 36. This act was introduced to prevent exploitation of tenants due to World War II and partition of colonial India after Independence. Rents were kept low to provide relief to the city’s migrants and tenants during these events. The rent control act has gone through multiple amendments and still persist in certain form today. 37. P. K. Das, “Slums: The Continuing Struggle for Housing,” Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 227.

14. Ibid.

38. Appadurai, “Urban Cleansing: Notes A Brief History of Decosmopolitanization,” 638.

15. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 51.

39. Roy et al., Urbanization and Slums, 77.

16. Ibid., 194.

40. Ibid., 78.

17. Adarkar, The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life, 6.

41. Appadurai, “Urban Cleansing: Notes A Brief History of Decosmopolitanization,” 644.

18. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 124-125. 19. Adarkar, The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life, 2. 20. Ibid., 6. 21. As most workers didn’t have access to toilets, these specific provisions ensured hygienic working conditions and higher standards of products generated in the mills.

42. Ibid., 646. 43. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 44. 44. Appadurai, “Urban Cleansing: Notes A Brief History of Decosmopolitanization,”638. 45. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

46. Adarkar, The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life, 17.

23. Ibid., 5.

47. Appadurai, “Urban Cleansing : Notes A Brief History of Decosmopolitanization,” 636.

24. Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, 197. 25. Ibid., 196. 26. Ibid., 197. 27. Claude Batley was a prominent British architect, whose works in Mumbai include the Bombay Gymkhana (1917), Bombay

Central Station (1930), Bombay Club (1939), Breach Candy Hospital (1950), and more. He was the president of the Bombay Architectural Association from 1925 to 1926. He was also a faculty member (1914) and later the principal (1923-1943) of the JJ School of Architecture in Mumbai.

48.Michel Foucault et al., “Society Must Be Defended.” Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, (New York: Picador, 2003), 239.

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Lon d on , E n g l and b y L a u re n L a h r 36

Ma d ri d , S p ai n b y S a d i e M a rs m a n 38

Sidewalks of Conflict:

Ongoing Spatial Negotiations Within a Brazilian Favela

LAURA DEVINE Master of Architecture 2018 Laura Devine is a Master of Architecture 2018 candidate at the University of Michigan and received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia. She focuses on designing for social impact through co-design and participatory planning. She is currently researching sustainable land occupation practices and community-based mapping in a variety of informal settlements in SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil. Laura is also a co-founder of Knot, a bi-weekly student publication at Taubman College. She values innovative, holistic approaches to sustainability driven by community-based initiatives and interdisciplinary collaboration within and beyond design professions.

ABSTRAC T

araisópolis is São Paulo’s second-largest favela, a term specifically referring to Brazilian informal urban neighborhoods.1 It covers roughly 197 acres and houses approximately 80,000 residents. The neighborhood is located close to the city center and, because of its favorable location within the metropolis, it has an incredible density that puts every piece of land under intense pressure of social appropriation, temporalities, and ongoing spatial negotiations. A variety of districts exist within the neighborhood, including a thriving retail corridor, fenced social housing blocks, steep hillsides occupied by precarious wooden structures, and low lands that are defined by open sewage and flooding. Security of tenure, living conditions, exposure to risk, and access

DEVINE

The following is an altered-photo series unpacking some of the conflicts for space within a consolidated informal settlement in São Paulo, Brazil. My research of informal settlements began with coursework in the Winter of 2017 and was further developed over a summer in São Paulo working with RADDAR, a local research and design firm. With RADDAR, I was able to teach and learn from young adults within the community how to leverage group mapping as a means to communicate needs and urgencies of urban conditions. The following was developed based on primary observations, documentations, surveys, and conversations with local residents, community leaders, and colleagues throughout 2017. Through several means of engagement to facilitate an intimate analysis of spatial appropriation, I gained an appreciation for the complexities of occupying public spaces within the favela. I observed that informal settlements have a complicated relationship to the “public right-of-way” because of the lack of formal regulations, which results in self-policing from the community. In contrast to an American planning perspective, I argue that disparate groups occupying public space at their own discretion both inhibit and create the lively street culture that defines public life in favelas. This essay begins to typologize the methods of occupation of the street as either fluid, meaning transitory or temporary; enduring, meaning permanent; and fluidly enduring, meaning temporary occupations in lasting and predictable locations. Through a deeper reading, it is possible to extrapolate the values and power structures of the favela from the analysis of current encroachments. to services vary across the neighborhood. For instance, some families live in densely packed, unstable wooden structures on steep hillsides prone to large fires, while other areas are experiencing the construction of six- and seven-story buildings, indicative of a booming rental and real estate market. This density has reached beyond the land’s capacity. The appropriation of public space, specifically concerning sidewalks, is a result of accepted cultural practices and norms in areas of extreme density, high land values, and a lack of formal regulations. Thus, the community self-regulates the use of sidewalks by disparate groups. Drawing on my research and experience, I speculate that an internal sidewalk real

AGORA 12

Sidewalks of Conflict

estate market exists, enabling current residents to financially benefit from the entrepreneurialism that occupies the right of way. Certainly, no public space is claimed without the notice of neighbors and community leaders, so it can be inferred that the appropriated spaces provide some broader benefit that outweighs the cost of the loss of public space. However, the holistic political and social structure within Paraisópolis is not made fully available to researchers for a variety of reasons, including censorship of the flow of information both in and out of the community, the desire to control outside resources to assert political power, and illegal businesses that wish to operate undisturbed. My experience of growing to appreciate the diverse appropriation of Paraisópolis’ sidewalks was disorienting. While working as a designer, I measured buildings down to the half inch to avoid encroaching upon public easements. I held a strict reverence for the right of way that I found culturally inappropriate in Paraisópolis. I discovered that compromising public space both simultaneously hinders and creates a unique street life that residents value. On one hand, this practice can enable a social network for entrepreneurs through a row of tiny shops, a place for friends to greet each other over restaurant railings, and a buzz of activity and life that is unique to each favela. On the other hand, the trespass into public space further constrains the narrow streets, reducing access to space, light, and air. While the self-regulation of the encroachments is telling of the community’s value of public life, it is also indicative of unseen power dynamics that determine who, what, how, and for how long public space can be appropriated for private benefit.

F LUID CONF LICT S The spatial delineations of a favela are always in flux, and the sidewalks experience a variety of short-term hindrances. These fluid conflicts are often unpredictable and temporary. While the objects that occupy the right of way are not persistent, the patterns of acceptable interferences are. For instance, vehicles, both running and broken-down, occupy significant space on the sidewalks. There are frequent rows of cars that haven’t been moved in months in front of large, blank facades or trucks idling on the sidewalks while goods are unloaded. The sidewalks are also used as space to temporarily gather and store goods or construction supplies. Piles of bricks, empty bottles, and unwanted household goods are common sights. It seems to fall to the responsibility of the occupants of the blocked building to defend their sidewalk and advocate for their portion to be cleared. These fluid conflicts are difficult to regulate due to their unpredictability and short presence in a particular location. However, the multitude of occurrences that are present on every block add up to a phenomenon that is socially accepted within the neighborhood.

DEVINE

Figure 1: —FLUID CO N FLICTS — St a c ks o f c rates, si mi la r t o t h ese, c a n b e sp o tted a ll o v er Paraisópolis. The y a re c o l l e c t i o n p o i n t s fo r t h e ret u r n o f b eer b o ttles. Th ese c rates w i ll most likely rem a i n h e re u n t i l a t r uc k c o m e s to c o llec t t h em. W h i le t h e rec y c li n g sy stem within the nei g hb o r h o o d i s a d e fi ni t e a s s e t a n d c o n tr i b u tes t o t h e red u c t i o n o f w a st e, collected mat e r i a l s c a n s i t fo r l o ng p e r i o d s b ef o re th ey a re p i c ked u p, h i n d er i n g t h e public’s right t o u s e t hat s p a c e .

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F LU I D CON F LICTS

Sidewalks of Conflict

Figure 2: —FLUID CO N FLICTS — A d us t y, b ro ken - d o w n c a r h a s b een a b a n d o n ed i n f ro n t o f a home and ap p ea r s t o b e b l o c k i n g a g a ra ge. I t d o esn ’ t lo o k li ke i t h a s b een mo v ed i n months and ha s t ra s h a ro u n d i t . It i s p o s s i b le t h at t h e v eh i c le w a s ta ken o u t o f t h e ga ra ge that it curren t l y b l o c ks . If s o, t he h o m e o wn er c o u ld th en t ra n sf o r m th e f o r mer ga ra ge i n t o living space. Th i s p ro c e s s c o u l d b e t r i g g e red b y t h e f a mi ly gro w i n g o r d ec i d i n g t o ren t t h e space for ext ra i nc o m e . E i t he r wa y, t he o l d c a r o c c u p i es th e p u b li c rea lm, a n d th e p o ssi b le freed interior s p a c e h a s b e e n p ut t o a h i g h er u se.

DEVINE

Figure 3: —FLUID CO N FLICTS — A c r i b, a van i t y, a n d f i v e c h a i r s h a v e b een left o n t h e sidewalk and a p p ea r t o b e i n g o o d , us ea b l e c o n d i t i o n . I t i s u n c lea r w h y t h ey w ere n eatly displayed wit h t wo o f t he c h a i r s a nd t h e va n i ty t o w a rd s t h e street a n d th e o th er t h ree chairs and cri b b a c k t o wa rd s t h e ho m e . Pe r h a p s th e f a mi ly h a s a c q u i red n ew f u r n i tu re a n d is offering th e s e p i e c e s fo r fre e t o a nyo n e w a lk i n g b y.

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Sidewalks of Conflict

E N D U R I NG CO NFLI CTS High land values within ParaisĂłpolis are evident through the â&#x20AC;&#x153;for rentâ&#x20AC;? signs posted on facades and the continued building construction that I observed. Increasing land value has residents and entrepreneurs craving more space to expand the footprints of their shops or restaurants. Commercial space is so profitable that tiny candy and electronic shops occupying only the sidewalks are common and successful. For larger shops, claiming the sidewalk in front of their business increases their usable space. The arrangements of who, when, and how the sidewalks can become permanently occupied by a built structure are unclear, but the practice seems to be sanctioned by the neighbors and residents who have political or social influence. Permanently building on the sidewalks has a significant impact on the urban experience because it further reduces the already-narrow streets. In a high-density neighborhood, the continued spatial appropriation of sidewalks gives a sense of increasing density and population capacity and changes the proportions of the urban street. However, due to their service-oriented functions, these businesses create an activated street and give the favela a unique character. Their presence and popularity suggest that the community believes their benefits outweigh their costs.

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Figure 4: —EN DUR IN G CO N FLICTS — A l a rge c o llec t i o n o f p o tted p la n t s c la i ms th e si d ew a lk in front of a ho m e . Th e s e p l a n t s l o o k t o o h ea v y t o b e mo v ed a n d a re p ro b a b ly i n t en d ed to be a perma n e nt o c c up at i o n o f t h e s i d e w a lk . Th e p la n ts ma y b e p la c ed th ere f o r th e beautification o f t he c o m m uni t y, o r t h e y m a y b e i n ten d ed to d ef en d th e si d ew a lk f ro m other unwant e d e n c ro a c hm e nt s .

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E N D U R I N G CON F LICTS

Sidewalks of Conflict

Figure 5: —EN DUR IN G CO N FLICTS — S m a l l c a n d y a n d elec tro n i c sh o p s a re b u i lt i n th e narrow width o f t h e s i d e wa l k . Thi s g ro u p o f en trep ren eu r s h a s mo st li kely ma d e a n arrangement wi t h t he o wne r o f t he h o m e t h ey b lo c k . A f ew p o ssi b le sc en a r i o s a re ei t h er that the store s a re r un b y t h e fa m i l y l i vi n g b eh i n d th em, c reati n g a li v e/ w o r k sp a c e, o r that the famil y “s o l d ” i t s p o rt i o n o f t h e s i d ew a lk f o r u se b y o t h er s. Th ese li ttle sh o p s ser v e to create a m i c ro - c o m m u n i t y, b ui l d i n g t i e s a mo n g sep a rate sh o p - o w n er s a n d n ei gh b o r s, while providing s m a l l - s c a l e re t a i l a n d i n c o me gen erat i o n t o resi d en t s.

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Figure 6: â&#x20AC;&#x201D;EN DUR IN G CO N FLICTS â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A s m all d eli u ses t h e si d ew a lk i n f ro n t o f i ts b u si n ess for propane t a n k s t o ra g e . S i n c e i t i s t o o d a n gero u s t o st o re p ro p a n e i n si d e o f b u i ld i n gs, the store need s t o c l a i m ext e r i o r s p a c e i n o rd er t o sell th e ga s. Th i s f rees u p mo re i n ter i o r space for retai l , wh i l e s e r vi ng t o e nc l o s e a p o rt i o n o f t h e si d ew a lk o n tw o si d es to su b t ly claim it.

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Sidewalks of Conflict

FLU I D LY E NDU RI N G CO N FLI CTS There are many hidden spatial appropriation routines within the favela that have typical or predictable sites but are only temporarily occupied. These temporary appropriations conform to a routine that is tacitly agreed upon within the neighborhood. While the occupation is impermanent, the sites and available goods and services of these conflicts are consistent in the minds of the residents. While these encroachments leave no permanent physical artefacts, they are enduring within the collective mind of the community. They are routine and predictable but tentative encroachments that straddle both of the previous typologies. Fluidly enduring encroachments can also be understood as expressions of hidden power dynamics. Who, what, where, and for how long businesses are allowed to occupy the public realm is up to the regulation of those tacitly in charge within the neighborhood. For instance, the corner where entrepreneurs can set up has a great impact on their ability to survive economically. Another rendering of this phenomenon is large piles of trash that routinely collect in the streets as part of the municipal waste disposal system. This shows the lack of power granted to the community to demand adequate and sanitary conditions.

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Figure 7: —FLUIDLY E N DUR IN G CO N FLICTS — Pi les o f h o u seh o ld w a ste w i th i n Pa ra i só p o li s are collected at t h e e n t ra nc e s t o vi e l a s (a l ley s) to b e p i c ked u p b y mu n i c i p a l ga r b a ge trucks. This co nfo r m s t o a p re d i c t a b l e c yc l e o f en t ra n c es b ei n g c lea r, t h en gra d u a lly blocked, then g o i n g b a c k t o c l ea r. Th i s s ystem i s i n d i c ati v e o f th e mu n i c i p a li t y ’s f a i lu re to provide ba s i c s t a nd a rd s o f l i vi ng wi t hi n t h e f a v ela . Th u s, ga r b a ge d i sc a rd i n g p ra c ti c es routinely imp e d e a c c e s s t o h o m e s a n d n o rma li z e th e si gh t o f la rge p i les o f ga r b a ge collecting in p ub l i c s p a c e s .

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F LU I DLY E N D U R I N G CON F LICTS

Sidewalks of Conflict

Figure 8: —FLUIDLY E N DUR IN G CO N FLICTS — Ev er y d a y t h i s DV D sta n d p o p s u p a n d i s operated by a va r i e t y o f e m p l o ye e s . Th e s ta n d i s lo c ated n ex t t o a p o p u la r a p p li a n c e retailer and s t a ke s a s i g ni fi c a n t s p at i a l c l a i m. Th i s sp o t i s mo st li kely c o v eted b y o th er informal busi ne s s e s fo r i t s p r i m e l o c at i o n. A n i n f o r ma l sy st em o f “ ren t ” o r si t e d ef en se is probably in p l a c e . Wh i l e t hi s b u s i ne s s i s mo st li kely lu c rati v e, th e c o st o f a p er ma n en t shop is out of t h e o wn e r s ’ rea c h.

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Figure 9: â&#x20AC;&#x201D;FLUIDLY E N DUR IN G CO N FLICTS â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Th ese tw o st o res h a v e merc h a n d i se b u r st i n g out onto the s i d e wa l ks , s e r vi n g t wo m a i n b en ef i t s f o r th e b u si n esses. Fi r st, t h e b r i gh t ly colored goods a re e ye - c at c h i n g a nd d ra w atten t i o n t o t h e sto res f ro m f a rth er d o w n th e block. Second , t he a d d i t i o n a l s p a c e a l l o ws t h e sto res to b e mo re p ro f i ta b le. Ev er y n i gh t, all the goods a re p a c ke d b a c k i nt o t h e s h o p a n d th e o v er h ea d d o o r i s lo w ered a n d lo c ked only to be un p a c ke d t he fo l l o wi ng m o r n i n g.

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Sidewalks of Conflict

CO N CLUSI O N

En dn ot e s

My recognition and appreciation for the nuanced complexities that surround the varied spatial appropriations of sidewalks within Paraisópolis has shifted my design thinking. Researching both the costs and benefits of this use pattern has made me reconsider my own design ethics for public spaces to include room for informal appropriations of a variety of durations. While some of these practices appear to undermine public enjoyment, such as trash collections and old vehicles, the lively street culture and hum of retail activity are highly valued within this community. From the perspective of an outside researcher, however, investigating the possible power dynamics that enable and protect the disparate occupations of the sidewalks is an insightful strategy to better understand the latent community dynamics. ■

1. Valéria França and Adriana Carranca, Segunda maior de SP, favela de Paraisópolis passa por mudança. Estado de São Paulo (2009). http://sao-paulo.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,segundamaior-de-sp-favela-de-paraisopolis-passa-por-mudanca,317413

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Ch i c ag o, I l l i no i s b y M a x we l l G i g le 56

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Me tz , Franc e b y E r i c M i nto n

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Health Implications of Transportation: A Detroit Case Study

A. CAMILLE MCBRIDE Master of Public Health 2019 Born and raised in Detroit, Camille McBride received her Bachelor of Science in Natural Resource Management from Grand Valley State University. Her time volunteering on community farms and abroad inspired her to return to school after five years to pursue a Master of Public Health in Health Behavior and Health Education. She is interested in the intersection between health disparities and the built environment, particularly as they relate to food security.

A B ST R ACT

mericans are increasingly reliant on personal vehicles to access social and economic opportunities. Most of us understand the importance of transit – whether personal or public – in getting us from point A to point B. Perhaps less understood is its importance in linking people to opportunities and services that are necessary for attaining upward mobility and leading healthier lifestyles. The United States’ historic predilection for cars over public transit has had inequitable impacts on community health and wellbeing. While these impacts are common to many urban areas lacking reliable public transportation, this paper will use the Metropolitan Detroit context to illustrate the connection between transportation and health.

residents into poverty. Households that could no longer afford to own a car (in a city intentionally designed for cars) faced increased barriers to finding employment, commuting to work, and accessing healthy and affordable food. Regional transit has reemerged as a potential solution to address health inequities faced by carless residents with little agency over their health. More widespread and reliable public transit opportunities could reduce many of the barriers Detroiters face. City and suburban decision makers must consider the health implications of regional collaboration for public transit. Detroit decision makers, in particular, can highlight the connection between transportation and health to further justify the need for regional transit.

The collapse of the automobile industry, administrative and cultural forms of racial discrimination, and rapid depopulation all contributed to the decentralization of employment opportunities in Detroit, which plunged many of its remaining

A BRIEF HISTORY OF T RA NS IT IN DET ROIT

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Many metropolitan areas have been deliberately designed for cars, without the consideration of inclusive and reliable public transit. Transportation links people to employment and resources necessary for upward mobility. In an economically deprived city where a large percentage of residents are without personal vehicles, a broken public transit system perpetuates the cycle of poverty. This is the case in Detroit, which remains the largest metropolitan area in the United States without an adequate regional transit system. Racial animosity and the decline of the automotive industry drove a deep wedge between the city and the suburbs, which continues today and results in stark health and economic disparities. The region’s underfunded and uncoordinated transit network fails to reliably connect carless residents to employment opportunities and nutritious food sources in the suburbs – adversely affecting the health of Detroiters. While there have been several attempts at more inclusive regional transit, all proposals thus far have been met with strong opposition from suburban officials and voters. Southeast Michigan must invest in a coordinated and reliable public transit network for all residents for the betterment of both public health and the economy.

Detroit, like many major metropolitan cities in the United States, was primed for cars even before the dawn of its Motor

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Health Implications of Transportation

City age. Starting in the 1920s, federal and state legislatures passed policies enabling extensive highway construction.1 During World War II, demands for military equipment spurred additional construction of expressways and highways to move military supplies with ease – inadvertently providing significant advantages to postwar expressway planning and financing.2 Unsurprisingly, cars became necessary to navigate the city and region, and manufacturing plants capitalized on this momentum. The automotive industry brought prosperity and opportunity to Detroit but also contributed to its descent. By the early 1950s, Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford had become the largest corporations in the United States.3 Their growth stimulated job opportunities and a massive influx of workers from the south. Detroit quickly became a prosperous city for blue-collar workers of all races and ethnicities as the population swelled to 1.8 million.4 However, its prosperity was short-lived. In 1956, the “Big 3” experienced a decline and moved assembly plants to more cost-effective locations in the suburbs.5 Those who could afford to move out of the city to find work in the growing suburbs did so. At the same time, racial tensions swelled and came to a violent head during the 1967 rebellion – accelerating the rate of depopulation.6 The bust of the automotive industry and resulting exodus of workers to the suburbs left the city fragmented and desolate. Remaining residents who were confined to the urban core due to oppressive acts of discrimination were left with few job opportunities and lower earning potential.7 While automobile ownership continued to increase in popularity, many Detroiters were unable to afford cars – which left

public transit as their primary option. State and federal transit subsidies resulted in the establishment of two independent transit agencies to serve the metropolitan region: one for Detroit – the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT), and one for the suburbs – the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART).8,9 Deliberate and often racially motivated attempts by suburban officials to defund existing transit options and deny proposals for public transit resulted in a system that did not adequately link the city’s patchwork of neighborhoods or travel outside of the city’s boundaries.10 As the region continued to expand in the 1960s, Detroit’s transit system struggled to adapt to the car-centric landscape, and fares no longer covered the costs of maintaining operations.11 Mistrust and prejudice fueled contention among city and suburban officials over the allocation of funds, which further divided the agencies and halted regional transit plans.12 DDOT eventually eliminated several routes due to deep cuts in funding resulting from reductions in ridership.13 Making matters worse, state law gave suburban municipalities the choice to opt out of paying for and participating in transit services.14 Today, nearly 50 cities in the region have opted out despite having concentrated centers of employment.15 As a result, job-rich suburbs remain C ar l e s s n e s s i n D e t r o i t

Figure 1: An estimated 26% of Detroit households are carless and must rely on sub-standard public transit or other means to access healthy food options (Crain’s Report by Bloomberg, 2012).

largely inaccessible to carless individuals in the urban core – which has led to high unemployment rates. Ultimately, Detroit’s broken transit system has contributed to a cycle of poverty that continues today and results in negative health outcomes for residents.

T R A N SP ORTATI O N A N D H E A LTH

Although the connection between transit and health is clear, it is often overlooked. This paper will focus on indicators of stress among Detroit’s underemployed, commuting, and food-insecure population. It will use these examples to explain transportation’s role as a social determinant of health and to argue for increased investment in regional transit to improve the wellbeing of all Detroiters.

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The cycle of poverty exhibited in Detroit is partially maintained by residents’ inability to access healthcare, work, education, and nutritious food. Limited mobility directly and indirectly compromises physical and mental health. For example, the inability to reach a medical professional or obtain medication can lead to direct health consequences. However, less obvious is the inability to consistently and reliably travel to educational institutions, which hinders employability indirectly and also causes stress that can be harmful to health.

Institute, only 22% of jobs in Metro Detroit are located within 10 miles of the urban core, making it necessary to commute to the outer suburban ring where 77% of jobs are located.17 Dispersal of urban city jobs to the suburbs, housing discrimination, and inadequate transportation to link the city to suburbs are largely to blame for high rates of unemployment and concentrated poverty within central cities.18 This phenomenon, the spatial mismatch hypothesis,19 is salient in the Detroit metropolitan area. The hypothesis proposes that the problem does not solely lie in geographic distance from jobs; rather, it is the inability to get from areas of poverty to areas of opportunity. The Detroit region is the largest urban area without regional transit,20 and this deficiency is a contributor to cyclical poverty in Detroit. Lack of reliable transportation adversely affects employment opportunities and subsequently health outcomes for Detroit residents trying to gain economic stability. The unemployment rate in Detroit is at a record low, yet the poverty rate is twice as high as the state average.21 The discrepancy between these two statistics is partly because the unemployment rate does not consider

Detroit

Metropolitan Detroit Suburbs

Employment and Commuting Detroit’s transit system was originally designed to transport city residents to city locations.16 However, with the migration of people and employers to the suburbs, the majority of job opportunities for those within the city are now located outside of the city limits. According to the Brookings

$41,553 $82,583

Figure 1: The Imbalance of Family Income in Metro-Detroit (US Census Bureau, 2012).

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the number of residents underemployed in part-time, temporary, and/or low-paying job opportunities. Chronic stress from joblessness and poverty is demonstrated to decrease life expectancy.22 The reverse is also true. Gainful employment improves economic mobility, which can alleviate stressors caused by poverty and thereby improve health outcomes such as life expectancy. Research not only shows that reliable transportation significantly increases the likelihood of finding and retaining employment,23 but also that the health implications associated with poverty are often worsened by the long, taxing commutes carless residents face in reaching jobs. Given Detroitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decentralized job market, unreliable transportation significantly extends commute times for city residents to suburban jobs, having deleterious impacts on physical and mental wellbeing. For the estimated 26% of carless households in Detroit,24 public transportation and active transport (e.g., bicycling and walking) are some of the only means of commuting. While active transport is associated with decreased risk of chronic disease and obesity, among other positive health outcomes,25 perceived stress while engaging in active transport is also associated with an increase in commuting duration and unpredictability.26 Stress can accelerate aging, promote early onset of and increased susceptibility to chronic diseases, and lead to unhealthy coping strategies.27,28 Furthermore, a long commute is associated with sleep disturbance and exhaustion and is a precursor to work-life imbalance.29 Studies have linked high work-life imbalance to depressive, negative emotions; fatigue; and overall poor self-rated health.30 While commuting is not inherently a threat to health, in Detroit, some workers are forced

Figure 3: Loc at i on of Em p l oymen t an d H eal t h y Food Op t i on s f rom t h e Cen t er C i t y (Brooki n g s I n s t i t u t e, 2012)

to walk hours to and from work because the bus will not travel past the city line. One former Detroiter walked 21-miles to and from work in the suburbs each day â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an extreme example of how a lack of adequate transportation affects residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; daily lives.31 These same stressors from commuting to the outer suburban ring are compounded by the difficulties of relying on public transit to reach healthy and affordable food options.

Food Security A diet limited in nutrient-dense foods such as fruits and vegetables could increase risk of diet-related diseases. An insufficient consumption of such foods can also

Detroit has made strides to confront its previous designation as a food desert but still falls short. In 2009, Zenk et al. found that the nearest supermarket in the most impoverished, predominately black inner-city neighborhoods averaged 1.1 miles farther from residents’ homes when compared to predominantly white neighborhoods with the same socioeconomic status. These same black neighborhoods also, on average, had 2.7 fewer supermarkets within a 3-mile radius compared to their white counterparts.37 As of 2015, an evaluation of the city’s food environment found that although the number of food sources increased (including restaurants — full service and fast food — and grocery, liquor, and convenience stores), their presence was inequitably distributed.38 Neighborhoods with the highest percentage of black residents still have a lower ratio of people-

to-food sources and tend to be dominated by fringe stores for available food.39 Fringe stores are venues that sell foods that are made strictly for convenience (as opposed to health), with long shelf lives.40 Even with an increase in affordable food outlets, some neighborhoods (namely majority black, which comprise a large percentage of neighborhoods in Detroit) remain disproportionately saturated with options that negatively impact residents’ health. M cB R I DE

compromise the body’s ability to protect itself from chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in Detroit.32,33 Studies show that adults living in very food-insecure households, where one or more household members skip meals because they lack money, are 40 times more likely than their food-secure counterparts to be diagnosed with a chronic condition.34 Wayne County, where the rate of food insecurity is 1.6 times higher than the national average, is no different.35 Further, inadequate intake of nutrients during the developmental stages of life can also lead to delays in social development, cognitive impairments, behavioral issues, depressive symptoms, and poor physical health.36 It is important for a city to provide its residents with options for maintaining healthy diets, yet in Detroit, this has not been fully remedied.

The products most fringe retailers offer provide few nutritive benefits and are associated with poor diets and an increased risk of diet-related disease. This includes processed, high-caloric, nutrient-poor foods, which are often sold at convenience and liquor stores, fast-food restaurants, and gas stations. Predominantly low-income urban areas like Detroit tend to have a higher density of fringe stores.41 Considering that people tend to make diet choices based on what is available in their immediate vicinity,42 city residents will likely choose fringe retailers for sustenance, which decreases their consumption of nutrient-rich foods. This is a pattern demonstrated by black women in Detroit, where availability of poor-quality food is linked to decreased consumption of fruits and vegetables,43 and in young adolescents when there is elevated access to convenience stores.44 Additionally, a qualitative study on two Detroit neighborhoods found that residents are aware that their options within the city are limited and of low-quality, and they prefer to shop at grocery stores on the outskirts45 that have higher-quality, lowerpriced produce.46 However, reaching these stores is time and labor intensive and thus not feasible on a consistent basis.47 Limited transportation is a barrier to healthy diets in Detroit, and improving residents’ ability

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to access healthful food is key in improving diet-related health outcomes. While the availability of healthy food options is only one aspect of creating and maintaining a healthy diet, accessing healthy food options that are few and far between is another. Due to the underdeveloped transit system, travel options are restricted for carless households in Detroit. Active transport can be impractical and extremely inconvenient for some, including single-parent households, the elderly, those with disabilities, and residents living in high-crime areas. Studies examining diet and proximity to chain supermarkets report that a better-quality diet is associated with proximity.48 They also show that residents of areas with greater access to stores with affordable, healthful foods display a higher intake of nutritious foods.49 Although the distance from grocery stores is linked to diet choices, researchers have observed that the degree to which carless households are able to make travel arrangements to those stores was even more influential on diet.50 Uncertainty caused by unreliable modes of transportation leads to stress, worry, and anxiety.51 Added stress can worsen these negative effects of a poor-quality diet. However, there is hope for the future. While the regional transit debate is not solely centered on improving food access, improvements to Detroiters’ ability to obtain healthy food could lead to improved health outcomes.

T H E FU TU RE O F DE T R O I T TRANSI T Transportation can help to alleviate poverty that some city residents experience. There have been regional attempts to move

towards a more coordinated public transit system. The Regional Transit Authority (RTA), formed in 2012 in response to the lack of coordination between regional transit agencies,52 has attempted to address problems associated with inadequate transportation facing Detroit’s downtown residents. Its first attempt at more inclusive mass transit, the Reflex system, consisted of two rapid lines running along major corridors crossing both city and county boundaries. As of January 2018, Reflex was replaced by a new service, FAST. While FAST adds an additional line to the airport and promises to be easy and reliable to use, it has a limited range of services and stops, and it still fails to meet the service needs of carless residents outside of the more affluent downtown area.53 RTA’s most recent proposal, which narrowly lost in the local 2016 election, was the most promising modern-day attempt thus far to alleviate barriers to economic and health-promoting opportunities. The proposal would have added rapid transit lines along major corridors, express buses to the airport and downtown Detroit, and major improvements to existing DDOT and SMART bus services. To make suburban job opportunities more accessible to Detroiters, the plan included 11 cross-county connectors that would extend into municipalities that opted out of SMART.54 While the plan was more inclusive of Detroiters’ service needs, it also had shortcomings. The increase in services would have been funded primarily by a property tax millage, and if necessary, by vehicle registration fees.55 While this is not inherently bad, it could cause funding inequities when coupled with its “parochialism clause.” The clause

Regional transit may reappear on the ballot in 2018. However, according to the transit advocacy group Motor City Freedom Riders, the new proposal is in jeopardy. The compromise that was reached and scheduled to be announced in January 2018 cut the northern portions of Oakland and Macomb Counties out of RTA jurisdiction. These areas would not be taxed or receive transit services. This new plan gave into most of the demands of Brooks Patterson, Oakland County Executive. However, Patterson decided to withdraw his endorsement at the last minute, citing reluctance to force municipalities in Oakland County to participate in a transit system from which they would not benefit.58 Despite pushback, many believe that the RTA should move forward with the new plan without Oakland and Macomb Counties.

employment perpetuates the cycle of poverty, which has adverse and cumulative effects on mental and physical health. Transportation is an important component of achieving employment, reducing poverty, and thereby alleviating debilitating stressors, yet is a barrier to those without cars or reliable public transit. Southeast Michigan needs a coordinated plan to connect all Detroiters to opportunities for employment and healthy food. Furthermore, decision makers must consider health in matters of design and public transportation planning and demonstrate these connections to their constituents, especially with the possibility of a plan for more inclusive regional transit on the ballot in 2018. â&#x2013;

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required that 85% of revenues raised by the RTA stay in the county in which they were collected,56 potentially resulting in the wealthiest (suburban) counties gaining the majority of the funding, while lessaffluent counties gained the least, despite being the areas that needed it the most. The ballot initiative was not supported by the majority of residents in Oakland and Macomb Counties, which contributed to its defeat. Regional county executives tried to renegotiate a compromise that also failed to gain approval in 2017.57

CO N CLUSI O N Whether transportation impacts health indirectly through stress or directly by impeding access to healthy food and employment, the connection is clear. Transportation is a prerequisite to accessing services and amenities necessary for a healthy life in Detroit. Lack of access to education, food, healthcare, and

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Health Implications of Transportation

E n dn o t es 1. C.K. Hyde, “Planning a Transportation System for Metropolitan Detroit in the Age of the Automobile: The Triumph of the Expressway,” Michigan Historical Review 32, no. 1 (2006): 59, 87, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20174141?seq=1#page_scan_tab_ content. 2. Ibid., 60. 3. Ibid., 60, 71. 4. Peter, Weber, “The Rise and Fall of Detroit: A Timeline,” The Week, July 19, 2013, accessed October 14, 2017, http://theweek. com/articles/461968/rise-fall-detroit-timeline. 5. G. Counts, K. Spenser, and S. Ronson, “Detroit: The New Motor City,” EDGE, July 26, 1999, accessed December 10, 2017, https:// web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/citypoverty/ hdetroit.htm. 6. Marilyn Salenger, “Marilyn Salenger: ‘White Flight’ and Detroit’s Decline,” The Washington Post, July 21, 2013, accessed October 13, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marilynsalenger-white-flight-and-detroits-decline/2013/07/21/7903e888f24a-11e2-bdae-0d1f78989e8a_story.html. 7. Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry J. Holzer, Detroit Divided (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), 113. 8. Phillip D’Anieri, “Regional Reform in Historic Perspective: Metropolitan Planning Institutions in Detroit, 1950-199,” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2007, 29, https://deepblue.lib. umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/126403/3253253. pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=n. 9. Farley, Danziger, Holzer, Detroit Divided, 253. 10. Ibid. 11. D’Anieri, “Regional Reform in Historic Perspective,” 120. 12. Ibid., 130. 13. Dan Austin, “How Metro Detroit Transit Went from Best to Worst,” Detroit Free Press, February 10, 2015, accessed December 10, 2017, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2015/02/06/ michigan-detroit-public-transit/22926133/. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Thomas W. Sanchez, “Poverty, Policy, and Public Transportation,” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 42, no. 5 (2008): 834, doi:10.1016/j.tra.2008.01.011. 17. Elizabeth Kneebone, Job Sprawl Stalls: The Great Recession and Metropolitan Employment Location, issue brief, Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, April 2013, 8, https://www. brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Srvy_JobSprawl. pdf. 18. Joe Grengs, “Job Accessibility and the Modal Mismatch in Detroit,” Journal of Transport Geography 18, no. 1 (2009): 42, doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2009.01.012.

19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 45. 21. Data Access and Dissemination Systems (DADS), “Community Facts,” American FactFinder, 2010, Accessed 2018, https:// factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts. xhtml?src=bkmk. 22. Raj Chetty, Michael Stepner, Sarah Abraham, Shelby Lin, Benjamin Scuderi, Nicholas Turner, Augustin Bergeron, and David Cutler, “The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014,” Jama 315, no. 16 (April 26, 2016): pages, doi:10.1001/jama.2016.4226. 23. Thomas W. Sanchez, “Poverty, Policy, and Public Transportation,” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 42, no. 5 (2008): 837, doi:10.1016/j.tra.2008.01.011. 24. Bloomberg, “Detroiters Without Cars Seek Jobs in Vain Amid Depopulated City,” Crain’s Detroit Business, February 18, 2014, http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140218/ NEWS01/140219877/detroiters-without-cars-seek-jobs-in-vainamid-depopulated-city. 25. Gavin Turrell, Michele Ann Haynes, Lee-Ann Wilson, Billie Giles-Corti, “Can the Built Environment Reduce Health Inequalities? A Study of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Walking for Transport,” Health and Place 19 (November 10, 2012): 89, doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2012.10.008. 26. Erik Hansson, Kristoffer Mattison, Jonas Bjork, Per-Olof Ostergren, and Kristina Jakobsson, “Relationship Between Commuting and Health Outcomes in a Cross-sectional Population Survey in Southern Sweden,” BMC Public Health 11 (2011): 834, doi:10.1186/1471-2458-11-834. 27. Arline Geronimus, Jay A. Pearson, Erin Linnenbringer, Amy J. Schulz, Angela G. Reyes, Elissa S. Epel, Jue Lin, and Elizabeth H. Blackburn, “Race-Ethnicity, Poverty, Urban Stressors, and Telomere Length in a Detroit Community-based Sample,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 56, no. 2 (2015): 199-200, doi:10.1177/0022146515582100. 28. Catherine E. Ross and John Mirowsky, “Does Employment Affect Health?” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 36, no. 3 (1995): 232, doi:10.2307/2137340. 29. Erik Hansson, Kristoffer Mattison, Jonas Bjork, Per-Olof Ostergren, and Kristina Jakobsson, “Relationship Between Commuting and Health Outcomes in a Cross-sectional Population Survey in Southern Sweden,” BMC Public Health 11 (2011): 834, doi:10.1186/1471-2458-11-834. 30. Oliver Hammig, Felix Gutzwiller, and Georg Bauer, “Work-life Conflict and Associations with Work- and Nonwork-related Factors and with Physical and Mental Health Outcomes: A Nationally Representative Cross-sectional Study in Switzerland,” BMC Public Health 9 (2009): 436, doi:10.1186/1471-2458-9-435. 31. Bill Laitner, “Heart and Sole: Detroiter Walks 21 Miles in Work Commute,” Detroit Free Press, February 10, 2015, https://www. freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2015/01/31/ detroit-commuting-troy-rochester-hills-smart-ddot-ubs-bankerwoodward-buses-transit/22660785/.

32. Brynne Keith-Jennings, “Food-Insecure Households Likelier to Have Chronic Diseases, Higher Health Costs,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 22, 2018, Accessed February 22, 2018, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/food-insecure-households-likelier-tohave-chronic-diseases-higher-health-costs. 33. Michigan Department of Community Health, “Selected Chronic Disease Indicators, City of Detroit Health Department Residents 2013-2015,” Michigan Department of Community Health, 2010, Accessed March 13, 2018. 34. Keith-Jennings, “Food-Insecure Households.” 35. “Map the Meal Gap,” Feeding America, http://map. feedingamerica.org/county/2015/overall/michigan.

37. Shannon N. Zenk, Amy J. Schulz, Barbara A. Israel, Sherman A. James, Shuming Bao, and Mark L. Wilson, “Neighborhood Racial Composition, Neighborhood Poverty, and the Spatial Accessibility of Supermarkets in Metropolitan Detroit,” American Journal of Public Health 663, no. 4 (2005): 663-664, doi:10.2105/ajph.2004.042150. 38. Dorceta Taylor and Kerry Ard, “Detroit’s Food Justice and Food Systems,” Focus 32, no. 1 (2015): 14-15. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/ publications/focus/pdfs/foc321c.pdf.

49. Larson, Story, and Nelson, “Neighborhood Environments: Disparities in Access to Healthy Foods in the U.S.,” 75. 50. John Coveney and Lisel A. O’Dwyer, “Effects of Mobility and Location on Food Access,” Health and Place 15, no. 1 (2009): 48, doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2008.01.010. 51. National Research Council, “Concepts and Definitions,” 44. 52. Troy Clampit, “About Us” RTA, 2012, accessed December 9, 2017, http://www.rtachicago.com/index.php/about-us.html.

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36. National Research Council, “Concepts and Definitions,” in Food Insecurity and Hunger in the United States: As Assessment of the Measure, Eds. Gooloo Wunderlich and Janet Norwood (Washington D.C.: The National Academies Press), 46, 2006, https://www.nap.edu/ read/11578/chapter/5#47.

48. Shannon N. Zenk, Amy J. Schulz, Barbara A. Israel, Sherman A. James, Shuming Bao, and Mark L. Wilson, “Neighborhood Racial Composition, Neighborhood Poverty, and the Spatial Accessibility of Supermarkets in Metropolitan Detroit,” 663.

53. “RefleX – Regional Transit Authority,” Regional Transit Authority, http://www.rtamichigan.org/reflex/. 54. Joel Batterman, “Will SMART Plan ‘Revolutionize’ Transit, or Marginalize the RTA?” Motor City Freedom Riders, November 14, 2017, http://motorcityfreedomriders.org/2017/11/14/will-smartplan-revolutionize-transit-or-marginalize-the-rta/. 55. R. Murphy and Michigan Dept. of Transportation, How Funding Works in Michigan’s Regional Transit Authority Legislation, report, March 2012, http://www.annarbor.com/RTA_funding_sources_ March_2012.pdf.

39. Ibid., 16.

56. Batterman, “Will SMART Plan ‘Revolutionize’ Transit, or Marginalize the RTA?”.

40. Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group, Food Desert and Food Balance: Community Fact Sheet, report, September 2014, 2-3, file:///C:/Users/acmcbride1/Downloads/Food-Desert-and-FoodBalance-Fact-Sheet%20(1).pdf.

57. Joel Batterman, “Brooks Got Everything He Wanted, It Still Wasn’t Enough,” Motor City Freedom Riders, March 05, 2018, https://motorcityfreedomriders.org/2018/03/05/the-transitbargain-that-brooks-refused/#more-1762.

41. Monica M. White, “Environmental Reviews and Case Studies: D-Town Farm: African American Resistance to Food Insecurity and the Transformation of Detroit,” Environmental Practice13, no. 4 (2011): 407-408, doi:10.1017/s1466046611000408.

58. Ibid.

42. Renee E. Walker, Christopher R. Keane, and Jessica G. Burke, “Disparities and Access to Healthy Food in the United States: A Review of Food Deserts Literature,” Health and Place 16, no. 5 (2010): 876-877, doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2010.04.013. 43. White, “Environmental Reviews and Case Studies,” 408. 44. N. Larson, M. Story, and M. Nelson, “Neighborhood Environments: Disparities in Access to Healthy Foods in the U.S.,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 36, no. 1 (2009): 75, doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.09.025. 45. Timothy F. Ledoux and Igor Vojnovi, “Going Outside the Neighborhood: The Shopping Patterns and Adaptations of Disadvantaged Consumers Living in the Lower Eastside Neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan,” Health and Place 19 (January 2013): 3, doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2012.09.010. 46. Daniel J Rose, “Captive Audience? Strategies for Acquiring Food in Two Detroit Neighborhoods,” Qualitative Health Research 21, no. 5 (2010): 646. doi:10.1177/1049732310387159. 47. Ibid.

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Ma d r i d, S p ai n b y S a d i e M a rsm an 70

SYMPOSIUM: RESILIENCY

he 21st century has brought crises in all domains and across all geographies. Natural disasters, such as the typhoons in the Philippines and hurricanes in New Orleans, Houston, and Puerto Rico, have devastated the capacities of their respective communities and have caused huge losses in all sectors. The 2008 global recession marked an economic low point surpassed only by the Great Depression and exacerbated divisions between races, classes, and geographies. Rising water levels correlated with climate change are increasingly impacting coastal communities around the world. In the face of this environmental, political, and economic uncertainty, cities must build the capacity to dynamically recover from and overcome moments of crisis. This year’s symposium topic poses the question “How can we plan cities proactively to mitigate the effects of crises?” The authors engage with the promise of emerging resilient energy solutions, the backwards logic of neoliberal economic development, and the dissonance between theory and practice. Further, they explore urban planning’s role in understanding, planning for, and responding to crises.

Jonathan Riley Symposium Director

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Ru ra l V ie t n a m by M a xw el l G i g l e

Islands of Light: Microgrids and Fracturing a Public Good

TYLER FITCH Master of Environmental Policy and Planning 2018 Tyler Fitch is a second-year master’s candidate in Environmental Policy and Planning at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. He is driven by the hope and ambition that humanity’s response to climate change can create a more just world. He received a Bachelor of Science and a complete immersion in Southern folk music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and managed energy efficiency programs in Washington, DC before returning to graduate studies. His research interests at Michigan center on the social processes and outcomes that pervade the transition to clean energy.

A B ST R ACT Climate-linked extreme weather events, aging infrastructure, and structural underinvestment contribute to increased vulnerability of urban populations to crises from interrupted electricity service. Microgrids – small-scale geographic “islands” of more resilient energy systems – present a technical solution to energy vulnerability. But energy planning is a socio-political process alongside a technical one, and while microgrids may create more resilient energy for some, they may further exacerbate cities’ structural and spatial inequities. Discourses on energy democracy identify a democratic alternative to the existing socio-technical institutions that govern energy infrastructure. Inclusive, participatory planning processes present an opportunity to build resilient energy systems that work for the benefit of all.

Massachusetts residents’ predicament in early January 2018 demonstrates the fragility of our electricity grid in the face of extreme weather events. It also highlights the critical role that a reliable and resilient supply of energy and electricity plays in our lives. Access to the services provided by electricity – refrigeration, lighting, and heating – define our contemporary lives, and even temporary outages or unstable supply can have far-reaching

consequences.2 As our working lives integrate more deeply with the digital world, our electricity infrastructure has transformed from what was once merely a medium for conveying energy services to an essential conduit to the outside world.3 Our energy infrastructure provides an increasingly critical public good, but it faces growing exposure to disruption and interruption. At the outset of the 21st century, our grid is due for a transformation.

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n Thursday, January 4, 2018, the “bomb cyclone” storm system hit the East Coast of the United States, bringing high winds and heavy snowfall to a region already contending with a record-breaking cold spell. The storm wreaked havoc on the region’s electricity grid. Almost 80,000 households and businesses lost power, and Massachusetts’ only nuclear power plant was forced to shut down.1 The power plants that stayed online ran dangerously low on fuel oil reserves. Without heat or light in the middle of a winter storm and record-low temperatures, Boston households faced crisis until authorities restored the state’s power grid. Emergency shelters hosted families who would go without electricity for days after the storm.

Transformation presents an opportunity to rearrange how our electric system distributes goods and services, but it also carries the risk of exacerbating the inequities of the current system. This essay identifies one potential way the grid is transforming – through microgrids – and illustrates how microgrids threaten to fracture a public good into a patchwork of grid technologies providing disparate levels of service and augmenting currently existing inequalities. First, I explore the critical nature of energy services and the challenges facing the grid of the 21st century. Second, I introduce microgrids as a potential technical solution. Third, I summarize the emerging discourse that identifies and problematizes status-quo development and point to new paradigms for understanding energy services.

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Islands of Light

R I S K S TO E NE RGY SE C U R I TY: CLI M ATE DR I V E N E X P O SURE , M A R K E T- DRI VE N SE N S I T I VI TY As a warming world increases the incidence of extreme weather events, communities need to understand the exposure of their critical energy infrastructure to wind, waves, and rain. Recent history provides stark portraits of the sensitivity of our energy systems. Hurricane Sandy’s 30foot swells plunged lower Manhattan into darkness, doing $75 billion of damage4 and leaving a permanent physical and psychological mark on the city.5 The

crippling, comprehensive, and ongoing outage in Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria has catalyzed a massive exodus from the island.6 Damage to energy infrastructure has become shorthand for understanding the human impact of extreme weather (Figure 1). Like many climate risks, the threats and damages of power outages disproportionately affect marginalized communities least able to adapt to them.7 Puerto Rico’s long ongoing recovery after Hurricane Maria demonstrates that risks to energy infrastructure may be no different. The risks posed by climate change and extreme weather events compound the structural and economic challenges

Figure 1 : Comparis on of Pu e rto Rico n ig h t l i g h t i n g , b ef ore an d aft er H u rri c an e M ari a. 8 Nation al A e ron au tical an d S pace A ge n cy (N ASA) i mag es f rom t h e Su omi N PP s at el l i t e show th e s cale of blackou ts pos t- Maria. Th e t op i mag e s h ows Pu ert o R i c o’s n i g h tt i me ligh tin g be fore H u rrican e Maria; th e bottom i mag e s h ows n i g h tt i me l i g h t i n g aft er Hurrican e Maria, on S e pte mbe r 2 7 - 2 8 , 2 0 17.

that have gripped the way electricity is generated, transmitted, and consumed in the United States. Even before climate impacts have taken full effect, the United States’ aging infrastructure causes more blackouts than in any other country in the developed world.9 As alternatives like solar power lead an increasing number of households to invest in their own power and opt out of the public grid, funds have become tighter for those urgent upgrades. The result has been dubbed the “utility death spiral.”10 Utilities must raise prices to cover their costs, thereby driving more customers away and fueling even higher prices.

Climate hazards, aging infrastructure, and a diverse set of vulnerabilities characterize the city’s energy landscape. At the same time, cities are uniquely situated to respond to growing energy instability. Urban energy provision retains the collective, networked nature of the grid, but the smaller, denser urban scale allows for the implementation of more precise policies and programs. Cities also wield unique political agency within regional energy policy regimes.14 Resilient communities and cities must provide an electricity system that meets the needs of its citizens equitably, efficiently,

MIC ROGRIDS : A T EC HNICA L S OLUT ION TO A S OC IA L PROBLEM Technology already exists to mitigate the risks to energy security. Microgrids – self-contained systems of power generation, transmission, and load – hold resiliency benefits because they are able to function even when the larger grid is down, or in some cases help to regulate the macro-grid.15 In effect, they are “islandable,” self-sustaining grids, which lends extra resilience to regional disruptions brought on by extreme weather events or breakdowns of the surrounding infrastructure. Microgrids can leverage that steadiness to provide stabilizing service to the surrounding grid, potentially reducing electricity prices, especially for those within the domain of a microgrid.16

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Increased utility prices will hit urban, lowincome, marginalized, and racial minority communities the hardest. Although these communities do not have substantially different energy practices than their more affluent neighbors,11 they pay a higher portion of their income toward energy bills and are more likely to fall behind on payments.12 Recent research on the lived experience of energy insecurity shows that households under a high energy burden suffer negative impacts to their social, physical, and psychological wellbeing.13

and effectively, and mitigates these rising risks to energy security.

Today, over 1,900 microgrids exist in the United States.17 In New York and throughout the country, Hurricane Sandy’s impact on New York has precipitated a new approach to resiliency and a commitment to resilient energy systems.18 Groups in Puerto Rico are urging grid rebuilders to turn toward microgrids, which promise to serve electricity at half of the utility’s retail rate and bring electricity to rural communities who previously could not afford access.19 Industry analysts predict that the 3,000 megawatts of microgrids already on the ground in the United States will double in five years. Ultimately, social and political institutions shape how new technologies emerge

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Islands of Light

in the world and how value is distributed across stakeholders. New energy infrastructure, no matter how innovative, is still shaped by those institutions. Highquality energy infrastructure tends to reflect the landscape of privilege in urban spaces, appearing most frequently in white and upper-income blocks, neighborhoods, and zip codes.20 Who is included in “islands” of light and who is kept in the dark? Disparities in access to secure energy are invisible until energy is desperately needed. When Hurricane Sandy turned off the lights in New York, the city became two separate half cities – “one rich in power, the other suddenly, stunningly impoverished.”21

access to a public good. Delineations of light through urban microgrids represent and reinforce a “splintered urbanism” that stratifies the experience of the city by race, place, and class.23 To the extent that microgrid technologies divert investment from the broader energy system toward privileged spaces, they threaten to fracture the public utility grid, providing reliable energy for those within the microgrid but second-rate services to those without. At a time when the grid is on the brink of transformation to cheap, available, and distributed renewable energy and high-quality electricity could be available to everyone, microgrid deployment might further exacerbate differences in energy security.

A F R ACTURE D P U BLI C G O O D, AN D WH AT’S NE X T

New problems, solutions, and tensions require new languages. A growing discourse is mobilizing “energy democracy” as an “integration of policies linking social justice and economic equity with renewable energy

Selective deployment of microgrids creates “premium” networked spaces of privileged

Figure 2:

Po w e r Ou tage s afte r H u rrican e S an dy, Ne w York C i t y, 2012. 2 2

transitions.”24 Energy democracy discourse allows for an imagination of an alternative form of energy provision characterized by self-determination and equity instead of technocratic, inaccessible decision making.25

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Renewable-powered, grid-connected microgrids are still relatively immature technical interventions outside of hospitals and military applications, so current regulatory and planning regimes do not directly address enhancing microgrid deployment. Further, the regional scope and technical nature of energy infrastructure planning confines discussion of problems and solutions into “largely techno-economic” modes of thinking.26 Energy democracy discourse, however, provides directions for new policies. Energy infrastructure could be integrated into other urban planning proceedings (e.g., housing, water, waste management). Microgrids and renewable energy projects could be included in plans for housing retrofits and updates. Cities could engage with their citizens through participatory, communitydriven policymaking procedures.27 In Chile, where the national government triggered a revision of its energy policy in 2014, participatory planning has taken center stage. The process is still in an early stage, but initial proposals reflect a commitment to communities’ assets and concerns.28 Communities face substantial challenges in achieving resilient energy systems, and planning for a highly uncertain future requires innovative approaches and paradigms. Energy provision will be

an essential component of increasingly connected and electrified communities of the 21st century. While technologies for building resilient power systems are emerging, they may further reinforce existing inequities in our energy systems if they are not planned for and implemented appropriately. As historian Timothy Mitchell wrote, “The building of solutions to future energy needs is also the building of new forms of collective life.”29 Societies interested in building vibrant, equitable communities should design their energy systems to match. ■

Islands of Light

ENDNOTES

17. Colleen Metelitsa, U.S. Microgrids 2017: Market Drivers, Analysis and Forecast (Green Tech Media, 2017).

1. Reuters, “The ‘Bomb Cyclone’ Has Put a Freeze on the Power Supply on Parts of the East Coast,” Fortune Magazine. January 4, 2017, http://fortune.com/2018/01/04/bomb-cyclone-grayson power-outages/.

18. Stephen Lacey, “Resiliency: How Superstorm Sandy Changed America’s Grid.” Greentech Medi,. June 10, 2014. https:// www.greentechmedia.com/articles/featured/resiliency-howsuperstorm-sandy-changed-americas-grid.

2. Michael James Fell, “Energy Services: A Conceptual Review.” Energy Research & Social Science 27, (2017): 129-140.

19. David Ferris and Peter Behr, “Microgrids Could Save Puerto Rico. But First, a Fight,” E&E News, December 8, 2017 https:// www.eenews.net/stories/1060068479.

3. Gretchen Bakke, The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future (Bloomsbury USA, 2016), 156. 4. Oliver Milman, “Hurricane Sandy, Five Years Later: ‘No One was Ready for what Happened After,’” The Guardian. October 28, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/27/ hurricane-sandy-five-years-later-climate-change. 5. John Homans, “The City and the Storm,” New York Magazine, November 4, 2012, http://nymag.com/news/features/hurricanesandy-2012-11/. 6. Alexia Fernandez Campbell, “5 Things to Know About Puerto Rico 100 Days After Hurricane Maria.” Vox, December 29, 2017, https://www.vox.com/2017/12/23/16795342/puerto-rico-mariachristmas. 7. “Climate Change,” Oxfam America, January 1, 2018, https:// policy-practice.oxfamamerica.org/work/climate-change/. 8. “Pinpointing Where the Lights Went Out in Puerto Rico,” NASA Earth Observatory September 29, 2017, https://earthobservatory. nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=91044.

9. Bakke, The Grid, 196. 10. Nicholas D. Laws, Brenden P. Epps, Steven O. Petersen, Mark S. Laser, and G. Kamau Wanjiru, “On photovoltaics and energy storage.” Applied Energy 185, (2017): 627-641. 11. Yessenia Funes,”This Brutally Cold Winter Could Mean Life or Death for the Poor.” Earther. January 4, 2018, https:// earther.com/this-brutally-cold-winter-could-mean-life-or-deathfor-1821743446. 12. Ariel Drebohl Lauren Ross, Lifting the High Energy Burden in America’s Largest Cities: How Energy Efficiency Can Improve Low Income and Underserved Communities (Washington, DC: American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, 2016). 13. Diana Hernández, “Energy Insecurity: A Framework for Understanding Energy, Environment, and Health,” American Journal of Public Health 103 no. 4 (2013).

14. Jonathan Rutherford and Olivier Coutard, “Urban Energy Transitions: Places, Processes, and Politics of Socio-technical Change,” Urban Studies 51, no. 4 (2014): pp. 1353-1377. 15. Matt Grimley and John Farrell, Mighty Microgrids (Institute for Local Self Reliance, 2016). 16. David Roberts and Alvin Chang, “Meet the Microgrid, the Technology Poised to Transform Electricity,” Vox, December 29, 2017, https://www.vox.com/energy-andenvironment/2017/12/15/16714146/greener-more-reliable-moreresilient-grid-microgrids.

20. Diana Hernández, “Sacrifice Along the Energy Continuum: A Call for Energy Justice,” Environmental Justice 8, no.4 (2015). 21. Homans, “The City and the Storm.” 22. Bobby Magill, “NYC Tops List for Seeing Increased Storm Outages,” Climate Central, December 17, 2014, http://www. climatecentral.org/news/nyc-grid-increased-storm-outages-18453. 23. Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (Routledge, 2001). 24. Matthew J. Burke and Jennie C Stephens, “Energy Democracy: Goals and Policy Instruments for Sociotechnical Transitions,” Energy Research & Social Science 33 (2017): 35-48. 25. Carla Alvial-Palavicino and Sebastián Ureta, “Economizing Justice: Turning Equity Claims into Lower Energy Tariffs in Chile,” Energy Policy 105 (2017): 642-647. 26. Ibid. 27. Ali Adil and Yekang Ko, “Socio-Technical Evolution of Decentralized Energy Systems: A Critical Review and Implications for Urban Planning and Policy,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 57: 1025-1037. 28. Jenny Heeter and Amy Hollander, Project Summary: Community Solar Stakeholder Impacts in Cook County, Illinois (Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory: 2017). 29. Shelley Welton, “Grasping for Energy Democracy.” Michigan Law Review, forthcoming.

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C HO

Aspirations of Economic Resilience: An Analysis of the Infuriating Logic of Detroitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Little Caesars Arena Development GRACE CHO Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2018 Grace spent all of her life in the Sun Belt before moving to Michigan for graduate school. She first learned about urban planning as a college student at UCLA and was immediately struck by the concept of structural injustice. Through her exploration of the discipline, she has come to appreciate the possibilities of using planning to promote equitable outcomes in local spaces. Grace is currently pursuing her Master of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan and has been enjoying the four seasons and Eastern Standard Time.

A B ST R ACT The narrative of deindustrialization and urban decline has been well-documented in literature. Local governments in the United States have responded to structural inequities in the use and generation of capital with some degree of success, continued challenges, and/or worsening conditions. Promoting economic development after decades of decline is no easy feat and requires perseverance, compromise, and risk. This paper will define urban economic resilience as promoting a diversity of goods, services, and industries; managing and moderating market cycles; actively preventing stagnation and decline; and protecting vulnerable groups. The qualities of urban economic resilience should be promoted, especially in urban areas that have suffered from increasing political and economic constraints. This paper will examine the unique case study of Detroit, Michigan and the downtown Little Caesars Area development project. This example demonstrates how local governments have used traditional economic development tools in an attempt to achieve positive growth outcomes. However, the use of these tools merits sincere critique in the face of historical economic troubles and existing conditions of inequality and disinvestment. Ultimately, this paper critiques local economic development tools by highlighting the public and social costs of implementing them. n the local development landscape, no one builds with the expectation of decline. In the past 60 years, technological advances have contributed to the rise of high-wage, high-skill industries, including finance and advertising. Some local economies have shifted to include these new generators of capital, which has allowed them to adapt well to change. Cities and regions that have focused exclusively on manufacturing have inevitably declined.1 Many of these post-industrial cities in Northeastern and Midwestern America have found themselves in the position of planning for population decline, budget constraints, blight, and vacancy.2 In addition to structural shifts in local economies, changes in political sentiment have further placed fiscal pressure on cities. Since the 1970s, most states have passed laws that restrict local governments from increasing taxes.3 In addition, dwindling revenue sharing to local governments

has contributed to the mismatch between revenues and expenditures.4

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Given these restrictions, municipal decision makers have begun to engage in an â&#x20AC;&#x153;entrepreneurialâ&#x20AC;? form of governance to promote local economic development.5 Local governments can use subsidies such as tax abatements, low-interest loans, regulatory leniency, and land transfers to support large, private-sector projects with the expectation of expanding employment and economic activity.6,7 Local subsidization of development inherently results in public assumption of private risk, which Harvey characterizes as a marked shift from managerial to more speculative forms of governance.8 These new public-private partnerships reflect the ideological, financial, and political challenges of growing and revitalizing urban neighborhoods. This current model of economic development reveals the coercive power of private capital in shaping local decision making.

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This shift in public decision-making begs the question of whether this form of economic development promotes economically resilient cities. Not only must local governments deal with increasing federal and state retrenchment,9 they are also vulnerable to recession under a neoliberal system that does little to moderate fluctuations in the private market.10 Somewhere between promoting city growth and keeping the lights on, local governments have been forced to make compromises to their fiscal security. This paper will discuss urban economic resilience as the promotion of a diversity of goods, services, and industries; the management of a market with cyclical booms and busts; active prevention of stagnation and decline; and protections for vulnerable populations. One can imagine that economic resilience, like equity, is an aspirational goal that is under-resourced, politically unpopular, and unlikely to be pursued without some forms of ideological compromise. Urban planners and policymakers must consider the implications of the pursuit of economic resilience, as well as the failure to do so. As one of the most recognizable examples of urban decline, the city of Detroit offers an important case study for modern economic development and the challenges of achieving economic resilience. While the city’s challenges are unique, they offer insight on economic development that can be applied more broadly. This paper will describe the structural forces that have contributed to Detroit’s multifaceted development challenges and the preconditions that forestall economic resilience. It will then analyze the Little Caesars Arena public-private partnership in Downtown Detroit. This analysis will challenge the logic of having local

governments absorb the risks of private enterprise. Detroit has a pressing need to establish economic stability; achieving urban economic resilience is a process that may require financial, social, and political compromises in a city that has experienced decades of unfavorable investments.

C HA LLENGES TO DET ROIT ’S GROWT H The city of Detroit offers rather extreme economic and political conditions in which to study economic development, but this context provides insight into broader constraints on local governance. Deindustrialization has played a widely recognized role in the city’s decline over the past 60 years.11 Decades of racially discriminatory federal policy, local planning, and real estate practices effectively enabled employment centers and the white population to move to the outlying suburbs.12 This slow-moving crisis hollowed out Detroit’s jobs and neighborhoods, a process that intensified after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.13 As a result, almost 30% of Detroit’s housing stock is now vacant,14 creating a visually stark landscape that poignantly demonstrates the effects of political, social, and economic disinvestment. Because of this decline, the municipal government has struggled to maintain its role as a local service provider. The loss of population has forced 600,000 residents – almost 40% of whom are impoverished – to maintain water, sewage, and street infrastructure that was built for two million people.15,16 Faced with a shrinking and weakening tax base, reduced economic activity, and declining property values, local agencies have been forced to raise

the City’s property tax rate, which is currently one of the highest in the country.17,18 Furthermore, the State of Michigan has been reducing its revenue sharing to local governments to deal with its own chronic deficits, which has resulted in further strain on the City.19 To deal with these and other serious issues, the City actively disinvested in certain neighborhoods for decades, cutting vital services like streetlights, police protection, and firefighting.20,21 In 2013, the City filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy with billions of dollars of debt and a stark inability to service its obligations.22,23 Discussing economic resilience in this context requires a nuanced understanding of the deep, structural challenges that impede municipal leaders from promoting fiscal stability.

Amid over 100 square miles of singlefamily neighborhoods that continue to lose population, the 7.2 square miles that comprise Detroit’s Downtown and Midtown neighborhoods have been growing. Because of its central location, “the 7.2” has been the focus of public and private investments in the city since at least the 1990s. Dan Gilbert (the owner of Quicken Loans and the Cleveland Cavaliers) and the Illitch family (the owners of Little Caesars Pizza) are prominent billionaires who control large swaths of land in the 7.2. They have made significant investments in this part of Detroit and have received large public subsidies for their efforts.27 Given these and other ventures, a privatesector report recently hailed “America’s comeback city” as having successfully attracted development and diversified its economy.28 While these claims are somewhat dubious and certainly do not hold true for most of the city’s longtime and mostly black residents, they reflect the optimism of the private sector around the potential for profit-making in Detroit. Local public and private actors have both been heavily involved in promoting radical citybuilding after decades of decline. These efforts, however, deserve sincere critique.

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Given the complex causes of Detroit’s decline, two realities exist: The city of Detroit as a geographic entity is in desperate need of investment, which is generated by private economic activity. The City of Detroit as a municipal body is in desperate need of revenue, much of which is generated by economic activity and property tax revenue. According to the “urban growth machine” theory, the primary role of local governments is to promote a business climate favorable to growth, namely by raising property capital.24,25 Within the context of its extreme physical and economic decline, the City of Detroit has an especially dire need to attract capital to begin to improve its own fiscal condition, as well as to facilitate a meaningful recovery process for its residents. Although the methods for drawing investment to the city are politically contested,26 Detroit requires new capital to make meaningful progress toward economic resilience.

DET ROIT ’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT LA NDS CA PE

DET ROIT CA S E ST UDY: T HE LIT T LE CA ES A RS A RENA DEVELOPMENT One of the major criticisms of government support for economic development is the use of public monies to subsidize profit-

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seeking activities. This is an especially salient point in Detroit, which only recently emerged from bankruptcy and still faces serious problems, such as a failing public school system.29 The development of the Little Caesars Arena in Downtown Detroit provides an important case study of the costs and compromises of local economic development. It raises questions about current processes and tools for promoting urban economic resilience, which impose undue costs on local third-party stakeholders. The Illitches have been acquiring lots in the 7.2 at least since the 1990s.30 They currently plan to redevelop a 50-block area that includes the Little Caesars Arena, which they have rebranded as the “District.” The estimated total investment in this area will be over $2 billion.31 The Arena, which is now home to the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, has received substantial public subsidies. In 2013, the Little Caesars Arena redevelopment project initially received $250 million of tax-exempt bonds from Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority. At the time, this amounted to 60 percent of estimated construction costs.32 The state later offered an additional $34.5 million in new bonds and $4.85 million in closing costs and interest payments to support the relocation of the Pistons basketball team to the Little Caesars Arena from suburban Auburn Hills. By September 2017, the cost of the stadium had ballooned to $863 million.33 State and local support for the stadium development has reached $289.4 million, one-third of the total construction costs. The development redirects property tax revenue in downtown Detroit’s tax increment financing (TIF) district to support redevelopment costs. The funding scheme

diverts property tax revenue from a state education tax, the Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency, and Detroit Public Schools.34

T HE ILLOGIC OF GOVERNMENT S UBS IDIES F OR PRIVAT E STA DIUM DEVELOPMENT One could make a case for the potentially catalytic nature of this redevelopment project, particularly in the context of Detroit. However, the facts of this project undermine justifications for public subsidy. First, experts have consistently criticized public subsidies for stadiums because of the lack of benefits for taxpayers. These developments often lead to above-market rates of return for investors, meaning that public financing and tax abatement policies essentially funnel excessive profits to the private sector. Highly publicized economic benefits in job creation and “spillover” effects are often unrealized. In addition, tax revenue from new stadiums to local governments often reflects a transfer of expenditures from one form of entertainment to another, meaning that the developments do not necessarily increase overall local and regional economic activity.35 This is especially true of the Red Wings’ move from Joe Louis Arena in Detroit and the Pistons’ move from suburban Auburn Hills. In spite of the claims of public benefit, the Little Caesars Arena may not contribute much to the City’s fiscal condition or to its residents outside of the 7.2 square miles of concentrated redevelopment. America’s cities and metropolitan areas are already marked by intense stratification;36 the disparities within Detroit and its surrounding region can only be amplified by continued uneven

development. The City cannot build its tax base around sports teams that have moved within and outside of the city multiple times in the last fifty years. Promoting economic resilience thus will likely require new methods beyond popular economic development tools.

A final critique of government support for private development asks whether the economic activity could have happened without subsidies. Besides the construction of the arena, the Illitches have made a $1.1 billion investment in their massive District redevelopment project, an ongoing effort that does not use public subsidies. This suggests that the Illitches have a significant amount of capital and are more than willing to invest in Detroit. It begs the question of whether the subsidy for the arena was necessary at all. Herein lies the excruciating truth of economic development: city leaders take

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Another problematic aspect of the Little Caesars Arena development is the use of tax increment financing (TIF) to the detriment of the city’s public school system. TIF essentially redirects taxpayer money away from vital City services to support profit-seeking activities.37 This is particularly troubling for Detroit, which has struggled with poor public school performance and its effects on enrollment and families.38 By 2051, $726 million of property tax revenue will be diverted from state and local public school funds to pay for the redevelopment.39 Economic recovery and resilience at the neighborhood level require stable schools that support families and children, which requires substantial investment in the local school system. Far from redistributing the benefits of redevelopment to marginalized groups, Detroit’s arena project is depriving public schools of much-needed capital.

risks – correctly or incorrectly – to divert money from essential services to promote private enterprise with the hope of ultimately benefitting the city. In the case of Detroit, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which the City would reject an offer of substantial reinvestment, especially in the very year that the City filed for bankruptcy. This is likely no accident on the part of Detroit’s billionaire developers; both the Illitches and Dan Gilbert took advantage of the disorder caused by the 2013 bankruptcy to readily acquire property and permissions for redevelopment. They were further empowered by weak community opposition to these proposals.40 The projects did little, and arguably will do little, for Detroit’s most vulnerable and underserved populations. It is hard to say whether the Arena would have been built without public subsidies. It may be better to ask whether the Illitches could have afforded to pay for the arena without government support, in spite of the challenging development context of Detroit. A question of further relevance for economic development professionals is whether the City of Detroit can afford to subsidize development – or whether it can afford not to.

CONC LUS ION The task of remaking a city is not easy. The City of Detroit has faced, and continues to face, strong fiscal constraints. Within this context, economic development professionals have worked behind the scenes to promote recovery and growth. While both public and private actors have contributed to the city’s recent improvements, one cannot help but question the methods of recovery that have actively disinvested from Detroit’s

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many impoverished, disenfranchised, and minority neighborhoods. When public financing is involved, urban planners must be vigilant in determining appropriate uses of limited taxpayer resources. This brief discussion of development in Detroit illuminates the elusive nature of true economic resilience. Peck discusses the phenomenon of â&#x20AC;&#x153;trickle-down austerity,â&#x20AC;? in which federal retrenchment transfers financial burdens to lower levels of government.41 Under this conception of urban governance, it follows that local governments are heavily restricted in their ability to promote resilience, especially for their more vulnerable constituents. Counties, cities, townships, neighborhoods, and blocks will vary in their ability to manage shrinking resources, depending on their political, financial, and social capital. Local governments will thus have varying degrees of success in adjusting to the multi-faceted restrictions that have been imposed on them. Economic development tools like subsidies for stadiums give local government bodies the ability to build up resilience, though not without consequences for the city as a whole. Ultimately, the question of economic resilience is one that could be resolved by a shift in how resources are allocated at the state and federal levels. Discussions about strengthening our cities and regions must engage higher governmental units to promote economic resilience through the redistribution of resources. â&#x2013;

E NDNOTE S

25. Harvey Molotch. “The City as a Growth Machine: Towards a Political Economy of Place.” American Journal of Sociology (1976), 297.

1. Edward L. Glaeser, “Why Economists Still Like Cities,” City Journal 71 (1996). 2. Ibid., 72. 3. Jamie Peck, “Austerity Urbanism.” City Journal 16, no. 6 (2012): 627. 4. Ibid., 628. 5. David Harvey, “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism.” Human Geography 71, no. 1 (1989): 4. 6. Ibid., 8.

26. Katrease Stafford and Joe Guillen, “Lawsuit to Block $34.5M in Public Funding for Pistons Move Dropped.” Detroit Free Press, July 1, 2017. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/ michigan/detroit/2017/07/01/lawsuit-public-funding-pistonsarena/446224001/. 27. Moskowitz, How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, 94–97. 28. CBRE Inc. “Downtown Detroit Development Report.” CBRE Group, Inc., 2017. 29. Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back, 244. 30. Perkins, “How the Illitches Used ‘Dereliction by Design’ to Get Their New Detroit Arena”; Shea, “How Olympia Financed an Arena in a Bankrupt City.”

7. Herbert J. Rubin, “Shoot Anything That Flies; Claim Anything That Falls: Conversations With Economic Development Practitioners.” Economic Development Quarterly 2, no. 3 (1988): 403.

31. Shea, “How Olympia Financed an Arena in a Bankrupt City.” 32. Moskowitz, How to Kill a City, 97.

8. Harvey, “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism,” 7. 9. Peck, “Austerity Urbanism,” 628.

33. Shea, “Latest Little Caesars Arena Project Construction Cost: $862.9 Million.”

10. William, K. Tabb, “The Wider Context of Austerity Urbanism.” City Journal 18, no. 2 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2 014.896645, 90–91.

34. Shea and Pinho, “Biggest Tabs for Public Arena Debt? Gilbert, GM.”

12. Gary Sands and Mark Skidmore, “Detroit and the Property Tax: Strategies to Improve Equity and Enhance Revenue.” Policy Focus Report. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (2015): 115. 13. Ibid., 8. 14. U.S. Census Bureau. (2016b). 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table DP04. Retrieved from http:// factfinder.census.gov.

35. Chad Livengood. “$1 Billion Spent on Little Caesars Arena, District Detroit.” Crain’s Detroit Business, September 10, 2017. http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20170910/news/638636/1billion-spent-on-little-caesars-arena-district-detroit. 21.

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11. Glaeser, “Why Economists Still Like Cities,” 70.

36. Donald F. Norris. “Prospects for Regional Governance under the New Regionalism: Economic Imperatives versus Political Impediments.” Journal of Urban Affairs 23, no. 5 (2001):, 565. 37. Livengood, “$1 Billion Spent on Little Caesars Arena, District Detroit.” 38. Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back, 244.

15. Sands and Skidmore, “Detroit and the Property Tax,” 11. 16. U.S. Census Bureau. (2016a). 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-year Estimates, Table DP03. Retrieved from http:// factfinder.census.gov. 17. Nathan Bomey. Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (2016), 109.

39. Stafford and Guillen, “Lawsuit to Block $34.5M in Public Funding for Pistons Move Dropped.” 40. Shea, “How Olympia Financed an Arena in a Bankrupt City.” 41. Peck, “Austerity Urbanism.”

18. Sands and Skidmore, “Detroit and the Property Tax,” i. 19. Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back, 13. 20. Ibid., 87. 21. Peck, “Austerity Urbanism,” 635. 22. Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back, xv. 23. Peck, “Austerity Urbanism,” 635. 24. Kevin Cox. “Revisiting ‘the City as a Growth Machine.’” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (2017): 392.

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Practitioner Perspectives, Equity, and Tradeoffs: A Critical Look at Urban Resiliency PRATHMESH GUPTA Master of Sustainable Systems and Master of Arts in Applied Economics 2018 Prathmesh Gupta is focused on climate change adaptation, urban sustainability, urban sanitation, and environmental finance. A native of Mumbai, India, he has a background as a mechanical engineer. He is currently a second-year dual student in the Master of Science in Sustainable Systems program at the School for Environment and Sustainability and the Master of Arts in Applied Economics at the school of Literature, Science, and the Arts. His future goals include pursuing a doctoral degree focused on international climate adaptation and starting a podcast on environmental issues and research in India. 90

A B ST R ACT Urban resilience is becoming increasingly relevant for urban planners due to the rising impacts of extreme weather events and climate change. Plannersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and practitionersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; conceptions of urban resilience have powerful effects on adaptation to climate change, actions to build resilience of urban systems, and the operationalization of resilience. The academic literature conceptualizes urban resilience as a characteristic of an urban system that maintains its intended functions and allows it to adapt to change or transform to a better state in the face of an event. In contrast, practitioners often apply a conceptualization of urban resilience that imagines the system bouncing back to its previous state after an event rather than transforming to an improved state. As a result, current approaches to urban resilience have tradeoffs, often with unintended consequences for communities on the margins. Planners and practitioners must critically evaluate how they conceptualize and actualize urban resilience; otherwise they may continue to perpetuate systems that cause inequities and undermine longterm resilience. They must frame and apply a conceptualization of urban resilience that focuses on bouncing forward, seeks to minimize or at least acknowledge tradeoffs, and considers questions of power and equity.

CLI M AT E CH AN GE AND U R B A N RE SI LI E NCE

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limate change has emerged as one of the biggest challenges to human well-being and progress in the 21st century. While the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events may not be causal, the intensity of extreme weather is increasing as global temperatures rise.1 In 2017, insurers covered $135 billion in losses of public and private property due to natural disasters, the second-highest payout amount in history.2 Planning for resiliency is a necessary lever to mitigate the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on cities and communities. Planners can focus, and are focusing on, resilience planning so that cities suffer fewer losses and start recovering faster after extreme weather events. Examples of building urban resilience include investing in green infrastructure, such as bioswales to reduce runoff, or constructing dykes to prevent

flooding. These efforts seek to redefine and reimagine how cities respond to extreme weather events in terms of the built environment, but they often fail to incorporate social promoters of urban resilience. In this paper, I argue that practitioners should conceptualize planning for resilience in terms of bouncing forward as opposed to bouncing back. I also argue that planners need to consider how interventions to improve resilience cause tradeoffs with development goals and resilience in the long term. Without such a conceptualization and consideration of tradeoffs, resiliency planning may lead to inequitable outcomes. To illustrate these points, the paper will begin with a discussion of the components of resilience and the common conceptualizations of the term. It will then describe how our conceptualization of resilience has implications for equity and power relations in a community, and tradeoffs with

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development and long-term resilience. It will conclude with recommendations for practitioners seeking to reduce the vulnerability and increase the adaptive capacity of their communities in the most equitable way.

U R B A N RE SI LI E NCE A N D I T S CO NCE PTUAL U N DE R P I N N I N GS In their work summarizing the academic literature on urban resilience, Meerow, Stults, and Newell (2016) define urban resilience as “the ability of an urban system to maintain or rapidly return to intended functions in the face of disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity.”3 Planning for urban resilience not only means recovering from events, but also means that urban systems can adapt, change, and transform after events. Examining the mutual determinants of resilience can guide planners to refine their focus from the narrow, environmental lens to a more holistic view of resilience. Planners can then incorporate interventions that may be often considered beyond the scope of resiliency but nonetheless influence a community’s ability to recover from events and transform into stronger systems. Outlined below is a theoretical snapshot of these mutual determinants.

Vulnerabil ity and Adaptive Capacity Two factors are related to resilience: vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Vulnerability is a system’s susceptibility to harm and is composed of two mutual determinants, exposure and sensitivity.

Exposure refers to how likely the system is to encounter a specific hazard or event. Sensitivity, on the other hand, refers to how responsive systems are to a specific hazard or event. For example, communities located near a river and at a lower elevation are more exposed to flooding than communities farther away from the river. However, communities near the river may have concrete houses, which reduces their sensitivity, while those living farther away might live in temporary structures that can easily be washed away during a flood. Therefore, even though the communities near the river are more exposed, they might be less sensitive to flooding than the communities farther away. Exposure and sensitivity are interdependent and compound to determine vulnerability. Therefore, a system’s vulnerability can be reduced, and its resilience increased, via a reduction in its exposure or sensitivity.4,5,6,7 Adaptive capacity describes the capacities of a system to respond to events and transform into an improved and resilient state. It can be further subdivided into two types: specific capacities and generic capacities. Specific capacities are related to specific risks. An example of building a specific capacity would be equipping communities with information about flood risks and teaching members how to use this information to make decisions. Generic capacities are centered on the development level of a community. Examples of generic capacities are the income levels, health, or education levels of community residents. 8,9,10,11 Building either type of these adaptive capacities can help a system improve its resilience, but not necessarily to every event. A generic capacity is useful across different types of risks and contexts. A

specific capacity is usually useful only for one specific risk. Moreover, restrictions may prevent use of either of these capacities.12

By reducing a system’s vulnerability or improving its adaptive capacity, we act on strategies to improve a system’s resilience. To reduce vulnerability, planners must focus on reducing the system’s exposure and sensitivity. To improve the system’s adaptive capacity, planners must focus on equipping the system with generic and specific capacities, which will enable it to respond or transform after an event. The following section will use the components of resilience covered so far to understand the points of contention that arise between

POINT S OF CONT ENT ION, EQUITY, A ND T RA DEOF F S Bouncing Back vs. Bouncing Forward Comparing how academics and local practitioners typically think about urban resilience in the context of climate change, Meerow and Stults (2016) outline certain points of contention. Only some of these points are explored here. Of the 134 practitioners they surveyed, a majority favored, implicitly or explicitly, notions of “bouncing back” after an event in their conceptualizations around urban resilience. Bouncing back means returning to the system’s previous state after an event has occurred.

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For example, a household with higher disposable income (generic capacity) can act upon the flood risk information (specific capacity) provided to make the decision to move to a safer location. The adaptive capacity is only observed when the household indeed acts upon the generic capacity (income) using the specific capacities (flood risk information). However, poorer households may not have the income to act upon the flood risk information provided to them. Therefore, they cannot act on the specific capacity, and the effectiveness of providing the specific capacity is not observed. Perhaps providing them with additional income may help them to relocate and thereby act on both generic and specific capacities. However, the movement of wealthier households into safer locations may drive up housing prices, further restricting lower-income households’ capacities to move into safer areas. This example illustrates that different system actors’ actions to build capacities interact dynamically and influence the overall capacities a system needs to undergo transformation.

how resilience is defined in this paper and how it might be applied in practice, the concerns of equity that arise from that contention, and the tradeoffs that occur between desires for development and long-term resilience.

In contrast to popular thought among practitioners, the academic literature tends to focus on “bouncing forward.” Bouncing forward means moving to a better system state after an event, as it might not be possible or even ideal to return to the system’s previous state. Continuing in the same vein of bouncing forward, the academic literature gives less importance to robustness, while practitioners emphasize it. Robustness is a system’s ability to return to its previous state and functionality after the occurrence of an event. Why do academics not emphasize robustness? Robustness itself is not inherently good and may involve the

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persistence of undesirable states. Poverty is a robust state of a system, one that is undesirable, and one that persists very strongly after events like flooding. Similarly, structural racism might be a robust state of a system, persisting even after system shocks. To bounce forward, adaptive capacity is needed. However, practitioners did not explicitly mention adaptive capacity in their conceptualization of urban resilience: only 21 alluded to it.13 Practitioners would benefit from approaching resilience from a â&#x20AC;&#x153;bouncing forwardâ&#x20AC;? mentality. For example, providing insurance to rebuild flooded houses in the same location may not be ideal, if future flooding conditions are likely to be similar, if not worse. A framework of urban resilience aimed at bouncing forward would not put these homes back where they were; it would actively seek out and employ context-specific, diverse solutions, including relocation of communities or more protective zoning regulations in problem areas. Doing so could prevent future harm to the community, increasing long-term resiliency.

Equity Actions to improve urban resilience are embedded in relations of power and equity. Some questions planners must think about include: For whom are we building urban resilience? What are we defining as improvements in urban resilience? What are the actions we are proposing? Who is deciding what actions to take? Whom are we affecting with these actions?14 Planners must contend with these questions as they plan for urban resilience, or they risk causing unintended harm to communities on the margins. And they must also situate these questions in a conceptualization that

emphasizes bouncing forward not only for new development, but also for broader market structures and processes. Issues of power and equity frequently conflict with sustainability goals in planning. This is best illustrated by an example. Suppose that insurance contracts include clauses that state that individuals or businesses cannot use insurance payments to rebuild in the same location if houses are in flood-prone areas. With these policies, households and businesses will have to relocate. Without an adequate amount of land and affordable housing to accommodate this displaced population, the price of existing housing may go up. Those who can afford the housing will move, thereby realizing their adaptive capacity and reducing their vulnerability. To move, others may need higher adaptive capacities (in the form of additional funds). They may have received insurance payments, but if the amounts are not enough to purchase housing at the elevated prices, their vulnerability may not be explicitly reduced. Those without property rights or perhaps insurance, such as tenants and informal settlers, will be unable to reduce their vulnerabilities and will struggle to realize their adaptive capacities. The broader structures that perpetuate a lack of property rights, such as a lack of unaffordable housing or tenure systems, have still not bounced forward and continue to be situated in a bouncing back conceptualization. A concrete illustration of the interaction between property rights, market systems, and resiliency is observed in Manila, Philippines. Here, informal settlers in the city typically live in the locations most exposed to flooding. Green infrastructure projects, such as the creation of additional

green space, are underway in the city to reduce runoff and improve urban resilience. These projects are targeting, among others, areas where these informal settlers live. Since informal settlers do not have property rights, these projects forcibly displace them, leaving them vulnerable to future hazards. Their future is uncertain without any compensation, and their vulnerabilities may not be explicitly reduced.15 Additionally, increased green space can increase surrounding property values. These rising housing costs can, in turn, cause further displacement, as people are priced out of property markets.16

Safe Development Paradox

We see the “safe development paradox” in the example of building dykes to prevent vulnerability to flooding. In New Orleans, dykes were built to allow urban expansion into low-lying, previously flood-prone areas. With the new dykes, these areas were, at first, safer from flooding. While these actions were appropriate when urban

CONC LUS ION Practitioners must consider which components of resilience of an urban system their interventions focus on and ensure that their approach is holistic. Planners can inform their efforts by thinking about what is it that they want the urban system to be resilient to. However, it is not enough to focus only on reducing vulnerability or adaptive capacity. Planners must work to conceptualize interventions to improve resilience after an event within a frame of bouncing forward to a better state, rather than bouncing back to the pre-existing state that had permitted failure. Additionally, practitioners should think about how their interventions result in tradeoffs between current or future development goals and resilience in the long run, seeking to minimize them whenever possible.

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Practitioners must be aware that their efforts to increase or maintain development in hazardous areas by increasing their resilience to present threats, without care, can forsake resilience in the long run. This contradiction is known as the “safe development paradox.”17 This paradox becomes especially important considering the increasing intensity of extreme weather events. Infrastructure designed to reduce vulnerabilities may seem to make a place safe for habitation and development in the short run. However, sometimes infrastructure requires continuous upgrading and regulation to prevent the dynamic nature of extreme weather events from undermining effectiveness in providing a system with resilience.

expansion was undertaken, dykes are designed for specific flooding levels. With increasing intensity of extreme weather events, the flood protection dykes provided decreased over time. Perhaps the dykes that once provided adequate protection also provided a false sense of security regarding future flooding. Developments in these previously flood-prone areas become increasingly vulnerable as the dykes were not upgraded. When New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, this situation unintentionally led to excess damage in the flood-prone areas thought to be protected by the dykes.

More importantly, actions to improve urban resilience do not occur in isolation from relations of power and equity. Planners must question whose resilience they are working to build, and who is benefitting

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from interventions. They need to explicitly consider the processes and structures that result in differential vulnerability to events, and the differing capabilities of marginalized groups to participate in the conversations and influence the discourse around resilience that ultimately impact the resilience policies that emerge. The current narrative of resilience in practice, without adequate critical examination, threatens to maintain efforts to bounce back to earlier inequitable states of processes and structures, such as a lack of property rights or affordable housing. To leave this narrative unexamined can perpetuate injustices as populations suffer disproportionate impacts and do not have the capacity to respond. Interventions to build urban resilience should strive, as one of their primary objectives, to break cycles of dispossession and exclusion.18 Without this focus, actions taken in the name of urban resilience are incomplete and do not accomplish their task. â&#x2013;

E NDNOTE S 1. Daniel G. Huber and Jay Gulledge, “Extreme Weather & Climate Change: Understanding the Link and Managing the Risk,” Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, last modified December 2011, https://www.c2es.org/site/assets/uploads/2011/12/white-paperextreme-weather-climate-change-understanding-link-managingrisk.pdf.

18. Christophe Béné, Lyla Mehta, Gordon McGranahan, Terry Cannon, Jaideep Gupte, and Thomas Tanner, “Resilience as a Policy Narrative: Potentials and Limits in the Context of Urban Planning,” Climate and Development 10, 2 (2018): 116-133.

2. Hiroko Tabuchi, “2017 Set a Record for Losses from Natural Disasters. It Could Get Worse,” New York Times, January 04, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/climate/losses-naturaldisasters-insurance.html 3. Sara Meerow, Joshua P. Newell, and Melissa Stults, “Defining Urban Resilience,” Landscape and Urban Planning 147 (2016): 38-49. 4. Ibid. 5. Gilberto C. Gallopin, “Linkages Between Vulnerability, Resilience, and Adaptive Capacity,” Global Environment Change 16 (2006): 293 – 303. 6. Donald R. Nelson, Neil W. Adger, and Katrina Brown, “Adaptation to Environmental Change : Contributions of a Resilience Framework,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 32 (2007):11.1-11.25. 7. Nathan L. Engle, “Adaptive Capacity and Its Assessment,” Global Environment Change 21 (2011): 647 – 656. 8. Meerow, “Defining Urban Resilience.” 9. Gallopin, “Linkages.” 10. Nelson, “Adaptation to Environmental Change.”

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11. Engle, “Adaptive Capacity.” 12. Hallie C. Eakin, Maria C. Lemos, and Donald R. Nelson, “Differentiating Capacities as a Means to Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation,” Global Environmental Change 27 (2014): 1-8. 13. Sara Meerow and Melissa Stults, “Comparing Conceptualizations of Urban Climate Resilience in Theory and Practice,” Sustainability 8, 701 (2016): 1-16. 14. Sara Meerow and Joshua P. Newell, “Urban Resilience for Whom, What, When, Where, and Why?” Urban Geography (2016): 1-21. 15. Sara, Meerow, “Double Exposure, Infrastructure Planning, and Urban Climate Resilience in Coastal Megacities: A Case Study of Manila,” Environmental Planning A 49, 11 (2017): 2649-2672. 16. Jennifer R. Wolch, Jason Bryne, and Joshua P. Newell, “Urban Green Space, Public Health, and Environmental Justice: The Challenge of Making Cities ‘Just Green Enough,’” Landscape and Urban Planning 125 (2014): 234 – 244. 17. Raymond J Burby, “Hurricane Katrina and the Paradoxes of Government Disaster Policy: Bringing About Wise Governmental Decisions for Hazardous Areas,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 604, no. 1 (2006): 171 – 191.

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The City of Tomorrow . . . Today

RYAN SCHELL Master of Business Administration and Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2019 An aspiring urban developer, Ryan Schell seeks to combine his passion for good design with his professional experience in finance and investments to positively impact peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lives through the built environment. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 2011 and worked as an investment banker for municipal and nonprofit healthcare institutions before attending the University of Michigan. After completing his dual Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degrees in Urban Planning and Business Administration, Ryan plans to work as a real estate developer in the city of Detroit.

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A B ST R ACT First published in 1961, Lewis Mumford’s classic macrohistorical work "The City in History" follows human civilization from its paleolithic origins to modern-day metropolises. Mumford was both a historian and social critic, demonstrating a singular ability to draw inferences from ancient civilizations to critique contemporary society, frequently with biting rhetoric. Written from the perspective of Mumford himself, this essay adopts his critical approach to assess the urban form of Troy, Michigan – a large suburb of Detroit. Drawing comparisons between public life in present-day Troy and that of the ancient Hellenic polis, it describes the emergence of a new hyper-individual urban form – the suburban micropolis – in which large single-family homes serve as selfcontained metropolises for the nuclear family. Socioeconomic competition, low-density urban fabric, and internet connectivity have encouraged this new form to emerge rapidly in Troy, but it will soon spread across the suburban American landscape.

This city of tomorrow is quickly becoming the city of today in Troy, Michigan. Beginning with its incorporation in 1955, this metropolitan Detroit suburb experienced rapid growth, with shopping malls, corporate headquarters and tract housing, transforming a small rural village into a large suburban polis.1 However, unlike the citizens of ancient Athens who relinquished their individualism to transition from village to city, Troy’s residents moved in the opposite direction. Socioeconomic competition, a low-density urban fabric,

and the emergence of internet technology led to the advent of a new hyper-individual urban form – the suburban micropolis – in which homes serve as self-contained metropolises for the nuclear family. While this new form will first come to dominate upper-middle-class suburban enclaves like Troy, continued technologic developments and social stratification will cause it to eventually dominate the American landscape. Troy’s high-quality school system, boasting the state’s sixth- and eleventh-highest ranked public high schools, makes it a destination for Metro Detroit’s upwardlymobile middle class.2 Beginning in the 1980s, parents moved to Troy to provide their children with expanded opportunities through educational attainment. Recent newcomers have been a diverse collection of first- and second-generation immigrant families from around the world. They have little in common but a commitment to their children’s education. In this way, Troy resembles the concept of a polis as a “place where people come together, not just by birth and habit, but consciously, in pursuit of a better life.”3 Tragically, the modern

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n the city of tomorrow, the morphology of the built environment is largely irrelevant. Life is contained within the home, the car, and the office mall. Gone are the days of walking to work and window shopping downtown. Concepts like density and distance are no longer top of mind. Instead, the average American experiences life almost entirely in an augmented reality provided by computer screens. Even during long commutes to work, autonomous vehicles give passengers more time to stare at their phone screens. There is little reason to engage with the world outside one’s windows.

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American conception of a “better life” represents a harmful inversion of that which existed in a typical Hellenic city. In ancient Athens, intellectual discipline was a shared value that encouraged all citizens to engage in public life. A litany of festivals and public performances during the year required “constant attention and participation” of the Athenian citizen, frequently in “direct face-to-face intercourse.”4 Without a deep understanding of history, literature and the arts, the Athenian citizen would miss the richness of life provided by these shared experiences. Furthermore, these obligatory events made it virtually impossible to stay confined to one section of the city; staying in one’s home would mean complete isolation from society. Contrary to its role as a unifying force for the Hellenic polis, education serves as an isolating influence among Troy’s citizenry. In America’s knowledge-based economy, educational achievement separates winners from losers. And the country’s increasing socioeconomic stratification means the stakes have never been higher. Competitive college admission requirements force families seeking the “good life” for their children to approach schooling as a zerosum game. A neighbor’s success becomes both a personal failure and an existential threat. Just as students shield test answers from the prying eyes of their peers, the nuclear family turns inward to prevent neighbors from gaining an upper hand at their expense. Before moving beyond this last point, it is necessary to recognize that Troy’s neighborhood schools provide ample opportunities for both children and parents to socialize with their peers.

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Student plays, ice cream socials, and youth sports all bring neighborhood residents together. However, since these activities are organized according to neighborhood boundaries, the socialization usually occurs among similar socioeconomic classes. Without a well-functioning common public space, there is limited interaction between different classes. Furthermore, the isolating nature of educational competition and Troy’s pre-existing structural deficiencies are quickly nullifying the positive influence of neighborhood activities. Troy’s decentralized urban fabric has always favored isolation. The construction of I-75 through Troy in the 1960s precipitated a deluge of low-density residential development, transforming what was once a small agricultural township into a sterling example of an “anti-city,” or “diffused low-density mass.”5 Regional job dispersion throughout Metro Detroit makes the isolating nature of the low-density landscape even more acute. Despite providing almost one-fifth of Metro Detroit’s office space, only one-eighth of Troy residents both live and work in the city.6,7 This means that a majority of Troy residents spend most of their weekdays outside of the city, making it far too easy to simply commute from home to work and back. Troy would need a vibrant mixed-use downtown district – akin to the Hellenic agora – to bring people together. This type of environment exists in many cities across Metro Detroit. In fact, neighboring cities like Royal Oak, Birmingham, and Rochester each have small, walkable downtowns that form the core of a shared experience for those communities. Unfortunately, Troy’s history of single-use zoning has prevented any such district from forming.

Troy’s monument to American consumerism, the Somerset Collection, embodies the agora’s spirit of exchange but fails as a unifying force among Troy’s citizens because it reinforces social stratification. This megamall is anchored by Sachs Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, with in-line stores like Coach, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co. Shoppers do not frequent these stores to engage with their fellow citizens. They shop at Somerset to materialize and broadcast their social stature, presenting themselves as “winners” of the socioeconomic competition. Like its ancestor the Roman bath, Somerset Collection is seen by contemporary observers as a symbol of the city’s economic and social prowess. But in reality, it is a painful reminder of the plutocratic aspirations and interclass competition that prevent Troy from establishing a diverse and rich public life.

Technology has diminished the motivation to resist these forces of individualism and isolation. Internet connectivity eliminates the need for local engagement because people can find their favored communities online. Small differences between neighbors are magnified by the ability to search online for someone with a shared perspective. This ability to “swipe for friendship” reinforces views without the need to consider alternatives. Instead of finding common ground within their local communities, individuals shelter themselves from meaningful discourse using televisions, laptops, and phones. With little reason to engage in the community at large, nuclear families hunker down in their homes. This tendency has led to the emergence of a new urban form: the suburban micropolis.

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Figure 1: Annex ation of pu blic s pace in s ide th e walls of th e s u b u rb an m i c rop ol i s .

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The suburban micropolis is a single-family home that replaces the city as the container of community life. During the neolithic age, the ancient city emerged as a selfcontained unit that gave form to the culture and kinetic energies of the community.8 Physical spaces and institutions, like monuments and museums, were required to store and transmit society’s collective knowledge among the citizenry. This physical form is no longer required in the technological age. Satellite television and HBO Go have supplanted the public plays of the Athenian polis. Every couch becomes a personal colosseum on football weekends – vomitorium no longer required. Skype connects newcomers to their families in different parts of the world, and Amazon delivers life’s essentials right to the front door. In response, home sizes have swelled to accommodate this increased activity, annexing public space from the city within the timber and sheetrock walls of the suburban micropolis. This new form is currently limited to McMansions in upper-middle class enclaves like Troy, but it will quickly spread as socioeconomic stratification and income rigidity take hold across the United States. Universal wireless connectivity and autonomous vehicles will make people location-agnostic. Community, culture, and commerce will be accessible via smart watches, phones, tablets, and computers from sea to shining sea. Autonomous vehicles will enable conurbation on a scale that would be inconceivable to past generations of suburbanites. Passengers will eat breakfast, watch the news, and even dress for the day within the confines of their cars. Although telecommuting will enable more people to work from home, many manufacturing jobs will still require employees to commute to work. However,

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spending two hours in the car each way will no longer be an impediment to frontier development. Suburban micropolises will sprout wherever internet is fast and land is abundant. It is not too late to avoid this fate. The same factors that contribute to the rise of the suburban micropolis can be harnessed to reverse this troubling trend. Education will remain a critical path to success in the global economy, but students can learn that fair and equitable outcomes are good for everyone. While the internet can certainly be an echo chamber that reinforces groupthink, it is also an incredible resource to learn about the world and broaden perspectives. Autonomous vehicles have the potential to encourage sprawl, but they also enable infill development that increases residential density. All citizens must choose to either break down the walls of their personal citadels and embrace the complexities of a pluralistic society or build their McMansions and live in bleak metropolises of one. ■

E n dn o t es 1. The Troy Historical Society, Troy: A City from the Corners, ed. Loraine Campbell (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2004). 2. “Best High Schools Rankings,” U.S. News and World Report LP, accessed February 18, 2018. https://www.usnews.com/education/ best-high-schools/search?state-urlname=michigan. 3. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt, 1961), 131. 4. Ibid., 168. 5. Ibid., 505. 6. Harrison West. “Strong Finish to the Year for Detroit’s Office Market.” Jones Lang LaSalle Q4 2017 Office Insight (2018), http://www.us.jll.com/united-states/en-us/Research/US-DetroitOffice-Insight-Q4-2017-JLL.pdf?6e117eb0-49c6-491a-a326929ae96c3c5a. 7. “Commuting Patterns: Troy,” Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG). Last modified 2013. http://maps. semcog.org/CommutingPatterns/. 8. Mumford, 97.

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Making the Middle: Planning to Create Socially and Economically Vibrant Middle-Class Communities

PETER SWINTON Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2019 Peter Swinton is a first-year graduate student at the University of Michigan in Urban and Regional Planning concentrating in Land Use and Environmental Planning. His interests lie in environmental, regulatory, and equity planning. His research seeks to determine tactics cities and regions may use to mitigate negative environmental externalities related to development, creating healthier and more environmentally friendly communities.

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A B ST R ACT Making the Middle acknowledges trends toward greater inequality within the United States (US) and makes a case for expanding middle-class communities through the tactics available to planners. Equity, deliberative, and actuarial planning theory advocates for operational frameworks planners can employ to help foster and expand socially and economically vibrant middle-class communities. Growing class stratification within the US provides a rationale for the importance of a socially and economically vibrant middle class. Social and economic vibrancy, and the ability of middle-class communities to create such environments, is defined through the incisive lens of Jane Jacobs. By connecting theoretical frames of equity, deliberative, and actuarial planning, planners can foster and grow middle-class communities.

Many planners have wrangled with urban issues, attempting to create a more perfect world. Though the primary intention of these planners has not always been to strengthen the middle class, their

solutions often seek to reduce disparities between social classes and increase access to opportunity. Early city designs, like Ebenezer Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Garden City, were rooted in the effort to create not only livable, healthy cities connected to local environments, but also communities that provided residents access to economic and social opportunity. These designs may not have always proved successful, but they emerged from an egalitarian social spirit. To address the problem of growing class stratification as it affects opportunity, planners should combine ideas from several theoretical frameworks to create vibrant communities that are economically and socially accessible for the many. In this article, I focus particularly on the ideas of Jane Jacobs to define what makes socially and economically vibrant communities. I demonstrate how middleclass communities are able to create economic and social vibrancy by drawing on relevant economic theory and social studies. Then I borrow from Patsy Healey, Norman Krumholz, and Ash Amin to inform planners how to create communities that are equitable and promote social and economic vibrancy. By linking these ideas,

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ince the 1970s, class stratification in the US has grown.1 Wages for the upper class have grown sharply, whereas middleand lower-class wages have stagnated.2 The class stratification has resulted in a disproportionate increase in the size of the lower class compared to the upper class, and a subsequent squeezing of the middle class. As the lower class grows, fewer citizens can access the services and opportunities that enable them to achieve better lives for themselves and their families. As Michael Lens and Paavo Monkkonen state, â&#x20AC;&#x153;These facts contribute to several social problems, including fractured politics and the concentration of negative outcomes in health, employment, education, and public safety.â&#x20AC;?3 Given the importance of access to services for promoting positive life outcomes, urban planners should focus on creating a broader middle class that can provide positive outcomes for as many Americans as possible.4

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I contend that in order to grow socially and economically vibrant middle-class communities, planners should engage in equity, deliberative, and actuarial planning.

W H AT A R E SO CI ALLY V I B R A N T M I DDLE -CLASS CO M MU NI TI E S? Social vibrancy is more easily felt than described, but it is embodied by communities who have robust social interaction through the everyday movement of people, goods, and services. Vibrancy is crucial in creating broad middle-class communities. It attracts middle-class people to join communities, thereby increasing their overall size and share of the population. Jane Jacobs’ catalogue of social interactions shows that vibrant communities provide each other constant mutual support through a diversity of human-driven social uses. Socially, Jacobs saw this vibrancy manifest itself as a “sidewalk ballet” in which a necessary mix of uses creates an active life on the street. This sidewalk ballet provides opportunities for interaction, trust-building, and many “eyes on the street” at one time, ultimately creating a sense of safety and liveliness in communities. Similarly, Jacobs asserts that this vibrancy does not exist to the same degree in economically and socially stressed communities because continuous tenant turnover prevents residents from getting to know one another and build trust. Conversely, upper-class neighborhoods lack needed community surveillance, which discourages use of the street.5 Eyes on the street provide the community security necessary for street life to thrive in middle-class areas and “unslumming”

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neighborhoods, which are economically and socially stressed communities moving toward the middle class. In middleclass and unslumming neighborhoods, this vibrancy exists through the diverse arrays of social and economic uses within these communities.6 Reinforcing this vibrancy and diverse use, middle-class and unslumming neighborhoods are also hotbeds for “community provincialism,” which Jacobs defines as the positive effects neighborhood diversification has on education, skills, interests, activities, and relationships.7 Though Jacobs is notably silent on racial diversity, a diversity of racial and ethnic communities within middle-class neighborhoods increases vibrancy as well. With a diversity of backgrounds within a place, communities better attract an array of residents because people tend to move to areas containing communities similar to their own.8 Middle- and burgeoning middle-class neighborhoods are places where “people are accommodated and assimilated, not in undigestible floods, but as gradual additions, in neighborhoods capable of accepting and handling strangers in a civilized fashion.”9 Racial and ethnic diversity also encourages a greater mix of uses for the street, adding to the street ballet. Middle-class communities create these opportunities because there are fewer economic barriers to entry. As Harrison Salisbury notes, “Segregation is imposed . . . by the sharp knife of income or lack of income. What this does to the social fabric of the community must be witnessed to be appreciated.”10 Reducing barriers to entry and incorporating diverse communities promotes greater economic and social diversity of community use, increasing vibrancy.

W H AT A R E E CO N O M I CALLY V I B R A N T M I DDLE -CLASS CO M MU NI TI E S?

HOW DO MIDDLE- C LA S S COMMUNIT IES C REAT E ECONOMIC A ND S OC IA L VIBRA NCY?

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Social vibrancy does not exist in a vacuum; strong economic support in the form of community investment is essential to help middle- and burgeoning middleclass communities thrive. Communities investing in and taking ownership of themselves is a hallmark of vibrancy, yet markets and governments are not always willing or able to make the neighborhood investments necessary to maintain that vibrancy. As Jacobs observed, vibrant middle-class communities and unslumming neighborhoods invest in themselves. This investment becomes evident as communities decrease in density and population but do not seek new tenants. This process signals that community members can afford increased living space and depend less on new tenants to buoy their economic viability. Community investment is also visible when communities make capital improvements to homes and businesses, showing tangible local reinvestment. This investment brings a greater diversity of residents, businesses, and uses of space that better support vibrant life on the street. Community investment increases the uses of the street through self-diversification and broad patronage of local business. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Selfdiversification of a population is reflected in the diversification of commercial and cultural enterprises. Diversification of income alone makes a difference in the range of possible commercial diversification, often in the humblest of ways.â&#x20AC;?11 Community investment brings a greater diversity of residents, businesses, and uses of space that better support vibrant life on the street.

Community investment is most prevalent in middle-class communities because lesswealthy communities lack the capital to invest in themselves and because upwardly mobile residents of poorer communities generally seek to move out of these neighborhoods.12 Conversely, though upper-class neighborhoods have the funds and do invest in capital improvements, their neighborhoods price out the selfdiversification of economic uses within the neighborhood through high land and business operation costs. Increasing the unit price of goods and services accounts for these costs, which, in turn, reduces the number of consumers willing to pay market price for those goods and services. Restricting the consumer base willing to pay high market prices creates the need for those consumers to purchase these services elsewhere, highlighting a flaw in the vibrancy of these neighborhoods. Indeed, wealthier neighborhoods generally have more businesses that primarily sell luxury items. Luxury goods are inherently not for everyday use, nor are they intended to attract a broad consumer base as consumers purchase more of these goods only as their incomes increase.13 The lack of diversity in businesses that cater to everyday uses reduces economic diversity and life on the street.

Before discussing how middle-class communities create economic and social vibrancy, it is important to identify some of the forces responsible for creating class separation. Municipalities are incentivized to cater to households with similar tax and

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spending preferences. A municipality’s ability to provide the lowest-cost, highestquality public services depends upon its ability to distribute its tax burden among the smallest number of people. Spreading the tax burden that pays for municipal services over a smaller population allows municipalities to ensure that municipal services are lightly used and that service provision costs are met. This reduces the per-person cost of service provision and improves the quality of service each resident receives. To create this equal tax burden, municipalities are incentivized to use the land-use controls available to attract wealthier residents and create residential economic homogeneity.14 Land-use controls established by local governments, such as zoning and density restrictions, have been shown to concentrate wealth.15 This wealth concentration impacts poorer communities by creating societal inequity; “spatial concentrations of poverty and wealth lead to unequal access to jobs, schools, and safe neighborhoods, and exacerbate negative life outcomes for lowincome households.”16 By existing in the middle of the socioeconomic spectrum, middle-class communities allow for greater market variety, which reinforces community social fabric. This variety allows poorer residents to afford to live in middle-class communities while providing wealthier residents adequate service provision and a wider range of consumer options. Additionally, middle-class communities contribute to the creation of economically vibrant communities by reducing human separation. Economists say that such separation “reinforces differences and prejudices; animosities thus grow, and economies are likely to decline rather than grow. Income inequalities may also reduce

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consumption, and therefore effective demand and economic growth.”17 Finally, middle-class communities have been shown to promote democracy, a system that American politicians and community leaders often romanticize as the very idea of what it means to be American.18 Indeed, the tenets of pure democracy help create socially vibrant communities, where the people determine community norms, standards, and rules regardless of class, creed, or race. It is the economic and social vibrancy created through market productivity and community-scale democracy that transfixed Jane Jacobs, leading her to describe the street ballet on display outside her living room window.

HOW CA N PLA NNING ST RAT EGIES F OST ER MIDDLE- C LA S S COMMUNIT IES ? In order to create broader middle-class communities, planners should borrow from a variety of strategies that prioritize disenfranchised views, allow for the community to provide input in planning processes, respect the expertise of planners to appropriately assess long-term risk for their communities, and defend these three positions within the political arena. Expanding the middle class within the current US reality of a disproportionately increasing lower class and class stratification will require planners to represent disenfranchised voices within their communities. Norman Krumholz’s planning departmental goal, “to provide a wider range of choices for those . . . residents who have few, if any, choices,” speaks directly to this need to lift up the values of disenfranchised communities.19 In Krumholz’s view, the job of city planners is

to create opportunity for city residents while finding revenue-increasing opportunities for the city. For example, after reviewing Cleveland’s Tower City development proposal, Krumholz’s department “concluded that the city had little to gain from Tower City . . . and the developer was not offering any permanent jobs for the city’s unemployed.”20 In order to strengthen the middle class, the planner must push public decision makers to act on recommendations that create both revenue and new workforce opportunities. This position seeks to create social and economic mobility for the city’s most vulnerable residents and continue progress for those unslumming communities described by Jacobs. Krumholz’s tactics for equity planning can teach planners how to build robust middle-class communities by addressing poverty, lack of access to city services, and segregation, which he calls “the root causes of crisis in many American cities.”21 Equity planning aims to reduce inter-class stratification and benefit the most vulnerable residents, while building a broader resident and business tax base, benefitting the city.

Healey exhibits the power of deliberative planning to improve lower- and middleclass communities in an environmental justice case study from Williamsburg, New York. “What [residents] often lack, especially in poor, ethnically mixed communities, is ‘voice,’ the capacity to make their concerns heard in the wider world.”25 In this case, getting heard was the result of several factors, of which two were coalition building with those diverse, poor communities and linking those coalitions with subject matter experts who could effectively advocate within the existing political hierarchy. By maintaining focus on the city’s disenfranchised population and building broad coalitions, planners can better move agendas that create and protect middleclass communities, increasing community vibrancy and city revenue. In spite of coalition-building efforts, planners may sometimes be at odds with their community. Communities have frequently tried to limit the integration of perceived undesirable groups through racial and economic discrimination. Under these circumstances, deliberative planning methods may hinder a planner’s ability to expand the middle class. Instead, advocacy planning provides a strong framework to correct for discriminatory forces, promote the benefits of middleclass communities, and build common

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Integral to approaches of equity planning are strategies that allow citizens to provide input into the planning process through deliberative planning. Patsy Healey explains a key component of the planning project as “an approach to deliberate place management and development that is infused with a specific orientation or philosophy.”22 It is important that this deliberation happen with different community stakeholders because they all have an interest in the development and management of their communities. This interest, involvement, and pressure from community stakeholders mean that planning is inherently a political

exercise.23 As planning is political and equity planning seeks to represent the city’s most vulnerable populations, it is necessary to garner community input and build coalitions to move forward a planning agenda. By building coalitions, planners can mobilize agendas, creating action that improves communities for the greatest proportion of residents, and the lower and middle classes.24

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understanding of the costs of maintaining barriers to entry. Important in building common understanding of these benefits and costs will be to recognize and debunk community biases hindering the creation of an inclusive middle-class community.26 Under isolationist circumstances and in discriminatory environments, advocacy planning can also aid planners in building coalitions through value propositions and a uniform understanding of the issues at hand. This, in turn, will help planners return to the deliberative planning position imperative for creating a broad middle class. Though coalition building through deliberative planning is paramount, planners must also practice risk assessment, or actuarial planning. This planning strategy assesses community risk and maps alternative visions of the future that maintain vibrancy and opportunity. Planners must use their unique expertise, showing community members their intentions and building coalitions around the visions of the future that benefit equitable communities. Actuarial planning thus â&#x20AC;&#x153;requires a particular kind of leadership that knows when expert judgement and deliberative democracy must be combined or traded off.â&#x20AC;?27 Actuarial planning strategies may seem at odds with deliberative planning strategies, but in order to build vibrant communities, both are needed. Planners have expertise that can benefit their communities through development of broadly beneficial future visions of their community and skill analyzing community costs and benefits from development. The Williamsburg, New York case study shows the power of this expertise on community issues where linking environmental experts with community coalitions strengthened the health and wellbeing of a lower- and

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middle-class community.28 Kromholzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tower City case shows how planning expertise was integral in uncovering how a seemingly attractive development might not benefit the city or its residents in need of employment.29 By combining equity planning with deliberative and actuarial planning strategies, planners can make their future community visions actionable for legislators, in turn creating the social and economic mobility necessary to create vibrant broad middle-class communities. If planners are to effectively combine strategies of equity, deliberative, and actuarial planning, they must not shy away from defending these strategies in the political arena. With adequate institutional and expert-driven support, planners have the tools and opportunity to step into public advocacy roles. Krumholz stated that he liked his planners to be political because planning is an inherently political process, and defense of planning strategies within the political arena urges legislators toward action.30 Should planners combine these three strategies with the goal of creating vibrant middle-class communities, the same will hold true; they must be effective advocates for their future visions within the political arena. By doing so, planners will better provide concrete rationales and political support that decision makers can use to implement their plans and create broad, vibrant middle-class communities that benefit the city and its residents.

CONC LUS ION To provide the solutions needed to grow socially and economically vibrant middleclass communities within US cities, planners will need to engage in equity-focused, deliberative, and actuarial planning. Growing class stratification has created

problems in our society that can be eased through the creation of broad middle-class communities. Socially and economically vibrant communities, like those Jane Jacobs describes, have tangible benefits for residents and the cities where these communities lie. To realize these benefits, planners should use the equity, deliberative, and actuarial strategies outlined above to push towards a vibrant vision of the future. â&#x2013;

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E NDNOTE S 1. Annie Lowrey, “For Two Economists, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start,” New York Times, April 17, 2012, http://www.nytimes. com/2012/04/17/business/for-economists-saez-and-piketty-thebuffett-rule-is-just-a-start.html. 2. Ibid. 3. Michael C. Lens and Paavo Monkkonen, “Do Strict Land Use Regulations Make Metropolitan Areas More Segregated by Income?” Journal of the American Planning Association 82, no. 1 (2016): 6-21. 4. Charis Kubrin and Gregory Squires, “Privileged Places: Race, Uneven Development and the Geography of Opportunity in Urban America,” Urban Studies 42, no. 1 (2016): 47-68. 5. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, Inc., 2011), 66. 6. Ibid., 356. 7. Ibid. 8. Kubrin and Squires, “Privileged Places.” 9. Jacobs, Death and Life, 369. 10. Ibid., 363. 11. Ibid., 369, 374. 12. Ibid., 374. 13. Anne Steinemann, Microeconomics for Public Decisions, (Menlo Park: Askmar Publishing, 2005). 14. C.M. Tiebout, “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures,” Journal of Political Economy 64, no. 5 (1956): 416–424. 15. Lens and Monkkonen, “Strict Land Use Regulations.” 16. Ibid., 9. 17. Steven Pressman, “The Decline of the Middle Class: An International Perspective,” Journal of Economic Issues 41, no. 1 (2007): 181-200. 18. Robert J. Barro, “Determinants of Democracy,” Journal of Political Economy 107, no. S6 (1999): S158-S183. 19. Norman Krumholz, “A Retrospective View of Equity Planning: Cleveland 1969-1979,” Journal of the American Planning Association 48, no. 2 (1982): 163-74. 20. Ibid., 168. 21. Ibid., 173. 22. Patsy Healey, “The Planning Project,” in Readings in Planning Theory, eds. Susan Fainstein and James Defilippis, (West Sussex: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2016), 139-55. 23. Ibid.

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24. Healey, “Planning Project.” 25. Ibid. 26. Paul Davidoff, “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31, no. 4 (1965): 331-338. 27. Ash Amin, “Urban Planning in an Uncertain World, in Readings in Planning Theory, ed. Susan Fainstein and James Defillippis (West Sussex: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2016): 156-68. 28. Healey, “Planning Project.” 29. Krumholz, “A Retrospective View of Equity Planning.” 30. Ibid.

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Social Cohesion and Economic Justice: A Justification for Public-Sector Planning CHRISTOPHER RODRIGUEZ Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2019 Christopher Rodriguez is a Master of Urban and Regional Planning Candidate at Taubman College of the University of Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Hope College, where he developed an academic interest in social philosophy and political activism. His public activism on campus earned him a speech at the 2012 Holland Democratic Convention. Before beginning graduate studies, Christopher worked in the non-profit sector as a project coordinator at Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation in the city of Detroit. He now concentrates his graduate studies on urban policy, local and regional economic development, finance, and civic engagement.

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A B ST R ACT The current political context within the United States is imbued with fragmented and privatized conceptions of social good. Everyday Americans disagree about what is best for urban and rural communities, and they disagree about how government should interact with the environments in which people live, work, and play. These particularly postmodernist conditions challenge the relevance and need for public-sector urban planning. A justification for public-sector planning relies on a socially cohesive attitude toward social good, and economic justice may serve as a normative guide. Such a justification demands that planners assert themselves as specialized agents who are best equipped to achieve economic justice in the built environment, for they structurally and technically possess a unique ability to pair substantive expertise with community engagement — technical rationale with empathy — to inform policy and broad planning actions.

(CDBGs) and the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative from the federal budget, along with other funding programs that cities use to rehabilitate and upgrade affordable housing and community services in distressed areas.4 Despite popular frustration with the market’s real inability to provide an equitable and adequate standard of living for all members of society,5 the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election demonstrates that certain constituents vote for a political party that disparages explicit government effort toward social equity. All in all, Americans perniciously disagree about what is best for community and the environments in which they live, work, and play. Justifying the relevance and need for public-sector urban planning within the current political context in the United States requires a two-fold discussion. First, it demands an assessment of the postmodern era and the problems of fragmented and privatized conceptions of social good. Justification for an activity inherently relies on shared — not fragmented — beliefs about the good in any end that action

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ver the years, government officials and academics have occasionally criticized urban planning efforts for intervention into the free enterprise system and called into question the relevance of planning as a public-sector agency. the years, government officials and academics have occasionally criticized urban planning efforts for intervention into the free enterprise system and called into question the relevance of planning as a publicsector agency. Some critics within planning academia dismiss the public interest as a chimera because of its seemingly ambiguous or potentially elitist standards.1 Others believe that market mechanisms more effectively signal consumer preferences for public goods (e.g., autocentric goods) than do standardized forms of urban data, such as urban health assessments, and are therefore more reliable guides for managing interaction with the built environment.2 They recognize the theoretical limitations of the market, yet they claim its shortcomings do not sufficiently justify centralized coordination.3 More recently, the Trump administration in the United States proposed to eliminate Community Development Block Grants

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strives to meet. Therefore, I present the importance of economic justice as one of the normative goods to which publicsector planning must aspire. Secondly, justification of the relevance of publicsector planning requires recognition of the planner as a specialized government agent who is best equipped to use this normative good in the urban environment. Where non-planning government officials could presumably attempt to absorb the responsibilities of the planner, the planning profession must assert its concentrated uniqueness: a structural relief from the worries of re-election and an ability to pair substantive expertise with community engagement — technical rationale with empathy — to inform policy and broad planning actions. A reconstructed understanding of normative social good provides an effective justification for publicsector urban planning and, furthermore, describes how the planner bridges microand macro-urban narratives, which anchor technical government intervention in ethical guidance toward equity and sustainability for all members of society.

T H E P R O BLE M O F P O ST M ODE RN FR AG M EN TATI O N We cannot justify a social practice like planning if there is widespread hostility toward reason. Postmodernist thinkers, who may or may not explicitly realize their postmodernist perspectives, point to the complexities of social reality and use them as a basis for eschewing universal truths and challenging authority. As a reaction to the somewhat utopian, geometrical ethos of modernist thought, postmodernists attempt to turn modernism on its head and celebrate the idiosyncrasies of fragmentation.

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While wariness toward universal truth and undisputed power is fundamental to individual liberty, extreme confidence in one’s own beliefs is just as threatening to a free society. Similarly, extreme paranoia toward legitimate sources of information leaves the thinker to selectively affirm beliefs that may be harmful to other members of the broader group. Philosopher Hilary Putnam characterizes as problematic the view that “notions of justification, good reason, warrant and the like are primarily repressive gestures” and goes on to call that view “dangerous because it provides aid and comfort for extremists.”6 Although the postmodernist thinker alone may not threaten publicsector planning as much as the decisionmaking of a political agent of immense and exploitative power, the permeation of postmodernist bias through our social, political, and cultural institutions challenges the power of social cohesion to solve social problems. Postmodernism’s backbone of fragmentation and hostility toward reason forgets the cohesive function and importance of equality and equity as social norms. Historically, the United States has made grave mistakes in explicitly or callously allowing unequal distribution of resources and opportunities across different social groups. Moreover, local communities may indicate consumer market signals that do not act in the best interest of the regional public. Now, instead of ushering in an era where the people and their representatives work to establish equity as an undeniably American norm, a political divisiveness permeates the government, as well as the fabric of daily social life, and challenges the ethical aspirations of the public-sector planner.

Postmodernism, however, does have redeeming qualities. As Harper and Stein note, “the rejection of metanarrative, the distrust of rigid methodology, the celebration of plurality, [and] the recognition that all voices have a right to be heard are important if planning is to legitimately express liberal ideals.”7 For example, in the United States, social pressure against racism in mortgage lending and other powerful institutions is crucial for racism’s removal from public and private practices, and there is still work to be done. That notwithstanding, postmodernism in its pervasive influence can disrupt our sense of shared trust in a public institution’s ability to understand general tenets of social good, to learn from constituents and from past mistakes, and to pursue progress. Forfeiture of trust is withdrawal from a basis for legitimate action, and it is merely a hope that economic, social, and environmental justice in our urban world will win out in the end.

According to the Rawlsian account, a critical responsibility of government is to facilitate individual pursuits toward happiness while ensuring that distributive justice is upheld12 Economic justice, as an ethical attitude, takes the American notions of individual autonomy, subjectivity, and happiness and aims to manage them in the field of economic decision-making. It celebrates individual well-being, yet it carefully appraises the appropriate weight of particular interests. And within the planning offices of government, the functions of which inextricably extend into the homes of block clubs and private corporations alike, economic justice ought to guide our competing motives and creatively fuse our mutual interests. Although public-sector urban planning should not attempt to justify itself as a replacement or correction for the market, it should assert how the planning specialization is not only able to empathize with individual concerns, but also make substantive evaluations of broader planning actions in ways in which pure politics and market mechanisms are unreliable.

T HE PEC ULIA RITY OF T HE PLA NNER

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A social good that holds together a basis for justified public-sector planning action is economic justice, which I define as the equitable distribution of wealth, knowledge, and skills. As an integral component of planning, however, economic justice is not a technically derived solution but rather a guiding attitude. This social attitude originates from familiar American notions that individuals are autonomous, that their values are subjective, and that they are free to pursue their happiness to the extent that it does not prevent other individuals from doing the same. Rawls’ thought experiment of the original position10 presents a case of legitimacy for ethical economic judgements without subscribing to absolute modernist or postmodernist ideas:

[Rawls] makes no appeal to any absolute transcendent foundation independent of our social or cultural framework. [He] does not intend the moral principles he develops to be universally valid in the sense that they are derived from a foundational conception of rationality. He does intend them to be universally valid in that they apply to all people.11

A general purpose of government is to sensibly manage private and public interests. That is nothing new, and I do not expect such a statement to grant

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profundity. However, the structure of our politics and the gleam of postmodernism throughout our cultural institutions have altered the measure for normative management. Just as a nutritionist who is trained in the shifts of dietetics may assert the proportional food groups necessary for a healthy diet, so does government use culture and technical expertise to craft the valuation of different public actions. That mechanism notwithstanding, the privatization of postmodernism culture challenges the authority of expertise and disrupts the management act, leaving us to seek reasonable guidance. The peculiarity of public-sector planning is its ability to use structural and specialized advantages to pair substantive expertise with community engagement – technical rationale with empathy – to inform policy and broad planning actions, despite a current glitch in the normative metric. For example, the planner’s position as a non-elected official provides a structural advantage. Departments or head executives hire public-sector planners, freeing them from the need to raise campaign funds and ingratiate themselves with special-interest groups. Although public service officials ought to address the concerns of their constituents, one can imagine a campaigning official ravenous for votes, forfeiting technical judgment for more sycophantic alternatives. Planners, while still accountable for their actions, have a structural advantage to focus on the expertise of their training, not on their pocketbook or the polling station, for their decision making. The various realms in which public-sector planning operates is another unique feature of the agency. Their practices span various geographies and communities. They meet

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with neighborhood association members, block clubs, and small business owners along with large commercial groups, banks, and other government agencies. In each of these offices of operation, each of which planners call home, they listen, negotiate, and influence outcomes of various breadth and depth. In this structural capacity, they are fundamentally concerned with both resident activity on a street corner and voices in the corporate boardroom. These realms of activity not only enhance positions of leverage but also require peculiar behavior, which helps to characterize a specialization of the planning field. Professional training equips planners with the ability to wear two hats: that of the technical and critical decision maker, and that of the community empathizer. By employing these two roles, public-sector planning can navigate those various realms of influence and put the attitude of economic justice to work. As empathizers, agents regularly bear witness to the far depths of policy outcomes in neighborhoods and homes, giving communities the chance to express feedback about their physical and social environments. Participatory planning, which invariably involves the planner as facilitator, handles this task well, and the approach is certainly included as a responsible step in the planning process. As a cultural feedback loop, public participation shapes the way in which we understand and articulate social problems. But the role of critical decision maker moves beyond mere facilitation. It involves mitigating conflict, crafting mutual solutions, and applying technical standards of economic justice as a normative and attitudinal basis for managing social good. This role relies on the planner’s ability to use data, broader policy objectives, and equitable ethics from

training to determine best possible courses of planning action. Therefore, the planner as advocate may not be the most effective style for the public sector. Advocates can use data to support claims, but the passion of advocacy can interfere with decision making in times of controversy. If publicsector planners choose to advocate, then they should advocate on behalf of their substantive expertise.

CO N CLUSI O N A justification for public-sector urban planning is the realization that in an increasingly fragmented society, in which individuals may vote to suppress others or vote against their own best interest, the public sector needs an agent that is free from ethical impairment and the grasps of super political action committees. It needs an agent that interacts directly with constituents, because no one understands a community like a member. And especially in times of conflict, the government needs a planner that encourages participation of all voices â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but not uncritically. Returning to Harper & Stein:

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While the past error was that the wealthy and powerful forced their ideas on other communities, it is equally erroneous to assume that every community is right and should never be challenged or changed. We should respect plurality and difference, but not to the point of giving up on communication or abandoning the search for consensus, and not to the point of conceptual and moral relativism.13 If the planning profession wants to gain legitimacy as a public-sector agency working toward the public interest, it needs to focus on holding society together. â&#x2013;

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E n dn o t es 1. Heather Campbell and Robert Marshall, “Utilitarianism’s Bad Breath? A Re-Evaluation of the Public Interest Justification for Planning,” Planning Theory 163, no. 1 (2002): 173. 2. Adrian Moore and Rick Henderson, “Plan Obsolescence,” Reason, accessed December 2, 2017, http://reason.com/ archives/1998/06/01/plan-obsolescence/print. 3. Charles Wolf, Jr., “A Theory of Nonmarket Failure: Framework for Implementation Analysis,” The University of Chicago Press Journal 22, no.1 (April 1979): 126. 4. “The Budget for Fiscal Year 2018,” Department of Housing and Urban Development, accessed December 2, 2017, https://www. whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/ hud.pdf. 5. Richard E. Klosterman, “Arguments for and Against Planning,” Town Planning Review 56, no.1 (January 1985): 10. 6. Thomas L. Harper and Stanley M. Stein, “Out of the Postmodern Abyss: Preserving the Rationale for Liberal Planning,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 14 (1995): 235. 7. Ibid., 240. 8. Jordan Weissmann, “Countrywide’s Racist Lending Practices Were Fueled by Greed,” The Atlantic, December 23, 2011, https:// www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/countrywidesracist-lending-practices-were-fueled-by-greed/250424/. 9. Campbell and Marshall, “Utilitarianism’s Bad Breath,” 178. 10. Samuel Freeman, “Original Position,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016), accessed February 1, 2018, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ original-position/. 11. Harper and Stein, “Postmodern Abyss,” 241. 12. Campbell and Marshall, “Utilitarianism’s Bad Breath,” 178. 13. Harper and Stein, “Postmodern Abyss,” 239.

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Racially Restrictive Covenants in the United States: A Call to Action

NANCY H. WELSH Juris Doctor and Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2018 Nancy H. Welsh is a dual Juris Doctor and Master of Urban and Regional Planning candidate at the University of Michigan (May 2018). She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College, where she majored in English and minored in Art History. Her research centers on social and environmental justice in the urban environment. Nancy has lived in seven countries and ten cities, and she will return to Boston to practice law upon graduation. She thanks Dr. Harley Etienne for his inspiring teaching and guidance on this article, and for the editors of Agora for their hard work.

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A B ST R ACT This paper examines the history and structure of racially restrictive covenants in the United States to better comprehend their continued existence, despite their illegality. While unenforceable, racially restrictive covenants signal tone and intent, may be psychologically damaging, and perpetuate segregation. Racially restrictive covenants were widespread tools of discrimination used by white homeowners to prevent the migration of people of color into their neighborhoods during the first half of the 20th century. In its 1948 decision, Shelley v. Kramer, the U.S. Supreme Court held that racially restrictive covenants could not be enforced, but the practice of inserting such covenants into title documents remained common. Finally, in 1968, the Federal Fair Housing Act made the practice of writing racial covenants into deeds illegal. However, nearly seventy years after Shelley and 60 years after the Fair Housing Act, racially restrictive covenants remain common features of deeds. This may be for several reasons. First, since covenants run with the land, they become part of the land title in perpetuity. Second, the process to remove covenants is expensive and time-consuming. Third, the majority of owners may not be aware that their properties are subject to racially restrictive covenants. Despite these challenges, it may be possible to adopt policies to improve removal rates. This paper calls lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals to action in light of their active role in the proliferation of racially restrictive covenants in the 20th century.

continued existence, despite their illegality. This history evidences the active role that lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals play in the proliferation of racially restrictive covenants. Our unclean hands and the continuing harms inflicted by racially restrictive covenants compel actions to remedy.

S ECT ION I: UNDERSTA NDING T HE LEGA L MEC HA NIC S OF COVENA NT S Before we can discuss the history and ramifications of racially restrictive covenants, we must first understand their

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eventy years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States held that racially restrictive covenants, discriminatory agreements inserted into deed instruments by community developers and white homeowners during the first half of the 20th century, were not enforceable in a court of law. Ten years later, the federal Fair Housing Act made it illegal to enter into such agreements. Nonetheless, racially restrictive covenants remain visible in deed instruments and continue to inflict harm on our society, particularly our communities of color. This article examines the history and structure of racially restrictive covenants in the United States in order to better comprehend their

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basic mechanics. A covenant is defined as a binding promise or obligation to do or not to do a particular act.1 Covenants may be inserted into an instrument of contract or other binding agreement; in the case of real property, covenants are typically contained in a deed.2 If the party promising to act in accordance with the agreement (the covenantor) fails to fulfill the promise, the holder of the promise (the covenantee) may sue to enforce the covenant in a court of law.3 Restrictive covenants are a subset of covenants that limit and qualify the use of real property.4 Restrictive covenants first emerged as a means to protect residential areas from commercial activity, and they continue to be used by homeowners’ associations to “protect community esthetics.”5 As long as these restrictive covenants do not run afoul of Constitutional protections, they are permissible.6 This is an important distinction from the subject of this paper: racially restrictive covenants. As with restrictive covenants, racially restrictive covenants are agreements between buyers and sellers of property that limit the covenantor’s property rights, usually appearing in the deed instrument. Specifically, racially restrictive covenants state that the covenantor will not sell, rent, or lease property to minority groups.7 Typical language is illustrated in the case of Corrigan v. Buckley, discussed further in Section II: In consideration of the premises and the sum of five dollars ($5.00) each to the other in hand paid, the parties hereto mutually covenant, promise, and agree each to the other, and for their respective heirs and assigns, that no part of the land now owned by the

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parties hereto, shall ever be used or occupied by, or sold, conveyed, leased, rented, or given to, Negroes, or any person or persons of the Negro race or blood. This covenant shall run with the land and bind the respective heirs and assigns of the parties hereto for the period of twenty-one (21) years from and after the date of these presents.8 The basic configurations of racially restrictive covenants are demonstrated in the companion cases of the landmark Shelley v. Kraemer decision. In Shelley, the covenant prohibited ownership and occupancy by African Americans.9 In McGhee v. Sipes, the covenant prohibited the use and occupancy by nonCaucasians.10 In Hurd v. Hodge and Urciolo v. Hodge, the covenants prohibited the sale of property to African Americans.11 Racially restrictive covenants may be separated into two broad categories: proactive covenants and reactive covenants.12 Proactive covenants are those that were written and applied by developers before new houses were sold, often as a condition to Federal Housing Authority (FHA) securitization and enforced by a homeowners’ association.13 For example, over the course of three decades, the JC Nichols Co. built dozens of racially exclusive suburban developments in Kansas City, MO, most of which retain their racially restrictive covenants.14 Reactive covenants are those that were written by informal coalitions of neighbors “in response to an immediate threat of black movement into white middle-class neighborhoods.”15 These covenants were organized door-todoor, neighbor-to-neighbor, with the sole and explicit purpose of racial exclusion.16 Brooks and Rose note that reactive covenants were more likely to contain flaws,

The legal properties of covenants render them particularly difficult to remove. Covenants are enforceable contracts between two or more people that run with the land, which present limited means to terminate the obligation or defend property from enforcement.18 Running with the land means that the agreement becomes a permanent feature of the property title, and that not only the contracting parties, but also their heirs and assigns, are bound by the agreement. In other words, covenants are effective in perpetuity unless the terms of the agreement include a specific time limit.19 As Olin Browder noted in his 1978 analysis, the concept of running covenants may be challenging for the unindoctrinated: “Why should any person be able to enforce a promise not made to him or be bound by a promise he did not make?”20 Browder posits that this legal property stems from the history of covenants, which “long anteceded the modern elements of contract law; running covenants are in essence, therefore, a part of the law of property, not an adaptation or extension of contract principles to property law.”21

If, however, our goal is the removal of a covenant rather than its enforcement, our options are more limited. Termination of a covenant typically requires written release by the covenantee(s), or the adoption of a new covenant that modifies or releases the obligations of the original covenant.25 Even if a covenant is no longer enforceable, as in the case of racially restrictive covenants, they will still be visible in the chain of title, and even within the language of the deed. Brooks and Rose note that “This ‘sticky’ quality is an artifact of the AngloAmerican conveyancing system, which looks to the history of past transactions to ascertain the claims against any given title.”26 While racially restrictive covenants can be eradicated from deed instruments, “it’s very time-consuming, and it can get very expensive.”27 Nonetheless, as Section III discusses, the history outlined in Section II places a responsibility on lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals to address the lingering discrimination of racially restrictive covenants head-on.

S ECT ION II: A BRIEF HISTORY OF RAC IA LLY REST RICT IVE COVENA NT S IN T HE UNIT ED STAT ES W ELS H

If a covenantor fails to fulfill the terms of the promise, the covenantee may sue to enforce – or require the covenantor to uphold – the covenant in a court of law.22 Generally, restrictive covenants are enforceable only by the benefitting party, although some states allow standing to individuals regardless of their ownership of neighboring property.23 Defenses to a suit for enforcement include acquiescence (demonstrating that the covenantee

agreed to the violations by failing to seek enforcement in the past), abandonment (of the general agreement), laches (evidence that the covenantee’s undue delay in bringing a suit of enforcement caused the defendant damages), unclean hands (the covenantee also violated terms of the covenant), eminent domain (the government is not subject to private covenants), and change in condition (the circumstances have substantially changed such that it no longer makes sense to enforce the covenant).24

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such as failure to obtain signatures from spouses, than proactive covenants, which rendered them more vulnerable to legal challenge.17

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Racially restrictive covenants were widespread tools of discrimination during the first half of the 20th century.28 Although southern states are often identified as loci of racial violence and discrimination, racially restrictive covenants first appeared in California and Massachusetts at the end of the 19th century.29 By the time the Supreme Court ruled them to be unenforceable in 1948, it is estimated that more than half of all residential properties built in the intervening decades were constrained by racially restrictive covenants.30 This section offers a brief history of racially restrictive covenants in the United States to establish the active role played by lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals in the proliferation of discriminatory covenants and the continued segregation of U.S. cities.

majority.”35

A. The Emergence of Racially Restrictive Covenants

As speculative suburban development captured the market, community builders sought more secure means to protect their investment from the “economic threat” of racial mixing.38 The Great Migration and the 1917-1921 racial uprisings may have further fueled this perceived threat from African American interlopers.39 In this climate, racially restrictive covenants offered an attractive means of circumventing Buchanan.40

The first racially restrictive covenants emerged in California and Massachusetts at the end of the 19th century.31 Early racially restrictive covenants were limited agreements governing individual parcels.32 Within a decade, racially restrictive covenants had been enthusiastically embraced by the real estate industry.33 The early 20th century was also marked by the rise of sundown towns (in which people of color were threatened with sanctioned harassment and violence after sunset) and the adoption of racial zoning ordinances.34 Baltimore Mayor Barry Mahool captured the tone of the era when he opined that “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White

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B. Buchanan v. Warley and Corrigan v. Buckley Historians tie the surge in popularity of racially restrictive covenants to the Supreme Court’s 1917 decision that municipally mandated racial zoning was unconstitutional.36 In Buchanan v. Warley, the Court overturned Louisville’s racial zoning ordinance on the grounds that it interfered with the core property right of alienation (the right to sell or otherwise transfer your property).37 While the decision was shocking to contemporaries, the legal reasoning was consistent with the freedom of contract interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that marked turnof-the century judicial theory.

Racially restrictive covenants became even more appealing in 1926, when the Supreme Court upheld their constitutionality as a form of private contract in Corrigan v. Buckley.41 In his opinion for the court, Justice Sanford stated that: The constitutional right of a Negro to acquire, own, and occupy property does not carry with it the constitutional power to compel sale and conveyance to him of any particular private

Under Corrigan, racially restrictive covenants were defined as a private action free of the imprimatur of the State, and developers and white homeowners were given free rein to construct racially exclusive communities through legal agreements.

C. The Rise of the Modern Real Estate Industry

Local real estate boards and national associations of real estate brokers were chief orchestrators in the widespread adoption of racially restrictive covenants. They produced and circulated standard restrictive covenants, encouraged the formation of homeowners’ associations, and stoked fears of racial integration.45 Associations of real estate professionals adopted codes of ethics that characterized failure to “protect” white communities from integration through creation and enforcement of racially restrictive covenants as unethical.46 Real estate brokers who did not comply with these policies could be expelled, which would result in the “loss of the network of contacts and information critical to the practice of the real estate broker.”47 On the other hand, brokers who engaged in blockbusting (the practice of persuading a white owner to sell his home to a broker below market value by stoking fears of minorities moving into the neighborhood, and then making a profit by selling the same house to people of color at exorbitant rates), in clear violation of the code of ethics, enjoyed enormous personal gain.48 In sum: real estate professionals directly profited from racially restrictive covenants, both by their creation and strategic deconstruction.

D. New Deal Era and FHABacked Mortgages A signature program of the New Deal, the FHA sought to stabilize the housing market by insuring low-interest, fully amortized, twenty-year loans.49 Prior to receiving an FHA-backed mortgage, a

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The rise of the modern real estate industry in the 20th century was accompanied by the “development of brokerage and appraisal techniques, and the creation of specialized real estate education and research facilities” that “institutionalized the notion that racial homogeneity is a natural characteristic of residential neighborhoods.”43 Indeed, in his case study of Kansas City, Kevin Scott Gotham argues that “Before the rise of the modern real estate industry and the creation of segregated neighborhoods, there is no evidence that residents in Kansas City

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perceived a connection between race, culturally specific behavior and place of residence.”44

property. The individual citizen, whether he be black or white, may refuse to sell or lease his property to any particular individual or class of individuals. The state alone possesses the power to compel a sale or taking of private property, and that only for the public use. The power of these property owners to exclude one class of citizens implies the power of the other class to exercise the same prerogative over property which they may own. What is denied one class may be denied the other. There is, therefore, no discrimination within the civil rights clauses of the Constitution. Such a covenant is enforceable, not only against a member of the excluded race, but between the parties to the agreement.42

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property was required to meet appraisal standards, including racial exclusivity.50 The FHA’s 1935 underwriting manual stated, “If a neighborhood is to retain stability it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes. A change in social or racial occupancy generally leads to instability and a reduction in value.”51 This language was not removed until 1947 – a politically expedient amendment that was not accompanied by policy change.52 In short, the FHA’s underwriting standards advantaged white, deed-restricted, greenfield development, leading to the proliferation of homeowners’ associations and exclusive suburban communities.53

E. Shelley v. Kramer In 1948, the Supreme Court revisited and overturned Corrigan v. Buckley. Dismissing the arguments of both defendants (that racially restrictive covenants were private agreements not subject to the Fourteenth Amendment) and plaintiffs (“that the freedom to purchase and use property, regardless of race or color, was a fundamental and basic freedom that was protected by the Constitution”54) in Shelley v. Kramer and its companion cases, the Court held that judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants constituted discriminatory governmental action in violation of the Constitution.55 The Court concluded that “the state may not accomplish indirectly through the courts what it cannot constitutionally do directly through the legislature.”56 Notwithstanding this landmark decision, racially restrictive covenants continued to proliferate. Brooks and Rose posit that this was due to Shelley’s perceived fragility.57 Not only were three of the justices forced

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to recuse themselves because they occupied homes with racially restrictive covenants, but judicial enforcement as state action seemed too broad and potentially destabilizing to the legal system to last.58 Finally, practitioners believed that, even without the power of an injunction (courtordered enforcement), they could still sue for damages for failure to comply with the terms of a racially restrictive covenant.59 The general dismissal of Shelley v. Kramer by white institutions may be captured by FHA Commissioner Richards’s statement that the decision would “in no way affect the programs of this agency,” which would make “no change in our basic concepts or procedures.” Finally, it was not “the policy of the Government to require private individuals to give up their right to dispose of their property as they see fit, as a condition of receiving the benefits of the National Housing Act.”60 Gotham notes that Missouri courts continued to enforce racially restrictive covenants for at least five years after Shelley.61

F. Federal Fair Housing Act While Shelley rendered racially restrictive covenants unenforceable, the practice of writing racially restrictive covenants into deed instruments was not illegal until 1968. The Federal Fair Housing Act made it unlawful to refuse to sell, rent to, or negotiate with any person because of that person’s inclusion in a protected class.62 However, the Fair Housing Act did not prescribe appropriate methods of dealing with existing restrictions, a limitation that was predicted by some legal scholars long before the Fair Housing Act was enacted.63 This brief history of racially restrictive covenants in the United States evidences

of racial discrimination places space at the center of the legal conversation.68 Boddie’s key thesis is that the law is overly concerned with the “racial dynamic between individuals,”69 when “a primary vehicle for racial discrimination against people of color historically has been exclusion from white space.”70 Boddie argues that: The ability to choose space and to move unimpeded through and across the local spaces of everyday life are basic components of freedom, social belonging, status, and dignity. Being excluded from space or marginalized within a particular space is stigmatizing and degrading. Racial territoriality demeans the individual by prohibiting the full expression of the self because those who suffer it experience the world as outsiders, barred from full participation in society.71

SE CT I O N I I I : RACI ALLY R E ST R I CTI VE COVE N ANTS A R E H A RM FUL Most legal scholars would end here: Shelley v. Kramer rendered racially restrictive covenants unenforceable, and the Fair Housing Act made them illegal. While both statements are true, they ignore the harm that racially restrictive covenants continue to inflict on our society, particularly within our communities of color. Racially restrictive covenants directly contributed to segregation, and our country remains deeply segregated.64 This harm is further compounded in our segregated educational system, which reinforces racial hierarchies and systems of power.65 And “[a]lthough unenforceable, the language [of racially restrictive covenants] can be psychologically damaging, reinforcing old fears and sending a message that racism is alive and well in America.”66 As demonstrated in the historical analysis above, lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals have unclean hands; we cannot now stand still and watch as systems of oppression continue to propagate.

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the active role played by lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals in the proliferation of discriminatory covenants and the continued segregation of U.S. cities. The next section describes the ongoing injuries caused by racially restrictive covenants, demonstrating that their harm did not end with Shelley and the Fair Housing Act.

“Racial territoriality occurs,” Boddie tells us, “when the state excludes people of color from – or marginalizes them within – radicalized white spaces that have a racially exclusive history, practice, and/ or reputation.”72 The territorialization of space occurs in two stages. First, spaces are classified by and imprinted with social significance to certain groups.73 Second, spaces are defended by:

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To further understand the harm perpetuated by racially restrictive covenants, this paper will employ the framework of racial territoriality proposed by Elise C. Boddie.67 Her conceptualization

“Creating, maintaining, or highlighting boundaries;” and then seeking to control “access to the area and to things within it, or to things outside of it be restraining those within.” Boundaries may be maintained by “signalling [sic] use or ownership through signs, markers, and label; or communicating warning of varying levels of indirectness and subtlety to potential intruders…” However, the

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point of territoriality is not so much the defense of the area itself but controlling the people in the area and their interactions. Space, in this sense, reflects social power — since only those with power can co-opt space for the purposes of territorial behavior — but it also helps reinforce social hierarchies.74 In short, racial territoriality is a product of proprietary power. Cheryl I. Harris takes this a step further in her seminal analysis of whiteness as property; not only are race and property historically entwined, they are inseparable.75 The law – the creation of rules restricting behavior and allocating property rights in society – is “integral to maintaining this spatial system.”76 In the United States, “[t] he power of the state has been deployed to ‘protect’ white space and to ‘contain’ nonwhite space, while regulating the movement of people of color within and across various racial borders in service of these objectives.”77 Boddie recognizes that the legal system’s failure to account for the racial meaning of space may be connected to a (subconscious) unwillingness to remedy harms inflicted on people of color in any way that might adversely impact “innocent whites.” 78 Nonetheless, this failure limits our capacity to remedy acts of racial discrimination that extend beyond the observed dynamic between two individuals.79 The framework of racial territoriality helps explain why owners of restricted property may “feel a kind of ethical obligation to abide” by racially restrictive covenants despite knowing that they are unenforceable.80 It demonstrates the implicit power of a covenant, which may signal “the nature of the underlying covenants to observers, such as prospective

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buyers,” through homogeneity.81 Seen through the lens of racial territoriality, the reluctance of people of color to live in a neighborhood scarred by restrictive covenants should not be a surprise.82 Finally, the racial territoriality framework offers justice in a legal system that has become too bloated with the minutiae of precedent to account for the spatialization of white power.

NEXT STEPS The time to act is now, but how do we act? In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated that “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.” This paper has collected the facts and has demonstrated that injustices have been committed, and worse, have been allowed to continue. To rectify these injustices, lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals must engage in dialogue, recognize our role in the perpetuation of these injustices, and take direct action against them. Urban planners, with their experience in community engagement and commitment to faithfully serve the public interest,83 are especially well-situated to bring awareness to this issue. Nearly seventy years after Shelley and sixty years after the enactment of the Fair Housing Act, racially restrictive covenants are still common features of deed instruments.84 Why? First, the majority of owners may not be aware that their properties are subject to racially restrictive covenants: “Homebuyers rarely see the original deed and real estate attorneys hardly ever point out the race restriction.”85 Silence, however, does not render racially

Second, as noted in Section I of this paper, racially restrictive covenants, which become part of the land title in perpetuity, are extremely difficult and expensive to remove.86 Here, again, the answer is unsatisfactory. Lawyers had the imagination to create racially restrictive covenants; they also possess the ingenuity to remove, or at least deal directly with, them. Rothstein offers one such solution. Rather than removing racially restrictive covenants, he recommends modifying the deed instrument by adding a clause disavowing the covenant: We, [your name], owners of the property at [your address], acknowledge that this deed includes an unenforceable, unlawful, and morally repugnant clause excluding African Americans from this neighborhood. We repudiate this clause and are ashamed for our country that many once considered it acceptable, and state that we welcome with enthusiasm and without reservation neighbors of all races and ethnicities.

regarding statues of Confederate generals: rather than removing the statues, we may consider adding a plaque that educates readers on our nation’s history. In light of a recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center showing that nearly half of American high school students polled believed that the southern states seceded from the Union to protest taxes on imported goods, a little education may be exactly what we need.88

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restrictive covenants harmless, as discussed in Section III. Lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals have a responsibility to reengage public dialogue around the history and ongoing damages wrought by racially restrictive covenants.

This paper does not offer a fully formulated slate of policy recommendations. It is, however, a call to action. In the words of Brooks and Rose, “Ultimately the persistence of covenants, even in very attenuated form, should cause us to reflect on the question whether Americans really want residential integration, and if we do, what we mean by integration.”89 Lawyers, urban planners, and real estate professionals should take this opportunity to reflect on our role in the proliferation of a segregated society, and ask ourselves what our role will be in its remedy. ■

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While Rothstein’s suggestion is not one of removal, it has the benefit of being currently actionable under our legal system. Further, he argues that removal may not be the best course of action, as racially restrictive covenants are an “important reminder and educational device, which we still need.”87 This suggestion is analogous to one solution in the current debate

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E NDNOTE S 1. Aladar F. Siles, “Methods of Removing Restrictive Covenants in Illinois,” 5 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 100 (1968): 110. 2. Rejeev D. Majumdar, “Racially Restrictive Covenants in the State of Washington: The Primer for Practitioners,” Seattle U. L. Rev. 30 (2007): 1095. 3. Ibid. 4. Siles, “Methods,” 100. 5. Bernard Tomson, It’s the Law: Recognizing and Handling the Legal Problems of Private and Public Construction (Channel Press, 1960), 295. 6. Ibid., 295. 7. Michel Jones-Correa, “The Origins and Diffusion of Racial Restrictive Covenants,” Political Science Quarterly 115 (December 2000): 541, 544. 8. Ibid., 544. This example is taken from Corrigan v. Buckley, further discussed below. 9. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 US 1 (1948). 10. McGhee v. Sipes, 334 US 1 (1948). 11. Hurd v. Hodge, 334 US 24 (1948). 12. Kevin Scott Gotham, “Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a U.S. City, 190050,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24, no. 3 (September 2000): 616-33. 13. Ibid., 625-27, see also Clayton P. Gillette, “Courts, Covenants, and Communities,” University of Chicago Law Review 61 (1994): 1375, 1383. 14. Judy L. Thomas, “’Curse of Covenant’ persists—restrictive rules, while unenforceable, having lingering legacy.” Kansas City Star. http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article92156112.html (July 27, 2016).

22. In some cases, the covenantee may also sue for damages for breach of the covenant. However, enforcement is the main goal of covenant claims. 23. Siles, “Methods,” 110. 24. Ibid., 104-08. In an example that is relevant to the subject of this paper, if no longer legally accurate in the particulars, Siles further notes that: The mere fact that there have been some changes in the neighborhood is not enough. In Burke v. Kleiman, five hundred white persons entered into a restrictive agreement. The covenant contained therein provided against leasing or selling of any premises included in the agreement to any person of the colored race. Defendant leased an apartment to a Negro. The plaintiffs sought an injunction requiring that the defendants remove all persons coming within the description of the restrictive covenants. The defendant answered that since the agreement was signed conditions had so changed that the granting of the injunction would be inequitable. Four apartments had previously been rented in violation of the agreement. The court held that this was not sufficient evidence to show a change of conditions and that the restrictive agreements were still operative (Siles, 108). 25. Ibid., 101-102. 26. Brooks and Rose, “Racial Covenants,” 14. 27. Thomas, “Curse of Covenant Persists,” (2016). 28. Jones-Correa, “Origins,” 544. 29. Richard Rothstein (The Color of Law, New York: Liveright, 2017), 42. Jones-Correa, “Origins,” 548. 30. Gotham, “Urban Space,” 616-33. 31. Rothstein, Color of Law 41-48. Jones-Correa, 548. 32. Gotham, “Urban Space,” 617. 33. Ibid.

15.Gotham, “Urban Space,” 627.

34. Rothstein, Color of Law, 42.

16. Richard R. W. Brooks & Carol Rose, “Racial Covenants and Segregation, Yesterday and Today,” Straus Institute Working Paper 08/10 (2010): 7.

35. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

37. Buchanan v. Warley, 245 US 60 (1917). Rothstein and others have noted that Buchanan did not end racial zoning. Other municipalities tried their luck with variations on the theme for decades following Buchanan, and Kansas City had a practice of guiding spot zoning decisions based on racial composition until 1987. Rothstein, 48.

18. To be enforceable, covenants must run with the land and “touch and concern” the land. Olin L. Browder, “Running Covenants and Public Policy,” Michigan Law Review 77 (1978): 12, 13. 19. Clayton P. Gillette, “Courts, Covenants, and Communities,” University of Chicago Law Review 61 (1994): 1375, 1395. This is, of course, part of their attraction. As opposed to zoning ordinances, covenants are not subject to politics. Ibid. 20. Browder, “Running Covenants,”12. This paper does not take up Browder’s question of whether covenants should exist in perpetuity.

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21. Ibid., 12-14.

36. Ibid., 48.

38. Rothstein, Color of Law, 48. 39. Jones-Correa, “Origins,” 543 (arguing that “the diffusion of racial restrictive covenants across the nation was spurred by a critical historical moment: the urbanization of black Americans and the consequent race riots from 1917-1921. The reaction to these events reinforced a number of policy alternatives,

among them racial restrictive covenants.”). See also Brooks & Rose, 6 (positing that “[t]he Chicago riot made integration seem dangerously problematic, and perhaps under its influence, several major state supreme courts decided cases favorably to racial covenants on both constitutional and property rights grounds.”).

considered deleted” in the 1980s. Thomas (2016).

40. Rothstein, Color of Law, 48.

66. Thomas, “Curse of Covenants’,” (2016)

41. Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323 (1926).

67. Elise C. Boddie, “Racial Territoriality,” UCLA Law Review 58 (2010): 401.

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64. Thomas, “Curse of Covenants’,” (2016). 65. Zanita E. Fenton, “Disabling Racial Repetition,” Law & Inequality 31 (2012): 77.

42.Ibid.

68.Ibid., 420.

43. Gotham, “Urban Spaces,” 621.

69. Ibid., 406.

44. Ibid., 618.

70. Ibid., 407.

45. Jones-Correa, “Origins,” 564-65. 46. Gotham, Color of Law, 616-33. A 1924 amendment to the NAREB charter read: “A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.” Jones-Correa, 564. 47. Jones-Correa, “Origins’” 564.

71. Ibid., 420. 72. Ibid., 406. 73. Ibid., 443. 74. Ibid., 444. 75. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 1707.

48. Rothstein, Color of Law, (2017).

76. Ibid., 427.

49. Ibid.

77. Ibid., 425.

50. Ibid.

78.Ibid., 413.

51. Ibid., 65.

79. Ibid.

52. Ibid., 65.

80. Brooks & Rose, “Racial Covenants and Segregation,” 16. There even appear to be homeowners who believe the racial covenant restricting sale of their homes to black Americans to be in effect: In 2002, there was something of a flurry in the metropolitan area of Richmond, Virginia, where an African American woman inquired about a house that had a ‘for sale’ sign in front of it. The owner was an older man, not well-educated and apparently not up on the news, and he told her that he could not sell her the property because of a racial covenant on the property. She took the matter to a fair housing council, who sent some ‘testers’ (both black and white) around to the house, and he once again told the African American tester that he could not sell the house because of the racial covenant. At this point the original would-be purchaser sued him for $100,000, and the matter ended up with an order for him to pay her a few thousand dollars and take a class in fair housing. 81. Ibid., 15-16.

53. Ibid. 54. Tomson, “Curse of Covenants Persists,” 296. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 297. 57. Brooks & Rose, “Racial Covenants and Segregation,” 10-12. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Rothstein, Color of Law, 86. 61. Gotham, “Urban Spaces,” 616-33. 62. Rothstein argues that housing discrimination did not become illegal in 1968, but in 1866: “Indeed, throughout those 102 years, housing discrimination was not only unlawful but was the imposition of a badge of slavery that the Constitution mandates us to remove.” Rothstein, 86.

83. Thomas, “Curse of Covenants’,” (2016) (“Even though they cannot be enforced, covenants continue to keep minorities away from certain housing developments….I have been told by black people that they’re aware of what neighborhoods were once restricted, and often they still see those as hostile zones, so that they’d be more likely to purchase a house in one neighborhood versus another because of that….So these covenants then have more than simply symbolic meaning. They still have an impact.”).

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63. R. Gordon Lowe, “Racial Restrictive Covenants,” Alabama Law Review (1948-1949): 15. There is some evidence that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “began requiring title companies to cross out the restrictions on copies of covenants or note in the margins that the provisions were to be

82. Gillette, “Courts,” 1408.

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83. American Planning Association, Ethical Principals in Planning (1992). 84. “Here’s why getting rid of unenforceable racial housing covenants matters.” Baltimore Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com/ news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0915-racial-covenants-20170913story.html (Sept. 14, 2017). 85. Julie Rose, Hidden in Old Home Deeds, A Segregationist Past, NPR (Feb. 6, 2010). 86. Thomas, “Curse of Covenants’,” (2016). 87. Rothstein, Color of Law, 221-22. 88. Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Hard History: American Slavery (2018). 89. Brooks & Rose, “Racial Covenants,” 1-2.

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