Agora 15 by Agora Journal of Planning and Design

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University of Michigan A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design Volume 15: 2021

The Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design is an annual, student-run, peer-reviewed publication of the University of Michigan’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 USA www.agorajournal.squarespace.com ISSN 2331-2823 COPYRIGHT Agora Volume 15 2021 The Regents of the University of Michigan LICENSING This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial - Share Alike 40 International License TYPE DIN-Light, DIN-Medium, Warnock Pro, Tr ajan PRINTING ULitho Ann Arobr, Michigan, USA Printed in an edition of 200 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 15 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 15: Bader AlBader Bryan Boyer Lan Deng Harley Etienne Joe Grengs Lesli Hoey Christine Hwang Larissa Larsen Jonathan Levine Kit McCullough Robert Pfaff Anthony Vanky We would also like to give special thanks to our faculty advisors, Dr. Scott Campbell and Dr. Julie Steiff.

agor a staff Editor-in-Chief Cassie Byerly Creative Directors Christian Hunter and Sarah “J” Jammal Deputy Editors Caroline Lamb and Laura Melendez Symposium Directors Clare Kucera and James Vansteel Manager of Finance Neeli Kakal Director of Fundraising and Outreach Anna Bronwyn Shields Communications and Blog Manager Michelle Lincoln Social Media Manager Keyana Aghamirzadeh Staff Editors Alicia Adams, Keyana Aghamirzadeh, Charlotte Burch, Andrew Darvin, Kiley Fitzgerald, Carly Keough, Aaron Krusniak, Clare Kucera, Michelle Lincoln, James VanSteel, Danielle Wallick, and Sydney Weisman. Layout Editors Alicia Adams, Aaron Cohen, Andrew Darvin, Christian Hunter, Sarah “J” Jammal, Neeli Kakal, Camilla Lizundia, Rebeka Rooks, Anna Bronwyn Shields, Alex Spofford, Sydney Weisman, and Arin Yu

Table of Contents Community Assets as Emergency Preparedness Spatial Analysis Areli Ariana Balderrama & Shanea Condon

Urban Stormwater Management

Madeeha Ayub, Helena Garcia, Collin Knauss & Clare Kucera

Tapping into Economic Potential: the Impact of Microbreweries in Michigan

Rowan Brady, Cassie Byerly & Carly Keough

City Building: the view from East Africa Tom Courtright

The City Plantation: the Great Migration and Funding the Growing City

Michelle Lincoln

Decoding Settler Colonialism Symposium

Madeeha Ayub

Urban Inflation

Yinan Fang, Chunyang Xu, Mingrui Jiang & Yuxin Lin

Less Is Not More Lauren Week

Argon

Eugene Kim, Ping Shao

Urban Density, VMT Reduction, and Smart Growth James Vansteel

Racism by Design Adeline Steffen

A More Perfect Unionism Nathan McBurnett

Winning at All Costs Tom Bagley

71 85 99 113 125 137 155 169

letter from the editor Our 15th edition is a landmark accomplishment for Agora. Not only are we continuing on the tradition of excellence in interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the world in which we live, we are seeing that very world – the fabric of our societies, the meaning of community during a global pandemic, and our role and responsibility as planners and citizens – change before our eyes. I am unbelievably proud of the time and effort that our 24 staff members, 22 authors, and faculty advisors, peer reviewers, and college staff put in to create this year’s journal – the first, and hopefully last, edition to be completed virtually from start to finish. Despite these challenges, this team held a successful Salon event that included faculty and students from multiple programs and colleges within the University of Michigan system. In a year unlike any other, Agora forged on; the bonds and collaborations in this group are all the more important and stronger because of the moment we’re living in. The theme of this year’s journal, r/evolutions, speaks to the impact that this pivotal moment will have on our built environment, planning and design, and society as well as our responsibility as planners, designers, and urbanists to challenge paradigms that don’t promote equity, sustainability, and racial justice. Agora 15 tackles these issues head on – from spatial and temporal case study analyses to bold recommendations and solutions to today’s wicked problems. Michelle Lincoln’s “The City Plantation: The Great Migration and Funding the Growing City” explores today’s impact from the devaluation of Black bodies during one of America’s greatest periods of urbanization. In “A More Perfect Unionism: Redeeming the Role of Organized Labor in the Push for Affordable Housing,” Nathan McBurnett charts a path for organized labor to regain its role as leaders and producers of affordable housing. James VanSteel, in “Beyond Mere Density: Smart Growth Strategies for Reducing Car-Reliance,” challenges the existing literature on the connection between population density, car reliance, and climate change. Tom Courtright’s “City Building: The View From East Africa” reminds us that to chart a better path forward, we must first reckon with the past. Leading and learning from everyone involved with the production of Agora 15 has been an incredibly rewarding and humbling experience. I’m grateful to the wisdom and time of our advisors, Dr. Scott Campbell and Dr. Julie Steiff. And I am indebted to the hard work of Deputy Editors Caroline Lamb and Laura Melendez, in whose very capable hands Agora will continue on. We hope that you enjoy reading Agora 15: r/evolutions. Cassie Byerly Editor-in-Chief

letter from faculty Fifteen years ago, a small but dedicated cadre of graduate Michigan planning students dreamt of starting a student-run journal. Ignoring the inevitable voices of doubt — will you find funding, authors, editorial staff, an audience? — the spirited staff plowed ahead and produced Agora 1. In the years to follow, Agora has become a vibrant and vital part of the Michigan planning culture and student life, taking its place alongside capstones, UPSA (the Urban Planning Student Association), DEI projects and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. event. And each fall, the current Agora staff recruits a fresh cohort of editors and staff from the new masters students, hosts a lively Salon kickoff event, and plots the path to the upcoming issue. Last year’s Agora staff had to quickly pivot from in-person to online in March 2020 to complete the journal. This year’s staff (led by editor Cassie Byerly) has faced the even more daunting challenge: working entirely under lockdown, from staff recruitment to article solicitation & selection, manuscript editing to final production. And unlike some journals that take a rather hands-off approach to editing, the Agora editors and staff actively work with authors to intensively edit and rewrite during the winter months. I applaud the editors and authors who walked that extra mile — beyond their coursework and other jobs and internships — to produce this pandemic-era Agora issue, when the easier path would have been to just hunker down and do their own Zoom-based schoolwork. The results of these efforts are a rich and diverse set of writings that engage, in a variety of forms and methods, the pressing planning issues of today: sustainability, poverty, inequality, racism, climate justice, urbanization in the Global South, the legacy of settler colonialism, and the failure to deliver affordable housing. Yes, the articles’ themes are somber reminders of the deep-rooted, often overwhelming challenges that urban society faces. But these articles also collectively demonstrate the passion, commitment and creativity of the next generation of planners and urbanists who are expanding the field, bringing in new voices, and pushing us into compelling new areas of social and spatial change. The journal’s title, Agora, may seem paradoxical during a school year of quarantine and the closure of public spaces. And yet the title reminds us of one of planning’s enduring missions: to provide and nurture a shared public space, for assembly and free speech, for all. Let me offer, from all the urban planning faculty and staff, my heartfelt congratulations to the authors and editors for their stalwart commitment to the journal and the larger ideas it represents.

Scott Campbell Faculty co-adviser (with Julie Steiff)

Detroit Contemporary Art Museum Photographer: Lauren Ashley Week

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Community Assets as Emergency Preparedness Spatial Analysis

with a focus on Socioeconomic Status, Language and Homeowner Type in Santa Barbara County, California ARELI ARIANA BALDERRAMA Master of Public Health and Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2022

SHANEA CONDON Master of Public Health and Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2022

ABSTRACT With increasing numbers of natural disasters threatening homes and communities across the United States, including wildfires, floods, and earthquakes, community outreach is essential.1 However, for vulnerable populations such as low-income people, racial and ethnic minorities, and those without citizenship status, housing precarity is further exacerbated. Some of the housing challenges faced by low-income communities include dense neighborhoods and poorer quality of housing that increase the risk of damage or loss of a home.2 Furthermore, unequal access to resources to pay for rent, mortgage, insurance, or rebuilding measures after fires make the intersection of identity, climate change, and housing more complex.3 Emergency preparedness, with respect to communications and subsequent mobility, may look different based upon an individual’s socioeconomic status, housing tenure, race, and age. This project focuses on communities in Santa Barbara County, on the Central Coast of California, which includes a diverse range of populations that vary in income, race, and age. As of publication, five of the six biggest wildfires in California took place in a span of two months in 2020, which indicates a critical need to prepare for natural disasters.4 The goal of this assessment is to create a method of visualizing existing access to emergency preparedness facilities in communities vulnerable to climate change. We place specific interest in the role that socioeconomic status, race, and housing tenure have on a population’s ability to prepare for environmental disasters.

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lobal climate change is an increasingly pressing issue, and natural disasters are becoming more unpredictable and often stronger in intensity.5 In recent years, climate change has led to heat waves and droughts in the American West, contributing to a growing frequency and severity of wildfires.6 In 2020, California experienced its worst year of wildfires, with over 4 million acres burned and five of the state’s six biggest fires taking place in the span of two months.7 While wildfires are indiscriminately destructive, at-risk populations including low-income people, racial and ethnic minorities, and non-English speaking residents face disproportionate challenges in accessing the tools needed to assess risk and accessing emergency preparedness facilities.8 City leaders can improve their insights into emergency preparedness by highlighting housing tenure as a vital variable for understanding the resilience of populations living at or below the poverty level. Some of the housing challenges faced by low-income communities include dense neighborhoods and lower-quality housing that increase the risk of damage or loss of a home during a wildfire.9 Furthermore, unequal access to resources to pay for rent and mortgage, insurance, or rebuilding measures after fires impacts the intersection of identity, climate change, and housing security more complex.10 Emergency preparedness, with respect to communications and subsequent mobility, may look different based upon an individual’s socioeconomic status, housing tenure, race, and English-speaking ability. This analysis focuses on communities in Santa Barbara County located on the Central Coast of California, which includes a diverse range of populations that vary in income, race, and citizenship status. This assessment visualizes existing access to emergency preparedness facilities in communities vulnerable to wildfires, and highlights the role that socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and housing tenure have on a population’s ability

to prepare for environmental disasters.

Presentation of methods According to the American Community Survey 2015-2019, a significant number of households in Santa Barbara County rent their homes, live below the poverty line, have no vehicle, and are non-English speakers.11 The U.S. Census Bureau also reports that more than 40 percent of Santa Barbara County residents speak a language other than English, with Spanish as the second most spoken language, followed by Chinese.12 With limited spatial, financial, and linguistic mobility, accessing the County’s federal shelter facilities poses a challenge, as many are clustered in its southeastern corner near a zip code with high rates of poverty and near multiple fire perimeters

In 2020, California experienced its worst year for wildfires, with over 4 million acres burned and five of the state’s six biggest fires taking place in the span of two months.” (Figure 3). Despite the proximity of federal shelter facilities to this southeastern zip code, there is a need for the County to promote awareness of wildfire risks and ensure that all marginalized populations have tools to make informed decisions during a natural disaster. Previous research used samples of fire scars – the visibly blackened land surface left after a wildfire – to construct temporal and spatial metrics, finding that the relationship between an area’s drought history and elevation contribute to a fire’s ecological impact.13 With this information in mind, we began

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this assessment by researching academic articles relevant to racial and ethnic groups most affected by wildfires, socioeconomic status, and wildfire perimeters in California counties. The authors refined the project to center on multiple variables to determine a population’s vulnerability to recover from a wildfire. These variables include nonEnglish speaking households as a proxy for marginalized racial and ethnic groups, households living below the poverty line as a proxy for socioeconomic status, renter-

Santa Barbara County recognizes the importance of building a plan to prepare community members to make informed decisions before, during, and after a natural disaster.” occupied households, and household ability to access federal emergency facilities via vehicle. The authors obtained data from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services Data Library and the American Community Survey. Using demographic data from the American Community Survey, the authors used ArcGIS Pro to join information on non-English speaking households and percent of residents living below the poverty line to select variables from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services’ Social Vulnerability Index, including renteroccupied households and households with no vehicles. The authors then mapped the wildfire perimeters from August 15, 2020 through October 15, 2020 to showcase the initial impact of a natural disaster and emphasize the potential exposure to future natural disasters.14 Finally, the authors mapped the locations of federal emergency preparedness facilities within

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Santa Barbara County using the most recent data available from 2017.15 Combined, the County’s demographic, wildfire, and shelter data reveal vulnerable populations’ disproportionate proximity to the perimeters of the fires and distance from emergency shelters.

description of results Within Santa Barbara County, there are high percentages of households with non-English speaking residents, households with no access to a vehicle, and households with a median income below the national poverty line. In the City of Santa Barbara, zip codes with high rates of poverty also tend to have higher rates of renter-occupied households. This suggests a potential correlation between these two variables (Figure 1). Households living below the poverty line are also likely to live in zip codes with high percentages of non-English speaking residents, which may pose a barrier to effective emergency communications (Figure 2). The concentration of households highlights the need for holistic community preparedness. Many residents who are renters and live below the federal poverty line live in closer proximity to fire perimeters than residents in zip codes with younger, more affluent populations with greater access to vehicles. In Santa Barbara County, many of the zip codes with higher rates of poverty also exhibit high percentages of households without access to a vehicle (Figure 3). This indicates a potential barrier to household emergency response – not having access to a vehicle reduces a family’s ability to seek shelter during a disaster – and a likely vulnerability in the disaster preparedness of the local population (Figure 3).

Recommendations Santa Barbara County recognizes the importance of building a plan to prepare community members to make informed

Legend

Percent Renter Households

Relationship of Percent of Renter Households to Percent Living in Poverty High

Low

High

Percent Living in Poverty Fire Perimeter Santa Barbara County Boundary National Shelter Facility

Note: The range of data for those living in poverty is 0% (low)-18.8 % (high) of total population. The range of data for percentage of renter-occupied households ranges from 0% (low) to 77.1% (high) of total households.

20 Miles

Data Source: 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Data Profiles

Figure 1: Populations who Rent and are Living in Poverty

Legend Percent of Non-English Speakers ≤ 10.0 10.1 - 20.0 20.1 - 30.0 30.1 - 40.0 40.1 - 50.0 Fire Perimeter Santa Barbara County Boundary National Shelter Facility 0

20 Miles Data Source: 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Data Profiles

Figure 2: Population that are Non-English Speaking decisions before, during, and after a natural disaster. An essential element in the 2021 Santa Barbara Community Wildfire Preparedness Plan is their commitment to routinely update the Ready! Set! Go! brochure that serves as a guide for local residents.16 The brochure, which is written in Spanish and English, includes important

emergency preparedness updates such as changing conditions.17 This step toward equitable engagement on behalf of Santa Barbara County is essential. Further planning must include a safety net for people without a private vehicle. Federal interventions like national shelters can collaborate with efforts at the county level

Balderrama/Condon

to tailor a system that facilitates free rides to appropriate shelters via options like local public transit, ride shares, etc. In consideration of poverty rates in Santa Barbara County and the significant number of renters, the County should aim to 1) reduce the impact of adverse risks of natural disasters and 2) create safety nets to alleviate the economic burden of natural disasters. Federal grants distributed at the discretion of communitybased organizations will help alleviate the economic stress of people who lose wages or other assets (e.g., home furnishings, vehicles) due to a wildfire. After a wildfire, many families that rent are ineligible for the same benefits as homeowners, which amplifies financial disparities according to housing tenure.18 By leveraging a tailored approach in recovery efforts, federal and county efforts can address this discrepancy. For example, in zip codes with high concentration levels of both poverty and renter-occupied households, financial resources can be provided for residents to use at their discretion. Public health departments must translate emergency communication materials regarding best evacuation practices to Spanish and Chinese. This plan should include collaborations with local radio stations,

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local news channels, and websites deemed appropriate for non-English speaking populations. Additionally, local health departments can host a series of workshops and create information guides tailored to meet the populations’ needs. Previous research highlights beneficial outcomes for communities that receive tailored resources to prepare them for natural disasters.19 Emergency preparedness efforts that align with the diverse needs of a community and draw from existing social assets can bridge gaps in recovery efforts.20 This calls for a multidimensional approach that includes mutual aid organizations like the 805 UNDOCUFund.21 Like many mutualaid organizations, the 805 UNDOCUFund rose in response to the lack of federal support available to many immigrant families after the 2017 Thomas Fire and the 2018 Montecito Mudslides.22 At the time of publication, their work has adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to “ensure that undocumented individuals and families impacted by disasters have the support and resources necessary to recover and rebuild their lives.”23 Santa Barbara County is uniquely poised in its current efforts to meet its residents’ needs and address exposure to wildfires faced by the community.

Legend

Percent Living in Poverty

Relationship of Percent of Population Living in Poverty to Percent of Households with No Vehicle High

Low

High

Percent Households with No Vehicle Fire Perimeter Santa Barbara County Boundary National Shelter Facility

20 Miles

Note: The range of data for those living in poverty is 0% (low)-18.8 % (high) of total population. The range of data for percentage of households with no vehicle range from 0% (low) to 12.9% (high) of total households. Data Source: 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Data Profiles

Figure 3: Population in Poverty and Households with No Vehicle

about the authors Areli Ariana is a second-year dual degree Public Health and Urban Planning student. They are driven by their love for their community and aims to plan for community resilience in the face of climate change through intentional emergency preparedness that encourages community involvement. They have a profound curiosity and commitment to create spaces that highlight strengths in BIPOC communities to ensure a safer and healthier future for the next generation. Shanea Condon is a dual Public Health and Urban Planning Master’s student. She is interested in how climate change and urban development affect access to resources, and resulting health behaviors. As climate change continues to most acutely affect lower-income and racial/ethnic minority communities, she is passionate about how we can plan more sustainable, healthy, and equitable communities through the promotion of community mobilization and environmental justice.

Balderrama/Condon

endnotes 1 John T. Abatzoglou and A. Park Williams. “Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 42 (2016): 11770-11775. 2 Alice Fothergill, Enrique GM Maestas, and JoAnne DeRouen Darlington. “Race, ethnicity and disasters in the United States: A review of the literature.” Disasters 23, no. 2 (1999): 156-173. 3 Ian P. Davies, Ryan D. Haugo, James C. Robertson, and Phillip S. Levin. “The unequal vulnerability of communities of color to wildfire.” PloS one 13, no. 11 (2018): e0205825. 4 Dani Anguiano. “California’s Wildfire Hell: How 2020 Became the State’s Worst Ever Fire Season.” The Guardian. December 30, 2020. 5 Abatzoglou and Williams. “Impact of anthropogenic climate change.” 6 Anguiano, “California’s Wildfire Hell.” 7 Anguiano, “California’s Wildfire Hell.” 8 Davies, Haugo, Robertson, and Levin. “Unequal Vulnerability of Communities.” 9 Fothergill, Maestas, and DeRouen Darlington. “Race, ethnicity and disasters.” 10 Davies, Haugo, Robertson, and Levin. “Unequal Vulnerability of Communities.” 11 U.S. Census Bureau, “QuickFacts, Santa Barbara County, California” 2015-2019 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, American FactFinder, accessed March, 14 2021. 12 U.S. Census Bureau, “Language other than English spoken at home, percent of persons age 5 years+,” 20152019 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, American FactFinder, accessed March, 14 2021. 13 Kvin D. Krasnow, Danny L. Fry, and Scott L. Stephens. (2017). “Spatial, temporal and latitudinal components of historical fire regimes in mixed conifer forests, California.” Journal of Biogeography 44, no. 6 (2017) 1239–1253. Oxford: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc. 14 Krasnow, Fry, and Stephens, “Spatial, temporal, and latitudinal components.” 15 Krasnow, Fry, and Stephens, “Spatial, temporal, and latitudinal components.” 16 Dudek. “City of Santa Barbara Community Wildfire Protection Plan.” February 2021. Accessed March 14, 2021. https://cwpp.santabarbaraca.gov/wp-content/ uploads/2021/03/SB-CWPP-Final_Feb-2021_OPT_signed. pdf. 17 Dudek, “Community Wildfire Protection Plan.”

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18 Davies, Haugo, Robertson, and Levin. “Unequal Vulnerability of Communities.” 19 Charleen C. McNeill, Cristina Richie, and Danita Alfred. “Individual Emergency-Preparedness Efforts: A Social Justice Perspective.” Nursing Ethics 27, no. 1 (February 2020): 184–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733019843621. 20 McNeill, Richie, and Alfred, “Individual EmergencyPreparedness Efforts.” 21 “805 UNDOCUFund.” 805 UNDOCUFund. Accessed March 14, 2021. https://805undocufund.org/ 22 “805 UNDOCUFund.” 23 “805 UNDOCUFund.”

Rail line in Southwest Detroit Photographer: Delores Perales

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Urban Stormwater Management

Advancing Sustainable Solutions in Lake Huron’s Coastal Communities MADEEHA AYUB Master of Urban Design 2020

HELENA GARCIA Master of Science in Environment and Sustainability 2021

COLLIN KNAUSS Master of Business Administration 2021

CLARE KUCERA Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Master of Science in Ecosystem Science and Management 2021 Graham Sustainability Institute

ABSTRACT Our team collaborated with a regional nonprofit organization, Huron Pines, and a pilot community, Rogers City, Michigan, to investigate the potential of a new participatory water management tool: the Community Vibrancy Dashboard. The tool helps communities, planners, and nonprofit organizations address water challenges by identifying opportunities to prioritize sustainable stormwater solutions. We grounded our work in (1) background research and stakeholder collaboration, (2) community engagement through qualitative interviews with key stakeholders, and (3) an in-depth analysis of the Dashboard. Ultimately, we see the Dashboard as a powerful tool that would benefit from continued and focused collaboration among local government, community, and environmental leaders. Our recommendations include identifying a local champion in each community, who can advocate for the Dashboard’s use and implementation, and using the tool in conjunction with other engagement methods to better understand the distinct priorities across different coastal Lake Huron communities. Looking forward, we envision the Dashboard as a grassroots inter-community tool that transcends municipal boundaries to promote more holistic, sustainable, and resilient stormwater planning. This report, completed through the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program, contributes to the seminal efforts of the Great Lakes One Water (GLOW) Partnership to advance innovative planning practices in water management for the economic, environmental, and cultural benefit of communities throughout the Great Lakes Basin.

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introduction

ake Huron is a critical natural resource that drives the Northeastern Michigan economy, supports incredible biodiversity, and serves to connect individuals, institutions, and communities throughout the region. The Great Lakes One Water (GLOW) Partnership, a basin-wide initiative representing six regional Great Lakes groups, was formed to address the following challenges faced by coastal Lake Huron communities: 1. Mitigating pollution and flooding from increasing stormwater runoff, 2. Strengthening and enhancing aging stormwater infrastructure, and 3. Balancing economic development along waterfronts with water resource protections.1 Huron Pines, a regional nonprofit, engages local community stakeholders (e.g., foundations, businesses, environmental groups) to improve water resource management and address these challenges, which will be exacerbated by climate change. Driven by a mission to “conserve and enhance Northern Michigan’s natural resources to ensure healthy waters, protected places, and vibrant communities,” Huron Pines organizes both on-the-ground conservation work and future planning.2 To better understand the opportunities and barriers in planning for sustainable stormwater solutions, Huron Pines aims to utilize a new interactive survey tool, the Community Vibrancy Dashboard (“Dashboard”). Developed by the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes and Michigan State University’s Institute for Water Resources, the Dashboard uses both quantitative and qualitative survey questions, formed from community engagement interviews and focus groups to help determine a community’s vibrancy with respect to its water resources. This tool was created in 2019 through the collaboration of four

Michigan cities (Alpena, Manistee, Port Huron, and Sault Ste. Marie), but has yet to be implemented in practice. Prior to this project, the accuracy, efficacy, and potential uses of this Dashboard had not been tested in the context of other Michigan localities. The Dashboard is designed to assess a community’s vibrancy as a measure of its relationships with all types of relevant water assets and resources within its jurisdiction. Community vibrancy is defined as: “The existence of accessible processes and networks that facilitate collective action toward shared goals, catalyze diverse opportunities for pursuing longterm community wellbeing, and foster the capacities needed for effectively responding to change over time in a particular place and driven by connection to that place.”3 Vibrancy in a coastal community in Michigan connotes a place where people (1) want to live, work, and recreate, (2) feel comfortable, safe, stimulated, and engaged, and (3) want to be.4 Thus, our research asks: How can Huron Pines use the Community Vibrancy Dashboard to support sustainable stormwater improvements in coastal Lake Huron communities? Using a Lake Huron community, Rogers City, as a pilot case study, we evaluated the Dashboard’s effectiveness at predicting a community’s readiness for sustainable stormwater improvements. Through a literature review and community engagement process, our team assessed both barriers to the implementation of stormwater solutions and whether the Dashboard accurately reflects the community’s perspective. Our evaluation offers Huron Pines and the GLOW partnership a deeper understanding of how to best implement this tool to further their conservation mission in coastal Lake Huron communities.

AYUB ET. Al

Relevance of Urban Stormwater Management in Lake Huron Communities Michigan localities are systemically failing to incorporate coastal area management into their planning efforts, resulting in an absence of meaningful coastal regulations that could help sustain distinct community resources.5 This deficiency in Michigan coastal planning stems from widely held perceptions that coastal concerns are not imminent compared to other local community priorities. This perception may, in part, be due to the relative infrequency of damaging coastal erosion and storm events, which further drives opposition from beachfront property owners to implement coastal regulations. Following large-scale coastal events, localities often rely on the state or other organizations to address coastal issues through insurance or federal programs that cover the cost of storm damages. In this context, the presence of cost assistance programs further disincentivizes advancing local coastal regulations.6 The Great Lakes region is projected to face increasing coastal hazards due to changes in regional climate and lake dynamics, which may be exacerbated by a lack of urgency in addressing coastal issues from a regulatory and planning perspective in coastal communities. In the past century, Great Lakes coasts have experienced record high and low lake water levels over seasonal and decadal temporal scales.7 In addition, the lakes also experience local water level variability during coastal storm surges caused by wind- and weather-induced seiches and meteotsunami events.8 These events damage coastal infrastructure and even lead to the loss of human life.9 Overlake and inland precipitation events are also expected to occur more frequently and intensely due to regional climate changes in the Upper Midwest region.10 These projections indicate there may be increases in coastal flooding and hazards along with

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inland runoff-precipitation events. Hazards may be further exacerbated in the Great Lakes region when compared with marine coasts, due to the larger range of coastal water level variability inherent to Great Lakes coastal dynamics. Considerations of coastal hazards and dynamics dominate infrastructure decisions and design criteria on marine coasts. In contrast, the Great Lakes

A seiche is a standing (or oscillating) wave in an enclosed body of water. These events are analogous to water sloshing back and forth in a bathtub but on a much larger physical scale and they can last for multiple hours to days. Seiches typically start when strong directional winds subside and cause water to rebound and then oscillate. In the Great Lakes, seiches are common in Lake Erie.11 Meteotsunamis are formed by rapid changes in atmospheric pressure over a body of water. Meteotsunamis can occur in enclosed basins and on open coastlines. These events are often grouped with seiches but they instead can generate a rapid progression of waves that can hit coastlines and refract in an enclosed body of water. An average of 126 meteotsunamis are recorded in the Great Lakes each year.12 Gray infrastructure refers to constructed structures such as treatment facilities, sewer systems, stormwater systems, or storage basins. The term “gray” refers to the fact that such structures are often made of concrete.13 Stormwater conveyance signifies the amount of water that is conveyed, or moved, through a stormwater system. Stormwater can be conveyed through built and natural channels such as storm drains, natural ditches, pipes, and other drainage infrastructure. Stormwater, like all water draining through a natural or built system, can be conveyed to larger bodies of water or to man-made detention basins or rain gardens. Often, stormwater conveyance systems are built to help water drain more efficiently to reduce flooding.14

science and management community often does not incorporate these considerations into decision making around water and infrastructure management in coastal zones. This gap in Great Lakes management threatens coastal communities and ecosystems. Aging coastal gray infrastructure, particularly stormwater infrastructure, is stressed by both coastal and inland water hazards. Trends in high lake water levels further stress the integrity of lowland stormwater infrastructure, while coastal urbanization leads to increased stormwater conveyance. Coastal communities rely on aging gray infrastructure and hardened coastal barriers to safely manage and treat stormwater and flooding risks, which has led to growing calls to incorporate more sustainable infrastructure solutions capable of withstanding increasingly variable urban and coastal stormwater conditions.

Dashboard Evaluation Process & Rogers City Case Study To assess the Dashboard’s effectiveness at predicting a community’s readiness for sustainable stormwater improvements, our research team developed an evaluation process where we reviewed critical literature, research, past planning efforts, and fiscal and redevelopment plans. Our team also engaged directly with Rogers City residents. Community engagement sessions enabled us to delve into the implications of Dashboard results for Rogers City, which informed focused recommendations on improving stormwater management within the City. First, we reviewed relevant literature provided by Huron Pines and Rogers City officials to understand the context of local stormwater and water resources management; this included the existing conditions, specific areas of concern, and potential barriers to implementation. Next, we developed a three-phased

interview process to better understand the current stormwater conditions and community perceptions of water in Rogers City. We interviewed 12 water resource professionals and active community residents that previously worked in or are still employed in Rogers City. These interviews captured local perceptions of water resources, stormwater management, and community relationships to water. We determined whether the Dashboard accurately reflects current stormwater and community vibrancy conditions through semi-structured interviews and by having interviewees complete the Dashboard. This process illuminated the primary barriers and constraints inhibiting implementation of the Rogers City Stormwater Plan. A final focus group session with four interviewees allowed our team to collaboratively interpret the Dashboard results and implications with Rogers City decision-makers and gain important feedback on the tool.

So Team Rogers City (TRC) is

a group of...people who recognize the beauty of Rogers City. They recognize that it is really a pleasure to live in a community that is focused not only on the environment, but the local economy [too]. Trying to make it as good as we can.” -Rogers City resident and TRC member

Beyond the focus group and interview process, we learned more about community perceptions of water resources and provided education on stormwater infrastructure during a presentation for a local community group, Team Rogers City (TRC). The Mayor of Rogers City hosts this forum for dedicated residents and professionals to drive positive change within their community.

AYUB ET. Al

Figure 1. Lake Huron Communities. Bi-national communities that Huron Pines services along Lake Huron.

Engagement with TRC enabled our research team to connect with the broader Rogers City community. During this town hallstyle session, we discussed sustainable stormwater solutions and introduced the Dashboard with the intention to attract interest and gain additional participation in our research project.

Understanding the Community Vibrancy Dashboard Tool The Dashboard consists of quantitative and qualitative survey questions that produce a score for each indicator. Survey questions are broken into six measurable indicator categories relating to a community’s water

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resources: (1) access to water resources, (2) governance, (3) community development, (4) community engagement, (5) relationship with water, and (6) connectedness. The Dashboard survey’s indicator results are presented on a publicly available, interactive website accessible at https://iwr.msu.edu/ CI/ (Figure 2). The survey questions assess how connected respondents are to local water resources and how communities include water amenities in their day-to-day activities and long-term decision-making. Upon completion of the Dashboard survey, users receive a vibrancy score that ranks their community among others in the Great Lakes Region. To analyze the Dashboard’s accuracy, we identified primary themes and secondary

sub-themes from the semi-structured interviews by employing a qualitative and quantitative coding process that was split into two categories of inductive and deductive coding. This process of coding interviews with residents used an inductive coding method for stormwater themes and a deductive coding method for vibrancy themes. Our first theme, Stormwater Topics, used inductive coding, which involved generating stormwater codes solely based on the interview data. We grouped stormwater codes according to the following topics: (1) identification of stormwater-related issues, (2) identification of stormwater management solutions, (3) identification of barriers to stormwater management, and (4) identification of past successes in addressing a stormwaterrelated issue in the community. The final stormwater codes and sub-codes emerged from the interview data through an interactive process of reading, grouping, and refining. The second theme, Drivers of Community Vibrancy, utilized a deductive coding approach, which involved using an established reference guide of codes

as defined by two of the creators of the Dashboard.15 These included: (1) governance, (2) community leadership, (3) access to water resources, (4) relationship with water, and (5) socioeconomic and environmental opportunities. Within each code, we refined and applied sub-codes when necessary. Following the coding processes, we collated the number of mentions within each code and sub-code. Codes within the community vibrancy category were further refined into positive or negative connotations within each sub-code. This quantitative analysis formed the backbone of our key findings in evaluating how the Dashboard is applicable to communities. It also helped our team better understand Rogers City’s Dashboard results and identify gaps in the tool’s accuracy and scope.

Rogers City Case Study We further examined Rogers City to understand how accurately the Dashboard reflects a community’s current readiness for pursuing sustainable stormwater practices and how well the Dashboard’s results can be used to aid the community in

Figure 2. Community Vibrancy Dashboard website homepage..

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Figure 3. Rogers City Stormwater Assets Map. The assets shown in this map were sourced from the 2006 Stormwater Management Plan by Huron Pines for Rogers City. The Plan elaborates on the stormwater basins, outfalls, watershed, and lakeshore.

implementing its sustainable stormwater goals. Rogers City, located in Presque Isle County, halfway between Cheboygan and Alpena along US Highway 23, was an appropriate case study community due its existing relationship with Huron Pines. The nonprofit supports the City’s efforts in sustainable stormwater management, and past engagement efforts have revealed Gravel berms are typically constructed of loose gravel, stone, or rock to allow for slow filtering of water next to infrastructure like roads or parking lots. They are also used to trap and retain sediment.18 A swale is a gently sloped depression in a landscape. Swales are often filled with plants and soils that can filter stormwater contaminants from the runoff the swale collects. Swales are meant to slow down and clean stormwater drainage.19

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resident enthusiasm for protecting water resources. The Rogers City community identity is strongly tied to Lake Huron and is well represented by local passion for protecting water resources. Huron Pines developed the Rogers City Stormwater Assessment in September 2006 to outline a stormwater management plan for the City’s future planning projects.16 Huron Pines received funding from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Coastal Management Program to create the assessment. The plan has two parts: a stormwater inventory and stormwater treatment options. Figure 3 illustrates Rogers City’s stormwater basins and outfalls as identified in the plan. In 2012, Rogers City updated its Zoning Ordinance to include stormwater management regulations that (1) reduce safety risks associated with stormwater runoff, (2) reduce economic losses, and

(3) protect and conserve water and land resources.17 The plan supports the creation of simplified stormwater runoff systems to creatively manage water where it falls. Some proposed solutions include parking lot depressions, rain gardens, gravel berms, and swales in back lots. The Zoning Plan mandates that all stormwater runoff control systems be equipped to handle 25-year frequency storm events that occur for 24-hour periods. The revised Zoning Plan regulations promote decreasing stormwater conveyance, increasing natural infiltration, decreasing sedimentation, and removing pollutants. To date, major progress in water infrastructure improvements in Rogers City have yet to be achieved. Huron Pines’ unimplemented stormwater recommendations from the 2006 assessment include filtering runoff through an oil and grit separator, maintaining existing vegetation and stream buffers, installing small sediment basins lined with stone, and installing small rain gardens or detention basins throughout the watershed. In 2014, the Rogers City Master Plan

“Rogers City is kind of unique.

If you look at Presque Isle county it is a whole lot of Lake Huron waterfront. Unlike most communities, where the waterfront is taken up with homes or condominiums or something that creates a tax base, almost all of ours is park and beach.” -Rogers City resident and TRC member

outlined a path forward for translating shared sustainability values into feasible goals for future growth and effective decision-making.20

The Community Vibrancy Dashboard Based on the Dashboard results of 13 Rogers City residents, the City’s total

Figure 4. Rogers City Community Vibrancy Score by indicator categories as reported by the Dashboard. Category descriptions include Access to Water Resources: presence of water resources, features, and amenities and how people use them; Governance: community visioning, planning, and local government support that focuses on water resources; Community Development: the role of water projects in supporting community development, potentially leading to expanded economic, social, and environmental opportunities; Community Engagement: stakeholder involvement, volunteerism, and public and private philanthropy; Relationships with Water: water resources as part of our background and everyday life; and Connectedness: your opinions on how well you and your community connect with water resources.

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vibrancy score is 339 out of 600 possible points (a breakdown of this score by indicator category is shown in Figure 4). This score places Rogers City in the Setting the Stage phase along the Dashboard’s “Vibrancy, Wellbeing, and Blueness” scale. This is the second of four phases of community vibrancy, preceded by Interventions/Tools/Training/Education and followed by Transformation and Saturation (Figure 5).

amount and modes of engagement. This also highlighted a need to emphasize the importance of stormwater and water management education, a job that one interviewer mentioned was usually relegated to the Drain Commissioner in times of disputes over water pipes or

In addition to using our coding and interview analysis to determine the accuracy of the Dashboard for Lake Huron coastal communities, we held a focus group with a small number of interviewees to discuss the Dashboard results. This meeting intentionally included community representatives from the local government, the City planning department, a local business owner, and a younger representative of the community. We asked participants about their perceptions of Rogers City’s vibrancy score, whether they agreed or disagreed, and what surprised them about their City’s Dashboard results. One of the primary pieces of feedback highlighted was a need to increase community engagement both in terms of

we’re blessed with a lot of potential for...

We’re blessed with a lot of land,

smart development. And when I say tipping point I’m talking economic, I’m talking sustainability, economic sustainability of Rogers City. Rogers City becoming either smart growth and reasonable development and increasing property values, or decreasing property values and failing infrastructure. I mean, we’re at that point.” - Rogers City Local Government Official

Figure 5. The Dashboard’s Vibrancy, Wellbeing, and Blueness Scale. The S curve identifies the different stages that communities have to cross in order to achieve vibrancy.

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Table 1. Barriers to sustainable stormwater management implementation applied to Rogers City and the Community Vibrancy Dashboard. This table describes the connection between barriers to sustainable stormwater management, specific examples of barriers experienced by Rogers City, and if/which indicator categories of the Community Vibrancy Dashboard describe this information. Primary barrier categories were derived from stakeholder interviews, whose definitions are supported by Winz, Trowsdale, and Brierley. 21 This analysis revealed the Dashboard’s failure to include ‘Educational/Knowledge’ barriers in its determination of community vibrancy.

nuisance flooding. Additionally, many of the participants suggested that the City should incorporate and advertise sustainable stormwater solutions in upcoming community development initiatives. The group also highlighted some barriers Rogers City faces in prioritizing sustainable stormwater solutions. Funding and local

capacity are primary barriers, but most interviewees noted that the current administration and community residents seem ready to initiate changes. Participants noted that the process of taking the Dashboard helped them identify pathways for advancing efforts to plan for sustainable stormwater solutions with

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members of the community. In our analysis of Dashboard applicability in Rogers City, our team compiled a number of barriers currently inhibiting sustainable stormwater solution uptake. They were initially determined during our background research and literature review, and compared to the impediments identified in our interviews and interactions with Rogers City community members. Table 1 compares how the Dashboard is able to identify or quantify these barriers within the community.

Recommendations Rogers City Case Study: Urban Stormwater Solutions in Action

As Rogers City continues to partner with Huron Pines, it will be critical to promote inclusive participatory planning methods so local officials and residents feel empowered to adopt sustainable stormwater solutions. The recommendations outlined below address the barriers currently inhibiting implementation of the Rogers City Stormwater Assessment Plan and are intended to specifically improve stormwater management within the City. In the short term, inclusive participatory planning methods will empower residents to construct low-cost sustainable stormwater solutions in their respective neighborhoods (e.g., training workshops on rain garden construction). Developing more inclusive planning processes will enable the City to identify sustainable stormwater solutions that can generate the greatest amount of buy-in to help address low scores in the community engagement portion of the Dashboard. Small-scale sustainable stormwater systems (e.g., permeable paving in a public parking lot), implemented through grants, can serve as visible prototypes to inspire larger projects capable of further transforming the urban

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There are things that we can

do and steps that we can take, and it’s educating the public.” - Rogers City resident and TRC member

landscape. Rogers City can also develop collaborative educational programming for K-12 students on watershed planning and resiliency, paired with sustainable infrastructure projects (e.g., a native plant rain garden on school grounds). A critical next step for Rogers City is to update zoning ordinances to include more stringent stormwater offsets to enhance stormwater resilience. The current zoning plan mandates stormwater infrastructure capacity at the 25-year frequency storm event. In order to withstand the impacts of regional climate change projections, A 25-year storm is a storm that has a 4% chance of occurring in any given year. A 50-year storm is a storm that has a 2% chance of occurring in any given year. A 100-year storm is a storm that has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. Rogers City should mandate that all new developments be constructed to mitigate greater frequency volumes of runoff (e.g., 50-year storm, 100-year storm). In the long term, Rogers City should become a certified Redevelopment Ready Community (RRC) through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to attract businesses and new residents that would expand the City’s tax base. The RRC requires extensive community engagement, with the initiative ultimately supporting localities in developing a

transparent, predictable, and efficient development experience.23 Rogers City’s RRC process would benefit from targeted intergenerational community outreach programs to better identify how the City can support a more holistic economy representative of a diversity of residents. With a stronger economic base, Rogers City can capitalize on its vast public waterfront to harness water-based placemaking. Changing the urban landscape to accommodate sustainable, attractive stormwater infrastructure in order to prevent coastal and stormwater flooding can help achieve this goal. Additionally, streets can be greened, and sidewalks and trails can accommodate activity during different hours of the day and week. Rogers City should also invest in sustainable stormwater infrastructure in upland areas to support maximum water retention and filtration. This practice will alleviate the stormwater burden of the lowland and coastal infrastructure located near the City’s businesses and public attractions. Strengthening relationships between Rogers City and other Lake Huron localities would help multiple communities leverage collective economic traction, tourism, outreach, and knowledge of sustainable solutions.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Community Vibrancy Dashboard The Dashboard’s strengths lie in its ability to organize complex interactions between a community and its water resources into six distinct indicator scores. The Dashboard successfully utilizes a variety of subjective questions to capture vibrancy trends related to Relationships with Water and Connectedness indicators. The tool accurately reflects how a community connects with its water resources on a personal and communal level. The Dashboard’s generation of numeric indicator

scores enables a range of communities in the region to effectively compare vibrancy scores, while also highlighting specific indicators where a community excels or should improve. This community-tocommunity comparison can then help place localities on a spectrum of readiness to advance sustainable solutions to water resource challenges (as seen in Figure 5). A community’s connectedness and relationship with water are generally hard concepts to quantify, but this tool’s use of a numeric Community Vibrancy Score enables participants and decision-makers to see these concepts in a concrete way that is generally not available to community leaders and planners. Our research recognizes key weaknesses in the current structure of the Dashboard that may constrain its ability to advance sustainable stormwater solutions. First, the Dashboard fails to capture education gaps pertaining to specific water resource issues within a community, such as stormwater. Our team assessed the community’s perspectives and understanding of stormwater issues through interviews and direct engagement with Rogers City residents. Absent this engagement, the Dashboard’s multiple-choice format is currently unable to collect individual perceptions of stormwater problems or insight into the community’s awareness and knowledge of stormwater solutions. Second, the quantitative nature of certain questions requiring specialized knowledge limits residents’ ability to adequately complete all the Dashboard questions. Considering that the Dashboard is intended to be completed by a wide range of community members, questions requiring specialized knowledge of community metrics were particularly troublesome for respondents not in governmental roles; the inaccuracy surrounding these responses likely skewed vibrancy scores lower than if quantitative questions were less expertisedependent.

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Third, the Dashboard does not adequately capture the overall water resource management strategies of a particular community. Without a strategic roadmap of community goals, it is challenging to accurately assess (1) the relative importance of stormwater management within the context of numerous competing priorities, (2) the current financial capacity of the community to manage stormwater, and (3) the alignment of government structures and community interests to invest in and maintain future stormwater improvement projects. These details are necessary for describing the full scope of vibrancy for a given community. Finally, vibrancy scores are not paired with actionable next steps that a community can take to improve its ranking. Though the Dashboard does capture whether or not communities are preparing for improvements, this ranking provides neither novel information nor guidance for a community eager to make improvements.

The Bottom Line: The Community Vibrancy Dashboard’s Potential to Advance Sustainable Stormwater Solutions Going forward, we believe that the Dashboard’s strengths, paired with a series of achievable supplementary actions, can help bridge the knowledge gap between government leaders, planners, and community members in prioritizing sustainable stormwater solutions. The Dashboard will benefit from greater emphasis on participatory engagement with the local community. As we found in our research, the score by itself provides limited insight if not paired with additional, targeted community outreach in the form of interviews, background research, and participatory planning sessions. All of these community outreach approaches should be used to better understand community perceptions of local water resource

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management and issues – aspects that are not adequately captured through the Dashboard alone. Participatory engagement should also provide an opportunity to better understand community priorities. For example, ranking current water resource issues among other issues identified by local government officials, Huron Pines, or others in the community would provide useful insight into how community perspectives align with current management plans and priorities. As a participatory engagement tool, the Dashboard’s results should be interpreted and shared with community members. An open discussion about results provides necessary explanations on how water resources contribute to community vibrancy and an opportunity to compare scores to other communities. The Dashboard’s results and interpretation should serve as the foundation of future planning efforts. Dashboard users would benefit from actionable recommendations for improving their community’s vibrancy score. Recommendations could include how to identify goals and initiatives, as well as next steps to implement and achieve sustainable stormwater management in small and large community settings.

The Roadmap Ahead: Reimagining Urban Stormwater Solutions This work recognizes the inherent value of a tool such as the Community Vibrancy Dashboard to support the sustainable transformation of urban stormwater infrastructure in coastal Lake Huron communities. However, it is apparent that the tool is not self-implementing; it requires a champion to ensure full effectiveness. A Dashboard champion such as Huron Pines would play a critical role in leading the distribution of, engagement with, and interpretation of the Dashboard tool with communities. The Dashboard can play

a critical role in advancing Huron Pines’ efforts to promote regional community resilience in the face of complex issues such as climate and urban changes that stress coastal and stormwater systems. The use and dissemination of the Dashboard will bolster Huron Pines’s main agenda of promoting more engaged, active, and sustainable Lake Huron Communities.24 Urban stormwater resilience and management also require an advancement of inter-community collaboration to identify similar barriers, such as educational and financial barriers, and devise holistic solutions. Our analysis outlines key ways in which the Dashboard can bridge the knowledge gap between planners and community members to promote bottom-up and top-down transformation toward more sustainable and resilient stormwater management. The use of this tool, in conjunction with active community engagement, has the potential to actively empower citizens to adopt sustainable stormwater practices as they become more aware of the critical need for them in coastal Great Lakes communities. Fostering this awareness through the use of this participatory planning tool will be most beneficial to coastal area management as well as promoting more holistic socioeconomic and environmental opportunities.

Acknowledgements Financial support from the Dow Company Foundation enabled us to conduct this project through the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program facilitated by the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan. We deeply appreciate our project advisors, Dr. Jennifer Read and Dr. Richard Norton from the University of Michigan and Dr. Jennifer Princing from the Dow Chemical Company, who provided excellent insights and guidance. We appreciate the ongoing support and collaboration from our client, Huron Pines, who played a critical role in the development and execution of our project. In addition, we acknowledge the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes and the Institute of Water Research at Michigan State University for their insights on the Community Vibrancy Dashboard. Finally, we are grateful for the support of Rogers City professionals and community members who generously took time to share their knowledge, perspectives, and personal experiences with the local water resources.

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additional Team Members This piece was published with permission from the following team members who also contributed to this research: Jeremy Nyitrai, Master of Environmental Engineering & M.S. Environment and Sustainability candidate, 2021 Eva Roos, M.L.A & M.S. Ecosystem Science and Management candidate, 2021

about the authors Madeeha Ayub is a Master of Urban Design graduate (2020) at The University of Michigan. In the broad domain of urban design, Madeeha’s research interests lie in understanding the intersection of built environment, geopolitics and socio-spatiality regimes in territories to employ reflective strategies inducing resilience and sustainability. Through multi-scalar mapping and design approaches, Madeeha aims to unpack the dynamic of constant flux that regions experience due to a multitude of internal and external factors, in the end to be tied to their place and communities. Helena Garcia is a Master of Environment and Sustainability candidate at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. Helena is interested in using her technical background as a water resources engineer to study the social equity and economic impacts of hydroclimate issues. She hopes to further explore the field of urban planning, and its intersections with the fields of hydrology and landscape ecology, in future academic and research endeavors. Collin Knauss is a Master of Business Administration candidate at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Previously, Collin received a Master of Environment and Sustainability from U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability in 2019. Collin’s interests lie at the intersection of business and sustainability, specifically the private sector’s role advancing sustainability initiatives and partnerships dedicated to community impact, resilience, and equity. Clare Kucera is a Master of Urban and Regional Planning and a Master of Environment and Sustainability candidate at the University of Michigan in her final year of study. Clare is dedicated to connecting ecology and social sciences to better understand how to sustainably integrate humans into natural systems. Clare has a Bachelor of Science in Program in the Environment and Spanish, also from the University of Michigan.

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endnotes 1. Deondré Young, “Great Lakes One Water Partnership: A Force Multiplier for Great Lakes Impact,” Great Lakes Protection Fund, last modified April 5, 2019, http://glpf. org/blog/great-lakes-one-water-partnership-a-forcemultiplier-for-great-lakes-impact/. 2. Huron Pines, “About Us,” Huron Pines, accessed January 16, 2021, https://huronpines.org/about-us/. 3. Jeremiah Asher et al., “Socioeconomic Indicators of Community Vitality: Research and Case Studies of Coastal Communities in Michigan,” MSU: Institute of Water Research, Project # GL17-MSU-3 (2019): 1-36, https:// www.michigan.gov/documents/egle/ogl-glpf-asherthomas_664860_7.pdf. 4. Asher, “Socioeconomic Indicators of Community Vitality: Research and Case Studies of Coastal Communities in Michigan,” 1-36.

Accessed February 10, 2021. https://ngicp.org/glossary/ gray-infrastructure/#:~:text=Gray%20infrastructure%20 refers%20to%20constructed,are%20often%20made%20 of%20concrete. 14. City of Bothell. “Understanding Stormwater Terminology.” City of Bothell. Accessed February 10, 2021. http://www.ci.bothell.wa.us/1376/StormwaterTerminology. 15. Michelle Rutty and Lissy Goralnik, “Measuring the Socioeconomic Impacts of Water Restoration Projects: Contributions to Community Vibrancy,” MSU: Institute of Water Research Project # GL17-MSU-4 (2019): 1-19, https://www.michigan.gov/documents/egle/ogl-glpfgoralnik-rutty_664871_7.pdf. 16. Huron Pines, Rogers City Stormwater Assessment, (2006).

5. Richard K. Norton et al., “Overlooking the Coast: Limited Local Planning for Coastal Area Management along Michigan’s Great Lakes,” Land Use Policy 71, (2018): 183-203, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.11.049.

17. Rogers City, Rogers City Zoning Ordinance, (2011), http://www.rogerscity.com/uploads/5/3/7/7/53772309/ rogers_city_zoning_ordinance_-_amended_to_9-20-16. pdf.

6. Norton, ““Overlooking the Coast: Limited Local Planning for Coastal Area Management along Michigan’s Great Lakes,” 183-203.

18. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. “Filter Berm.” Massachusetts Clean Water Toolkit. Accessed March 12, 2021. https://megamanual. geosyntec.com/npsmanual/filterberm.aspx.

7. Andrew D. Gronewold et al., “Coasts, Water Levels, and Climate Change: A Great Lakes Perspective,” Climatic Change 120, no. 4 (2013): 697–711, https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10584-013-0840-2. 8. Adam J. Bechle, et al., “Meteotsunamis in the Laurentian Great Lakes,” Scientific Reports 6, no. 37832 (2016): 1-8, https://doi.org/10.1038/srep37832. 9. Anderson, E. J., Bechle, A. J., Wu, C. H., Schwab, D. J., Mann, Eric J. Anderson, et al., “Reconstruction of a Meteotsunami in Lake Erie on 27 May 2012: Roles of Atmospheric Conditions on Hydrodynamic Response in Enclosed Basins,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 120, no. 12 (2015): 1–19, https://doi. org/10.1002/2015JC010883. 10. Gronewold, “Coasts, Water Levels, and Climate Change: A Great Lakes Perspective,” 697-711. 11. NOAA. “What is a seiche?.” National Ocean Service. Accessed January 16, 2021. https://oceanservice.noaa. gov/facts/seiche.html. 12. NOAA. “What is a seiche?.” National Ocean Service. Accessed January 16, 2021. https://oceanservice.noaa. gov/facts/seiche.html.

19. City of Eugene Stormwater Management Program. Stormwater Swales. https://www.eugeneor.gov/DocumentCenter/View/4579/StormwaterSwales#:~:text=A%20swale%20is%20a%20long,into%20 our%20rivers%20and%20streams (2009). 20. Rogers City Planning Commission, Rogers City Master Plan 2014, (2014), http://www.rogerscity. com/uploads/5/3/7/7/53772309/rogers_city_master_ plan_2014_-_adopted_2-24-2014_revised.pdf. 21. Ines Winz et al., “Understanding barrier interactions to support the implementation of sustainable urban water management,” Urban Water Journal 11, no. 6 (2014): 497–505, https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2013.832777. 22. Winz, “Understanding barrier interactions to support the implementation of sustainable urban water management,” 497-505. 23. MIPlace, Michigan Economic Development Corporation, accessed January 23, 2021, https://www. miplace.org/. 24. Young, Great Lakes One Water Partnership.

13. EnviroCert International, Inc. “Gray infrastructure.” National Green Infrastructure Certification Program.

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Tapping Into Economic Potential:

The Impact of Microbreweries in Michigan ROWAN BRADY Masters of Urban and Regional Planning 2021

CASSANDRA BYERLY Masters of Urban and Regional Planning 2021

CARLY KEOUGH Masters of Urban and Regional Planning 2021

ABSTRACT In the state of Michigan, the craft beer industry is a billion dollar industry composed of hundreds of small batch microbrewers. This piece, adapted and condensed from our larger research, examines the economic impact of microbreweries on their local context. Through statistical analysis, we measure economic impact using metrics of the number of businesses, changes in employment, and sales volume. We refine this data by quantifying and ranking the unique characteristics that may determine the impact of a particular brewery. To contextualize our results with qualitative data, we conducted case studies with public officials and brewery owners. These conversations made it clear that microbreweries rely on a combination of experiential and place-based marketing strategies to build brand loyalty and unique consumer experiences. We use our statistical findings and case studies to build out recommendations for local governments to incorporate new planning, zoning, and programming to promulgate best practices of the craft beer industry, particularly for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. The full report on our research can be read on the Agora blog at https://agorajournal.squarespace. com/.

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ince the start of the modern craft beer boom, more than 400 breweries have opened in Michigan – a fresh-poured beer is never more than an hour drive from any location in the state. In 2019, the craft brewing industry had a nearly $2.6 billion impact on the state of Michigan, generating nearly 22,000 full-time jobs with an average annual wage of $42,000 and producing nearly one million barrels of craft beer.1 Simply put, the craft beer industry has a wide-ranging and profound impact on Michigan and its communities. The craft beer industry includes brewpubs, microbreweries, and breweries, which are legally distinguished by production and distribution limits. We studied microbreweries – independent brewers that produce between 18,000 and 60,000 barrels of beer annually – to better examine the impact of local, small businesses on the neighborhoods where they tap their kegs.2 We conducted a two-part statistical analysis of microbreweries across the state and case studies of three cities – Bellaire, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo – to apply our statistical findings to the real world. We interviewed local officials, surveyed microbrewery owners, and examined municipal demographic data. We conclude with several regulatory, policy, and programming recommendations to streamline experience for consumers (both residents and tourists) and small business owners to build off the existing landscape and culture of public and private spaces and the business within. These recommendations consider the immediate impact of COVID-19 on the craft beer industry and examine how policies enacted to help keep consumers safe and businesses open can extend beyond the pandemic. Throughout this article, we provide industry context gleaned from our literature review, all of which can be viewed in our full publication, accessible on the Agora blog.

statistical analysis The first step of our statistical analysis determined how to measure economic impact. We determined that a combination of three economic indicator variables – change in number of businesses, employment, and sales volume – would provide the best picture of economic impact. Business growth speaks to the overall change in the neighborhood and the spillover economic effects of microbreweries. Analyzing employment change provides a measure for how much growth is happening around the microbrewery. Sales volume shows the impact that microbreweries have from a consumption perspective. The more products being consumed around a microbrewery, the higher the sales volume. Using available Michigan business records from 1999 to 2017, we analyzed all microbreweries that opened between 2000 and 2016 in our analysis, as these businesses have records from one year prior to and after it opened. We measured our economic indicator variables at three distances around a microbrewery and five time horizons. We chose to measure three distances – a quarter-, half-, and one-mile buffer – to determine at what geographic scale microbreweries have an impact. Similarly, we chose to measure five different time horizons – one, three, five, seven, and 10 years after a microbrewery opens – to determine the temporal relationship between microbreweries and economic impact. With our three economic indicators, three geographies, and five time horizons, we ran our statistical analysis 45 times to account for all combinations of variables. We split our statistical analysis into two parts. Part I determined if a microbrewery has an impact and Part II showed what characteristics of a microbrewery influence the degree of economic impact. We generalized our findings for the purpose of making recommendations; however, the

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impact may vary from brewery to brewery. Our team did not have the opportunity to evaluate the individual economic impacts of all microbreweries in Michigan. part i: metrics To analyze the economic impact that microbreweries have on their local area, we separated the direct impact of microbreweries from other economic noise. To do this, we compared each microbrewery metric to the same metric at the county level to determine if they were statistically higher. If a metric was statistically higher at the microbrewery level than the county level, it indicates a correlation between a microbrewery and greater economic impact. Since we compared the same statistical test across different years, we used a Bonferroni correction on our resulting p-values to correct for the multiple comparisons, dividing critical p-values by five. Therefore, a 99 percent statistical p-value threshold is 0.002 rather than 0.01. The overall results of business change, employment change, and

sales volume changes are detailed below and shown in Tables 1, 2, and 3. part i: results In Michigan, within a one-mile radius of a microbrewery, the number of businesses increases up to 10 years after its opening; these findings are statistically significant at the 99 percent confidence level, with the exception of five and seven years after opening at the half-mile radius, which are statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence level. This data is shown in Table 1. The large amount of business growth at the quarter-mile radius suggests microbreweries have the largest impact on business growth when the businesses are in close range. Based on this evidence, and built upon in our recommendations, clustering and beer districts are important and should be supported by local government policy and regulations. The impact of microbreweries on employment change is evident, although

Table i: business change metrics

Original data sourced from DataAxle, formerly known as ReferenceUSA. Data analysis our own.

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Table 2: employment change metrics

Original data sourced from DataAxle, formerly known as ReferenceUSA. Data analysis our own.

Table 3: sales volume change metrics

Original data sourced from DataAxle, formerly known as ReferenceUSA. Data analysis our own.

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less statistically certain than business growth, as shown in Table 2. Our data suggests that there is a substantial positive impact on employment growth, especially up to three years after the opening of a microbrewery, at a distance up to a quarter-mile. At the half-mile and one-mile radii, there is still substantial growth in employment; however, statistical significance varies.

Sales volume change shows the greatest increase, percentage wise, as shown in Table 3. This indicator measures the impact of product consumption at a quarter-mile, half-mile, and one-mile radius around the microbrewery. However, when compared to the county results, these results were not statistically significant. While it is likely that the microbrewery played a role in the change in sales volume, the increase

Table 4: Weighted Ranking of Importance of Characteristic

The 14 characteristics and their weighted importance determined through a tree classification analysis. *Denotes data derived from Untappd, a beer rating app that allows users to check in at various drinking establishments and rate their experience. We pulled three categories of crowdsourced data from the website: ratings, total check ins, and unique check ins. We acknowledge that data from Untappd is not representative of every person who visits a microbrewery: those who use the app are most likely younger and avid beer drinkers.

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in sales is not directly attributable to the existence of the microbrewery. These data suggest that a number of external factors contribute to the success and economic impact of a microbrewery. These factors may include the demographic composition of the municipality, other complementary or unrelated industries and employment sectors, city size, microbrewery aesthetics, recognizability, and more. Of the three metrics, sales volume produced the most dramatic results. Most of the sales business growth was above 20 percent across all three geographies and time series, but only three of these measures were statistically significant. Sales volume change is important to consider in addition to business growth and employment growth because it provides insights that business and employment growth may not show. For example, existing businesses may see an increase in sales volume due to microbrewery proximity, but may not need to hire more employees to accommodate the increased activity. part ii: Analysis of Microbrewery Characteristics Understandably, the impact of microbreweries on each metric varies from microbrewery to microbrewery. We sought to understand which characteristics of microbreweries are important in determining growth in businesses, employment, and sales volume to identify patterns that may not be evident in the results of Part I. We identified 14 characteristics of microbreweries to use in the Part II statistical analysis, which are defined in Table 4. Part II is a tree classification analysis using a machine learning algorithm to determine which characteristics of a microbrewery contribute to a business’s high, medium, low, or negative impact on the economic metrics described in Part I. Any negative values were categorized as Negative and

the remaining values were separated into tertiles: Low, Medium, and High. As in Part I, we performed the tree classification 45 times on each combination of metrics and variables. Each tree classification weights the characteristics of a microbrewery as it assigns it to a quartile. We then averaged this weight across all 45 tests to generate the weighted importance of each characteristic, shown in Table 4 (each tree is viewable in our full report). part ii: results This analysis resulted in a ranking of characteristics based on the weighted importance of characteristics that influence the economic success and impact of microbreweries. The most important factors are Prosperity Region and number of unique check ins. When we remove the data collected from Untappd (an app used to check into breweries and rate breweries and beer), Prosperity Region, age, and neighborhood type are the most influential factors on economic success. The Untappd data provided important insight into the popularity and quality of microbreweries, but we include this data with a caveat because app users may not be representative of all beer drinkers (we were unable to acquire user data from Untappd, but users tend to be younger, more avid beer drinkers). These factors indicate that the location of the microbrewery is very important, both regionally and locally. Additional analysis, available in our full report, on indicators like Prosperity Region and neighborhood type show spatial patterns of breweries. They tend to cluster in cities, like Grand Rapids, or along transportation routes across the state in neighborhoods ranging from residential to industrial.3 The importance of Prosperity Region is indicative of the consumer trends of craft beer drinkers and the rise of beer tourism; regions of the state that may have a higher concentration of craft breweries may see

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an influx in beer tourists. Age indicates that the positive influence of a microbrewery on its surroundings grows over its lifetime. Our data shows that this may be indicative of a certain brewery’s ability to catalyze redevelopment for years after the business opens. The importance of Prosperity Region is indicative of the consumer trends of craft beer drinkers and the rise of beer tourism; regions of the state that may have a higher concentration of craft breweries may see an influx in beer tourists. Age indicates that the positive influence of a microbrewery on its surroundings grows over its lifetime. Our data shows that this may be indicative of a certain brewery’s ability to catalyze redevelopment for years after the business opens.

Individual brewers and their impact on the neighborhoods and cities around them are as varied as the logos, names, and flavors of the beer they create.” case studies Our statistical analysis quantified microbreweries’ potential economic impact on their neighborhoods and surroundings, but also confirmed the variability and nuance of microbreweries that our data was not able to capture. To gain a better understanding of the local context and unique conditions that vary from brewery to brewery and city to city, our team developed case studies of microbreweries and economic development in three Michigan cities: Bellaire, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Results of a survey sent to microbreweries in each city and interviews with local planning and economic development officials informed these case studies.

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Where Grand Rapids has the largest concentration of craft brewers in the state, Bellaire boasts only one. Short’s Brewing Company’s presence in downtown Bellaire is synonymous with the redevelopment of the area from tourist and trinket shops to boutiques and outdoor-oriented businesses that welcome a new generation of young families and tourists to the area. Kalamazoo lies between Grand Rapids and Bellaire in both population and number of Breweries. Bell’s Brewery, known for its awardwinning Two Hearted Ale, put Kalamazoo on craft beer drinkers’ map: the network of microbreweries throughout town keeps them coming back. In addition, demographic differences between each city are shown in Table 5. Bellaire, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids are evidence that the craft brewing industry can thrive in a variety of cities and neighborhoods. Interviews and survey responses further indicate there is no prescriptive spatial model for a successful brewery. Bellaire’s downtown is dominated by Short’s, whereas Grand Rapids features both clustering in beer districts and outliers. In Kalamazoo, breweries are more likely to serve as a single neighborhood anchor business rather than cluster in hotspots in the downtown area or elsewhere.5 Reflective of this spatial pattern, Bellaire and Grand Rapids officials credit the industry with a larger economic development impact in those cities. Collectively, the studies revealed that microbreweries may be the catalyst for developing a unique atmosphere in a city or neighborhood. While they eventually become just one component of the geographic and economic makeup of an area, they can be the anchor businesses that initially draw in a young, millennial demographic, attract trendy businesses, and spur the development of beer clusters or districts that compound their impact. Millennials, key drivers and consumers of the craft beer industry, look for uniqueness, embrace

local identity, and seek an experiential lifestyle.6 Don Hoyt, a Bellaire Downtown Development Authority Board Member, noted that this group is the future of Bellaire – as both consumers and residents – and is intricately tied to the business turnover in town.7 Microbreweries aim to offer iconic and singular experiences in their taprooms and business models to appeal to this demographic and to foster brand loyalty.8 Bellaire is the epitome of this idea. When Short’s Brewing Company opened its brewpub in 2004, its neighbors were novelty trinket shops that were barely open yearround and catered to tourists. Over 15 years later, Short’s is neighbored by a wine bar, yoga studio, and gourmet bakery, all catering to local and visiting customers. But the result is more than just additional tourism spending and a successful brewery: downtown Bellaire now boasts a unique experience for the everyday resident and tourist alike.

Grand Rapids also supports the notion that consumer experience matters. An interview with a local brewery owner indicated the importance of place-making in the craft beer industry and its ability to create the unique experience in a city that boasts a plethora of craft beer options.9 However, the customer experience in a particular brewery alone is not the goal. Clustering is crucial to breweries in Grand Rapids to extend the opportunity for unique consumer experiences to a larger geographic area.10 Kalamazoo again splits the difference; microbreweries’ impact is much different there. Instead of attracting clusters of other breweries or businesses that cater to a certain customer demographic, microbreweries in Kalamazoo are auxiliary businesses in a city that boasts a bustling downtown area of high-end restaurants, shopping, and everyday commercial activity. Local officials believe that microbreweries prefer to serve as one-off businesses in residential neighborhoods rather than break

Table 5: comparing case study cities

A demographic comparison of each case study city. Source: data.census.gov.

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We have engaged with our neighborhood and community since we opened. It has been a huge part of our success in the COVID days we endure now. People are rooting for us (I think).”17 -Edwin Collazo of City Built Brewing Company in Grand Rapids

into a crowded market in the commercial core of town.11 However, despite what it may seem, Bellaire and Kalamazoo are not opposites; in fact, they support the same conclusion. Whether or not they arrived first, microbreweries are a key component to creating a desirable experience that hinges on social activity and variety. Kalamazoo is an example of how microbreweries positively impact areas that are not already booming with other businesses by acting as a neighborhood anchor. As an anchor, microbreweries attract a more localized and loyal customer base. Kalamazoo and Bellaire indicate that microbreweries have potential to make a strong economic impact in areas like residential neighborhoods or small-town downtowns. A clear phenomenon that emerged is the importance of experiential marketing for small businesses like microbreweries. A relatively new concept, experiential marketing has emerged during the modern craft beer movement and focuses on creating a relationship between consumers and a brand through events, programming, or social media.12 Through direct consumer participation, experiential marketing reconsiders consumers as active in brand marketing.13 Survey respondents and interviews highlight the importance of a brewery to deliver a unique, novel

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experience for consumers, especially when that business is in a brewery district. They noted that marketing techniques like programming, which may include mug clubs, weekly member specials, and beer or music festivals, helps to strengthen the relationship between consumer and business.14 Craft brewers across the country align with the tenets of neolocalism by creating unique, small-scale attractions that prioritize local suppliers and talent.15 Breweries rely on place-based marketing, experiential marketing, and communitybased programming efforts to create and sustain an image of a community-embedded business that serves all, one beer or service project at a time. Furthermore, Kalamazoo shows that breweries can be important neighborhood anchor businesses. Consumer preferences and local officials indicate that craft breweries are the new version of the neighborhood anchor – and that it is important to adopt zoning ordinances to allow these businesses to open closer to home. Kalamazoo indicates a preference and return to the traditional neighborhood unit model presented by Clarence Perry – mixed-use, walkable, and dense development with access to multimodal transportation and a strong sense of place.16 Individual brewers and their impact on the neighborhoods and cities around them are as varied as the logos, names, and flavors of the beer they create. There is no one prescription of city or neighborhood location, marketing effort, or any other business practice that will result in a brewery’s success. These efforts combined, however, create a tangible impact on consumers and economic development; this is evidenced by the growing number of breweries in communities of all sizes that utilize place-based and experiential marketing to build brand loyalty. For some, these efforts will help them survive COVID-19; for others, they won’t be enough.

As Edwin Collazo of City Built Brewing Company in Grand Rapids notes, “we have engaged with our neighborhood and community since we opened. It has been a huge part of our success in the COVID days we endure now. People are rooting for us (I 17 think).”

recommendations Consumer experience in public and private spaces play an important role in creating an environment that fosters positive economic development – including increases in employment opportunities, high sales growth, and new business opportunities. While breweries often play a key role in providing a novel and engaging consumer experience due to their neolocal nature, municipalities are also integral to creating spaces that drive economic development. Our recommendations focus on ways municipalities can spur economic activity through novel experiences and activating specific spaces. social zones In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Michigan Legislature passed Public Act 107 in summer 2020, allowing municipalities to establish social zones.18 Social zones allow participating businesses to sell alcohol that customers can consume off the premises. Within the social district, open containers are permitted but consumption is only permitted within specific markets areas. As of March 2021, 34 municipalities in Michigan have established social districts, two of which are Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.19 In Kalamazoo, the response to the social districts has been positive from both businesses and residents, according to the City Planner Christina Anderson.20 As they relate to microbreweries, social zones provide the opportunity for the city to establish outdoor beer districts where participating businesses can reach a larger

consumer base, who in turn can enjoy products in common spaces. This would create an experiential space akin to food truck lots. While Public Act 107 passed as a reaction to COVID-19 and sunsets in 2025, legislation can extend the life of social zones beyond the scope of the pandemic. Additionally, their codification into zoning regulation would allow for increased cohesiveness between the social district and other municipal objectives. place-making and experiential marketing Experiential marketing draws parallels to the practice of place-making. Common place-making efforts include streetscaping, urban parks, and public art. Experiential space can encompass activities and programming such as collaboration between businesses and the capitalization of existing assets. Together, placemaking and experiential marketing can create a synergistic environment for local businesses, anchored by community-driven businesses like microbreweries, municipal planning agencies, and consumers to thrive. reclaiming the street Street closures allow more space for pedestrian movement and retail space to accommodate various state and federal

Figure 1: Front Street Closure in downtown Traverse City Sources traverseticker.com.

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public health restrictions and guidelines, particularly important throughout the pandemic. COVID-19 policy expanded the degree and time that streets are closed on top of traditional street events and programming. For example, in Traverse City, the weekly street festival Michigan Friday Night Live shut down two blocks of Front Street (the central downtown street) for retail space, entertainment, and space for external vendors (Figure 1). City Council voted in June 2020 to close two blocks of Front Street to vehicle traffic to allow for more pedestrian access, and the street parking spaces were converted to outdoor dining space.21 Approaches to street closure and reclamation varies from municipality to municipality. Ann Arbor and Traverse City both extended outdoor dining beyond the street parking spaces and into the lanes with pedestrian access through the middle of the street (Figure 2). The difference came in duration: Ann Arbor closed streets on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, as opposed to several months in Traverse City. In an interview with The Ticker, Jean Derenzy, director of Traverse City’s DDA, said, “people really appreciated the expanded public space. Most of the retailers appreciated it but also noticed a [positive] difference as soon as the street opened back up .”22 Both Ann Arbor and Traverse City have elements of a complete street reclamation, but

combining the duration of Traverse City’s approach with Ann Arbor’s use of street furniture and seating would be the most effective way to reclaim the street.

zoning As the main regulatory mechanism for land use, zoning has an important role in the development of experiential spaces. Zoning can address several issues that impact the development of an experiential space, including alcohol-based businesses, outdoor dining, and permitting food trucks. All three case studies include alcohol-based businesses that are permitted either by right or by special use in the commercial core, commercial arterial, or manufacturing areas, depending on scale of production. The commercial core is ideal for beer clustering and experiential marketing. As a result of COVID-19 health and safety regulations and legislation, outdoor dining has risen in popularity, particularly in public spaces like sidewalks and street parking. For example, the Grand Rapids zoning ordinance states, “outdoor dining areas shall be designated so as to be architecturally compatible with existing structures on the subject property.”23 While this provision permits outdoor dining, it confines the outdoor dining area to the boundaries of a parcel. To tap into

Figure 2: Main Street closure in Ann Arbor. Source: secondwavemedia.com.

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the potential of experiential marketing, outdoor dining areas should extend beyond the boundaries of a particular business or parcel. To better highlight this, we looked into the impact of food truck zoning in the three case study cities. Food trucks can be an important part of creating an experiential place, because their mobility can contribute to the larger cohesive space identity. Through clustering, food trucks create an experiential space (Figure 3). In Grand Rapids, mobile food vending must go through director or qualified review before it can be permitted.24 Using a different approach, the City of Kalamazoo does not establish district requirements for mobile food vehicles, and their location is established through the annual permitting process.25 Additionally, the number of mobile food vehicle licenses is capped at ten annually. Mobile food vending is a special-use permit within the village commons, commercial, central business, and manufacturing districts in Bellaire.26 Given that food trucks are permitted in a variety of zoning districts, they must go through a director review process and are encouraged to cluster. Grand Rapids’ approach is the best way to encourage experiential spaces. A similar zoning approach can be used to create semi-permanent or seasonal spaces for additional businesses and business districts.

conclusion This project began with our goal of determining the economic impact of microbreweries on their immediate area. Through our statistical analysis, we found that microbreweries do have a quantifiable positive impact on their neighborhoods in terms of number of businesses, jobs, and sales volume growth based on a series of 14 business characteristics. However, through our research into Michigan cities, we found

Figure 3. Little Fleet food trucks lot in Traverse City. Source: tripadvisor.com.

that this impact is not solely attributed to the existence of microbreweries. Instead, the combined results of our statistical analysis and case studies espoused the larger impact of experiential marketing and the opportunities for both craft breweries and municipalities to utilize this as a marketing and planning strategy. The creation of experiential spaces coupled with place-based and experiential marketing highlights the potential for microbreweries to drive local and regional economic development. The communitydriven and market appeal of microbreweries prime them to be a fundamental part of experiential marketing. However, communities and businesses should consider additional factors when planning and creating these spaces. Recreational opportunities, public programming, and special events can contribute to experiential spaces and are aligned with the craft brewing lifestyle identified in our case studies. Experiential spaces may be an effective strategy for communities undertaking economic development efforts. Our research shows that these spaces have a positive impact on the business growth, employment creation, and sales volume of a hyperlocal area. The effectiveness of experiential spaces can be attributed to larger shifts in consumer habits. In this age of niche consumer preferences, customers have more options than ever

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before. Therefore, demand for hyperlocal and unique experiences should be reflected in the spaces that planners are fostering. Experiential spaces that reflect a city’s local context and culture will help Michigan communities tap into economic potential.

further research An area of concern we identified but were unable to explore in the scope of our original research is the craft beer industry’s potential to spur on gentrification. The same conditions that helped make the craft brewing industry successful (large, idle, cheap buildings on the fringes of downtowns or along corridors; federal, state, and local

subsidies and assistance; and a culture of information and resource sharing) are the same factors that may cause breweries to catalyze positive local reinvestment and gentrification. As we note in our original report, much research remains to be done on the connection between craft brewing and gentrification. Furthermore, while our research shows that breweries tend to be community-driven, there is no industry standard to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in brewers’ business models. Zoning is one of many tools in a city’s toolkit to prevent gentrification and displacement and encourage a diverse business community that reflects the identities and values of its residents.

about the author: rowan brady Rowan Brady is a second-year Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning student. Rowan received his Bachelor’s of Environmental Science in 2019 from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. In addition to his studies, Rowan works at the Michigan-based urban planning firm, Beckett & Raeder, Inc. Rowan’s interests within urban planning include economic development, environmental resilience, and urban informatics. In his free time Rowan enjoys spending time outside, especially on the beaches of his hometown in Leelanau County.

about the author: cassie byerly Cassie Byerly is a second-year Urban and Regional Planning Master’s student at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College. She graduated from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill with degrees in English and International Studies. After a five year career working for Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, she returned to graduate school to pursue a career in equitable and community-driven planning.

about the author: carly keough Carly Keough is a second-year Urban and Regional Planning Master’s student. She graduated from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor in 2018 with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Science and a minor in French. The focus of her studies are rooted in equity, namely in the realm of environmental sustainability and gender dynamics. Since 2019, Carly has worked for a private consulting firm as a Community Planner centered around community development work and GIS mapping.

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endnotes 1 Brewers Association, “Economic Impact,” accessed March 12, 2021. https://www.brewersassociation.org/ statistics-and-data/economic-impact-data/#state-impact.

16 Clarence Perry, “The Neighborhood Unit,” in the Urban Design Reader, Second Edition, ed. Michael Larice and Elizabeth Macdonald (New York: Routledge, 2013), 78-89.

2 “Craft Brewer Definition,” Brewers Association, accessed March 12, 2021. https://www. brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/craft-brewerdefinition/.

17 Edwin Collazo, survey response, September 9, 2020.

3 Isabelle Nilsson, Neil Reid, & Matthew Lehnert. “Geographic Patterns of Craft Breweries at the Intraurban Scale.” The Professional Geographer 78, no. 1 (2017), DOI: 10,1080/00330124.2017.1338590 4 Michigan State University. Michigan History: Beer City USA. (n.d.). http://michiganhistory.leadr.msu.edu/beercity-usa-2/ 5 Lee Adams and Brian Pittelko, interview with authors, October 21, 2020. 6 Neil Reid. “Craft Breweries, Adaptive Reuse, and Neighborhood Revitalization.” Urban Development Issues 57, (2018), DOI: 10.2478/udi-2018-0013 7 Don Hoyt, interview with authors, October 8, 2020. 8 Neil Reid and Jay Gatrell. “Craft Breweries and Economic Development: Local Geographies of Beer.” Polymath, n.d. 9 Todd Heleski, survey respondent, September 17, 2020. 10 Nilsson et al., “Geographic Patterns.” 11 Adams and Pittelko, interview.

18 Michigan State Legislature, Act No. 107, Public Acts of 2020, 100th Regular Session. (Lansing, Michigan: 2020). 19 Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Liquor Control Commission, Local Governmental Units That Have Established Social Districts. (Lansing, Michigan: 2021). 20 Christina Anderson, interview with author, November 2, 2020. 21 Beth Milligan, “TC Commission Approves Front Street Closure Plan,” The Traverse Ticker, June 2, 2020, https:// www.traverseticker.com. 22 Luke Haase, “‘It Was Already An Uphill Battle’: Jean Derenzy Faces Critical Time For Downtown Traverse City,” The Traverse Ticker, November 16, 2020, https://www. traverseticker.com. 23 City of Grand Rapids, Zoning Ordinance. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: 2019), 9.40. 24 Grand Rapids, Zoning Ordinance. 25 City of Kalamazoo, Zoning Ordinance. (Kalamazoo, Michigan: 2020). 26 Village of Bellaire, Village of Bellaire Zoning Ordinance. (Bellaire, Michigan: 2016).

12 Batat, W. (2019, January). Experiential Marketing. London, England: Routledge. 13 Batat, Experiential Marketing. 14 Heleski, interview. 15 Steven Schnell and Joe Reese, “Microbreweries, Place, and Identity in the United States,” Geographies of Beer (2014): 167-187.

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City Building

The View from East Africa TOM COURTRIGHT Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Master of Science in Sustainability and the Environment 2022

ABSTRACT Western schools of urban planning tend to describe a narrative of urban growth that focuses almost exclusively on the past and current imperial core cities of London, Paris, and New York. Understanding the urban growth requires a pivot away from these cities towards the rest of the world and especially the so-called Global South cities such as Manila, Kinshasa, and Dar es Salaam. This essay highlights several themes in the growth of cities in East Africa, including their roles as nodes and tentacles of trade, as parasitic consumers of rural production, and of cosmopolitan progressivism and nationalism. I then look at Kampala, Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam as primary examples of interior kingdoms, coastal trading city-states and colonial creations. Finally, this essay argues that by centering East African cities we can gain a broader understanding of the roles of cities in the global human experience, and better plan cities for all.

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The City in History and Theory

he role of the city in society and human development is a longstanding one. Urban settlements have benefitted from and served as the nodes of great trade routes, including the Sahel trade routes, the Swahili coast, and Eurasian Silk Road, creating cultures that give meaning and identity to people. They have also dominated their surrounding landscapes, seizing agricultural surplus, enforcing inequality, and corrupting cultural norms. Cities have thus wrought intense cultural changes on their residents, changing longstanding norms in a matter of years or decades, and empowering minority groups to remake a more just and equitable society. Recentering Urbanism The Kenyan intellectual, writer, and activist Nanjala Nyabola describes Nairobi as “layers of history and culture colliding in crude and unexpected ways.”1 Yet despite cities being a global phenomenon with extensive local variation, American schools of urban planning often fail to discuss cities as such and instead implicitly amplify the long-standing American tradition of assuming we have nothing to learn from elsewhere. The apparent dominance of white American male urban planning theorists, who at their best seem content to ponder the city from the view of a downtown café, has led to vague statements purporting to be about theoretical cities that are based on New York or London but have little to say about the global development of cities by humans. Lewis Mumford, for example, called to “break up the functionless, hypertrophied urban masses of the past,” likely a call to action in his setting of mid-20th century America, yet written and taught as if globally applicable.2 If we recognize such excessive growth in cities such as Kinshasa and return to Mumford

To understand cities as trading outposts and as economic nuclei, as local empire and as colonial subject, as monoethnic kingdom and as multiracial citystate, we need look no further than East Africa.” for an explanation, we will be sorely disappointed when he fails to recognize the role of colonial policy in encouraging such urban growth. Do his supposedly universal theories have any relevance to the Kibuga, the capital of the Buganda Kingdom swallowed whole by the colonial creation of Kampala, or to Stone Town, a former trading port and independent city-state known better as Zanzibar? The cities at the hearts of our textbooks are mostly imperial core cities, which grew rich off slavery, colonial plunder, and exporting their particular brand of racialized, unregulated capitalism. Urbanists who have not looked beyond their own privileged positions to deeply consider the humanity of others should not be taken seriously as definers of the city as a global phenomenon. Instead, we should center the experiences of cities and their residents in the places treated as other by imperial forces and colonists. To understand cities as trading outposts and as economic nuclei, as local empire and as colonial subject, as monoethnic kingdom and as multiracial city-state, we need look no further than East Africa. The city as Trade Empire Empires and their modern-day descendants, nation-states, have defined much of the modern human experience, and almost all grew out of city-states. Cities have risen and fallen with economic and political

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winds, and some, such as Zanzibar, have been both hubs and spokes of empires. Zanzibar and the other urban settlements along the East African coast from Kilwa to Mogadishu were the nodes of a trade route that gave rise to the Swahili language, culture, and people.3 Swahili evolved as a Bantu language spoken by some coastal Africans, but the power of trade – in ivory, in cloves, and later in enslaved people sent to Oman and the Middle East – and the uniting force of Islamic trade law led to the dominance of Swahili in eastern Indian Ocean trade.4 Swahili has adopted numbers and government structures from Arabic; household items from Portuguese traders; modern-day conveniences from English.5 Mixed-race marriages were a norm in these cities, with Islam as religion and law unifying the new urban settlements.6 The Swahili city-states did not form an empire in the sense of being a cohesive political unit, but rather were imperial in their power relations with the nearby rural areas and in their cosmopolitan mixing of cultures. As port cities, Zanzibar and Mombasa exuded significant demand for the goods of the day and reached into the interior of East Africa to satisfy this demand.7 While cloves were grown on the island of Zanzibar itself, elephant tusks and people were sourced from the interior of the continent. Swahili trading parties reached into the interior to source goods and conduct trading missions, and Zanzibar became the capital city of a larger empire when the Caliphate of Oman moved to Stone Town in 1828.8 Zanzibar today is a place where Swahili – traditional, grammatically precise Swahili, a far cry from the patois of Nairobi – is heard from every mosque, corner shop, and coffee seller. Swahili is now taught in far-flung universities, is understood by over a hundred million people stretching from Mogadishu to Kinshasa to Beira and is heard on global pop music albums. Understanding this power of city trade networks in generating culture can help us properly value the social nucleus of cities to better

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serve human needs. The city as parasite City dwellers in newly urbanized areas stand most clearly in contrast with their rural neighbors in their general abandonment of the hoe. Urban density allows farmers to bring their goods to town and make sales more efficiently, then exchange their earnings in turn for better transport to and from the city. Within the city, transport operators can pick up more passengers on their routes, increasing their own earnings and in turn using that to provide popular transport services for farmers’ transportation to and from the city.9 Yet within all of this creation of economic value, farmers are feeding urbanites who have better access to services than the farmers do. Today, with diesel-burning trans-oceanic shipping routes, this has gone global – your Starbucks Pumpernickel Delight depends on the continued impoverishment of Bagisu coffee farmers on the slopes of Mt. Elgon in Eastern Uganda.10 The population density that allows for more efficient provision of services, such as health and education, works against rural dwellers, who must move farther to get access to the same services. While delivering some cash into the hands of farmers, the city extracts and plunders from the surrounding areas, creating surplus value for a select few off the backs of the many.

Today, with diesel-pumping shipping routes, this has gone global – your Starbucks Pumpernickel Delight depends on the continued impoverishment of Bagisu coffee farmers on the slopes of Mt. Elgon in Eastern Uganda.”

We can see this extractivist relationship in precolonial Buganda, whose center of political power was the Kibuga, an urban settlement that grew out of the relationship between the Baganda people and the Kabaka, ruler of Buganda. The Kibuga grew as people came to ask favors, stake claims to land, seek his validation, and legitimize themselves. Long lines of visitors would form outside of the Kabaka’s palace, and many settled around his palace compound.11 Young men would offer themselves up as apprentices to the Kabaka and as soldiers in his army. The need to manage his empire and this settlement, all without written word, meant that the Kabaka had to rely upon this growing bureaucracy and designate chiefly titles as a means of distributing power, while creating a council of advisors, known as the Lukiiko.12 All of these depended on the relationship with peasants, whereby peasants would deliver goods such as banana beer and meat as tribute to the Kibuga; Kabaka and chiefs would in turn provide land for peasants to live on and cultivate.13 This was one of the largest settlements of the Great Lakes region in the late 1800s, which depended on surrounding rural areas producing excess food - especially bananas - to sustain itself.14 The drastic misinterpretation of this system and the introduction of a private system of land tenure by the British had disastrous effects after 1900, as peasants lost their ability to move to new lands easily, exacerbating and codifying inequalities.15 The Buganda Agreement concentrated power and land in the hands of those chiefs in power at the time of colonization, and removed the Kabaka’s ability to remove land from the hands of underperforming chiefs.16 The monopolization of power in the Kibuga was intensified by the bureaucracy of colonization, as the British designated Buganda as the core of a new nation named Uganda and the Baganda became the local elites. These local and foreign rulers then imposed their ways of life and political organization onto neighboring

Phtograph of Zanzibar (James Courtright, 2021)

kingdoms and tribes sucked into this unprecedented creation.17 The British established their colonial capital on a hill next to the Kibuga of the time on Mengo Hill, leading to the immobilization of the capital of Buganda. The British capital, named Kampala, eventually grew to swallow the Kibuga, becoming the new dominant parasite in the land. Political instability, an economic downturn, and structural adjustment policies in post-independence Uganda narrowed the available sources of employment and investment, creating a state where badges of authority are more useful for their ability to squeeze unlucky passersby than they are for receiving a stable and livable income. Today, an estimated 60% of the country’s GDP is created in Kampala, and Kampala remains 20 times larger than the second-biggest city in Uganda.18 While economists would have us celebrate the city and denigrate the countryside for their relative capacities for efficiency, the Kibuga and Kampala remind us that cities create power imbalances with their surrounding rural areas. The city as A Crucible Coastal cities in East Africa have long provided for the comingling of cultures and peoples, and this cosmopolitanism – combined with economic pressures and opportunities – make cities ideal places to challenge cultural norms. This in turn

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is often regarded as social degradation by elites and elders invested in structures which privilege them. Cities like Dar es Salaam, the economic capital of Tanzania, have thus been the place of both passive and active resistance and oppression.

power of cities in driving rapid social and political changes.

In colonial Dar es Salaam, urban youth were seen as a problem both by colonial officers and rural authority figures, who viewed them as going against colonial and traditional norms, respectively.19 Elders wanted the youth to “be finding wives for themselves and cultivating land on their own behalf or working as wage-earners,” leading to stability that would make them better fit to support aging elders not viewed as productive under the new wage economy.20 British administrators, on the other hand, claimed they were “at worst petty criminals and at best unemployable hangers-on.”21 Colonial officials’ primary concerns were based on a fear of disorder, yet the regime was generally negligent in investing in necessary physical infrastructure and jobs, and Tanganyikan society continued to morph and develop as a largely indigenous city.22

Cities – that is to say, dense settlements – have been at the center of social change, cultural creation, and economic development, and thus the controversial idea of civilization itself. Many of the foundational theorists of Western urban planning are concerned with the city as an idea and theorize away the vast majority of people who actually create and fill cities – farmers, market women, petty traders, and local bureaucrats. While today cities’ forms have been altered by colonial and neoliberal policies that deemphasize the state and maximize the power of capital, they nonetheless provide a lens for us to understand broader movements – of postcolonial nationalism, of resource extraction, and of indigenous entrepreneurship.

This negligence also offered opportunities for feminist empowerment and resistance to colonialism. While Bibi Titi Mohammed – the leader of the women’s wing of the Tanganyika African National Union – explicitly rejected Western forms of feminism, she advanced the role of women in the fight for independence from British colonialism and protected and defended women’s livelihoods.23 Bibi Mohammed rose to political power and organized women through ngoma dance circles in colonial Dar, a form of cultural organization that was viewed as apolitical by both colonial and local male elites.24 Interestingly, she fell out with the government when the Arusha Declaration, a turn towards socialism led by the iconic Tanzania president Julius Nyerere, banned rental housing – one of few income streams accessible to women.25 Urban youth and leaders like Bibi Titi Mohammed should help us recognize the

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Conclusion: The East African City

Zanzibar and other Swahili city-states were integral nodes and nuclei in a trading network that wrought disruption and economic development and eventually delivered unto us the absolute banger Tetema by Rayvanny and Diamond Platinumz.26 The Kibuga and it’s successor Kampala have dominated in turn Buganda

and Uganda, providing fresh avocados yearround to city residents while leaving avocado producers with few opportunities, victims of geography. Dar es Salaam disrupted and hastened change in familial structures in colonial Tanganyika, while simultaneously providing opportunities for nationalists and women to organize in pursuit of freedom from the colonial yoke. Cities have so many more stories to tell, if only we can put down Lewis Mumford to pick up Nanjala Nyabola.

Photograph of Kampala (Tom Courtright, 2021)

about the author Tom is an American who grew up mostly in Moshi, Tanzania. Tom attended Knox College, studying International Relations and Journalism, before serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fiji where he worked on cultural preservation projects with people in his host village of Sabeto. He then worked in the solar industry in Kampala, Uganda and Bangui, Central African Republic before starting a dual Master’s degree in Environment and Sustainability and Urban and Regional Planning.

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endnotes 1. Nyabola, Nanjala. Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move. C. Hurst & Co, 2020. 2. Lewis Mumford. “What Is a City?” Architectural Record 82, no. 5 (November 1937): 59–62. 3. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie, and Adria LaViolette. The Swahili World. Routledge, 2017. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315691459. 4. Wynne-Jones and LaViolette, Swahili World. 5. Mwaliwa, Hanah Chaga. “Modern Swahili: The Integration of Arabic Culture into Swahili Literature.” Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde 55, no. 2 (2018): 120–33. https:// doi.org/10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.55i2.1631. 6. Perkins, John. “The Indian Ocean and Swahili Coast Coins, International Networks and Local Developments.” Afriques, December 21, 2015. https:// doi.org/10.4000/afriques.1769. 7. While the trade in enslaved people was undeniably cruel and unjust, Indian Ocean slavery was not comparable to the chattel slavery of the Americas in either cruelty nor scale. Regardless, ridding the area of slavery was used by British missionaries and colonists as an excuse for their bid for power in the region. 8. Mathews, Nathaniel. “The Zinjibari Diaspora, 1698-2014: Citizenship, Migration and Revolution in Zanzibar, Oman and the Post-War Indian Ocean.” Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2016. 9. Salon, Deborah, and Sumila Gulyani. “Commuting in Urban Kenya: Unpacking Travel Demand in Large and Small Kenyan Cities.” Sustainability 11, no. 14 (July 1, 2019): 3823. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11143823. 10. Grabs, Janina, and Stefano Ponte. “The Evolution of Power in the Global Coffee Value Chain and Production Network.” Journal of Economic Geography 19, no. 4 (July 1, 2019): 803–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/ lbz008. 11. Hanson, Holly. “Mapping Conflict: Heterarchy and Accountability in the Ancient Capital of Buganda.” The Journal of African History 50, no. 2 (2009)., 179–202. 12. Monteith, William. “Markets and Monarchs: Indigenous Urbanism in Postcolonial Kampala.” Settler Colonial Studies 9, no. 2 (April 3, 2019): 247–65. https:// doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2017.1409402. 13. Hanson, “Mapping Conflict.” 14. Wrigley, C. C. “Bananas in Buganda.” Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 24, no. 1 (January 1, 1989): 64–70. https://doi. org/10.1080/00672708909511398. 15. Hanson, Holly Elisabeth. “When the Miles Came : Land and Social Order in Buganda, 1850-1928.” University of Florida, 1997. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/ AA00025787/00001/pdf.

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16. Kiwanuka, M. S. M. “The Evolution of Chieftainship in Buganda.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 4, no. 3 (July 1, 1969): 172–85. 17. The name Uganda comes from the Swahili term for Buganda. Bantu languages use prefixes rather than suffixes. 18. Kampala Capital City Authority. “KCCA Strategic Plan 2014/2015 - 2018/2019,” n.d. 19. Burton, Andrew. “Urchins, Loafers and the Cult of the Cowboy: Urbanization and Delinquency in Dar Es Salaam, 1919-61.” The Journal of African History 42, no. 2 (2001): 199–216. 20. Burton, “Urchins,” 202. 21. Burton, “Urchins,” 208. 22. Pariser, Robyn. “Masculinity and Organized Resistance in Domestic Service in Colonial Dar Es Salaam, 1919-1961.” International Labor and WorkingClass History, no. 88 (2015): 109–29. 23. Geiger, Susan. TANU Women :Gender and Culture in the Making of Tanganyikan Nationalism, 1955-1965 /. Portsmouth, NH :, c1997. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ uva.x006045170. 24. Gearhart, Rebecca. “Ngoma Memories: How Ritual Music and Dance Shaped the Northern Kenya Coast.” African Studies Review 48, no. 3 (2005): 21–47. 25. Geiger, TANU Women 26. This author recommends a listen and learning the high kick.

Urban Light Photographer: Zihao Li

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The City Plantation:

The Great Migration and Funding the Growing City MICHELLE LINCOLN Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Master of Science, Environmental Science 2021

ABSTRACT During the Great Migration, a period in United States history spanning from 1910 to 1970, Black Americans left the South in search of better social and economic opportunities. During the same time period, the United States experienced rapid urbanization, and property tax mechanisms became the primary source of revenue to fund cities’ changing and growing landscapes. The convergence of these phenomena created the city plantation in which Black bodies were systematically devalued and relegated to undesirable land within the city. The government regarded the poor conditions of these spaces as acceptable for the land to have use and therefore value – value ruthlessly extracted from Black Americans.

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land Acknowledgement

have the privilege of living, working, and learning in the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabek. The Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa) and Bodewadomi (Potawatomi) people lived on and stewarded the land now known as the Great Lakes for hundreds of years before settlers created the colonial state which now allows me to use this land. To this day, the University of Michigan benefits financially from Anishinaabe lands that were ceded to the federal government in the 1817 Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids. With this statement, I acknowledge and denounce the societal and state sanctioned violence, theft, and genocide inflicted on Indigenous peoples to benefit settlers and colonial powers. These words are not enough, but may they serve as a reminder that we all must take actions to restore right relations and stand in solidarity with the Anishinaabek, the first people of this land.1

Note For the purpose of the paper, I will focus on the time period of The Great Migration (c. 1910 to 1970) and the growth of cities during the second industrial revolution (following the Civil War until 1970). By 1970, some great American cities, like Detroit and Cleveland, were beginning to see population declines or losses of the major industries that cities relied on economically, and Black American migration north slowed.2 I will also focus on urban areas and Black Americans. What constitutes an urban area changed from 1910 to 1970, but I broadly use A. E. J. Morris’ determinants of urban form to create a distinction between what is rural and what is urban.3 Urban areas will be used to describe areas with relatively higher concentrations and densities of technology, population, industries, economies, and politics than non-urban areas.4

Black Americans are defined as American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS).5 Within this narrow scope, I acknowledge that throughout the history of the United States, race and class struggles have manifested in a variety of regions, both rural and urban, and often and consistently include indigenous peoples, immigrants, lower-income households, and Americans of Asian, Pacific Islander, Indian, African, Caribbean, Dominican, Mexican, Central and South American descent.

Introduction Black labor, prior to and following the Civil War, was an “engine of capitalist innovation and sat at the furious leading edge of modern systems of labor exploitation that have come to dominate much of the globe in the twenty-first century.”6 Black people suffered commodification, valuation, and devaluation throughout United States history through mechanisms of enslavement, Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) legislation, Jim Crow laws, and numerous other formal and informal social and governmental systems. The Great Migration and second Industrial Revolution are important time periods that fundamentally shape the Black experience in cities: they signal a new era for the United States as rapid urbanization quickly shifted more of the population to cities, and the scale of the human built environment grew to an unprecedented size. There were many motivating factors that led Black Americans to leave the South. During his presidency (1865-1869), President Andrew Johnson fully endorsed states’ rights, and the federal government left the determination of Black voting rights, livelihoods, and social integration to the states, alienating freedpeople from citizenship, safety, and prosperity. Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, and Pig Laws severely restricted the property that Black people could own and the jobs they could work. The laws also contained nuisance laws that carried significant fines for being

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unemployed, loitering, and other mundane activities of life. Black sharecroppers were bound by contracts that kept them on the land and ran up high debts from buying tools and materials on credit. Even those who experienced some financial stability after the war left the South. Violence from white Southerners did not lessen after the war. Racism was still pervasive, and tensions over Black people owning property, voting, or practicing freedpeople activities meant that Black Americans still lived in fear of violence from whites. In 1916, Anthony Crawford, a wealthy Black landowner in South Carolina, was lynched after an argument with a mechant over cotton prices; 92 percent of lynchings from 1900 to 1909 took place in the South with Black people accounting for 88.6 percent of all lynchings.7 The violent and economically precarious situation in the South spurred Black migration prior to 1910 with families putting children on trains to the North or spouses separating until they could save enough for train fare. After 1910, with rapid urbanization and technological development and wartime labor restrictions, Black Americans began migrating en masse northward. When hopeful Black people arrived in cities, they became part of the city plantation. Cities, with burgeoning costs due to growth, would dedicate more attention to property tax mechanisms to fund projects and services, and for Black Americans, the system would incorporate existing racial, social, and economic tensions into the process to maximize revenues. Black American bodies would become internalized with a cycle of value and devaluation that would shape their experiences in cities for six decades and beyond. To reveal this system of devaluation in early 20th century cities, I will use Urban Political Ecology (UPE) urban metabolism frameworks, Katherine McKittrick’s philosophies on plantation futures, and Marxism and racial capitalism commodification and exploitation theories.

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Frameworks of the City Plantation In The Power of Place, John Agnew and James Duncan highlight a main critique in the dominant concepts of space: “rarely have the...aspects been viewed as mutually complementary dimensions of place. Rather they have been viewed as mutually incompatible.”8 UPE faced a similar challenge in purporting that the urban landscape is a fundamental element of nature, rather than a dichotomous or contradictory element. The conceptual integration of nature and city have produced works highlighting human and non-human relationships.9 UPE uses “historical and material” and “multi-scalar” contexts to form a “conceptual approach that understands urbanization to be a political, economic, social, and ecological process.”10 This is an important positioning for the early 20th century American city as the urban metabolism was growing and changing: cities relied heavily on food and raw materials from the non-urban land in between cities and exported goods, services, and even certain raw materials back into the agricultural market, like human excreta for fertilizer or by-products from the manufacturing process.11 The city is a place of transformation for raw materials, goods, labor, and social and spatial relationships. People and labor are integral to the transformation, especially with the financial pressures of rapid urbanization. Property taxes, the main funding mechanism of cities, transformed people and labor into commodities to be exchanged for revenue; though the similarities are obscured by the sheer size and growth of the cities, the economic system of the city would resemble the plantation.

It was the same thing, only just painted with different colors.” - William Brown (1994)12

The imagery of the plantation for the city is not just a vivid metaphor. Plantations operated as towns with numerous buildings and land uses; they contained owner and worker residences, slave quarters, business offices, slave auction blocks, agricultural buildings, crop fields, gardens, pastures and fields, recreational space, cemeteries, worship buildings, and kitchens. They developed transportation infrastructure to link to rivers, roads, and rail to ship raw materials, crops, slaves, and other commodities. They were policed and surveilled. Enslaved peoples were dehumanized. The plantation “is a meaningful geographic process to keep in mind because it compels us to think about the ways the plantation became key to transforming the lands of no one into the lands of someone, with black forced labor propelling an economic structure that would underpin town and industry development in the Americas.”13 The city from above would look like an enormous plantation, and the Black geographies of plantations would be replicated in the city as Black Americans moved en masse to the North. Not only were Black geographies determined by this economy, but Black bodies were transformed as the system adapted to rapid urbanization. Karl Marx develops his theories on the commodification of the worker in Capital, Volume I and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The worker is commodified through their labor and the products of their labor, which are assigned a value through wages in the economy – the

wage is the exchange-value of the worker and their labor.14 Profits are made through the devaluation of that wage and the labor of the worker.15 Marx’s theory is rooted in the idea that person is worker, and that labor is the primary characteristic that becomes exploited in the economy. But the valuation, and subsequent devaluation, goes a step further to the person and their body directly, separate from a person’s identity as a worker. An internalized value was imposed on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in terms of their labor (e.g., slavery) but is fundamentally applied to their bodies whether they labor or not. Feminists and political ecologists Rosemary-Claire Collard and Jessica Dempsey struggle with “the unwaged realm within capitalist social relations” and offer the idea that “much of nature is not priced, and no nature labors for a wage.”16 They discuss nature as having no wage value and no clear exchange value in the capitalist economy. Unlike nature in Collard and Dempsey’s argument, bodies do have an imposed value. The concepts of the exchange-value and the unwaged realm are important ones: if value is extended to the body, whether waged or unwaged, then what is it exchanged for?

If value is extended to the body, whether waged or unwaged, then what is it exchanged for?” The identity of the body is important in this case. Nonwhite bodies are exchanged for different things than white bodies in the capitalist market, and value is applied and extracted differently. The process of this exchange, or racial capitalism, derives “social and economic value from the racial identity of another person.”17 Shifting the commodification of person and labor to

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race explains how a Black person who may not labor still has extractive value. This value stems from the risk associated with a devalued Black body; because of the risk, the white participants in the exchange must be compensated for that risk. The accounting for this compensation is idiosyncratic and obscure, and ultimately, as capitalism is a system of white supremacy, the white individuals, groups, and systems get to decide the appropriate compensation for taking part in the exchange.18 Racial capitalism has a profound spatial effect on city systems because a Black household owning or renting real property (land and housing) would be seen as carrying risk. This enabled the exploitation of Black people for the compensation of power, privileges, and money to white beneficiaries. Simultaneously Black Americans had value for white people, but no value for themselves as their blackness was crafted as a barrier to wealth, power, and privilege. Via racial capitalism, the city plantation property tax system siphoned wealth and wages from Black Americans.

Urbanization and The City Changing During the first U.S. Industrial Revolution of the late 18th to mid-19th century, early American industries were drawn to areas with a confluence of abundant raw materials, favorable transportation avenues, and easy access to energy sources. These attractive land characteristics made places like the present-day areas of New York City, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Buffalo centers of manufacturing and production. Developments in transportation technology, like railroads and steamboats, further bolstered industrial and economic activity. They also eased the way for people to immigrate to the Americas and migrate from rural to urban areas for industry jobs and opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility.19 Even when the agglomeration of resource characteristics faded in

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importance due to advances in technology, these metropolitan areas maintained their draw and housed hundreds of thousands of people within their jurisdictions.20 Further technological development fueled the factorization of industry, and during the second U.S. Industrial Revolution in the late 19 th century, cities became critical innovative hubs with exploding populations. Grid electric and water access were becoming ubiquitous, and municipalities, inventors, and investors alike were motivated to use new technology and build new facilities and infrastructure. By 1880, many cities like Grand Rapids, Michigan and the region around Niagara Falls were being serviced by large hydropower projects. Coal power was gaining popularity in the 1880s with facilities like Thomas Edison’s 1882 coal power plant in New York City. Throughout the rest of the 19 th century and into the mid-20 th century, coal and hydropower allowed for the large-scale residential, commercial, and industrial development of cities. With more efficient energy production, large industrial and manufacturing facilities like the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit and denser commercial and residential development accelerated urbanization. This, combined with contemporary technological advances, created new cycles of demand for products and people. The metabolism of the city was changing. From 1910 to 1920, the number of people living in cities increased by 5.6 percent, which equated to over 12 million more people living in cities than in the previous decade.21 From 1910 to 1970, the urban population would swell from 45.6 percent of the United States to 73.6 percent.22 Rapid urbanization was changing the landscape of the United States, and the influx of people during the early to mid-20th century meant cities needed more labor, resources, and funding to support new residents, business, and industries. During the same time period, it is estimated that six million Black people moved away from the South. Detroit,

New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many other metropolitan areas saw increases in the Black population; some went from 3 percent to 26 percent over the course of the Great Migration.23 As cities grew, they took in more people, food, water, construction materials, and consumer products and created more waste than previously seen in the United States.24 Increased population needs and business expansion put pressures on the city to invest more in public works projects, like paved, connected roads and more sophisticated water and sewer networks. Funding these changes and keeping the city financially and economically growing became a critical challenge for local governments. Due to the 1840s debt default crisis and economic depression, many states had put restrictions in their constitutions that limited borrowing and debt financing, causing local governments to heavily rely on property taxes to compensate for the financial losses.25 Additionally, local spending and public projects began to outpace state spending, strengthening spatial linkages between revenue, taxes, projects, and amenities. By 1902, property taxes accounted for 30 percent of state revenue and 73 percent of local revenue.26 Despite increases in federal government spending for state and local projects after President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933, property taxes remained the main source of state and local revenue. This shift in tax revenues plus the changing metabolism of the city laid the foundation for cities to create structures that assessed and valued property. Since property taxes were assessed and taxed at a uniform rate – all property of a single type was assessed and valued at the same rate – maintaining stable, profitable property values became

critical to a city’s growth and revenues. Additionally, the density and proximity of industry, commercial, and residential land uses, as well as the competition of these uses over a fixed supply of land, necessitated local governments to negotiate their locations. They were formalized in city ordinances and zoning codes and informally enforced in nuisance laws, fines, covenants, and other informal planning and policing mechanisms. However, property assessment was a variable and subjective process. At the turn of the century, economist Irving Fisher was writing about utility theory and highest and best use (HBU). Fisher was wildly popular at the time, and his theories were greatly influential in determining property values. HBU is “the legal, possible, and probable employment that will give the greatest present value to land or realty while preserving its utility.”27 Characteristics of the HBU of a property have broadly included “physical and legal attributes” and “overall urban structure and location.”28 Appraisals were done by individuals with competing stakes in the real estate industry, and the HBU process was indistinct and vague on whether factors like neighbor homogeneity could influence property values. This also meant that land near polluting industries could be assigned an HBU that included residential or other human uses. More than likely, white city residents were averse to living in these areas and possessed the social and political power to resist living near hazardous uses. Black residents with comparatively less social and political power and limited options for housing were regulated to sickly parts of the city, and the scarcity of residential options would keep costs high while quality remained low.

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Black Experience and the City But I’ve heard of a city called heaven And I’m striving to make heaven my home.” - Fannie Lou Hamer, 1963

Fannie Lou Hamer could have been singing to all the Black Americans heading North. They heard of opportunity: the promise of some freedom from the violence they experienced in the South, increased wages from manufacturing work, and more social and political opportunities. When World War I halted the influx of European immigrants to the United States and the draft shifted American labor into the military, manufacturing in northern cities experienced severe labor shortages, and factories looked to the South for domestic labor.29 Factory wages in the North were advertised as multiple times what a Black American could earn in the South, and the increasing populations in cities from all socioeconomic backgrounds fueled an increase in service jobs promising potential employment for most members in a Black household.30,31 Increasingly, Black

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Americans were drawn to the North by aggressive factory business recruitment, advertisements in Black publications, and word-of-mouth from relatives, friends, and other connections who had already migrated North.32,33 City residents from pre-World War I migrations and immigrations were becoming upwardly mobile, leaving lower-level, unskilled jobs in facilities and manufacturing plants vacant.34 With the increased income, they also left behind poorer quality or aging housing for better living conditions in other parts of the city. When Black Americans arrived in the city, they filled the most hazardous jobs and moved into the aging housing. On the city plantation, factory work was grueling, and Black workers primarily filled unskilled labor jobs regardless of their skill or experience. Still, wages were higher in the factories than what could be earned in similar or agricultural jobs in the South.35 Black labor not only ensured continuing factory operations at the time of labor shortages but supported the continued growth that cities would experience until the Great Depression in the late 1920s.36 Further profits were possible, and racial tensions enabled the government to decide not only which housing was available for Black Americans, but also where that housing was located. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ‘separate but equal’ decision allowed for the

segregation of all parts of life in the United States, enabling cities, private citizens, and the private sector to make racially discriminatory decisions in housing.37 Even more progressive actors could be stymied by racially restrictive covenants tied to property deeds. These practices and the ordinances and zoning codes that followed excluded Black Americans from all but a few areas in the city. The only housing options widely available to Black households were very often poor quality and located in close proximity to what are now called locally unwanted land uses (LULUs). These racially segregated areas were rife with overcrowding, crime, and disease, and these conditions were used to justify the continuation of racially discriminatory practices – despite the fact that these practices were a significant cause of the poor living conditions. Despite housing and land options being near LULUs, real estate agents and property owners took advantage of the scarcity of housing options for Black Americans and extorted higher prices and rents from Black households than from households located farther away from LULUs – rents quickly outpaced the higher wage earnings in the North. In 1917, the Supreme Court decided in Buchanan v. Warley that housing discrimination on the basis of race was unconstitutional; cities could no longer enact racially discriminatory zoning

Black geographies gained their necropolis status from racial capitalism.”

ordinances and practices.38 In response to Buchanan v. Warley, neighborhood associations and individual property owners relied more heavily on racially restrictive covenants in property deeds that forbade white property owners from selling to non-white buyers or renters.39 In the 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer Supreme Court decision, racially restrictive covenants were declared unenforceable by the state, but restrictive covenants were not the only factors in Black segregation; real estate, mortgage lending, and city planning practices along with white resistance still operated past the Shelley v. Kraemer decision.40 Through this judicial and legislative process, Black geographies became devalued. Even as Black resistance strategized in the courts, the streets, and homes, this process, supported by the private market, continued to transform and devalue Black bodies. It continued dissolving the spatial connection between Black geographies and Black persons. The practice of blockbusting highlighted this internalized valuation of Black bodies. White housing was considered

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more valuable because it was not Black housing.41 Real estate agents would buy up vacant houses in white neighborhoods and canvas houses saying that Black people would be moving in and devalue the area simply with their presence.42 Previously desirable properties and housing were quickly made undesirable. Even the presence of young Black children, who do not have a labor value, or wealthy Black Americans indicated to white neighborhoods that integration was imminent and property quality and value would rapidly deteriorate due to deterministic viewpoints on the character of Black people. Real estate agents would eagerly sell these properties to Black Americans at inflated prices, even more than whites had paid for the properties prior, channeling property taxes to the city plantation.

The Great Migration was a hope-filled opportunity for Black Americans to leave the South for comparatively better lives. Instead Black Americans were transformed to hold an internalized value that made them candidates for sacrifice zones and siphoned any wealth accumulation directly to private actors or the city. They became synonymous with irresponsibility, poverty, and low-quality housing despite these being conditions imposed upon them not developed by them with agency or selfdetermination. This devaluation persisted, supported by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), a corporation created by the federal government under the New Deal (1933-1939). The HOLC created government-sponsored maps that labeled areas across cities as hazardous and ineligible for most

Figure 1: HOLC Map.Red areas are ‘hazardous’ and often located near industrial land (indicated by crosshatching).48 From (HOLC “Redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure of Segregation and Economic Inequality » NCRC, n.d.).

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government funding that would have eased the way for Black homeownership or rehabilitated aging housing. Financial institutions, private actors, and governmental agencies used these maps in redlining activities that forced racial residential segregation and facilitated disinvestment in non-white geographies. Even when the use of HOLC maps was discontinued in the late 1960s and 1970s, Black body devaluation was too entrenched to disappear and continued via policing, discriminatory practices, and targeted nuisance laws and land use decisions.

The government and the private sector worked in tandem to confine Black Americans to sacrifice zones, where the environmental degradation and the Black loss of quality of life, health, and wealth equity were considered acceptable losses.” After the 1967 Detroit Racial Uprising and the passing of the 1968 Housing and Urban Development Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act, availability of housing increased, but in most places housing continued to be of poor quality and located away from amenities and near LULUs.43,44 Black homeownership rates remained low until the 1990s when the mortgage lending environment changed because of government intervention.45 Increases in Black homeownership did not guarantee stability. Subprime mortgage lenders of the late 1990s and 2000s targeted Black communities, and the subsequent crisis caused 8 percent of Black homeowners to lose their homes compared to 4.5 percent of white homeowners.46 Those who were able to stay in their homes, or

purchase a home, still suffered exploitation from property taxes. A 2019 study by Carlos Avenancio-Leon and Troup Howard showed that from 1999 to 2016, despite uniform tax rates, Black and Hispanic households faced 10 to 13 percent higher tax burden due to inflated assessed property values.47 Black Americans answered the allure of the North, moving away from the South

Conclusion for better economic, social, and political opportunities. The city plantation awaited them where the government created and enabled sacrifice zones with pollution and low-quality housing. Private interests, like the real estate industry, gained considerable profits: Cities were constant beneficiaries of this exploitation. Black geographies were not spaces of vertical mobility in white colonialist, capitalist society, which determined land use controls and planning – these were spaces assigned as non-human which dictated the types activities that could happen there and from which Black people could not leave. Black people were given space that had societal foundations of dispossession. These are spaces that are considered lifeless, dead, dying – having no history, character, or dynamism. Of course, Black neighborhoods, communities, and geographies are far from lifeless – Harlem, New York, Greenwood, Oklahoma, and Detroit are just a few on a long list of places that produced and fostered incredible activism, art, prosperity, community, and resilience. Black geographies gained their necropolis status from racial capitalism. White supremacy and capitalism use and foster racism to label Black geographies as dying and allow for the development of systematic devaluation with no oversight. It is a thread that ties the slave ship to the auction block to the plantation to the sharecrop to the city – these are spaces that white society considers dead and inhuman.

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Black spaces operate under different considerations than the lively and powerful white spaces: the plantation house, the penthouse apartment, the bank, the park, the shops. Cities use Black geographies as rote areas for exploitation, extraction, and degradation. The government and the private sector worked in tandem to confine Black Americans to sacrifice zones, where the environmental degradation and the Black loss of quality of life, health, and wealth equity were considered acceptable losses. People of color in these neighborhoods

suffered cyclical violence from the lack of governmental investment and protections which led to poor living conditions that, in turn, were used as justification for further disinvestment. Understanding the city plantation and property tax system of the city can help guide policy decisions that address the rooted processes through which Black bodies became devalued. Decoupling Black bodies from this valuation will be difficult, but without removing historically inequitable processes, fully remediating the Black body and the Black experience will be impossible.

about the author Michelle Lincoln is a graduate student at the University of Michigan in Urban and Regional Planning and Environmental Justice. Equity and justice are paramount to her principles of practice, and she intends to bring these principles to her urban planning career to help people live healthy, equitable, stable lives. She dreams of a tiny pantry à la the tiny library in her front yard full of food for her neighborhood and a garden full of pollinator-friendly plants.

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endnotes 1 Credit: Sam Stokes. University of Michigan. 2 Hartt, Maxwell. “The Diversity of North American Shrinking Cities.” Urban Studies 55, no. 13 (October 2018): 2946–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017730013. 3 A.E.J Morris, History of Urban Form Before the Industrial Revolution, 2013, http://ebookcentral.proquest. com/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=1574792. 4 Morris, History of Urban Form Before the Industrial Revolution, 11-14. 5 #ADOS. “About ADOS.” ADOS 101, 2020. https://ados101. com/about-ados. 6 Erik Mathisen, “The Second Slavery, Capitalism, and Emancipation in Civil War America,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 8, no. 4 (2018): 677–99, https://doi. org/10.1353/cwe.2018.0074, 1. 7 Oren R. Martin, Bound for the Promised Land: The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan, New Studies in Biblical Theology 34 (Nottingham, England : Downers Grove, Illinois: Apollos ; InterVarsity Press, 2015), 9-10. 8 John A. Agnew and James S. Duncan, eds., The Power of Place: Bringing Together Geographical and Sociological Imaginations (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 9 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1991). 10 Natasha Cornea, “Urban Political Ecology,” Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press, 2019), https:// doi/10.1093/OBO/9780199874002-0203.org 11 Sabine Barles, “History of Waste Management and the Social and Cultural Representations of Waste,” in The Basic Environmental History, ed. Mauro Agnoletti and Simone Neri Serneri, vol. 4, Environmental History (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2014), 199–226, https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09180-8_7, 205-208. 12 Field to Factory - Voices of the Great Migration: Recalling the African American Migration to the Northern Cities. Recorded January 1, 1994. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1994, Streaming Audio. 55:39. 13 Katherine McKittrick, “Plantation Futures,” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 17, no. 3 (November 1, 2013): 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2378892, 8. 14 Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859. 15 Karl Marx. Capital, Volume 1: The Process of Production of Capital, 1867. 16 Rosemary-Claire Collard and Jessica Dempsey, “Politics of Devaluation,” Dialogues in Human Geography 7, no. 3 (November 2017): 314–18, https://doi. org/10.1177/2043820617736602. 17 Nancy Leong, “Racial Capitalism,” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2009877, 2153.

18 Daniel HoSang, Oneka LaBennett, and Laura Pulido, Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520273436.001.0001, 68. 19 Leah Platt Boustan, Devin Bunten, and Owen Hearey, “Urbanization in the United States, 1800-2000” (National Bureaus of Economic Research, May 2013), 4-5. 20 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, 296. 21 U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Censuses, Urban and Rural Definitions and Data, United States, Regions, Divisions, and States Table 1: Urban and Rural Population: 1900-1990, Released October 1995 2000 Census: SF1, American FactFinder, Table P1. Prepared By: State Library of Iowa, State Data Center Program, 800-2484483. 22 U.S. Census Bureau, “Urban and Rural Population: 1900-1990,” Table 1. 23 US Census Bureau. “The Great Migration, 1910 to 1970.” U.S. Census. Accessed March 5, 2021. https://www. census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/020/. 24 Barles, “History of Waste Management and the Social and Cultural Representations of Waste.” 25 John Joseph Wallis, “American Government Finance in the Long Run: 1790 to 1990,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 1 (February 1, 2000): 61–82, https:// doi.org/10.1257/jep.14.1.61, 69-70. 26 Wallis, “American Government Finance in the Long Run,” 70. 27 Stephen Sussna, “The Concept of Highest and Best Use Under Takings Theory,” The Urban Lawyer 21, no. 1 (Winter 1989), 113-14. 28 Mark G. Dotzour, Terry V. Grissom, Crocker H. Liu, and Thomas Pearson. “Highest and Best Use: The Evolving Paradigm.” The Journal of Real Estate Research 5, no. 1 (Spring 1990), 18 29 Spencer R. Crew, “The Great Migration of AfroAmericans, 1915-40,” Monthly Labor Review 110, no. 3 (March 1987): 34–36, 1. 30 Crew, “The Great Migration of Afro-Americans, 191540,” 1. 31 Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 132-133. 32 Carole Marks, Farewell--We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration, Blacks in the Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 1. 33 Field to Factory - Voices of the Great Migration: Recalling the African American Migration to the Northern Cities. Recorded January 1, 1994. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1994, Streaming Audio. https:// search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_

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entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C73329. 34 Dylan Shane Connor and Michael Storper, “The Changing Geography of Social Mobility in the United States,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 48 (December 1, 2020): 30309–17, https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.2010222117, 30311 35 Crew, “The Great Migration of Afro-Americans, 191540,” 36. 36 “Era of Restriction | USCIS,” December 4, 2019. https:// www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history/overview-of-agencyhistory/era-of-restriction. 37 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). 38 Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917) 39 Larry Santucci, “Documenting Racially Restrictive Covenants in 20th Century Philadelphia,” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research 22, no. 3 (2020): 241–68. 40 Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) 41 Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, Justice, Power, and Politics (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 7 42 Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, First edition (New York ; London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), 100 43 Taylor, Race for Profit, 239 44 Taylor, Race for Profit, 141 45 Lance Freeman, “Black Homeownership: The Role of Temporal Changes and Residential Segregation at the End of the 20th Century,” Social Science Quarterly 86, no. 2 (June 2005): 403–26, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.00384941.2005.00310.x. 46 Debbie Gruenstein Bocian, Wei Li, and Keith S. Ernst, “Foreclosures by Race and Ethnicity: The Demographics of a Crisis” (Center for Responsible Lending, June 18, 2010), 2. 47 Carlos Avenancio-Leon and Troup Howard, “The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation” (Indiana University, June 2020), 42. 48 NCRC, “HOLC ‘Redlining’ Maps: The Persistent Structure of Segregation and Economic Inequality,” accessed December 11, 2020, https://ncrc.org/holc/.

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Nazca Lines Photographer: Lingjing Shi

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symposium:

R\Evolutions

The Symposium section of Agora acts as a unique platform that highlights salient issues within urban planning. Over the years, this section of the journal has focused on planning for crises, addressing police brutality, and exposing the real world consequences of irresponsible academic theorizing. This year, we turned to societies’ collective experiences across the globe as we navigate the upheaval of our daily norms, community organizing, governance, and urban planning and design paradigms. The current Covid-19 pandemic has changed our relationships with our cities, jobs, education, public spaces, natural and built environments, and one another. We are observing and experiencing these changes at regional, national, and international macroscales as well as at the microscale in our communities, neighborhoods, and homes. New communication and transportation technologies are also transforming the traditional spatial connections and centers of power that have structured the past century or more of urbanization. Surely, we are all grappling with the many scales of revolutions and evolutions that are transforming how we function and view our world. This year’s Symposium gives voice to this notion: How our cities work is rapidly changing as we know it in the face of public health, human rights, and environmental crises. All of these factors are catalyzing revolutions and evolutions in our cities as citizens challenge past paradigms in planning, design, and in our larger society to envision a society that prioritizes equity, racial justice, and sustainability. This year’s Symposium poses the question: How are these radical changes unfolding before us, and how might the trends and evolutions we observe in the present fundamentally shift what the built environment can and will be in the future? Our aim is not to only identify these revolutions and evolutions, but also to spark dialogue about how we can move forward through present challenges into a more equitable society. The Symposium section explores three unique sites of intense transition and uncertainty where planners and designers are responding to disruption by actively shaping the future. Where “Decoding Settler Colonialism” requires us to confront the political power dynamics in the nature of space, “Urban Inflation” inspires innovative solutions to bring us closer together. “Less Is Not More” reminds us to continue to think critically of and improve proposed solutions to urban problems. We hope these pieces spark you, too.

Clare Kucera and James Vansteel

Symposium Directors

Decoding Settler Colonialism: The Scales of Kashmir MADEEHA AYUB Master of Urban Design 2020

ABSTRACT Spatial manifestations are inherent in the nature of power. Territorial dominance over the course of time has evolved in its execution and functioning. Both the colonizer and the colonized exist in the same dimensions of space, yet their urban experience is mutually exclusive. Today, “war has entered the city again, the sphere of the everyday, the private realm of the house.”1 Colonization has still managed to creep in through democratic ways, further emphasizing the political nature of space. Decoding Settler Colonialism is a simultaneous spatial and temporal unlayering of the contested territory of Kashmir. It builds on the scholarship of territorial fragmentation, political enclaves, urbicide, and neoliberal militarization that occupies and controls space. Geopolitically informed, Kashmir is a passage through the Himalayas; its unique location between the three nuclear powers of India, Pakistan, and China has constantly marked it with conflict. I zoom in cartographically from the territorial dispute to the makings of a camp in dense urban areas. Furthermore, analysis at each scale, from the broad geographic area to smaller camp and bunker sites, reinforces the observation of the entire mechanism through which settler colonization is deeply embedded in the urban design and planning practices of Kashmir.

urbicide refers to the increased urban abandonment due to military colonialism and political turmoil, a metaphorical war against the City. Therefore, it is imperative to politicize spatiality and decode how practices of injustice manifest themselves in contested spaces. Equally important are the instruments of control and surveillance that produce the process of deterritorialization (making, unmaking, and remaking of spaces).10

enri Lefebvre, in his seminal work The Production of Space, unquestionably put forth that “there is politics in space because space is political.”2 The strategic production and control of space is crucial to execute political power. Furthermore, multiple powers operating in space create a plurality in a territory.3 Anselm Franke uses plurality in territory to bear witness to the emergence of multiple territorial islands due to the fragmentation of space.4 Fragmentation can produce overlapping invisible fronts that continuously segregate the space. When political powers are unusually extended, urban space starts to manifest in itself as camp.5 Giorgio Agamben crucially critiques the idea of camp not being just historical (like concentration camps), but applicable to the present day as the structure that materializes spaces of political and social exception through violent human displacement and desubjectification of human rights.6 The mechanism of strategically controlling this camp derives from the instrumentalization of space. The result is a discontinuous dialogue in the conceived, perceived, and lived realms of any territory.7 In the scholarship of the postcolonial globalizing world, such fragmented terrains have continuously struggled in defining their borders and boundaries.

This project, Decoding Settler Colonialism, is a spatial and temporal unlayering of the uniquely contested territory of Kashmir. Sections zoom into the different scales of occupation as identified in Figure 01, starting from the erstwhile territory of Occupied Kashmir, to the Kashmir Valley, and into the capital city of Srinagar. The manifestation of control is elaborated at each scale by determining actors and methods deployed by the colonizer, the Union of India. Temporally, the sections qualify the incremental increase of political turmoil and territorial instability in the Indian-administered Kashmir from 1949 to 2020. The concepts of borders and fronts are challenged by competing territorial claims by India, Pakistan, and China embodied in complex geopolitical relationships. Kashmir is a passage through

In the context of Kashmir, urbicide refers to the increased urban abandonment due to military colonialism and political turmoil, a metaphorical war against the City. Therefore, it is imperative to politicize spatiality and decode how practices of injustice manifest themselves in contested spaces.”

As result of the combination of globally scaled urbanization with geopolitical upheavals and neoliberal economic restructuring, urban spaces are now sites of dominance, occupation, colonization, and violence.8 Andrew Herscher, in his study of the conflict in Kosovo, elaborates on the ways urbicide is intrinsic to programmatic interventions in space; urban landscapes are now more often subjected to military planners than to architects or urbanists.9 The term ‘urbicide’ has developed varied and evolving connotations since it was first coined. In the context of Kashmir,

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Disciplinary context

the Himalayas; it is a permeable buffer between these nuclear powers of the Asian subcontinent. Famously known as ‘paradise on Earth’ for its natural beauty and resources, it is also recognized for being the most militarized place in the world. In August 2019, the estimated number of Indian Defense Forces in Indian-administered Kashmir was 700,000 – one for every 11 civilians.11 The urban realm in Kashmir is a medium and

instrument that forms a social space against the backdrop of military coordinates for the Indian army, as the means of conquering space.12 Through spatial mapping, I show that Kashmir is an open camp where militarism exists as a seamlessly dissolved layer within the civilian realm, from the borderlands all the way to the core of the City. In all the maps produced in this piece, each scale highlights the varying qualities and parameters of the camp. They differ in shape, morphology, density, size, function,

Figure 01: The different scales of study. Territory of Kashmir, Valley of Kashmir, and Capital City of Srinagar.

territorial conflict Since 1850, the territorial boundaries of Kashmir have undergone a drastic shift in their sovereign status, evolving from an independent country to a British Princely state, and more recently to fragmented and disputed semi-autonomous regions governed by India, Pakistan, and China. The Chinese enclave owes its control mostly to the topography in the region, but India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the control of Kashmir. Internationally, Kashmir is considered a bilateral issue, although India has managed to get away with calling it an internal matter of India. Until August 2019, Indian-administered Kashmir had autonomy guaranteed by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.13 But on August 4, 2019, the enclave under India was reduced from a single state to two divided Union Territories, directly under the control of the Central Government, which completely obliterated its civilian freedom movement. In this process of changing political authority, the borders of the territory continuously redrawn, inevitably becoming a passage, a front, a buffer, and active linear grounds of violence and biopolitical skepticism.14 Through military impunities, Kashmir has been a colonial project, subjected to crossborder violence and internal turmoil. In this case, the colonial settlers are the Indian security forces, including Border Security Forces (BSF), the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and other defense companies. After the abrogation of Article 370, which prevented non-Kashmiris from buying land in the region, the settler colonial project increased its ways of controlling land through land grabs, demographic change, and the reduction of access to land for Kashmiris themselves. These mechanisms of colonialism are based on the geography

of the territory, critical infrastructure on strategic locations, military camps, and smaller bunkers that seamlessly tie the spatial conquest together.

Territory of Kashmir: Ensemble of Enclaves The functional analysis of a territory is marked by its living conditions, political ecology, socio-economic parameters, and infrastructure, all of which are a direct result of its location on the world map.15 As mapped in Figure 02, the territory of Kashmir is an ensemble of enclaves created through a series of wars, concessions, and agreements between India, Pakistan, and China from 1949 to the present day. These enclaves vary in political control and remain in constant flux owing to territorial turmoil and cross-enclave tensions. Since they are plurally claimed, each country solidifies the conflict by including them in their official maps. The access to continental routes of transportation between neighboring countries and the abundance of natural resources mark the strategic importance of the Kashmir Territories in global geopolitics. From an independent country two centuries ago, the territory of Jammu and Kashmir has been reduced to a semi-autonomous region and, finally, a Union Territory directly under the control of the Central

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These mechanisms of colonialism are based on the geography of the territory, critical infrastructure on strategic locations, military camps, and smaller bunkers that seamlessly tie the spatial conquest together.”

intensity, infrastructure, authority, and activation.

Government in India. The territories signify the multiplicity and fragmentation of claims within Kashmir. Indian-occupied Kashmir, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Azad Kashmir, North West Frontier province, Aksai Chin – all are different enclaves politically controlled by the competing powers. The nature of borders and fronts between these enclaves are unique in form and function owing to the mountainous topography. The border between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, established by military practices and associated infrastructure, the Line of Control (LOC) is the paradigmatic form of spatial organization that makes and remakes the ephemeral line of separation. For the purpose of this study, the focus of this analysis is on the Indianoccupied enclave of Kashmir. The militarized infrastructures securing the territory of Kashmir are not fixed; they follow fleeting movements to gain more area for respective countries. This nature of the transition of power through built structures is what de-territorializes and re-territorializes the enclaves in Kashmir. In other words, the territory has ever remained in flux. In this process, an

urbanism in conflict takes shape, constantly struggling for an identity against a high level of fragmentation. Kashmir is a territory subjected to contestation by both India and Pakistan for the production of strategic links of economy and political superiority in the Indian subcontinent. Urbanization is modulated and inherently manipulated by these actors to produce an output of a market economy based on territorial dominance and international relations. Borders and quasi-border zones can be read as ephemeral urbanisms guided by the Himalayan passages and the LOC.16

Valley of Kashmir: Border Hilltropes The Kashmir valley (also known as Vale of Kashmir) is a northwest by southeast diagonal stretch of about 150 kilometers, an area of 16,000 square kilometers with a peak elevation at 1,620 meters. It is enclosed by the Pir Panjal Range on the southwest and the Himalayan range on the northeast. River Jhelum and its tributaries drain into the region, facilitating rich agricultural land and development of cities and towns. In addition

Figure 02: The territorial fragmentation of Kashmir from 1949-present.

between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, unpack the nature of its disputed border (between Azad Kashmir and Indianoccupied Kashmir), and map regional infrastructural urbanism that runs along its spine to connect the urban and suburban centers. Urban space can be understood as a composite of three parts, or an urban triad: the physical structure which

I establish the valley as a physical front

Figure 03: Hilltropes

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to the smaller alpine lakes in the upper reaches of the mountains, the valley hosts larger freshwater lakes like the Wular and the Dal. The regional boundaries between districts permeate through mountain passes to physically connect to neighboring regions. Some of these passes include ZojiLa (3,528 meters) and KhardungLa (5,359 meters).

includes buildings and roads, the urban infrastructure, and the population itself, all layers which are considered equally available for military manipulation.17 The disputed LOC around the Kashmir Valley is a dynamic front. It divides the valley from Azad Kashmir on its west and north sides, strategically cutting through river valleys and peaks. On the east, the Himalayan range extends to Kargil and Ladakh to the border with China.

The border zones are heavily militarized with critical defense infrastructure for surveillance. I call these the Border Hilltropes because the nature of this front varies across different cross sections and is defined either by the topography of mountains or the hydrology of rivers and tributaries. But even then, at certain locations, the border is unmarked and spatial assertions are made through the maintenance of outposts on hilltops and

Figure 04: Aerial View of Hilltropes

city of Srinagar and visualized through crowdsourced mapping and aerial imageries. There is a constant battle for the negotiation of space in the urban space of Srinagar. Apart from huge army camps and detention centers that take up prime locations, smaller bunkers are diffused abundantly in neighborhoods, forming a seamless system of surveillance and security. The City imageability is reduced to barbed wires and silent empty roads.

There is a constant battle for the negotiation of space in the urban space of Srinagar.”

Through satellite imageries and topographical maps combined in Figures 03 and 04, I located high grounds and defense locations of the Indian Border Security Forces. This mostly entails landing space (helipads), a communications tower, and a sheltered space with outposts for a line of vision. In river valleys along the border, there is a greater opportunity for an established camp with training centers, residential quarters, and air and road transportation. By constantly building planned settlements and smaller structures, these hilltropes maintain the control and power in the spatial edge of enclaves.

Defense use accounts for 26 percent of the land use in Srinagar, much higher than public or commercial uses.18 This alien population of army personnel also affects the everyday functional zones of the territory. In times of uncertainty and addition of troops, public infrastructure is devoted to the army for private uses. Army housing inside the City is provided either in educational and cultural institutions or in prototypical units that then mark a no-entry zone. The National Institute of Technology and other public education institutions witnessed an overnight surge of nonKashmiri students leaving their dorms and hostel rooms after the Indian government issued travel advisories for tourists in 2019.19 For the next six months, these residences were the humble abode of the extra troops.20

City of Srinagar: Camp Manifestation The borders are areas of maximum surveillance, but the constant struggle for self-determination in Kashmir has caused massive militarization of dense urban spaces. The production of camp is done with finesse under the pretense of maintaining peace. The spatial manifestation of this urban camp is realized in the capital

Theorizing design or planning practices in a region where land and building use is fickle produces psychological barriers too. This dynamic of vulnerability generates a unique and conflicted biopolitical consensus in the society.21 It decreases civic participation in public places, thereby losing the essence of urbanity and weakening the social construct

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higher grounds. There are dirt roads leading to mountain tops marked by helipads, residential zones, and bunkers. The civilians of the valley can always hear the air transport at night when military traffic is particularly high. Amidst such a linear border environment are small villages and tribes (pahadi) that remain in constant danger of losing lives and property. Cross-border tensions erupt very frequently, which causes an international stir between India and Pakistan. The mappings of valley borders between Indian and Pakistani enclaves are a juxtaposition of its extroverted mountainous border regions vis-à-vis the internal functioning in the lower-lying region. It is a simultaneous vision of ‘non-place’ and ‘all place,’ where a critical urbanism has produced a colonized cartography.

of the region’s natural and built fabric. People become skeptical of using urban amenities and claiming their right to the City.22 Settler colonialism, achieved on this scale, through studying urban patterns of a territory, follows a very strategic set of policies that use spatiality to its advantage. The place itself acts as a host to conflict that replicates and finds its way into corners and crevices. Various forms of securitization and control in political life are enforced onto the civilian population.23 The primary mode is incorporated through settlements scattered throughout the City, varying in scale and type. These institutions produce a state of mind within the urban dynamic, that of detachment and fear within their own fabric.24 Obvious and normal conditions are replaced by uncertainty and indeterminacy. One of the largest camps within the municipal boundary of the City shown in Figure 05 includes the Badami Bagh Cantonment Zone extending the security region up the hills of the Zabarwan Mountains. This is a classic example

of taking the higher ground to assert dominance. Tattoo Ground, a 123-acre, walled-off army complex, produces another zone of civilian abandonment right in the City center, with wire-topped high walls housing distinctly ugly, single-storied barrack structures.25 This military complex is surrounded by all the major government offices like the civil secretariat, high court, radio station, and police station. Furthermore, the road intersections around it are major traffic arteries leading to the airport and major commercial center in the City, Lal Chowk. In addition to these, there are smaller CRPF camps dispersed in the neighborhoods for housing of army personnel. A few of these localities include Sanathnagar, Barzulla, Hyderpora, Gupkar Road, and Indra Nagar. The omnipresence of the army, so close to residential zones, creates a spatial stigma that reinforces an imposed control narrative on the citizens on a daily basis. In certain instances, the military takes up abandoned or dilapidated houses in the neighborhood and roams around during the day to assert its presence over the territory. In the downtown of the City – which

Figure 05: Aerial View of city camps

The smallest type of settlement are military bunkers, tents with some protective rainproof covering at intersections, crossings, and outside camps for protection to study the general movements of people in commercial and residential areas. These outposts are easy and quick to set up and connect bigger settlement camps to form a

Figure 06: Composite Map of defense settlements in Srinagar City

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is always the epicenter of protests – these makeshift military settlements, along with local police, study everyday grassroots movements to gather information. They use familiar settlements to blend into the neighborhoods, becoming an integral part of the spatial mechanism to influence from within.

seamless network. The datasets for this layer were crowdsourced through a public survey and geo-located in Figure 06. This survey was administered discreetly through social media platforms and resulted in 123 responses that pinpointed bunker locations near residences or en route to places of work.

everyday life and re-engineering information to redefine the urban atmosphere for better dominance in the name of national security.27 Through these differently scaled practices, settler colonialism is rooted in the City of Srinagar. Control over institutions, public and commercial spaces, neighborhoods, and circulation spaces lay defense over the movement map of the City to identify hotbeds of so-called illegal activities. The lattice network map in Figure 07 amplifies how the soul spaces of the

The infrastructure of Srinagar is at the mercy of political violence. Varying passive and active aggression targets civilians by reaching into the crevices of

Figure 07: Lattice network of defense settlements in Srinagar City

Military impunity is further guaranteed by the Public Safety Act (PSA) and Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), enacted by the Indian government in the name of national security.28 The basic fundamentals of the right to the city are challenged here.29 The army has the authority to detain or take violent action without reason. Such acts alter the urban realm completely; they cause desertification of social spaces and make people skeptical of inclusion or embracing their own city. The City of Srinagar, with the urbanity it has to offer, lies on the threshold of indeterminacy between democracy and absolutism.30

The Kashmir dispute is over 70 years old, and with India’s advancing settler colonial project (that can progress after dissolving Article 370), the dispute sees no end in the foreseeable future. In the past year, after stripping Kashmir of its autonomy, India conducted massive land grabs of agricultural land and productive landscapes and ecological zones. Tribal natives are removed from their ancestral lands. The army has the right to declare any piece of property to be strategic in order to take control. New zoning laws and master plans prepare for an increase in defense housing along new highways and on reclaimed wetlands. Therefore, settler colonialism is shifting its mechanisms constantly to deepen its roots and eradicate signs of dispute and unrest by changing demography and future land use of the territory. It is imperative to scrutinize patterns of occupation through urban practices and planning. The constant battle of securing territory and negotiating power marks serious gaps in the way space is conceived, perceived, and lived. Kashmir was conceived as a paradise on Earth, perceived as a disputed territory, and now lived as an urban camp.

The nature of urbicide due to neo-modern

Conclusion militarism is differently scaled in the edges versus the interior of the Kashmir enclaves. Border fronts along the edge play a defensive role against neighboring countries. This is smaller but strategically placed infrastructure that maintains a presence on the mountain tops. Within cities and towns, defense settlements are spread out over a greater surface area, with smaller neighborhood structures tying

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The infrastructure of Srinagar is at the mercy of political violence.”

them together. Collectively, they facilitate the strategic deterioration of sociospatial linkages by targeting critical urban infrastructure as a place of non-civilian use, all the while maintaining a false facade of peace and normalcy. Lack of what was will always hinder the truth of what has changed. Therefore, an objective analysis of the production of control is necessary to qualify conflict and quantify its conquest.

City are shaped by the presence of defense infrastructure using arterial roads to carry out military operations.

about the author Madeeha Ayub is a Master of Urban Design graduate (2020) at The University of Michigan. In the broad domain of urban design, Madeeha’s research interests lie in understanding the intersection of built environment, geopolitics and socio-spatiality regimes in territories to employ reflective strategies inducing resilience and sustainability. Through multi-scalar mapping and design approaches, Madeeha aims to unpack the dynamic of constant flux that regions experience due to a multitude of internal and external factors, in the end to be tied to their place and communities

1. Henri, Lefebvre. “The Production of Space.” Oxford, OX, UK; Cambridge, Mass, USA: Blackwell, 1991.

18. S, Authority. 2019. “Masterplan 2035 Srinagar Metropolitan region”. Sdasrinagar. http://www. sdasrinagar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MasterPlan-2035-ReportFinal.pdf

2. Lefebvre, “The Production of Space.” 1991. 3. Anselm, Franke. “Territories: Islands, Camps and Other States of Utopia.” Berlin: Köln: KW, Institute for Contemporary Art ; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2003.

19. India, T., 2021. “Jammu & Kashmir: Travel advisory issued against travelling to J&K by UK, Australia and Germany”. Times of India Travel. https://timesofindia. indiatimes.com/travel/destinations/jammu-kashmirtravel-advisory-issued-against-travelling-to-jk-by-ukaustralia-and-germany/as70533793.cms

4. Franke. “Territories: Islands, Camps and Other States of Utopia.” 2003. 5. Giorgio, Agamben. “Means without End Notes on Politics.” Theory out of Bounds; Volume 20. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 2000.

20. B, Bhat. 2019. “Kashmir’s schools, colleges double up as bunkers for military; students forced to depend on tuitions, notes in absence of classes” Firstpost. https://www.firstpost.com/india/kashmirs-schoolscolleges-double-up-as-bunkers-for-military-studentsforced-to-depend-on-tuitions-notes-in-absence-ofclasses-7720351.html

6. Richard, Ek. “Giorgio Agamben and the Spatialities of the Camp: An Introduction.” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 88, no. 4 (2006): 363-86. 7. Henri, Lefebvre. “The Production of Space.” Oxford, OX, UK; Cambridge, Mass, USA: Blackwell, 1991. 8. Arjun, Appadurai. “Modernity at Large : Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.” Public Worlds ; v. 1. (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press), 1996.

21. Michel, Foucault, and Michel, Senellart. “The Birth of Biopolitics : Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79.” (Basingstoke [England] ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 2008.

9. David Campbell, Stephen Graham, and Daniel Bertrand Monk. “Introduction to Urbicide: The Killing of Cities?” Commentary. Theory & Event 10, no. 2 (2007): NA.

22. David, Harvey. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review, no. 53 (9/2008): 23–40.

10. Brian, Massumi. “A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari.” (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press), 1992.

23. Laura, Pastoreková, and Laura, Vodrážka. “(In)Visible Elements of the City Military Architecture in the Context of Urban Structure Development.” Procedia Engineering 161 (2016): 2161–67. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2016.08.809.

11. K, Dickerman. 2020. “Like a land of permanent sorrow’: A visiting Indian photographer documents life in Kashmir”. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost. com/photography/2020/04/10/after-more-than-threedecades-violence-kashmir-feels-like-land-permanentsorrow/

24. Robert Ezra, Park. “The City.” Chicago, Ill: (The University of Chicago press), 1927. 25. Paul, Virilio. “Bunker Archéologie.” (Paris : Galilée), 2008.

12. Djordje, Stojanovic. “Space, Territory and Sovereignty: Critical Analysis of Concepts.” (2018) 10.18999/nujlp.275.3.

26. Loïc, Wacquant. “Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality.” Thesis Eleven 91, no. 1 (11/2007): 66–77. doi:10.1177/0725513607082003.

13. BBC News. 2019. “Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters”. BBC https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-asia-india-49234708

27. Graham, Stephen,. “Cities under Siege : The New Military Urbanism.” (London; New York: Verso), 2011. 28. Pasquetti, Silvia. “Experiences of Urban Militarism: Spatial Stigma, Ruins and Everyday Life.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43, no. 5 (9/2019): 848–69. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.12797.

14. Giorgio, Agamben, and Daniel, Heller-Roazen. “Homo Sacer : Sovereign Power and Bare Life.” Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics Ser. Redwood City: (Stanford University Press), 1998.

29. Harvey, David,. “Rebel Cities from the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution.” (London : Verso), 2013.

15. Tim, Marshall. “Prisoners of Geography : Ten Maps That Explain Everything about the World.” New York, (New York: Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc), 2015.

30. Giorgio, Agamben. “State of Exception.” (University of Chicago Press), 2005.

16. Priyanka, Singh. “Prospects of Travel and Trade across the India–Pakistan Line of Control (LoC).” International Studies 50, no. 1–2 (1/2013): 71–91. doi:10.1177/0020881715605237.

Ayub

17. Anselm, Franke. “Territories : Islands, Camps and Other States of Utopia.” Berlin : Köln : KW, Institute for Contemporary Art ; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2003.

endnotes

Urban Inflation YINAN FANG Master of Urban Design, 2020

CHUNYANG XU Master of Architecture, 2022

MINGRUI JIANG Master of Architecture, 2021

YUXIN LIN Master of Architecture, 2021

ABSTRACT Cities are intensely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. The way people interact with each other within the urban milieu has been largely altered. More public space is required due to the six feet of social distance required for safety. Observing this new trend, the Urban Inflation Team envisions adaptations to the shared environment at the central campus of the University of Michigan, which will revitalize public life and remain valuable in a postpandemic context. The project considers the possibility of using inflatable structures to meet the increased space requirements for public, education, and business buildings.

Bubble History

Fang/xu/jiang/lin

People now take up more space than they used to, which results in a deficiency of interior space. Commercial space has expanded into adjacent streets. We propose a new type of ephemeral urban typology using inflatable structures to provide potential solutions to the shortage of space brought by the pandemic solutions to the expansion brought by the pandemic (Figure 2).

ur perception of social distancing was flexible before COVID-19, as it was predominantly determined by our individual comfort zones. Now, the boundary is a mandatory and defined bubble that separates each of us.

Social Distancing

Taking mobility, temporality, and distribution of crowd circulation into account, we chose to use inflatable bubbles to encompass the urban changes driven by COVID-19. These inflatable bubbles will dynamically expand, contract, move, and morph into different shapes weekly. Corresponding to our inflation modes, our bubbles will have three sizes: large, medium, and small. Large bubbles are represented by gray shades. They will cover a whole block, providing enormous interior space that can be used for large gatherings, and can contain medium and small bubbles. Medium and small bubbles are represented by black infill. Medium bubbles will be able to accommodate up to 20 people at a time

Centr al Campus timeline

Fang/xu/jiang/lin

By studying the urban landscape of Ann Arbor through students’ point of view, we pinpointed four different kinds of spaces that are crucial to student life: commercial, educational, public, and residential. Drawing on our research on student density at different places during different times of the day, we introduced a weekday inflation mode and weekend inflation mode. We then combined these diagrams into a weekly chart. A weekly chart is more relevant to student schedules and city-scale movements. This means that inflation that occupies a whole block will happen only when student density reaches a peak in the diagram (Figure 3).

and will be used as classrooms or extensions of commercial buildings. Small bubbles are designed to contain one to four people. Furthermore, the shapes and functions of the bubbles can be easily changed through different topologies (Figure 4)

installed in any urban location because of their lightweight and malleable character. The bubbles can thus adapt to rapid urban changes and inflation without using too many resources. Another advantage of the bubbles is the plasticity of their skin. Like an astronaut’s suit, the bubble can accommodate heating and air exchanging systems adhered to its surface.

We pushed the flexibility of the bubbles even more by imagining that they can be transported from one place to another by attaching them to hot air balloons. The bubbles can easily be dropped and

weekday inflation mode

of the building that they are attaching to (Figures 6 - 11). Understanding the long history of the inflatable bubble structures from Peter Cook’s “Instant City” (1968-1970)1 to Chip Lorad and Doug Michel’s “The 50x50 Foot Pillow,” “Spare Tire Inflatable,” and “Clean Air Pod” (1970)2, we learned that the possibility and flexibility of inflatables are unlimited. But through site analysis, we have come to the conclusion that the design becomes meaningful only through understanding the condition and culture in which these bubbles exist. Pillow,” “Spare Tire Inflatable” and “Clean Air Pod” (1970)2, we learn that the possibility and flexibility of inflatables are unlimited. But through site analysis, we come to the conclusion that the design becomes meaningful only through understanding the condition and culture in which these bubbles exist.

Out of all three sizes, we believe the multifunctional medium-sized bubbles in Figure 6 - 11 hold the most potential, since they could be most frequently applied in various urban scenarios. For example, the round-shaped bubble can be used both as an auditorium on central campus and as a two-story commercial extension on South State Street. The stripe-shaped bubble can be used either as study rooms underneath the school library or as a serpentine gallery in front of the museum. The torus-shaped bubble can be an add-on to Starbucks or a multi-function classroom located in the Diag. Again, the bubbles can act as parasitical spaces that not only share the mechanical system but also the served spaces, such as bathrooms and stairs,

education and public area inflation

Fang/xu/jiang/lin

The bubble can also act as a parasite and borrow the heating and cooling system from its adjacent buildings, which allows us to create giant bubbles that can cover a whole block (Figure 5).

Bubble x harlan hatcher gr aduate libr ary

Bubble x m den

Fang/xu/jiang/lin

Bubble x university of michigan museum of art

Fang/xu/jiang/lin Bubble x shapiro undergr aduate libr ary

Bubble x The diag

Fang/xu/jiang/lin Bubble x Starbucks

endnotes 1. Cook, Peter. Archigram. London: Studio Vista, 1972. 2. Inflatocookbook. (1973). San Francisco: Ant Farm. 27. Agamben, Giorgio,. “State of Exception.” Book. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2005.

about the authors Yinan Fang is a Urban Design graduate student at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Urban Planning from South China University of Technology in 2019. His academic research includes cultural segregation and environmentally sustainable design in Detroit. Chunyang Xu is a second-year Master of Architecture candidate at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pittsburgh. His current interests include high-performance building technologies and systematic design. Mingrui Jiang is a second-year Master of Architecture candidate at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Liverpool University in 2019. Her current interest is adaptive reuse of architecture to bring more vitality to the leftover space in rust belt cities. Yuxin Lin is a second-year Master of Architecture candidate at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. He is interested in utilizing different design methods through material and advanced technologies. His academic research focuses on the application of artificial intelligence in architectural design.

Marching for Black Lives Photographer: Nathan McBurnett

Less is Not More

The False Promise of Accessory Dwelling Units for San Francisco’s Lowest Income Communities LAUREN WEEK Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Juris Doctor 2023

ABSTRACT Accessory dwelling units, also referred to by acronym as ADUs, have been championed as a low-cost solution – both monetarily and politically – for America’s housing affordability crisis. However, do these micro-units provide a city’s lower-income community members with much-needed affordable housing? And which income groups benefit from the theoretical supplemental income created by ADUs? Using socioeconomic data, building permit information, and geospatial analysis, I explore these questions by conducting a case study of the archetype of America’s housing affordability crisis: San Francisco, California. Finding that within the City and sample frame, few ADU permits have been filed in the most pricevulnerable communities, this paper challenges the theoretical benefits of ADUs espoused by politicians and academics. Thus far, ADUs appear to have failed to directly provide San Francisco’s lowest-income communities with below–market rate housing or supplementary income streams.

The rise of accessory dwelling units has rapidly changed American housing policy. As of early 2021, municipalities across 47 states as well as the District of Columbia currently include accessory dwelling units, often referred to by acronym as ADUs, as part of their local zoning and development codes.1 As more and more communities explore backyard cottages, in-law suites, and basement apartments as potential solutions to the United States’ housing affordability crisis, the addition of ADUs will begin and continue to morph the physical infrastructure and social configurations of cities across the country. While localities in almost every state have welcomed ADUs into their urban landscapes, the ADU phenomenon has influenced no state more than California. A Lexis search of statutes and legislation that reference ‘accessory dwelling units’ by jurisdiction finds 1,450 results for California.2 Florida, the state with the second-highest number of search results, registers only 327 statutory mentions.3 Overall, California’s state legislature has successfully passed 25 ADU bills.4 Meanwhile, Florida has passed three.5 Thus, the Golden State appears to lead the nation in ADU advocacy and legislation. What potential benefits persuaded California to pursue a housing policy approach so enamored with ADUs?

California’s Housing Crisis and the ADU Solution: A Background A shortage of roughly two million homes burdens California’s housing market.7 Researchers estimate that to keep up with growing demand, the State needs to build at least 3.5 million new units by 2025.8 As a promise campaigned on in 2018 by now Governor Gavin Newsom, this lofty goal would require construction of 500,000 units per year.9 Unfortunately, warnings predicting the unfeasibility of such production have held true: California cities approved about 90,000 housing permits in 2019, leaving a 410,000-unit gap between political targets and reality.10 Despite this disappointment, Newsom’s promise combined with constituents’ increasing concerns over unaffordability have reinvigorated lawmakers’ efforts to solve the housing crisis. State and local politicians alike have pushed for a plethora of innovative and progressive housing laws: in 2019 alone, the State Assembly and Senate combined passed 12 housing-related bills (although legislators introduced many more that ultimately failed).11 Four of these acts reformed regulation surrounding ADUs – small in

Politicians, academics, and now a burgeoning ADU industry have championed the micro-units as a low-cost solution – both monetarily and politically – to providing more affordable housing to society’s most vulnerable residents. Additionally, by transforming the traditional model of housing infrastructure (i.e., single-family homes) via increased density and integration of lower-cost housing options into historically wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, ADUs can help (slowly) reverse the United States’ history of residential segregation across racial and socioeconomic lines.6 However, as more and more cities and

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states adopt ADU legislation, important questions arise: are ADUs truly a progressive solution to systemic housing affordability issues? Where are they being built, and what communities have access to and benefit from them? Can they radically change entrenched built environments to overcome the history of policies that created our existing segregated and inequitable cities? Do they actually transform neighborhoods into affordable, mixed-income communities? I aimed to answer these questions by conducting a case study of ADUs within the archetype of the State’s – and America’s – housing crisis: San Francisco.

Introduction

size, but potentially a big-impact solution to California’s housing crisis.12 Section 65852.2(j)(1) of the California Government Code defines an ADU as “an attached or a detached residential dwelling unit which provides complete independent living facilities,” including “permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking, and sanitation,” located “on the same parcel as the [primary] single-family or multifamily dwelling.”13 Popular examples include granny flats or an apartment located over a garage or in a home’s basement.14 Proponents of ADUs champion them as a solution due to their flexibility, affordability (both in terms of construction and rental rates), potential to create supplemental income streams, and minimal environmental impact.15 Due to these benefits, initial reforms were met with much fanfare.16 Passed in 2016, the reforms altered various parking and design requirements embedded within zoning laws as well as fee schedules that previously restricted ADU development.17 Researchers touted California Senate Bill 1069, and complementary Assembly Bill 2299, as “key policy facilitating new ADU development across the state.”18 For example, the University of California, Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that as a result of 2016 ADU legislation, more than 12 times as many San Francisco property owners submitted ADU permit applications in 2017 as compared to 2015.19 Although California’s overall housing production still lagged behind Newsom’s campaign promise, ADUs provided a small glimmer of hope. Moreover, beyond the realized objective of increased housing production, proponents clung to the theoretical benefit of increased affordability. From Newsom’s campaign promise to economic research to government handbooks, officials and academics alike promoted the idea that expanding the supply of housing through ADUs correlated to more

affordable housing overall for California’s most vulnerable communities.20

San Francisco: A Case study Motivated by this philosophy, and more importantly, required by state law, municipalities across California adapted their own local ADU ordinances to conform to state standards. However, some cities went “beyond what has been mandated by the state” to pursue even more progressive ADU policy, especially the City and County of San Francisco.21 Even prior to the passage of Senate Bill 1069, San Francisco allowed ADUs in the Castro neighborhood as early as 2014.22 In 2015, the City dangled ADUs as an incentive for property owners required to seismically retrofit their buildings due to earthquake risk.23 And in 2016, with the passage of Ordinance No. 162-16, the City legalized ADUs in all neighborhoods citywide, as well as allowed their addition on existing multifamily properties such as apartment complexes and duplexes.24 After the adoption of Senate Bill 1069, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed Ordinance No. 95-17 in early 2017 to ensure that the City’s ADU review and approval process met all requirements of the State’s 2016 mandates.25A few months later the Board, aiming to provide further permitting and payment flexibility, once again modified its ADU program with the adoption of Ordinance No. 162-17.26 Although San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued an Executive Directive on August 31, 2018 to further expedite ADU permits, the above-mentioned Ordinances – 162-16, 95-17, and 162-17 – encompass all of San Francisco’s most recent legislative attempts at streamlining and expanding application and review processes for ADU construction within the City.27 However, despite continued emphasis on ADUs as a solution (at the state level, California passed yet another ADU-focused

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law in 2020 that came into effect in the new year), skepticism surrounding their ability to provide affordable and below-marketrate housing proliferates.28 Urban planning research from University of Massachusetts Amherst that focused on California’s ADU proposals argued that “the confluence of a lack of oversight and the unproven efficacy of ADUs as low-income housing means that California has low-income housing units that exist on paper, but not in operation.”29 Essentially, municipalities across California count each new ADU as an additional belowmarket housing unit; however, no zoning codes or other enforcement mechanisms exist to ensure ADUs qualify as and remain affordable.30 Analyzing a sample of 759 constructed ADUs across the state, the same Amherst study found that none of these units were actually identified as available low-income housing.31

Considering San Francisco’s dynamic ADU efforts, its overall progressive ethos, and the acute nature of the Bay Area’s housing crisis, I sought to understand if such statewide findings applied to the City and County of San Francisco. Although the Amherst study analyzed cities located within the larger San Francisco Bay Area, it did not assess ADUs within the boundaries of the City itself.35 The San Francisco Planning Department has witnessed and testified to the exponentially increasing number of ADU permit applications; as of 2019 planners have approved over 900 permits since the adoption of the City’s first ADU law in 2014.36 But do these units provide the City’s lower-income community members with much-needed affordable housing? Who has benefitted from the theoretical supplemental income created by ADUs? Lastly, have ADUs transformed San Francisco’s housing landscape for its lowest-income community members?

Some researchers advocate that the addition of any new housing units – whether affordable or not, leads to a process known as ‘filtering.’ As moderate-income individuals and families move into newly built housing units, they free up the more affordable options they once occupied.32 However, such market-based processes rely on long-run supply and demand curves for a problem that desperately needs a solution now. Moreover, the slow pace of housing construction (including of ADUs) further prolongs the already long-term process of filtering. Concerns over gentrification and associated displacement also hinder filtering’s potential impact. In San Francisco, researchers found that “neither market-rate nor subsidized housing production” affords communities the opportunities theoretically created by filtering; the extreme mismatch between supply and demand in the City simply leaves lower-income tenants behind.33 Ultimately, ADU legislation successfully increases localities’ overall housing inventory, but fails to offer lowincome housing options.34

Methodology To answer these questions, I used the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection’s (DBI) online permit tracking system and searched for any and all permits referencing keywords such as accessory dwelling unit, ADU, and the names of the related ordinances filed between August 1, 2016 and December 31, 2020. Although the City had ADU programs prior to 2016, legislation limited such processes to certain neighborhoods or by seismic retrofitting requirements. Thus, I only analyzed permits filed after August 1, 2016 – the first of the month after Ordinance No. 162-16 went into effect and ADUs were allowed citywide. To further narrow my sample frame, I removed all permits approved under the original Castro neighborhood or retrofit incentive programs. Additionally, if an application did not contain enough information for me to assess what

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Research question

ordinance (162-16, 95-17, or 162-17) the DBI issued a permit under, I removed it from the frame. This resulted in a sample of 263 total permits spread across San Francisco – from the southeastern corner of Bayview to the hilly northeastern neighborhoods of Nob Hill and North Beach to the western coastal communities on the City’s edge of Outer Richmond, Outer Sunset, and Lakeshore. The sample also featured ADUs from each of San Francisco’s 11 Supervisor Districts, which define the political boundaries represented by each member of the City’s local council, the Board of Supervisors. Figure 1 captures the spatial distribution of all ADU permit applications within the sample frame across Supervisor District boundaries. In addition to the permit data, I also collated three socioeconomic features for each Supervisor District: 1) median household income (in United States dollars); 2) percentage of owner-occupied housing units within the District; and 3) percentage of renter-occupied units. Although I could not access specific rental prices for each of the ADU units in the

Figure 1. ADU Permit Applications across San Francisco’s Supervisor Districts.37

sample frame (because of a lack of reliable databases, but more importantly, because many of the proposed units are currently under construction and do not yet physically exist), I sought to answer my first research question by determining if assumed-tobe-affordable ADUs were being built in the lowest-income communities. Regarding my second question, I used the same data to assess what class of homeowners reaped the benefits of ADUs’ theoretical supplemental income streams. Lastly, I considered my quantitative results in light of San Francisco’s existing built environment to explore ADUs’ potentially transformative impact for lower-income communities.

income characteristics: overall Results To assess community vulnerability and define neighborhood need for affordable housing options, I gathered income characteristics

Figure 2- Median Household Income Compared to ADU Permits Issued across San Francisco’s Supervisor Districts.39

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A geospatial representation of this same data (i.e., income characteristics contrasted against permit information) as shown in Figure 2 further illustrates this finding. Shades of green signify the median household income for each District, with lighter colors indicating lower median incomes and darker shades representing higher household earnings. The golden house symbol captures permit information: the larger the icon, the greater the number of ADU permits filed within that District. Overall (although not entirely consistently), smaller house icons correlate to lighter shades. Thus, property owners have filed for fewer ADU permits, and thereby attempted to build fewer potentially affordable housing units, in lower-income Districts. Despite vast political support, ADUs appear to have failed to directly provide San Francisco’s lowestincome communities with theoretically below–market rate housing.

Home ownership characteristics: overall Results Beyond assessing community need for affordable housing options, I also collated the percentage of owner-occupied versus renter-occupied units in each District to contrast homeownership characteristics against the permit filings. In combination with the above income information, such homeownership data serves as a proxy to understand what groups – low-, moderate-, or high-income – potentially benefit from the theoretical income produced by ADUs. Thus, Table 2 portrays the percentage of owner-occupied and renter-occupied housing units for each District as well as the corresponding ADU permit sample frame data. Unsurprisingly, the lowerincome Districts tend to have the lowest homeownership rates and largest share of renter-occupied housing among the City’s 11 Supervisor Districts. This represents disparities in generational wealth accumulation and is also correlated to such communities’ lack of access to capital due to their lower incomes.40 Moreover, this reveals that even when ADUs are built in lower-income neighborhoods, they likely do not provide a source of supplemental

Table 1- Income & poverty characteristics compared to ADU permits issued in San Francisco’s Supervisor Districts.38

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for each of San Francisco’s 11 Supervisor Districts. Thus, Table 1 contrasts the median household income of each District against the total number of ADU permit applications filed within the sample frame for that District. A simple side-by-side comparison of the data reveals an unfortunate truth: even if ADUs do provide below–market rate housing, they barely support the City’s most pricevulnerable communities.

Table 2- Homeownership and Rental Rates compared to ADU Permits Issued in San Francisco’s Supervisor Districts.41

income to the families that rent and live there – those most in need of such monetary support. Instead, external (and most likely wealthy) property owners, investors, and landlords reap the incomegenerating benefits of ADUs espoused by policymakers and academics as a reason to advance ADU legislation.

not a completely perfect metric), while lighter shading illustrates a high percentage of owner-occupied units. Once again, the golden house symbol captures permit information with the size of the icon corresponding to the number of ADU permits filed. Although

Figure 3 provides a geospatial representation of this same data (i.e., homeownership characteristics contrasted against permit information). The red hue of each Supervisor District conveys the percentage of owner-occupied housing units; the darker end of the spectrum represents poor homeownership rates (as calculated via owner occupancy, which is

Even when ADUs are built in lower-income neighborhoods, they likely do not provide a source of supplemental income to the families that rent and live there—those most in need of such monetary support.”

Figure 3. Homeownership and Rental Rates compared to ADU Permits Issued in San Francisco’s Supervisor Districts.42

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second-lowest median household income – at $59,111 – among the City’s political divisions.44 This may be explained by the District’s large immigrant population, as over 42 percent of the community’s inhabitants identify as foreign-born (compared to 35 percent of the City overall).45 District Six, home to Treasure Island, Mission Bay, South Beach, Rincon Hill, Yerba Buena, South of Market (or ‘SOMA’), Mid-Market, Civic Center, and the Tenderloin, is San Francisco’s lowest-income community with a median household income of $54,819.46 Similar to District Three, many areas of District Six feature facades of wealth: luxury apartment developments rise above SOMA’s converted warehouses, Mission Bay features a state-of-the-art research hospital and brand-new professional basketball arena, and South Beach condos look out upon stunning views of the Bay Bridge. Yet, District Six also covers the Tenderloin, MidMarket, and Civic Center neighborhoods, communities that have historically offered refuge to San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents due to legally safeguarded shortterm residential hotels and community organizations and shelters offering services to the unhoused. In line with District Three, 42 percent of the population is also foreignborn.47

To answer my research questions with more nuance, I delved further into these results for San Francisco’s lowest-income neighborhoods: Districts Three and Six. As these Districts are home to the most vulnerable communities, I prioritized understanding how ADU legislation impacted their housing affordability, income opportunities, and the overall housing landscape. This targeted case study of Districts Three and Six confirms the larger findings discussed above while also adding new insights and considering the complicating factors surrounding San Francisco’s ADUs.

Results for districts Three and six: The lowest-income districts

Beyond representing San Francisco’s lowestincome communities, these Districts also feature the lowest proportion of ADU permits from the sample frame. Property owners filed for only eight ADU permits within District Three, one of which an owner cancelled and another of which was withdrawn.48 Thus, only six active ADU applications currently exist in the District (within the sample frame). Moreover, none of these applications have resulted in new housing units, affordable or not; construction has not been completed on any of the projects.49 In District Six, even fewer permit applications have been filed. Four are currently active, two of which have received their Certificate of Final Completion (CFC) from the DBI, meaning contractors have completed construction.50 Thus, out of

As illustrated by the above tables, Districts Three and Six constitute the two lowestincome Supervisor Districts, as measured by median household income. District Three encompasses the neighborhoods clumped together in San Francisco’s northeastern edge: North Beach, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, Polk Gulch, Union Square/Financial District (a non-residential area), and Russian, Nob, and Telegraph Hills.43 Despite the District’s outward appearance as bustling and prosperous, due to its popularity among tourists and inclusion of San Francisco’s core business center, it features the

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the correlation between homeownership characteristics and permit data is not as consistent as ADU permits’ correlation with income, smaller house icons tend to relate to darker shades, which not only represent lower homeownership rates but also are predominantly associated with lower-income areas. With higher rental rates, fewer property owners call these deep red Districts home. Thus, external, wealthier landlords more likely earn the supplemental income linked to the ADUs built in these Supervisor Districts.

the sample frame, only two new potentially affordable units of housing – in the form of ADUs – have been added to San Francisco’s lowest-income neighborhoods since 2016 Additionally, both Districts Three and Six feature the largest disparities between the percentage of their populations who own their homes and the percentage who rent. Once again, the Districts with the highest need for below–market rate rental housing, as illustrated by the high rental rates – at 86 and 81 percent for District Three and Six, respectively – have the least access to potentially affordable ADUs. This comparison also reveals another layer of San Francisco’s ADU story: beyond the benefits of lower rental prices for lowerincome communities, policymakers often champion ADUs for their ability to provide extra income to homeowners struggling with burdensome mortgage payments.51 However, for San Francisco’s lowestincome homeowners, represented by the 14 and 19 percent of owner-occupied units located within Districts Three and Six respectively, very few if any are benefitting from ADUs’ potential income generation. Considering these quantitative results in light of the existing built environments of Districts Three and Six, it is important to recognize that the current zoning and related density of these Districts potentially interfere with ADU progress. The San Francisco Planning Department has zoned the majority of Districts Three and Six as either commercial or medium- to highdensity residential.52 Soaring skyscrapers, including the 1,070 foot Salesforce Tower – the second tallest building on the West Coast – crowd the inner cores of both Districts.53 Housing options span from “widely-spaced high-rises” to “group housing” in “buildings over 40 feet in height” to “low- and mid-rise buildings with ground floor townhouses.”54 Due to the predominantly high-density nature of existing housing and commercial infrastructure, Districts Three and Six

seem to afford property owners little space to plan for and build ADUs. However, the City of San Francisco foresaw this issue. Unlike the popular image of ADUs as cottages in the backyard of a single-family home, San Francisco includes any and all additional housing – even units squeezed into unused spaces in apartment buildings’ storage rooms, old boiler areas, and garages – within their statutory definition of ADUs.55 For example, former District Three Supervisor Julie Christensen introduced ADU legislation in 2015 with the goal of allowing ADUs in her District “in an effort to shoehorn in more housing units in a densely populated area.”56 This illustrates how San Francisco representatives creatively defined the micro-units to target the communities with the highest need. Thus, Districts Three and Six’s existing zoning scheme and correlated high density do not completely explain the neighborhoods’ lack of ADU permits. Do other complicating factors related to San Francisco’s existing built environment hinder ADU development for San Francisco’s lowest-income communities? Or, as this research has shown, do ADUs simply fail to transform the housing landscape in a way that meaningfully impacts the City’s most vulnerable Populations?

conclusion These side-by-side comparisons of Supervisor Districts’ permit data against their income and occupancy factors as well as corresponding geospatial analyses substantiate the hypothesis of some urban planning researchers and many housing activists: Thus far, ADUs fail to provide the miracle affordability solution promulgated by other academics and state and local legislators.57 Moreover, in terms of spatial equity and accessibility, proposed ADUs fail to target the communities that need access to affordable housing options and supplemental income opportunities most. Even if property owners set ADU rental rates at much lower, more affordable price ranges (which has not

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as those that are being built in the lowestincome neighborhoods most likely belong to external property owners and not the communities themselves. Despite the popular maxim associated with accessories – ‘less is more’ – less ADU development in lower-income neighborhoods illustrates yet another failure of California housing policy and the continued disparate impacts of socalled progressive solutions for the State’s most vulnerable residents.

about the author Lauren Ashley Week is a dual degree student pursuing a Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Juris Doctor at the University of Michigan. Prior to graduate school, she studied gender and entrepreneurship as a Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellow at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Legal Studies and Political Economy. Her urban planning interests include equitable housing, commercial corridor investment, small business development and entrepreneurship, and environmental resiliency.

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yet proven to be true), they would not exist as a significant choice for lower-income populations.58 This spatial analysis reveals that unless San Francisco and the state of California more broadly expect their lowestincome residents – those with the least access to resources and highest reliance on their localized social networks – to uproot their lives and move to new communities to access just the choice of ADUs, the promise of ADUs is a false one.59 Furthermore, ADUs appear to fail to provide promised income opportunities for lower-income homeowners,

endnotes 1. The author confirmed which states and jurisdictions have ADU legislation by conducting a search for statutes and legislation containing the phrase “accessory dwelling units” on legal research database Lexis, https://plus.lexis.com/. 2. Author’s “accessory dwelling units” search, Lexis. 3. Author’s “accessory dwelling units” search, Lexis. 4. Author’s “accessory dwelling units” search, Lexis. 5. Author’s “accessory dwelling units” search, Lexis. 6. Marcel Negret et al., “Be My Neighbor,” Regional Plan Association (July 2020), https://rpa.org/work/ reports/be-my-neighbor. 7. Jonathan Woetzel et al., “A Tool Kit to Close California’s Housing Gap: 3.5 Million Homes by 2025,” McKinsey Global Institute (October 2016), https:// www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/ Public%20and%20Social%20Sector/Our%20Insights/ Closing%20Californias%20housing%20gap/ClosingCalifornias-housing-gap-Full-report.pdf. 8. Woetzel et al., A Tool Kit to Close California’s Housing Gap; California Department of Housing and Community Development, “Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook.” 9. Gavin Newsom, “The California Dream Starts at Home,” Medium.com, October 21, 2017, https:// medium.com/@GavinNewsom/the-californiadream-starts-at-home-9dbb38c51cae; Matt Levin, “Newsom Wanted to Go Bold on Housing. Have He and Lawmakers Delivered So Far?,” Cal Matters, September 20, 2019, https://calmatters.org/ housing/2019/09/newsom-california-housing-donenot-done/. 10. Levin, “Newsom Wanted to Go Bold on Housing. Have He and Lawmakers Delivered So Far?” 11. David Garcia, “2019 California Housing Legislation Round Up,” Terner Center for Housing Innovation, University of California, Berkeley, last modified October 14, 2019, https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/researchand-policy/2019-california-housing-legislation-roundup/. 12. See A.B. 68, 2019-20 Assemb. (Cal. 2019); S.B. 13, 2019-20 S. (Cal. 2019); A.B. 881, 2019-20 Assemb. (Cal. 2019); A.B. 670, 2019-20 Assemb. (Cal. 2019). 13. Cal. Gov’t. Code § 65852.2(j)(1) (2020). 14. Laura Calugar, “Are ADUs the Answer to San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Crisis?,” Multi-Housing News, April 25, 2018, https://www.multihousingnews. com/post/are-adus-the-answer-to-san-franciscosaffordable-housing-crisis/. 15. California Department of Housing and Community Development, “Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook”

(December 2020): 3-4, https://www.hcd.ca.gov/policyresearch/docs/adu_december_2020_handbook.pdf. 16. Calugar, “Are ADUs the Answer to San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Crisis?” 17. Calugar, “Are ADUs the Answer to San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Crisis?” 18. David Garcia, “ADU Update: Early Lessons and Impacts of California’s State and Local Policy Changes,” Terner Center for Housing Innovation, University of California, Berkeley, last modified December 2019, https:// ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/ ADU_Update_Brief_December_2017_.pdf. 19. Garcia, “ADU Update: Early Lessons and Impacts of California’s State and Local Policy Changes.” 20. Newsom, “The California Dream Starts at Home;” Woetzel et al., A Tool Kit to Close California’s Housing Gap; California Department of Housing and Community Development, “Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook.” 21. Garcia, “ADU Update: Early Lessons and Impacts of California’s State and Local Policy Changes.” 22. Garcia, “ADU Update: Early Lessons and Impacts of California’s State and Local Policy Changes.” 23. Garcia, “ADU Update: Early Lessons and Impacts of California’s State and Local Policy Changes.” 24. Garcia, “ADU Update: Early Lessons and Impacts of California’s State and Local Policy Changes;” Ordinance No. 162-16, San Francisco Board of Supervisors (Jul. 19, 2016). 25. Ordinance No. 95-17 § 2(d), San Francisco Board of Supervisors (Apr. 17, 2017). 26. Ordinance No. 162-17, San Francisco Board of Supervisors (Jul. 11, 2017). 27. London N. Breed, Executive Directive 18-01, Office of the Mayor of San Francisco (Aug. 30, 2018). 28. Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) and Junior Accessory Dwelling Units (JADUs), California Department of Housing and Community Development, accessed January 25, 2021, https://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy-research/ accessorydwellingunits.shtml. 29. Darrel Ramsey-Musolf, “Accessory Dwelling Units as Low-Income Housing: California’s Faustian Bargain,” Urban Science 2, no. 3 (2019): 2, https://doi.org/10.3390/ urbansci2030089. 30. Ramsey-Musolf, “Accessory Dwelling Units as LowIncome Housing: California’s Faustian Bargain,” 3. 31. Ramsey-Musolf, “Accessory Dwelling Units as LowIncome Housing: California’s Faustian Bargain,” 1. 32. Todd Litman, “How Filtering Increases Housing Affordability,” Planetizen, August 27, 2018, https://www. planetizen.com/blogs/100293-how-filtering-increaseshousing-affordability.

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Community Survey 2012-2016.” 46. District 6, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, accessed January 25, 2021, https://sfbos.org/supervisorhaney-district-6; San Francisco Planning Department, “San Francisco Supervisor Districts Socio-Economic Profiles: American Community Survey 2012-2016.”

34. Ibid.

47. District 6, San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

35. Ramsey-Musolf, “Accessory Dwelling Units as LowIncome Housing: California’s Faustian Bargain.”

48. DBI Permit Tracking System, Department of Building Inspection.

36. Jessica Zimmer, “Accessory Dwelling Units being Steadily Built Throughout the City,” The Potrero View, September 2019, https://www.potreroview.net/accessorydwelling-units-being-steadily-built-throughout-the-city/.

49. DBI Permit Tracking System, Department of Building Inspection. 50. DBI Permit Tracking System, Department of Building Inspection.

37. The author designed this map using ArcGIS Pro. Data source includes: DBI Permit Tracking System, Department of Building Inspection, accessed January 26, 2021, https://sfdbi.org/dbi-permit-tracking-system.

51. California Department of Housing and Community Development, “Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook.” 52. San Francisco Zoning Map, San Francisco Planning Department, last modified November 2020, https:// sfplanninggis.s3.amazonaws.com/hub/BIGmap.pdf.

38. Income and Poverty Characteristics: San Francisco Planning Department, “San Francisco Supervisor Districts Socio-Economic Profiles: American Community Survey 2012-2016,” City and County of San Francisco, September 2018, https://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/ SF_NGBD_SocioEconomic_Profiles/2012-2016_ACS_ Profile_SupeDistricts_Final.pdf; Permit Data: calculated by author from data collected from San Francisco Planning Department, “Property Information Map,” City and County of San Francisco, last modified 2021, http:// sfplanninggis.org/PIM/.

53. Breanna Reeves, “San Francisco’s Tallest Towers, Mapped,” Curbed San Francisco, February 14, 2020, https://sf.curbed.com/maps/sf-tallest-building-towerslargest-skyscrapers. 54. San Francisco, California, Planning Code § 828; Ibid., § 209.2. 55. Geri Koeppel, “Supervisors Approve In-Law Units to Squeeze In More Housing,” Hoodline, September 9, 2015, https://hoodline.com/2015/09/supervisors-approve-inlaw-legislation/.

39. The author designed this map using ArcGIS Pro. Data source includes: DBI Permit Tracking System, Department of Building Inspection.

56. Geri Koeppel, “Sup. Christensen Hopes to Add Housing in Dist. 3 With ‘Accessory Dwelling Units,’” Hoodline, August 19, 2015, https://hoodline.com/2015/08/ sup-christensen-hopes-to-add-housing-in-dist-3-withaccessory-dwelling-units/.

40. Thomas P. Boehm and Alan Schlottmann, “Wealth Accumulation and Homeownership: Evidence for LowIncome Households,” Cityscape 10, no. 2 (2008): 225, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20868659. 41. Homeownership and Rental Rates: San Francisco Planning Department, “San Francisco Supervisor Districts Socio-Economic Profiles: American Community Survey 2012-2016;” Permit Data: calculated by author from data collected from San Francisco Planning Department, “Property Information Map,” City and County of San Francisco, last modified 2021, http://sfplanninggis.org/ PIM/.

57. Ramsey-Musolf, “Accessory Dwelling Units as LowIncome Housing: California’s Faustian Bargain.” 58. Ramsey-Musolf, “Accessory Dwelling Units as LowIncome Housing: California’s Faustian Bargain.” 59. Kimberley Skobba and Edward G. Goetz, “Mobility Decisions of Very Low-Income Households,” Cityscape 15, no. 2 (2013):185, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/ periodicals/cityscpe/vol15num2/ch11.pdf.

42. The author designed this map using ArcGIS Pro. Data source includes: DBI Permit Tracking System, Department of Building Inspection. 43. District 3, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, accessed January 25, 2021, https://sfbos.org/supervisorpeskin. 44. San Francisco Planning Department, “San Francisco Supervisor Districts Socio-Economic Profiles: American Community Survey 2012-2016.” 45. San Francisco Planning Department, “San Francisco Supervisor Districts Socio-Economic Profiles: American

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33. Miriam Zuk and Karen Chapple, “Housing Production, Filtering and Displacement: Untangling the Relationships,” Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, last modified May 2016, https://www.urbandisplacement.org/sites/default/files/ images/udp_research_brief_052316.pdf.

Power Center Stair Photographer: Sarah Marie Britain

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Argon

A Far-UVC Lighting Spatial Experience that Provides Students a Safe and Healthy Outdoor Environment During and Post-COVID-19 EUGENE KIM

Master of Architecture 2023

PING SHAO Master of Architecture 2022

Abstract Adapting to the new social norm in response to COVID-19 requires new public health measures for precaution against the virus. Our proposal aims to prompt more awareness and advocate practice of the recommended sanitation actions, using the University of Michigan campus as a hypothetical testbed. ar ultraviolet-c (UVC) light is a promising disinfectant to eliminate the virus without harming humans.1 It is currently being studied to understand its vast potential as a new form of health technology. Since the technology was reported to be effective in eliminating the virus, hospitals and other public entities are using this UVC lighting to sanitize patient rooms and clean public transportation systems such as buses and trains. In our proposal, we utilize UVC light at three scales to accommodate and give students more agency in practicing ways to control the pathogen. The three scales are proposed at two popular student locations on the University of Michigan campus – central (The Diag) and north campus (The Grove). Far-UVC lighting is reimagined using light trails to add a secondary layer or protection as students make their way to classes (Gateway), phone charging and sanitation stations (Hub), and pop-up pods (Vessel) placed throughout The Diag and The Grove. Together these elements create the Argon.

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Introduction

Research

Since the first recorded case of coronavirus on March 10, 2020, Michigan has acted accordingly; the state declared a state of emergency and issued the Stay Home, Stay Safe executive order.2 Although Michigan recently started to lift its restrictions amidst a rise of community spread, the University of Michigan and local businesses continue to address safety concerns by pursuing their own measures to minimize the risk of exposure within the population.

Given its efficacy, UVC lighting has been implemented in various practices. In China, large scale UVC lamps are used to clean public transportation vehicles.3 On a smaller scale, sanitizing mediums for everyday objects, like mobile phone cases, are pushed onto the market.4 High demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) from both healthcare workers and the general public has created a supply shortage. In medical facilities, UVC sterilizing machines are implemented to sanitize facial masks and other personal protective wear. The various PPE sterilization approaches are proven to remain effective over prolonged amounts of time.5

Many schools transitioned to online learning and will continue into the upcoming school year. In the absence of the physical academic and social environment that schools provide, students like those at the University of Michigan have been challenged to adapt to online learning, which can include technical difficulties and distractions. However, technological uses of ultraviolet-C light, liquid argon being a main component of the device, have been noted for its sanitation potential in both the public and private sectors. For example, this technology has been utilized at hospitals to sanitize patient rooms due to its effectiveness in killing pathogens and germs. Our proposal, Argon, is a Far-UVC lighting spatial experience that provides students a safe and healthy outdoor environment during and post-COVID-19. Argon offers an alternative public health measure that the University can implement as part of a suite of safety protocols.

The Argon intends to activate The Diag and The Grove as the main social centers for students by provoking a spatial light experience.” Additionally, research notably suggests that using Far-UVC lighting to disinfect is promising for outdoor use. Low doses can eliminate 95 percent of airborne H1N1 virus and is likely to achieve the same for COVID-19.6 A study indicated that, unlike traditional UVC, Far-UVC lighting does not damage human tissue. Subsequently, several groups have advocated for Far-UVC light to be deployed in public locations.

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Argon Thus, our proposal – the Argon – would operationalize these proven advances in combating COVID-19 by installing Far-UVC lighting on the University of Michigan campus. The Argon houses the Vessel, the Gateway, the Hub, and the App. Each location utilizes Far-UVC lighting to create a safe outdoor environment for students.

Recycled Plastic Panel Joint Connector

Far-UVC Lighting Seating

Vessel In order to maintain a safe public space, Far-UVC lighting is integrated along the frames of the Argon Vessel, providing an additional protective layer of disinfection between users and the outdoor environment. Since previous studies were done in a controlled environment, the results of FarUVC light used in the Vessel is unknown. Yet, the effectiveness of Far-UVC light at low exposure is a strong candidate to add to the list of public health safety measures. This conceptual proposal imagines students and guests interacting safely within the enclosed space – whether they are doing school work or catching up – and the Far-UVC lighting provides them a sense of security and intimacy.

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Waterproof Cap

Metal Casing

Clear Quartz Sleeve Far-UVC Lighting

Far-UVC Lighting

Screen Far-UVC + Charging Slots Far-UVC For Larger Items

Metal Stand For Stability

Gateway

Hub

To mitigate the spread of viruses, the Argon Gateway acts as a dry shower for users when they pass by the system in the designated areas. Even a small contact with the installed Far-UVC lighting can eliminate 95 percent of airborne viruses.7 Furthermore, the Gateway adapts Far-UVC light onto smaller scales, such as door handles, drinking fountains, or as hand held sanitation devices.

The Argon Hub provides an alternative to mobile charging and sanitation stations. Since the average person touches their phone 3,000 times a day, it is prone to carry germs and viruses.8 Thus, it is highly important to mitigate phone contamination. Further investigation on portable UVC-light devices can offer improved accessibility and help us understand the daily impact of UVClight on a smaller scale.

App The Argon App is essential to the entire Argon system in creating a secondary level of safety through communication and information sharing. The Argon App allows users to reserve, activate, deactivate, and view statuses of its in-use systems. The app responds to user reservations at the Vessel and the Hub, initiates UVC light to activate and deactivate in the reserved space, and lets users view the availability of the modules for users to reserve.

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Outside of Campus

Our proposal is assembled as an arrangement of conceptual interventions to serve the student population at the University. Additionally, Argon’s systems can be implemented in a broader context. Public spaces that are central to student life on campus such as the Diag and the Grove are able to accommodate all interventions, enabling students and the general public to take strolls, charge and sanitize devices, or even meet others briefly in the Vessel. Additional locations, such as grocery stores and academic buildings, can implement the Gateway to enhance the level of safety in spaces such as aisles or hallways that frequently do not allow for six feet of social distancing. Installations of the Argon can be found using the app, which also helps users queue for the use of the Vessel and locations of the Hub and Gateway systems.

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Walking Through the Grove The Argon system on campus serves as a safe environment for students and faculty to interact with one another in close range, in addition to providing a safe passage to and from class. People can use the Argon to charge and clean their personal devices. The Vessel is a place to study, rest, eat, or hang out with friends. Furthermore, people can walk through the Gateway, placing themselves in a safer environment.

Afternoon at the Diag The Argon at the Diag encourages students, staff, and faculty to venture outdoors while feeling safe to be physically close to others. These interventions aim to reduce viral exposure and promote a healthy environment.

Between Classes For many students, staff, and faculty, moving between classes now requires caution to maintain six feet of distance from others. By implementing the Argon within the academic setting, students, faculty, and staff obtain an additional level of protection against infection, making it safer to gather in hallways and classrooms.

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Downtown Window Shopping Implementing the Gateway in storefronts will help to mitigate the risks associated with increased traffic through a space where social distancing is difficult.

Morning Grocery Run Grocery stores are essential in preparation for and stocking of food during this pandemic. However, these stores pose a risk to certain populations who are most vulnerable to contracting the virus from other customers or staff. With the Argon’s Gateway, consumers are provided an extra layer of protection in addition to wearing facial masks, enabling a safe shopping experience.

Catching the Bus Bus stops are frequently populated by vulnerable communities and commuters who do not have access to a personal vehicle. Passengers will be able to gain a layer of safety with the installation of the Argon while waiting for the bus.

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Conclusion The Argon strives to create interactive spatial experiences through various Far-UVC lighting mediums for everyone through the Vessel, the Gateway, the Hub, and the App. More research is needed to fully understand the role of Far-UVC light in the outdoor setting and the mechanisms in these interventions. Because current uses of Far-UVC lighting have only been observed in utilitarian and immediate

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implementations, the Argon offers a sensory experience through a contactless experience. As such, the Argon provokes potential experiential and spatial interest of Far-UVC lighting during and following the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing people to reimagine the public space with new systems that will provide safety and level of security for all communities.

endnotes 1. Buonanno, Manuela, et al. “Far-UVC Light (222 Nm) Efficiently and Safely Inactivates Airborne Human Coronaviruses.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 24 June 2020, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-02067211-2. 2. Gibbons, Lauren. “Michigan Coronavirus Timeline: It’s Been Four Weeks since State’s First Confirmed Case.” MLive. April 7, 2020. https://www.mlive.com/publicinterest/2020/04/michigan-coronavirus-timeline-its-beenfour-weeks-since-states-first-confirmed-case.html. 3. Gorvett, Zaria. “Can You Kill Coronavirus with UV Light?” BBC Future. April 24, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/ future/article/20200327-can-you-kill-coronavirus-withuv-light. 4. Capritto, Amanda. “Does Uv Light Kill Coronavirus? Here’s What the Science Says.” c|net. July 8, 2020. https:// www.cnet.com/health/can-uv-light-protect-you-fromcovid-19/.

5. de Man, P. “Sterilization of disposable face masks by means of standardized dry and steam sterilization processes; an alternative in the fight against mask shortages due to COVID-19.” National Center for Biotechnology Information. April 8, 2020. https://www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7194556/. 6. Gorvett, Zaria. “Can You Kill Coronavirus with UV Light?” BBC Future. April 24, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/ future/article/20200327-can-you-kill-coronavirus-withuv-light.

7. Gorvett, Zaria. “Can You Kill Coronavirus with UV Light?” BBC Future. April 24, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/ future/article/20200327-can-you-kill-coronavirus-withuv-light. 8. Gorvett, Zaria. “Can You Kill Coronavirus with UV Light?” BBC Future. April 24, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/ future/article/20200327-can-you-kill-coronavirus-withuv-light.

about the authors Eugene Kim is in his second year of his Masters of Architecture I Program at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies and Minor in Visual Arts from Boston University. He will work full-time as an Architectural Intern at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in June. Ping Shao is in her second year of her Masters of Architecture Program at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She has completed her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and minors in Chinese and Health, Medicine, and Society from Lehigh University. She’s interested in additive manufacturing technology applications towards sustainable design and the interdisciplinary relations between public health and architecture. Outside of architecture, she likes to cook, eat, relax, and enjoy the little things in life.

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Beyond Mere Density

Smart Growth Strategies for Reducing Car-Reliance JAMES VANSTEEL Master of Public Policy and Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2021

ABSTRACT Planners seeking to improve the environmental sustainability of their communities are often influenced by research and arguments supporting a connection between greater population density and reduced car reliance and lower vehicle miles traveled (VMT). However, some transportation and planning researchers critique such a simple correlation between population density and VMT, and seek to understand the other structural and policy factors that might be obscured by density. This paper reviews competing findings and analyses in transportation and planning research literature, reviewing the evidence supporting or challenging the idea that general residential density itself is the primary driver of VMT reduction when compared across cities and neighborhoods. This paper finds that other characteristics of urban environments promoted by advocates of Smart Growth, such as increased land-use mix, more even population distribution, improved destination accessibility, increased street connectivity, and improved transit access and service have stronger influences on driving behavior than population density itself. Thus, planners, environmental advocates, and policymakers should reconsider pursuing higher population density alone as the most effective strategy for reducing per capita VMT in cities.

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s the world’s population continues to grow and urbanize, one of the central challenges to addressing the wicked problem of climate change has been limiting transportation-related carbon emissions. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), transportationrelated emissions were the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States as of 2018, constituting 28 percent of all emissions that year and eclipsing the amount produced from the generation of electricity.1 Vehicle emissions are a long-standing concern of environmental policy and public health, with problems like concentrated air pollution and smog spurring government regulations and advances in internal combustion engine efficiencies as well as transportation planning’s strong focus on reducing roadway congestion. One path toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector is to reduce the per-mile emissions of automobiles by improving their fuel efficiency or by transitioning to fully electric vehicles. However, despite decades of designing cities and transportation systems around efficient car travel, as well as gradual improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency since the introduction of federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE), vehicle travel in the U.S. is still a substantial source of emissions that contributes to climate change and air pollution.2 There is an urgent need for policymakers and urban planners to do more to mitigate vehicle emissions than merely relieving traffic congestion, improving the efficiency of cars and trucks, or even encouraging vehicle fleet electrification. To this end, a more effective strategy planners and policymakers can pursue to curb transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions is to support interventions that reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled (VMT). If many individuals or households

can reduce their average daily VMT by lowering car usage or traveling by other transportation modes, their collective reductions can create a powerful aggregate effect of lowering emissions across the whole population. Many urban and transportation planners today are moving away from a congestion-reduction paradigm and are instead trying to better integrate land use and transportation in order to improve system efficiencies and reduce the need for driving overall. Some influential transportation research argues that cities with greater population densities tend to have lower per capita VMT than comparable cities with lower population density. Such findings help inform urban planning theory, local government decision-making, and environmental policy-making at federal agencies like the EPA, and they have powerfully shaped the form and function of the built environment. If greater population density drives lower per capita VMT, then planners should think of encouraging higher population density as an important tool in combating climate change. Conversely, if interventions that affect other physical and functional characteristics of cities are more powerful or predictable ways to reduce per capita VMT, even if those characteristics are correlated with density, then those should be decision-makers’ direct focus rather than the promotion of population density itself. This paper focuses specifically on the competing evidence for whether greater population density alone is the primary driver of VMT reduction across otherwise comparable cities and neighborhoods, and discusses whether urban planning strategies like Smart Growth could achieve VMT reductions without necessarily focusing on density. It finds that recent research on this question makes a compelling case for challenging a simple population density-VMT link. In the context of assessing the influence of urban form on per capita VMT, analysis of this research

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supports a reframing of ‘density’ as a correlated or composite description of communities with lower per capita car use rather than an influential variable itself. Instead of focusing on merely increasing population density, Smart Growth development and design advocates can adopt other interventions and strategies that may be more effective at reducing aggregate emissions that harm the environment and human health. These strategies include increasing regional destination accessibility, improving public transit infrastructure and service, increasing street connectivity and

network design to facilitate the safety and efficiency of both vehicle and vehicle-car trips, balancing residential and employment distributions across a region, and better integrating land use types to place residential areas in closer proximity with important daily destinations. .

Environmental Benefits from Population and Development Density Investigating the purported relationship between population density and per capita VMT is a major focus of research in the

Figure 1 – Per Capita Gasoline Use and Urban Density in Global Cities, 1980 Data (Newman and Kenworthy 1989)

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effort to reduce transportation-related emissions. An influential and frequently cited study in this realm was conducted by Jeffrey Kenworthy and Peter Newman, who claim to confirm the existence of such a relationship with empirical data. In one of their iconic charts shown in Figure 1, a comparison of population density with per capita gasoline consumption (a proxy for VMT) across different global cities appears to show an exponential decrease in driving as the person-per-acre density ratio increases. In a succinct passage from Patterns of Automobile Dependence in Cities, Kenworthy and researcher Felix Laube summarize the thrust of their findings: “Higher urban density would thus appear to be a positive factor in minimising automobile dependence and its associated direct economic costs.”3 Kenworthy and Newman’s research over the last 30 years has compared relative per capita vehicle use across cities with different aggregate population densities, measured as metropolitan population divided by total land area, and finds a strong inverse correlation between greater density and lower per capita VMT. In the effort to reduce household reliance on cars (and thereby total emissions), planners arguing for greater development density frequently rely on common-sense intuitions about the relationship between urban form and per capita VMT in addition to influential research like that done by Newman and Kenworthy. It just makes sense that denser, more walkable communities with density-related features like a greater mix of land uses and more robust public transit service would encourage alternatives to driving. Some planners contend that these environments encourage alternatives to driving because destinations are closer to residences and one another on average and therefore more accessible by non-vehicle travel modes.4 An increasingly popular and widely supported approach to planning with these environmental factors and design goals

in mind is called Smart Growth. Smart Growth is a suite of different policies, design considerations, and development strategies that seek to improve social, economic, and environmental outcomes for communities by guiding land use and transportation system integration. Smart Growth is closely related to development paradigms like New Urbanism and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) that encourage synergy between more compact, diverse land-use mixes and quality public transit to achieve improved destination accessibility by noncar travel modes. The EPA is one of Smart Growth’s most notable proponents and emphasizes that Smart Growth policies are based on the theory that land use and transportation are inextricably linked.5 The agency has a number of guiding resources to help define and illustrate the concept of Smart Growth and observes that “developing compactly and investing in public transit and other transportation options make it easier for people to drive less, lowering greenhouse gas emissions.”6 The EPA further argues that Smart Growth and TOD approaches to development achieve social, environmental, and economic benefits by “allowing higherdensity zoning.”7 Indeed, Smart Growth policies explicitly encourage more integration of residential, commercial, and other land uses, which in turn support public transit and non-car travel modes like cycling and walking. This contrasts with the features usually associated with suburban sprawl, including separated land uses, exclusively residential zoning, and consequent auto-dependence. Because it is defined in opposition to autooriented sprawl in the U.S. context, greater density becomes a hallmark element and a salient feature of Smart Growth; greater density is achieved by encouraging both greater new development density and infill of sparsely developed land. In “Growing Cooler,” a 2007 study led by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the authors concluded that

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“compact development can reduce VMT by 20 to 40 percent compared to conventional development,” implying a comparison to non-compact development, or the sprawl indicative of many suburban development patterns in the U.S..8 Todd Litman, founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (VTPI), is a staunch advocate for and prolific researcher of Smart Growth development and its myriad purported economic, environmental, and public health benefits. His work is frequently cited, as his advocacy and VTPI publications routinely include extensive literature reviews and serve as useful collections and analyses of relevant planning and transportation research related to the VMT impacts of different development patterns. Throughout this work, Litman defends the argument that the more compact, mixed-use development associated with Smart Growth reduces per capita VMT when compared with lesscompact development. Though Litman is clear across many of his publications that density alone is not the determining factor in reducing vehicle dependence, he also strongly defends greater density development as an integral part of the basket of Smart Growth strategies that reduce VMT by building off of one another. In “Understanding Smart Growth Savings,” Litman cites the work of researchers Christopher Jones and Daniel Kammen, stating that “within urban regions, motor vehicle travel, fuel consumption and emissions tend to decline when population density exceeds about 3,000 residents per square mile (about 5 residents per acre).”9 The report also cites Sungwon Lee and Bumsoo Lee, whose work examined the effect of urban form across 125 U.S. urban regions, noting that “their analysis indicates that doubling population-weighted density is associated with a 48% reduction in transportation emissions.”10 By marshalling an impressive array of supporting research and concrete figures, Litman’s writing and

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response to critiques of Smart Growth convey a sense that greater density is truly a key factor in reducing VMT. Litman also argues that reaching certain thresholds of density influences per capita VMT in predictable ways. In a draft paper for the 2016 World Conference on Transport Research, Litman cites Newman and Kenworthy, using one of their exponential charts to argue for specific aggregate population density thresholds in the correlation between vehicle ownership and use: “The largest are caused by shifts from low to moderate densities (from under 20 to over 40 residents per hectare), and from high to moderate vehicle ownership rates (over 500 to under 300 vehicles per 1,000 residents).”11 In their 1999 book, Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence, Newman and Kenworthy themselves point to specific metropolitan density thresholds for car

Smart Growth strategies claim to improve environmental sustainability and quality of life in cities through an extensive set of policy interventions, regulatory reforms, and design recommendations, but these goals might not always be achieved when the primary objective is merely increasing population density.” ownership and use, noting that “there appears to be a critical point (about 20 to 30 persons per hectare) below which automobile-dependent land use patterns appear to be an inherent characteristic of the city.”12 It is clear from the research

findings assembled by Litman, which include research from Lee and Lee, Jones and Kamme, and Newman and Kenworthy, that a range of research findings offer support for the idea that density influences reductions in driving. With the combined weight of this research and the EPA’s support for Smart Growth policies (partially on the basis of the same research), Smart Growth advocates have built a seemingly strong case that greater population density is necessary to reduce emissions from the transportation sector and achieve emissionreduction goals.

and they include several distinct but related built-form factors beyond simple population density, including land-use mix, population distribution, accessibility, and street connectivity.13 The relevant factors contained within comprehensive measures like multivariate density can get lost in less nuanced measures of aggregate density, even though these factors increase the explanatory power of models when included in disaggregate studies. Accessibility is one of these functional measures of interconnection that can

VMT and Land Use: More Factors to Consider The frequency with which planners and policy-makers elevate large-scale population density as the supposed driver of VMT reduction raises an important question: when research links density to VMT at the metropolitan area scale, might the correlation be obscuring or omitting factors at more granular scales that are actually driving the observed reductions? Smart Growth strategies claim to improve environmental sustainability and quality of life in cities through an extensive set of policy interventions, regulatory reforms, and design recommendations, but these goals might not always be achieved when the primary objective is merely increasing population density. Indeed, other transportation researchers present powerful critiques of the role of aggregate density in determining per capita VMT. In their article “Testing Newman and Kenworthy’s Theory of Density and Automobile Dependence,” Ewing et al. deconstruct the influence of metropolitanlevel density on car use by testing it against more comprehensive measures of compactness and multivariate density. Compactness and multivariate density can be thought of as broad descriptions of physical and functional interconnection,

Figure 2 – Street Network Accessibility Comparison (Ewing and Cervero 2010)

be included in multivariate density or compactness. The term has undergone a series of evolutions and refinements as a transportation concept, but from an urban planning perspective, it considers the role of proximity in transportation outcomes and centers the relative time and money costs of reaching important destinations in people’s daily lives. In their recent book From Mobility to Accessibility, Jonathan Levine, Joe Grengs, and Louis A. Merlin articulate a definition of accessibility as “an increase in the value of destinations that can be reached for a given investment of time and money.”14 For Levine et al., accessibility differs from mobility as a measurable factor in that it incorporates proximity to valuable destinations in addition to speed. Proximity is related to but distinct from residential density, as it can include network design and the relative locations of various kinds of

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destinations. Street connectivity is another physical and functional variable included in multivariate density. Better interconnected street networks can reduce the time cost and risk of making trips, and they can promote walking and cycling by providing safer, shorter, and more direct paths for pedestrians and other non-car travelers.15 A transportation network with more intersections and direct routes between valuable destinations can also reduce the total distance cars need to drive, reducing average per-trip VMT in a given area. As seen in Figure 2, street connectivity and network design differences that introduce a greater number of intersections across areas with comparable densities can promote both more efficient vehicle access and non-car travel modes. Ewing et al. perform statistical analysis to determine whether aggregate density has the same explanatory power purported by Newman and Kenworthy when compared with these correlated measures. Ewing et al. do still find some negative elasticity between aggregate density and VMT, which they say can be “taken as confirmation of Newman and Kenworthy’s basic theory that density, properly measured, is strongly related to vehicle use, at least at the large scale of urbanized areas.”16 However, the paper also shows that the elasticity of VMT with respect to general population density is significantly lower when controlling for confounding factors such as the distribution of population and employment in ‘disaggregate’ studies, or studies that look at household-level data in relation to the immediate built environment.17 Notably, VMT shows a stronger negative elasticity with regional destination accessibility than with weighted-average density in disaggregate studies, but more localized destination accessibility can be obscured when analysis is performed at a regional scale.18 Like Litman, Ewing et al. also refer to Lee and Lee’s findings, but they do so to ground

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an opposing argument regarding the effects of population density on per capita VMT. They point out that Lee and Lee’s analysis measured the VMT elasticity of populationweighted density rather than aggregate population density for 125 urbanized areas. Population-weighted density is the weighted mean of population density measures across a city’s census block groups, a more granular measure that better aligns with the actual built form that households experience in their own neighborhoods.19 For Ewing et al., the results of that analysis were evidence that “the distribution of population and employment might be more important than overall density at the regional level.”20 Rather than metropolitan-scale population density, Lee and Lee’s analysis points toward the stronger relative effect of a more even geographic distribution of the population within a given urban area on reducing per capita VMT. Lee and Lee are careful to acknowledge that their analysis does not capture some of the specifics of the built form at smaller scales: “A notable limitation of the present analysis is that our urban form measures focus only on the macro spatial structure at the urbanized area level, leaving out other urban form dimensions such as land use mix and street connectivity.”21 Lee and Lee go further, emphasizing that “population density is believed to function as a catchall variable for compact urban form, which may also include land use mix and alternative urban design elements.”22 Though their population-weighted methodology observed much greater effects on VMT than aggregate density, Lee and Lee still use a measure of population density at the scale of the whole urban area, which they suggest could fail to capture important contributions from factors like physical layout or more integrated uses of land.23 Ewing also co-authored with Robert Cervero a highly cited 2010 review of transportation research papers, “Travel and the Built Environment: A Meta-analysis,”

which synthesized a broad assessment of research about the effects of land use on transportation. Their findings are used by both advocates and critics of greater density in transportation and planning policy to make divergent arguments, and the report makes a number of observations relevant to this discussion. Ewing and Cervero found that regional destination accessibility is the most important factor in determining per capita VMT, followed by network design. Both destination accessibility and network design were found to be more correlated with VMT in Ewing et al.’s review than residential density. In the abstract, they note their surprising finding: “We find population and job densities to be only weakly associated with travel behavior once these other variables are controlled.”24 Their findings indicate the strong likelihood that regional accessibility and street connectivity, while often correlated with population density, are distinct factors that have more influential effects on VMT. A hypothetical example distinguishing these factors might be a neighborhood with densely populated high-rise residential towers that doesn’t allow for other related land uses or fails to provide an accessible transportation network connecting these towers to one another and the broader region. Though very dense, such an area might exhibit poor street connectivity and network design by failing to provide safe traversable sidewalks and bike lanes for pedestrians and cyclists, or by incorporating no-exit cul-de-sac entrances to each respective tower rather than interconnected streets with many entrances and exits. Such towers might have poor regional accessibility if they are located in a relatively isolated area far from education and employment centers, shopping, and basic services or are not well-integrated with the surrounding public transit system. Being residential only rather than incorporating a greater mix of land uses, these hypothetical towers would likely require vehicle ownership and use for every single trip their

residents make — far from a successful strategy for reducing per capita VMT. Ewing and Cervero note that VMT is “primarily a function of regional accessibility,” and they go further in rebutting pure density advocates with a similar illustrative hypothetical: “This means that dense, mixed-use developments in the middle of nowhere may offer only modest regional travel benefits.”25 Furthermore, both Newman and Kenworthy’s comparison of global cities and Lee and Lee’s analysis of populationweighted density referred to residential density, or the number of people with a primary residence in a given area. But Ewing and Cervero’s meta-analysis interestingly calls attention to the fact that, for walking and transit, employment densities are “as important as and are possibly more important than population densities at origins,” and that “the preoccupation of the transit-oriented design literature with residential density and neighborhood design may be misguided.”26 This analysis shows that residential density per se may not be a strong driver of per capita VMT, and other changes to the built environment and development patterns may have a more powerful and direct influence on the reduction of per capita driving.

Shifting the Focus of Driving Reduction Away from General Population Density Ewing and Cervero address the uncertain role of aggregate density directly in their meta-analysis, going further to consider the transportation impacts of other factors co-varying with density, such as centrality, transit service, street connectivity, and other urban form features. They highlight this line of critique in the work of other transportation researchers, such as the research of Susan Handy from her 1992

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bibliography: “‘Many studies focus on density, but is it density that matters? No, probably not’... The impact of density per se may be limited to whatever disutility attaches to automobile ownership at high densities because of traffic congestion and limited parking.”27 Considering that Ewing co-authored the ULI report cited by the EPA as support for compact development through Smart Growth, it is interesting that Ewing and Cervero have not found density to be a powerful influence on VMT. However, the ULI report makes an important distinction and clarification that may point toward a different perspective: “The term ‘compact development’ does not imply high-rise or even uniformly high density, but rather higher average ‘blended’ densities. Compact development also features a mix of land uses, development of strong population and employment centers, interconnection of streets, and the design of structures and spaces at a human scale.”28 While a threshold level of compactness may be necessary to facilitate walking and biking, many people still choose to drive for a significant number of daily trips even in substantially denser environments than the conventional single-family detached residential pattern. Such a disconnect indicates that land-use mix, transit service, destination accessibility, and physical design factors that are often correlated with residential density may actually be animating factors in an observed shift away from car reliance rather than the increased density itself. Similarly, in a Planetizen blog post from 2019, Litman himself acknowledges the limits of density in driving reduction in VMT: “By itself, increasing density in a particular area, without increasing land use mix, connectivity, walkability, transit service quality or parking management, will provide little vehicle travel reduction,” highlighting the necessity of the other urban form elements that go along with Smart Growth

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in cumulatively achieving those effects.29 In another report where Litman responds to Smart Growth criticism from Eric Fruits’ 2011 literature review of compact development, he frames this dilemma more frankly: “If the question is defined narrowly, ‘Does density significantly reduce VMT?’ the answer may seem negative. However, if the question is defined more broadly, ‘Can integrated Smart Growth policies make a significant and cost-effective contribution toward emission reductions, considering all benefits and costs?’ the answer is generally affirmative.”30 Hence, even defenders of more compact Smart Growth and New Urbanist land-use paradigms suggest that density itself is not the sole causal factor in their success with reducing car dependence. Rather, compact development in these strategies correlates with and complements many policy changes that improve walkability and promote transit operations; together they lead to lower per capita VMT (and thus lower aggregate VMT). In fact, when planners and policy-makers are focused on the specific challenge of reducing per capita VMT through different approaches to land use and transportation integration, it seems that they need not consider density as an independent causal variable at all. Given that the research put forth by Ewing

While researchers are still debating the nuances and implications of different findings, the research and analyses presented above do effectively undermine the simplistic notion that aggregate urban density alone is determinative of per capita VMT.”

et al. and the separate meta-analysis by Ewing and Cervero both undermine the influence of aggregate density in reducing VMT, and Litman himself acknowledges that density alone does not explain reduced VMT, where does that leave density? This is far from a settled matter. Planners and researchers are passionately litigating this issue today – a particularly interesting exchange can be seen in the comments section of the September 2019 Planetizen blog post, “Three Studies That Show Density Doesn’t Determine Car Travel,” by Fanis Grammenos, where Newman himself responds to the piece’s criticisms of his and Kenworthy’s work. One of Newman’s responses includes a quote from Newman and Kenworthy’s 2015 book The End of Automobile Dependence, recapitulating: “‘the two most significant indicators of car use are urban density and transit service levels, with a minor role played by road length per capita’.”31 Litman also enters the fray, disputing Grammenos’s conclusions at length, and pointing toward his own Planetizen blog post from October 2019.32 While researchers are still debating the nuances and implications of different findings, the research and analyses presented above do effectively undermine the simplistic notion that aggregate urban density alone is determinative of per capita VMT. Local governments, developers, urban planners, and environmental policymakers like the EPA should reconsider any emissions-reduction strategies that see simple increases in population density as an effective strategy for lessening impacts from the transportation sector on climate change and public health.

Conclusion and Recommendations This paper assesses claims that increasing population density alone in an urban area is an effective tool for reducing per capita VMT and improving the environmental

sustainability of communities. Under those circumstances, Smart Growth land-use and transportation paradigms would compare favorably to suburban sprawl when considering transportation emissions largely because of their greater population density. However, evidence and analysis seem, rather, to show that other characteristics of cities related to but distinct from density are more influential in reducing VMT. Aggregate density and compactness in cities can more accurately be thought of as composite or emergent descriptions that correlate with other factors of urban and regional areas with lower per capita VMT. Measures of largescale density in an urban area capture a set of other relevant urban form factors, such as street connectivity, regional accessibility, and mixed land use, that more directly affect per capita VMT, rather than a single independent variable causally influencing driving behaviors. Thus, communities, urban planners, and environmental policy-makers concerned with reducing per capita greenhouse gas emissions should pursue a suite of Smart Growth development strategies in concert with one another without centering residential density as an end goal that produces its own environmental benefits. Planning principles and design interventions that communities can focus on instead of increasing population density may include planning for transportation networks and street design that encourage walking and cycling by improving safety through wide and well-maintained, wide sidewalks, protected lanes, and better signage and lighting, as well as planning for communitywide street connectivity with a greater density of intersections to reduce travel distances. Planners should also focus on connecting pedestrian and cycling paths and networks with major employment and service destinations as well as transit connection points to smooth transitions between travel modes and increase the number of valuable destinations people can

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reach in a day. Land use and transportation planning should be comprehensively linked, integrating transit facilities and service considerations into both new and infill development and promoting TOD to limit the need for new infrastructure and promote transit ridership. Land use types should be better integrated with one another at more granular scales, promoting a mix of land uses across communities rather than exclusively residential or commercial zoning for large areas. This requires considering

the relative distribution and balance of employment centers and important community institutions like schools, healthcare facilities, and grocery stores with residential areas in a community and region.33 When implemented together, these applications of Smart Growth strategies and principles can help reduce per capita VMT in communities, helping to mitigate climate change by reducing transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions while improving accessibility and safety for residents.

about the author James is pursuing a dual degree program in Public Policy and Urban and Regional Planning. He graduated from Michigan State University in 2015 with degrees in Political Theory and English and worked for three years at the Michigan Public Service Commission as an energy market analyst prior to coming to the University of Michigan. He grew up in Michigan and loves exploring the state’s many beautiful parks.

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endnotes

18. Ewing et al., “Testing Theory of Density,” 177-178.

1. “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks.” Environmental Protection Agency, 2020, September 11.

19. Lee, Sungwon, Bumsoo Lee. “The influence of urban form on GHG emissions in the U.S. household sector.” Energy Policy, Volume 68 (2014), 539

2. “Highlights of the Automotive Trends Report.” EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, January 6, 2021.

20. Ewing et al., “Testing Theory of Density,” 13. 21. Ewing et al., “Testing Theory of Density,” 547.

3. Jeffrey R. Kenworthy & Felix B. Laube. “Patterns of automobile dependence in cities: an international overview of key physical and economic dimensions with some implications for urban policy.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 33(7) (1999): 719. 4. Todd Litman, “Understanding Smart Growth Savings: Evaluating Economic Savings and Benefits of Compact Development,” 2020, Report, Victoria Transport Policy Institute. https://www.vtpi.org/sg_save.pdf, 14-15.

22. Lee and Lee, “Influence of urban form,” 546. 23. Ewing et al., “Testing Theory of Density,” 543. 24. Ewing, Reid, Robert Cervero. “Travel and the Built Environment: A Synthesis,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 76:3 (2010), Abstract. 25. Ewing and Cervero, “Travel and Built Environment,” 92.

5. Smart Growth and Transportation. EPA. (2021).

26. Ewing and Cervero, “Travel and Built Environment,” 92.

6. Smart Growth. EPA. (2020, December 09).

27. Ewing and Cervero, “Travel and Built Environment,” 92 and 100.

7. EPA, “Smart Growth.” 28. Ewing et al., “Growing Cooler,” 11. 8. Ewing et al., “Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change,” Report, Chicago, IL: Urban Land Institute, (2007). 9. Litman, “Understanding Smart Growth Savings,” 26.

29. Litman, Todd, “Smart Growth and Vehicle Travel Reductions,” October 8, 2019, Planetizen. 30. Litman, Todd, “Evaluating Criticism of Smart Growth,” Report, Victoria Transport Policy Institute (2017), 80.

10. Litman, “Understanding Smart Growth Savings,” 32. 11. Litman, Todd, “Determining Optimal Urban Expansion, Population and Vehicle Density, and Housing Types for Rapidly Growing Cities (Working paper),” 2017, Elsevier, 12. Newman, P., Kenworthy, J. R. (1999). Sustainability and cities: overcoming automobile dependence. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. From https://catalog.hathitrust.org/ Record/004022349, 100.

31. Grammenos, Fannis. “Three Studies That Show Density Doesn’t Determine Car Travel,” Planetizen, 2019, Comments. 32. Grammenos, “Three Studies Density Travel,” Comments. 33. Litman, Todd, “Comprehensive evaluation of energy conservation and emission reduction policies,” Transportation research (2013).

13. Ewing et al., “Testing Newman and Kenworthy’s Theory of Density and Automobile Dependence.” Journal of Planning Education and Research; 38(2) (2017), 167. 14. Levine et al., From Mobility to Accessibility: Transforming Urban Transportation and Land-Use Planning. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press (2019), 2. 15. “Estimated Intersection Density of Walkable Roads,” Environmental Protection Agency, Fact Sheet, August 2015, EnviroAtlas. 16. Ewing et al., “Testing Theory of Density,” 176. 17. Ewing et al., “Testing Theory of Density,” 178-179.

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Racism by Design:

Cleveland Ohio’s Continuing History with Racial Segregation ADELINE STEFFEN Master of Design Science 2021

ABSTRACT Racism itself was declared a public health crisis in the city of Cleveland and the surrounding Cuyahoga County in June 2020. The effects of racist violence were a catalyst for the recognition of racism as a public health crisis, and the official documents discuss disparities by race as remnants of 400 years of racism in America. This essay aims to deepen the discussion of how racism became entrenched into the Cleveland cityscape, examining history through a public health and urban planning lens. Racially restrictive covenants, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps, and severe income segregation engineered structures that are detrimental to the well-being and quality of life for Black Clevelanders through the intentional deprivation of resources. This analysis is motivated by the need to fully address the intentionality of racial disparities through the inherited mechanisms of distributing health, wealth, and power according to white supremacist norms. This analysis is also being completed in view of the disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black lives in Cleveland and the U.S. more broadly. I offer different pathways to address the income and spatial segregation in Cleveland, arguing that reparations from the wealthy suburbs to the city center could offer economic mobility and restoration while strategically avoiding continued structural violence enacted through gentrification and displacement. Perhaps most importantly, I emphasize the necessity of a community-led design process for racial healing: the residents most impacted by structural racism must be at the forefront of envisioning and planning a just city.

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Introduction

n 2015, a real estate broker named James Wise wrote a blog post on a site called BiggerPockets revealing a guide for real estate investors trying to make a big buck in Cleveland, Ohio. The writer promotes his color-coded map that grades areas in Cleveland for investment-potential as “an educational document created based solely upon risk factors determined by income, criminal activity, and property damage.”1 Wise’s map aligns hauntingly with the racially segregating redlining maps of the 1900s. He asserts that his guide was not intentionally race-based, and the purpose of this paper is not to argue otherwise. He asserts that his guide was not intentionally race-based and the purpose of this paper is not to argue otherwise. However, it does lead to the question of how economic and community-health factors became normalized stand-ins for direct racial categorization. The economic justification of investment security rings alarm bells; it is not by coincidence that the Federal Housing Administration and Home Owners’ Loan Corporation used a similar narrative to formalize racial segregation in America through mechanisms including redlining and zoning. When impacts of racist policy – like violence, poor housing quality, and low income levels – are ahistorically discussed, they are normalized and public entities fail to recognize their responsibility in administering harm. There is a direct correlation between a lack of awareness of historical racism and the perpetuation of it; the racist structures that underpin American society continue to create racial disparity by design. Five years later, in June 2020, racism was declared a public health crisis in Cleveland and the surrounding Cuyahoga County.2 The resolutions – which came in the midst of nationwide protests for the Black Lives Matter movement – acknowledge slavery, Jim Crow laws, and “structural/systemic racism, [which] creates a disparity between

Black and white people in nearly all aspects of people’s lives.”3 The impacts of racist policy in Cleveland are life and death: there is a six-year life expectancy difference between Black and white Cuyahoga County residents.4 What is happening in Cleveland, and in America more broadly, is structural violence; racism is killing people by systematically depriving them of the basic resources necessary to support the mental, physical, and social health needs of individuals.5 The documents declare that further action will be taken in the form of working groups to research and recommend paths forward. Thus far, it is difficult to tell how this initiative will or will not succeed in addressing racism in Cleveland. The declarations came amid national protests against police violence and the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on people of color. Though the reports address disparities in access and burden caused by racism, they do not as clearly address how or why racial inequalities became embedded into the landscape of greater Cleveland. The City and County documents name institutional racism specifically as a driver for disparities; they do not name the people, organizations, systems, and structures that created direct and covert racist policies that designed racism into the city itself. The lack of historical responsibility taken for the embedded injustice in Cleveland inspires the following analysis, through which I examine the spatial segregation mechanisms and manifestations of racism through both historical and present-day lenses. I discuss the racially disproportionate burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic that compound on the deprivation of resources from segregation. Building from a comprehensive analysis of spatial segregation, I argue that the mechanisms that exacerbate, systematize, and normalize structural violence can inform where critical interventions and reparations are necessary to create a just and equitable city.

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Cleveland’s History of Segregation The harm and pain caused by racist policy must be understood in context with how this present reality evolved in order to design transformative change that prevents America’s violent history from repeating itself. Cleveland is situated on the shores of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes; the ability to transport locally manufactured goods by water and rail made Cleveland into an iron powerhouse. By 1900, Cleveland ranked fifth nationally for the manufacturing of iron and steel.6 Economic opportunities in the industry attracted migrants from the South fleeing Jim Crow laws that segregated land, public spaces, education, voting, and work.7 The population of Black Clevelanders increased dramatically, from 8,500 people in 1910 to 72,000 people in 1930.8 By 2018, almost 50 percent of the city’s population was Black. Almost twothirds of Black Cuyahoga residents today live in neighborhoods that were redlined in the 20th century as a result of the New Deal, while only 27 percent of white Cuyahoga residents live in those neighborhoods.9 The Cleveland cityscape is still racially segregated; examining the history of racist housing policy in Cleveland and the U.S. can explain why segregation is a manifestation of intentional structural violence. The history of racial segregation in Cleveland is similar to the story of cities across the U.S. that were formally and systematically segregated as antiBlackness remained embedded in society after the abolition of formal slavery. At the turn of the 20th century, property owners and neighborhood associations across the country began to utilize racially restrictive covenants to prohibit marginalized racial groups, especially Black households, from inhabiting particular spaces, including more than half of the subdivisions constructed prior to 1948.10 Racially restrictive

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covenants were property contracts that prevented the sale, lease, or renting of homes to people of color, usually Black individuals; people who violated the contract were liable to be sued.11 The National Association of Real Estate Boards published pamphlets explicitly championing racially restrictive covenants, using racist tropes to support their claim that heterogeneous neighborhoods lowered home values.12 In post-WWII America, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced two federal programs into the already racialized housing market as part of the New Deal: the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Prior to Roosevelt’s housing interventions, a down payment on a house in the U.S. was typically 50 percent of the mortgage, and available loans were short term, making homeownership unachievable for those outside the privileged groups.13 The introduction of the FHA increased the availability of long-term loans and lowered interest rates across the country.14 This financial assistance was unavailable to Black people.15 The work of the FHA and HOLC functioned historically to create a racist housing safety-net in the U.S Although the 1948 Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer deemed racial covenants unenforceable, the systemic practice of segregation in neighborhoods was already codified through redlining: the real estate investment grading practice created by the HOLC in 1935.16 The HOLC, concerned with mortgage debt, assistance, and relief, was asked by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to create maps for 239 U.S. cities that delineated which areas were financially safe places for real-estate investment.17 Though disguised as an effort to provide banks with recommendations for areas that were financially secure for lending, the maps were coded based on racial and ethnic composition, falsely equating the presence of Black households with risky financial investment. As Ta-Nehisi Coates

Redlining Map of Cleveland. “Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, Home Loan Security Map (“Redlining” Map) of Cleveland, 1933,” HIST 1952, accessed February 23, 2021, https://hist1952.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/show/160.

Households at Age 35 Income Levels of Cleveland Jones & Sonya R. Porter, 2018. “The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility,” Working Papers 18-42, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.

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Adeline Steffen, 2021, Tremont, Ohio, looking at the industrial cityscape.

puts it, the redlining maps “destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived.”18 Red- and yellow-coded areas indicated where people of color and of lower socio-economic status were concentrated by previous segregation policies.19 The maps were quite impactful; banks refused loans to people who lived in red neighborhoods and would only back yellow-coded neighborhoods 15 percent, compared to up to 80 percent in other neighborhoods.20 Black people and other residents of these neighborhoods were essentially cut off from federal backing for their home loans, instigating the term redlining. This deliberately racist practice was enacted for the purpose of wealth and resource hoarding; white families began building generational wealth, and Black families were prevented from doing the same. While this was certainly a formulaic approach, other systematic practices implemented by cities and federally increased segregation and degraded the health of the neighborhoods they designated for Black families. White fear has historically embedded disparity into Cleveland by acting through people in positions of power.21 Such mechanisms can seem covertly racist; single-family use zoning laws, urban renewal practices, highway construction, and strategic municipal disinvestment have all exacerbated negative health outcomes and the exclusion of Black individuals from generational wealth.22 58 percent of land in Cuyahoga County is zoned for single-

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family homes.23 This practice perpetuates racial segregation through the inextricable constructions of race and income inequality in the U.S.; because it is less expensive in the short term to rent an apartment than to own a single-family home, policies barring multi-family homes operate covertly to exclude Black families due to the nature of the racialized economy in the U.S. Singlefamily zoning abuses the income disparities due to historical and structural racism and uses them to re-entrench segregation and compound the existing racial wealth gap.24 The wealth hoarding enacted and maintained through both overt and covert segregative practices scaffold structural racism into the daily lives of Black Clevelanders by making racism invisible. Throughout history, racist policy practices created racial disparities so deep that they persist in the silence of neoliberal decision making that does not contend with the normalization of structural violence.25

Continuing Mechanisms of Segregation and the Social Determinants of Health The social determinants of health can locate the presently segregated environment as a structure of systematic economic racism that influences the overall health of Black Clevelanders. These factors illustrate the connection of social structures and psychosocial conditions to health outcomes

The wealth hoarding enacted and maintained through both overt and covert segregative practices scaffold structural racism into the daily lives of Black Clevelanders by making racism invisible.” on both individual and community levels.26 Segregation of residence has a large influence on educational and employment opportunities, poverty rates, neighborhood and housing quality, environmental pollution exposure, municipal services, higher crime rates, and lack of adequate health care, to name a few.27 Negative outcomes in these areas are symptoms of housing segregation and feed into the cycle that compounds the impacts of racism generationally.28 Residents in historically redlined neighborhoods in Cleveland are disproportionately composed of people of color and people of lower socioeconomic status.29 hese residents are affected by shorter life expectancy and higher rates of poverty, asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, mental health problems, obesity, and pulmonary disease compared to residents in historically white neighborhoods.30 The economic impacts of racist segregation negatively influence the social environments within resourcedeprived neighborhoods, withholding from Black Clevelanders the opportunity to thrive. The County’s declaration of racism as a public health crisis in Cleveland explicitly describes the disparities of income: Black Clevelanders are 1.7 times more likely to be in poverty than white people, and the median income for white people in Cleveland is 2.1 times higher than the median income for Black people living in the metropolitan

area.31 The report, however, does not as thoroughly discuss the connection between income gaps by race and segregating practices, which is an important thread connecting the evident negative health outcomes to historical and present-day racist policy in Cleveland’s cityscape. Wealth hoarding created neighborhoods that concentrate poverty and a dearth of resources, which influences clinical, environmental, and behavioral factors and significantly affects overall health of inhabitants.32 Maps of income data by neighborhood and census tract show a concentration of low-income households in the city resembling the red- and yellowlined neighborhoods from the HOLC maps, connecting racial income gaps directly to Cleveland’s redlining history.33 The same collection of data shows that the average annual household incomes of neighborhoods located outside the City boundary are significantly higher than even the average of the City itself. For example, the suburb of Westlake’s median household annual income was $81,000 in 2018, 205 percent greater than the City of Cleveland’s median of $26,600; despite the stark income difference, Westlake is ranked only 21st among highest income levels in the Cleveland area.34 This extreme decentralization of income is a present-day imprint of housing discrimination practices known as income segregation, where low-income families are more likely to live in neighborhoods with lower average incomes.35 Black homes are also routinely appraised for lower than perceived-white homes of the same quality, which further exacerbates and continues to embed racial income segregation in American society.36 Income segregation is a symptom of racial segregation, a catalyst for negative health outcomes, and a mechanism that maintains inequality by normalizing it through meritocratic narratives. Income disparities instituted through centuries of racist policies create significant

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Income segregation is a symptom of racial segregation, a catalyst for negative health outcomes, and a mechanism that maintains inequality by normalizing it through meritocratic narratives.”

and fast-food restaurants.43 In 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture linked urban areas of limited food access to the prevalence of environmental characteristics of racial segregation and income inequality in these regions.44 50 percent of all Cleveland residents are living in a food desert, 60 percent of whom are people of color.45 These environmental aspects of segregation create further burdens on the social infrastructure within racially segregated communities.

differences in the ability to access proper medical treatments. People living in low-income neighborhoods are likely to experience a lack of health insurance coverage and regular medical care, more delays in obtaining medical care, and a higher likelihood of preventable negative health outcomes like morbidity, hospitalization, and mortality.37 In Cleveland, a particular concern resulting from inequitable clinical access is the infant mortality rate, historically among the highest in the country.38 Black babies are 3.5 times more likely to die than white babies, a painful statistic that is linked to access to medical care and racism in the medical field.39 Access to nutritious food, shelter, physical activity, and medical services are environmental and behavioral factors that affect the likelihood of infant mortality.40 Access to medical care is further limited by anti-Black racism in healthcare itself, exacerbating the aforementioned spatial access inequalities.41

Income and resource segregation negatively influence the educational and employment opportunities for residents in low-income communities, particularly with respect to the increasing reliance on digital infrastructure. In Cuyahoga County, 24.9 percent of households total and 51.8 percent of those making less than $20,000 annually lack internet access of any kind.46 AT&T systematically enacted digital redlining in Cleveland by neglecting to upgrade the fiber networks in low-income neighborhoods; the outdated, low-speed networks made residents ineligible for discounted rates through AT&T’s Access program, which required a threshold internet speed that their own infrastructure did not allow.47 This systematic digital exclusion enacted through the normalization of racist economic deprivation has left Cleveland residents with a lack of access to important resources like health information, government institutions, educational tools, job training, job searches, and business opportunities, and it further reduces their ability to participate in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.48

Segregative housing practices concentrated marginalized people into certain areas of the City; continual disinvestment turned these neighborhoods into unhealthy physical environments that greatly increase the likelihood of chronic disease.42 A lack of a sense of safety in your neighborhood can be directly tied back to the unlikelihood of exercise, and poorer neighborhoods tend to have a higher density of tobacco retailers

Racist policy making and systematic economic marginalization have continued to deeply impact Black Clevelanders by operating in the silence of “colorblind” economic narratives. Connecting the intersections of income and race to issues like infant mortality, access to affordable and nutritious food, and digital redlining helps bring this history into present-day focus. The influences of segregation,

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systemic racism, and the exacerbation of burdens throughout the COVID-19 pandemic go far beyond the examples detailed here, and the necessary policies to restore these communities will need to be equally farreaching.

Segregation’s Impact on Covid-19 This is a critical time to examine the institution of racism and white supremacy as mechanized through segregation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Health implications due to social inequality produced by racial segregation are evident in the high percentage of positive COVID-19 cases among Black Cuyahoga County residents. Data shows that COVID-19 more negatively impacts those with the underlying health risks prevalent among residents of historically redlined neighborhoods.49 Black Cuyahoga residents are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in the rate of positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. While representing only 31.5 percent of the Cuyahoga population, Black residents made up 41.6 percent of positive cases, 57.4 percent of hospitalizations, and 34.7 percent of deaths as of October 1, 2020.50 Generations of deliberate social exclusion from essential resources are reflected in the disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black communities in America.51 The shift towards telehealth medicine in response to COVID-19 exacerbates existing racial disparities in healthcare access due to digital redlining. People living in historically under-resourced neighborhoods additionally face higher exposure to the COVID-19 virus through overcrowded living spaces, high-risk essential work, and increased dependency on social networks for child and elderly care.52 Housing instability nationally during the pandemic’s economic impacts has also disproportionately impacted people of color and residents of underresourced communities.53 The current racial

disparities in the vaccine roll-out compound the existing disparities in medical care access; Ohio’s choice to prioritize elderly populations seems to displace awareness of and exacerbate the shorter life expectancy that Black Ohioans experience due to institutional racism and such harmful prioritizations.54

Racist policy making and systematic economic marginalization have continued to deeply impact Black Clevelanders by operating in the silence of “colorblind” economic narratives.”

The ways in which COVID-19 impacts the livelihood of people in disadvantaged communities within Cleveland deserves a depth of research outside the scope of this paper. While the pandemic still continues, there is opportunity to strategically address the disparities in the vaccine roll-out, but the harm already done must be reckoned with. The COVID-19 data that quantifies racial health disparities is unable to capture the trauma arising from the unjust distribution of burden on people of color during this time; their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic reflect and amplify underlying structural injustices that have yet to be addressed.

Recommendations: Understanding History to Plan The Future Racism and anti-Blackness are deployed and embedded in historical, interpersonal, organizational, institutional, and structural designs. The City and County declarations

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address the disparities in life and livelihood, which is a significant step in acknowledging the evidence of injustice and moving towards redress of the centuries of pain embedded in the Cleveland landscape. However, the mechanisms of violence that were enacted with the institution of slavery have not yet been disrupted.55

and safety of housing have a tremendous impact on the health of individuals. All of these factors are deeply related to spatial segregation, income segregation, and the deprivation of resources. All of these factors are deeply related to spatial segregation, income segregation, and the deprivation of resources.

The following recommendations support structural redress for the harms inflicted upon residents in Cleveland due to normalized and systematic historical and current racism. Decision-making is a power that is hoarded through systems of white supremacy; it is crucial that any policy, community, or design plans be developed with principles of design justice.56 Those impacted by institutional racism in Cleveland must be part of, central to, and at the forefront of envisioning and building change.57 Mechanisms that center the economy over human dignity, like gentrification, will perpetuate the very system of injustice that Cleveland has taken a stand against.

Those impacted by institutional racism in Cleveland must be part of, central to, and at the forefront of envisioning and building change. Mechanisms that center the economy over human dignity, like gentrification, will perpetuate the very system of injustice that Cleveland has taken a stand against.”

Efforts to mitigate the symptoms of segregation and institutional racism without addressing the current racialized distribution of the ability to exercise power will fail to create both short- and long-term change. An approach to address racism and the mechanisms of structural violence must unearth and contend with the historically oppressive foundation of institutions in the U.S. A just and healthy Cleveland is possible with the strategic redesign and abolition of mechanisms that support and carry out structural violence. I recommend three strategies that work to both mitigate the symptoms and address the problem of racism itself.

Redfining Housing Codes Housing is a salient manifestation of structural violence on the individual and community level. In addition to homeownership, the stability, quality,

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Many people in Cleveland struggle with failing infrastructure and unhealthy homes due to housing policies that kept wealth in the suburbs. A comprehensive policy solution to restore quality housing in these communities would redefine housing quality codes and enforcement policies.58 Current housing codes generally address only a subset of conditions that affect housing quality and do not address substantial structural remediation. These codes should be updated to address health-impacting factors like moisture, ventilation, mold, and exposure to toxins, as well as privacy, noise, and lighting.59 A critical intersecting conversation is about the enforcement of these codes and the inequity of funding options due to income segregation. A significant source of funding for housing repair, the Ohio Housing Trust Fund, is a state-wide resource dedicated to helping

low-income Ohio residents find or repair affordable homes.60 Inadequate funding and budget cuts for the Ohio Housing Trust have been deteriorating the housing safety net in Ohio for decades, leaving low-income residents with low-quality housing and a lack of resources to repair household damages.61 Without providing funding, housing code reform will fail to address the harms of historical racism, due to a lack of recognition of racial income segregation that is entwined with and normalized through neoliberal economic policy. In 2019, an article published in Vice described a Cleveland resident facing jail time due to unresolved housing code violations that she could not afford to mend.62 Policies should be reformed to consider race and ethnicity in their support of healthy homes and provide more resources so residents can afford the repairs they need to stay in their homes. The development of a comprehensive housing code plan that includes investment for low-income residents could significantly improve the overall health of residents, while a plan that lacks this type of funding has the potential to inflict more harm on low-income residents, penalizing them for the systemic disinvestment in their communities.63

Anti-Racist Education for Greater Cleveland The silence that I have implicated in the perpetuation and normalization of racist policy exists when and where racism itself is not confronted. Classrooms offer space to address the local and national historical narratives of structural violence. Darnell Moore emphasizes the importance to first understand, construct, and engage in public dialogue addressing the institutions of racism, anti-Blackness, and classism in order to build the foundation for a just city

that does not perpetuate further violence on people of color.64 To address racism as a public health crisis, more people need to understand why an equitable society is necessary and not yet achieved; spreading awareness of the lasting impression of racial segregation is an important aspect of that.65 To fully understand the harm and injustice of segregation and the modern covert forms of racism, students in thriving and well-resourced communities, such as those in the suburbs of Cleveland, need to be educated about structural violence and sites of resistance in disenfranchised communities. Schools in northeast Ohio should examine and design their core curriculum to incorporate teachings of human rights, history, and social memory, a historical concept that integrates social identity with historical remembering. Social memory specifically addresses how knowledge production and historical narratives are gatekeeping tools mechanized by white supremacy and colonialism.66 Cleveland educators and policymakers should examine the efforts undertaken in Virginia to redesign history curriculum, incorporating diverse perspectives and local history, as well as the #DiversifyOurNarrative movement organized by U.S. high school and college students.67 Both of these sources of wisdom offer prospective directions for Cleveland schools to implement an antiracist curriculum for all schools in Greater Cleveland. Education redesign is a way to confront and address racism in the foundation of today’s world, while cultivating anti-racist values in the coming generations of leaders, community members, and voters. Systems to mitigate and invest in greater equality for people of color have been attempted, but they failed to address the racism underlying society that allows these harms to continue.68 Education policy and curriculum can also be forms of structural

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violence in terms of who has access to quality education, who is able to teach, who is getting in trouble or falling behind, and what is being taught inside classrooms.69 Any racial disparity among students and graduates is an indication of anti-Blackness in education policy and discourse.70 Education policy regarding school funding and student success needs to be thoroughly examined and redesigned. Remnants of eugenicist educational policy from the 20th century still function to determine the definition of the ideal student.71 A deep review of Ohio’s policy must be conducted to point out policy that is in urgent need of redesign. Nationally, standardized testing, which informs funding and choice programs for schools, impacts under-resourced districts the most, exacerbating racial and economic segregation in schools.72 In July 2020 the Ohio State Board of Education published a document that acknowledged many of the racist mechanisms within public education, but its impact is limited by policy that allows local districts to define their own curriculum.73 Local districts are encouraged to instigate internal change, but education funding that is still tied to property tax and standardized testing will punish schools and students that do not have the resources to adequately prepare students for those tests.74 The path towards educational reform and policy redesign requires public dialogue to achieve community-wide understanding of historical and present-day mechanisms that reproduce inequality and racial segregation.

Reparations and Responsibility Addressing the structures of injustice in Cleveland requires facing history, unearthing the normalization of antiBlackness through racist economic policy, and taking responsibility. Wealth-hoarding suburbs, as well as municipal governments that sanctioned direct and covert segregational policies, carry inherited

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responsibilities for the disparities that exist, and therefore an obligation to balance the scales of economic justice. RReparations are not a simplistic or final solution, but they take a step towards restoration and justice for Black Clevelanders by redressing the generations of damaging public policy and decisions. On the national stage, current legislation for reparations in the House of Representatives includes a commission to study the impacts of slavery in America and develop proposals for reparations.75 Evanston, Illinois has also taken a step in this direction, embedding reparations into their 2020 budget via a marijuana tax that goes towards healing residential and income inequality due to racist residential segregation practices, including redlining.76 As of February 2021, the city has decided to fund $25,000 of reparations for each member of the community who was directly or relationally impacted by housing discrimination from 1919-1969.77 Reparations in Cleveland could take the form of economic channels that redistribute money from the wealthy suburbs to the city, and they could be used to address the symptoms of racism impacting residents living in under-resourced neighborhoods. This suggestion comes from understanding wealth hoarding’s role in racial disparities; suburban communities benefit from proximity to the city, while simultaneously drawing funds and resources away from historically under-resourced city neighborhoods harmed by segregation. Suburban neighborhoods have the potential to stand in solidarity with residents of the city, but the assumed power dynamics could add to racial tensions and stereotypes. This emphasizes how important it is to hold public dialogue about the history and potential future of institutional racism in Cleveland, as well as historical resistance movements. Funds alone will not repair the damage done to residents who are negatively impacted by segregation, but

they can serve as a significant step in the process of building robust welfare programs to economically assist and uplift city residents. My analysis points towards multiple intersecting avenues in which people have been harmed, and I argue that the focus of reparations should be restoration and healing from income segregation, trauma, pain, and violence of intentional resource deprivation. Race is a complex categorization of humans for economic benefits, and I will not contribute to further social exclusion by declaring limits on who counts as victimized by this system and therefore who can receive reparations for the harms of structural violence and segregation. This redirects the design conversation for reparation policy in Cleveland towards responsibility and healing, and away from further social exclusion of marginalized persons. I will not claim liberty to determine the prioritization of these funds; the communities most vulnerable to positive or negative impact from them should decide. To prevent housing instability and the fracturing of social networks, such funds could be utilized to restore homes to healthy conditions, to boost and create programs that adequately address violence and the prevention of it, and to create mechanisms

Wealth-hoarding suburbs, as well as municipal governments that sanctioned direct and covert segregational policies, carry inherited responsibilities for the disparities that exist, and therefore an obligation to balance the scales of economic justice.”

for economic mobility. The transformative possibilities for reparations in Cleveland are limited only by what you can imagine and how you frame the problem.

Concluding Discussion The declarations from the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County contribute toward identifying the realities of racism as it currently impacts residents, but much more work needs to be done to fully address and abolish the mechanisms that have embedded anti-Blackness into the cityscape. Designers, city planners, community leaders, and residents of the greater Cleveland area must face both the past and the present to consciously decide the path forward to a more equitable future. These recommendations are built off of the social determinants of health and examination of segregation mechanisms that embedded racism into the Cleveland cityscape. This analysis provides insight into the harm that can be done through housing policy and reform that ignore the way racist ideology is closely entwined with society, economic mobility, power, and health. Therefore, the recommendations in light of these topics are a comprehensive strategy to unearth and publicly voice the mechanisms of racism like residential and income segregation, while implementing programs to address racist policy. Doing so will require a broad range of strategies, working simultaneously at individual, community, policy, structural, organizational, and institutional levels. This analysis is intended to join and aid the conversation about restorative justice for Cleveland, while understanding that further community-based research is necessary to provide detailed suggestions that do not inflict further harm to Black Clevelanders. Moore, sharing thoughts on gentrification, states, “catchphrases such as ‘community development’ or ‘urban planning and design’ can be counterproductive if, in fact, one’s

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praxis is not guided by a commitment to a type of transformative work grounded in the belief that Black lives actually matter.”78 The path forward that Cleveland decides to take will determine whether the healing process truly begins or racist policy continues to harm its residents.

Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to Charlotte Burch, whose editing has been instrumental in the development of this article, and Aaron Cohen, for taking this piece into its final layout. Special thanks to Carmelita Naccarato, for her support and editing throughout the process of writing this paper. I would like to thank Dr. Roshanak Mehdipanah and Yazier Henry for inspiring me to publish this work and giving me the tools to frame this analysis.

Adeline Steffen, 2021, from Edgewater Park, looking at Cleveland’s Lake Erie shoreline.

about the author Adeline Steffen is pursuing a Masters of Design Science at the University of Michigan with focal interests on the design of physical and administrative structures rooted in social justice. Adeline has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Michigan, where she developed an interest in the societal impact of physical structures. Through design process thinking, she has expanded her awareness on how systems of inequality function as physical structures in society. She was raised in Westlake, Ohio, a suburb twenty minutes outside of Cleveland.

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endnotes 1. Brentin Mock, “The Brazen Redlining Happening in Cleveland,” Bloomberg CityLab, November 9, 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-09/aredlining-map-aimed-at-housing-investors-in-cleveland 2. Cleveland City Council, An Emergency Resolution Declaring Racism a Public Health Crisis and Establishing a Working Group To Promote Racial Equity in the City of Cleveland, (Resolution No. 296-2020, 2020). 3. County Council of Cuyahoga County, A Resolution Declaring Racism a Public Health Crisis in Cuyahoga County, (Resolution No. R2020-0122, 2020). 4. County Council of Cuyahoga County, A Resolution Declaring Racism a Public Health Crisis in Cuyahoga County. 5. Johan Galtung and Tord Hoivik, “Structural and Direct Violence: A Note on Operationalization,” Journal of Peace Research 8, no. 2 (1971): 73, https://doi. org/10.1177/002234337100800108 6. Carol Poh Miller, Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, s.v. “Iron and Steel Industry,” accessed October 2, 2020, https://case.edu/ech/articles/i/iron-and-steel-industry 7. Stephanie Christensen, “The Great Migration (1915-1960),” Black Past, December 6, 2007, https:// www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/greatmigration-1915-1960/ “Jim Crow Laws,” History, last modified February 15th, 2021, https://www.history.com/ topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws 8. Jason Reece et al., “History Matters: Understanding the Role of Policy, Race and Real Estate in Today’s Geography of Health Equity and Opportunity in Cuyahoga County,” The Ohio State University: Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, (2015): 5, http://kirwaninstitute.osu. edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/history-of-race-realestate.pdf 9. Jason Reece et al., “History Matters: Understanding the Role of Policy, Race and Real Estate in Today’s Geography of Health Equity and Opportunity in Cuyahoga County,” 5. 10. Kevin F. Gotham, “Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a US City, 1900–50,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24, no. 3 (2008): 618, https://doi. org/10.1111/1468-2427.00268 11. Catherine Silva, “Racially Restrictive Covenants History: Enforcing Neighborhood Segregation in Seattle,” The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, 2009, https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants_report.htm 12. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, (New York: Random House, 2008) 13. William R. Emmons, “The Past, Present, and Future of the US Mortgage Market,” The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, July 1, 2008, https://www.stlouisfed.org/

publications/central-banker/summer-2008/the-pastpresent-and-future-of-the-us-mortgage-market. 14. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, 204-205 15. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, June, 2014, https://www.theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-forreparations/361631/. 16. Kevin F. Gotham, “Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a US City, 1900–50,” 618 Jason Reece et al., “History Matters: Understanding the Role of Policy, Race and Real Estate in Today’s Geography of Health Equity and Opportunity in Cuyahoga County,” 16. 17. “Home Owners’ Loan Act (1933),” The Living New Deal, accessed March 4, 2021, https://livingnewdeal.org/ glossary/home-owners-loan-act-1933/. 18. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” 19. Jason Reece et al., “History Matters: Understanding the Role of Policy, Race and Real Estate in Today’s Geography of Health Equity and Opportunity in Cuyahoga County,” 16. 20. Jason Reece et al., “History Matters: Understanding the Role of Policy, Race and Real Estate in Today’s Geography of Health Equity and Opportunity in Cuyahoga County,” 16. 21. Aamna Mohdin, “US History Explains That White Fear is Just Another Way to Enforce Racial Segregation,” Quartz, May 24, 2018, https://qz.com/1288067/us-historyexplains-that-white-fear-of-black-people-is-just-anothertool-to-enforce-racial-segregation/. 22. Michael Lepley and Lenore Mangiarelli, “Exclusionary Zoning in Cuyahoga County,” Fair Housing Center for Rights and Research, January, 2020, 4, https://www. thehousingcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ Exclusionary-Zoning-in-Cuyahoga-County.pdf. 23. Michael Lepley and Lenore Mangiarelli, “Exclusionary Zoning in Cuyahoga County,” 9. Bridget J. Goosby and ChelseaHeidbrink, “Transgenerational Consequences of Racial Discrimination for African American Health,” Sociology compass, 7 no. 8 (2013), https://doi.org/10.1111/ soc4.12054 Jamie Fogel and Zachary Ackerman, “Opinion: Restrictive Zoning Laws Perpetuate Neighborhood Segregation,” The Detroit News, July 15, 2020, https://www.detroitnews. com/story/opinion/2020/07/15/opinion-restrictive-zoninglaws-perpetuate-neighborhood-segregation/5444168002/ 24. Heidi Grunebaum and Yazir Henri, “Where the Mountain Meets its Shadow: A Conversation of Memory and Identity and Fragmented Belonging in Presentday South Africa” in Bo Strath and Ron Robins (eds.), Homelands: The Politics of Space and the Poetics of

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Power (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2003), pp 267-283.

(2002), https://doi.org/10.1177/107755802237808.

25Heidi Grunebaum and Yazir Henri, “Where the Mountain Meets its Shadow: A Conversation of Memory and Identity and Fragmented Belonging in Present-day South Africa” in Bo Strath and Ron Robins (eds.), Homelands: The Politics of Space and the Poetics of Power (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2003), pp 267-283.

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26. Lauren K. Brennan Ramirez, Elizabeth A. Baker, and Marilyn Metzler, “Promoting Health Equity: A Resource to Help Communities Address Social Determinants of Health,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, GA, 2008) 27. David R. Williams and Chiquita Collins, “Racial Residential Segregation: A Fundamental Cause of Racial Disparities in Health,” Public Health Reports 116, no. 5 (2001), https://doi.org/10.1093/phr/116.5.404. 28. Bridget J. Goosby and Chelsea Heidbrink, “Transgenerational Consequences of Racial Discrimination for African American Health.” 29. National Community Reinvestment Coalition & University of Richmond Digital Scholarship lab, “Not Even past: Social Vulnerability and the Legacy of Redlining,” accessed October 2, 2020, s.v. “Cleveland” http://dsl. richmond.edu/socialvulnerability/map/#loc=11/41.473/81.652&city=cleveland-oh 30. National Community Reinvestment Coalition & University of Richmond Digital Scholarship lab, “Not Even Past: Social Vulnerability and the Legacy of Redlining.” 31. County Council of Cuyahoga County, (Resolution No. R2020-0122, 2020). 32. Dhruv Khullar and Dave A. Chokshi, “Health, income, & poverty: Where we are & what could help,” Health Affairs Health Policy Brief, October 4, 2018, https://doi. org/10.1377/hpb20180817.901935. 33. Statistical Atlas, “Household income in Cleveland, Ohio (city): Tract map,” last updated September 10, 2018, [Statistical Data and Analysis] 34. Statistical Atlas, “Household income in Cleveland, Ohio (city): In the Cleveland Area,” last updated September 10, 2018, [Statistical Data and Analysis], https:// statisticalatlas.com/place/Ohio/Cleveland/HouseholdIncome#figure/place-in-cleveland-area. 35.(Reardon & Bischoff 2011) 36. Layisha Bailey, “An Unfamiliar Champion in the Fight: Black Homeownership Has and Enduring Advocate,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, April 4, 2020, https:// www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/ publications/notes-from-the-field/nftf-20200416-anunfamiliar-champion.aspx. 37. Anderson et al., “Access to Medical Care for Low-Income Persons: How do Communities Make a Difference,” Medical Care Research and Review 59, no. 4

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39. WCPN Ideastream 2019) 40. First Year Cleveland, “Reducing Racial Disparities,” accessed March 13, 2021, https://www.firstyearcleveland. org/solutions/reducing-racial-disparities. 41. Bhopal Raj, “Spectre of racism in health and health care: lessons from history and the United States,” BMJ 316, no. 7149 (1970), https://doi.org/10.1136/ bmj.316.7149.1970. 42. Dhruv Khullar and Dave A. Chokshi, “Health, income, & poverty: Where we are & what could help.” 43. Dhruv Khullar and Dave A. Chokshi, “Health, income, & poverty: Where we are & what could help.” 44. United States Department of Agriculture,“Access to affordable and nutritious food: Measuring and understanding food deserts and their consequences,” 2009, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/ publications/42711/12716_ap036_1_.pdf?v=41055 45. Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, “Cuyahoga county supermarket assessment: 2018 inventory update,” March 2, 2019, https://www.countyplanning.us/wpcontent/uploads/2019/03/Cuyahoga-County-SupermarketAssessment-2018-Inventory-Update-_FINALREPORT-030819.pdf 46. Schartman-Cycyk et al., “Connecting Cuyahoga: Investment in digital inclusion brings big returns for residents and administration,” Connected Insights, June 4, 2019, https://static1.squarespace.com/ static/59d3bca38dd041c401d9ed80/t/5d5c448f6fede8000 1a75334/1566328034944/Connecting+Cuyahoga_2019.pdf. 47. Bill Callahan, “AT&T’s digital redlining of Cleveland,” National Digital Inclusion Alliance, March 10, 2017, https:// www.digitalinclusion.org/blog/2017/03/10/atts-digitalredlining-of-cleveland/ 48. Schartman-Cycyk et al., “Connecting Cuyahoga: Investment in digital inclusion brings big returns for residents and administration.” 49. Gerard Torrats-Espinosa, “Using Machine Learning to Estimate the Effect of Racial Segregation on COVID-19 Mortality in the United States,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118, no. 7 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.2015577118. 50. Ohio Department of Health, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard: Case Demographics,” accessed October 1, 2020, https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/ covid-19/dashboards/demographics/case-demographics .51. Ohio Department of Health, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard: Case Demographics,” accessed October 1, 2020, https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/

covid-19/dashboards/demographics/case-demographics.

52. Neeta Thakur et al., “The Structural and Social Determinants of the Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the U.S. COVID-19 Pandemic,” The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 202, no. 7 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.202005-1523PP. 53. Emily Benfer et al., “The COVID-19 Eviction Crisis: An Estimated 30-40 Million People in America are At Risk,” Aspen Institute, August 7, 2020, https://www. aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-covid-19-evictioncrisis-an-estimated-30-40-million-people-in-americaare-at-risk/. 54. Jake Zuckerman, “Black Ohioans are 13% of the State Population but 5.6% of Vaccine Recipients,” ABC News 5 Cleveland, March 5, 2021, https://www.news5cleveland. com/news/continuing-coverage/coronavirus/vaccinatingohio/black-ohioans-are-13-of-state-population-but-5-6of-the-vaccine-recipients. 55. Michael Dumas, “Against the Dark: Antiblackness in Education Policy and Discourse,” Theory Into Practice 55, no. 1 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2016.1116 852. 56. Design Justice Network, “Design Justice Network Principles,” last modified in 2018, https://designjustice. org/read-the-principles. 57. UNHCR Innovation Service, “Collaborative Approaches to Creating Community-Based Solutions,” Medium, September 8, 2020, https://medium.com/unhcrinnovation-service/collaborative-approaches-to-creatingcommunity-based-solutions-96137b0870b5. 58. James Krieger, and Donna L. Higgins, “Housing and Health: Time Again for Public Health Action,” American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 5 (2002) https://doi. org/10.2105/AJPH.92.5.758. 59. James Krieger, and Donna L. Higgins, “Housing and Health: Time Again for Public Health Action.” 60. Ohio Development Services Agency, “Affordable Housing Programs: Ohio Housing Trust Fund,” Accessed December 10, 2020, https://development.ohio.gov/cs/ cs_htf.htm. 61. Michael Shields, “Clevelanders Face Housing Insecurity: A Higher Minimum Wage Could Help,” Policy Matters Ohio: Ohio’s Policy Kitchen (Blog), February 24, 2017, https://www.policymattersohio.org/blog/2017/06/30/ clevelanders-face-housing-insecurity-a-higherminimum-wage-would-help. 62. Emma Ockerman, “This Cleveland Woman Could go to Jail Because Her House Needs a New Coat of Paint. Vice News, October 7, 2019, https://www.vice.com/en/ article/7x57xq/this-cleveland-woman-could-go-to-jailbecause-her-house-needs-a-new-coat-of-paint. 63. Christina Plerhoples Stacy and Joseph Schilling,

“Housing Codes Should Protect Public Health, Not Penalize Low-Income Homeowners,” Urban Wire: Housing and Housing Finance (blog), October 9, 2019 https://www. urban.org/urban-wire/housing-codes-should-protectpublic-health-not-penalize-low-income-homeowners 64. Darnell Moore, “Urban Spaces and the Mattering of Black Lives,” The Nature of Cities, October 23, 2015, https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2015/10/23/urbanspaces-and-the-mattering-of-black-lives/ 65. Christina Torres, “All Students Need Anti-Racism Education,” Learning for Justice, July 30, 2020, https:// www.tolerance.org/magazine/all-students-needantiracism-education 66. Cecilia Barbieri and Martha K. Ferede, “A Future We Can all Live With: How Education Can Address and Eradicate Racism,” UNESCO Futures of Education Ideas LAB, June 29, 2020 https://en.unesco.org/ futuresofeducation/ideas-lab/barbieri-ferede-educationeradicate-racism Linda Tuwahi Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2012) 67.Katherine Knott, “New History Curriculum Created to Aid Anti-Racist Teaching,” The Washington Post, July 4, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ new-history-curriculum-created-to-aid-anti-racistteaching/2020/07/04/241960c2-bdff-11ea-97c16cf116ffe26c_story.html. Diversify Our Narrative, accessed March 13, 2021, https:// www.diversifyournarrative.com/. 68. Adiyah Ali, “To be Truly Anti-Racist, Community Development Needs a Reckoning,” Local Initiatives Support Coalition: Community Wise Blog, June 10, 2020, https://www.lisc.org/our-stories/story/be-truly-antiracist-community-development-needs-reckoning/. 69. Donna Rich Kaplowitz, Shayla Reece Griffin, and Sheri Seyka, Race Dialogues: A Facilitator’s Guide to Tackling the Elephant in the Classroom (New York City: Teachers College Press, 2019), 11-15. 70.Michael Dumas, “Against the Dark: Antiblackness in Education Policy and Discourse.” 71. Ruth Jones, “Eugenics in Education Policy and the Impact on African American Students,” (Master’s thesis, University of San Francisco, 2019), https://repository. usfca.edu/thes/1198. 72. Donna Rich Kaplowitz, Shayla Reece Griffin, and Sheri Seyka, Race Dialogues: A Facilitator’s Guide to Tackling the Elephant in the Classroom, 12). 73. Ohio State Board of Education, “Resolution to Condemn Racism and to Advance Equity and Opportunity for Black Students, Indigenous Students, and Students of Color,” (Columbus, OH: 2020). 74. Suzie Kaeser, “Ohio Needs to Abandon Failed

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High-Stakes School Testing as a Measure of Quality,” Cleveland.com, June 9, 2019, https://www.cleveland.com/ opinion/2019/06/ohio-needs-to-abandon-failed-highstakes-school-testing-as-a-measure-of-quality-susiekaeser-opinion.html. 75. U.S. 117th Congress, “H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act,” (Washington, DC: 2021), https://www.congress.gov/ bill/117th-congress/house-bill/40 76. Gaynor Hall, ”The Push for Reparations: How Evanston is Trying to Get it Done,” WGN 9 Chicago, November 12, 2020, https://wgntv.com/news/cover-story/the-push-forreparations-how-evanston-is-trying-to-get-it-done/. 77. Beatrice Peterson, “After Racial Unrest Across US, Congress Takes Another Look At Reparations,” February 17, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/racial-unrestus-congress-takes-reparations/story?id=75925706. 78. Darnell Moore, “Urban Spaces and the Mattering of Black Lives.

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Bradbury Building Photographer: Zihao Li

STEFFEN

A More Perfect Unionism

Redeeming the Role of Organized Labor in the Push for Affordable Housing NATHAN MCBURNETT

ABSTRACT Wage stagnation and rising housing costs are two central factors contributing to growing economic inequality in the United States. In urban areas, this gap is intensified by significant wage growth for the highest-income households that drives housing costs up across the market, drastically decreasing housing opportunities for urban residents in the lowest income bracket. Because labor unions played a central role in the policy, financing, and production of affordable housing units for low- and middle-income earners in the first half of the 20th century, the decrease in union membership over the second half of the 20th century should be analyzed for its effect on affordable housing production over the same time period. Analyzing both the historical and current role of labor union involvement in affordable housing production provides a helpful lens to explore the intimate relationship between employment and housing in the United States. The shrinking membership and political influence of labor unions nationwide hinders their ability to maintain a significant influence in housing policy and production at a national level; however, the social and financial resources unions retain position them well to effect substantive changes to housing production, policy, and rights at a local level. Labor unions can once again bolster affordable housing production at the local level by leveraging three strategic assets: access to capital for affordable housing finance, a strong tradition of community organizing, and a long-standing expertise in alternative forms of affordable housing production.

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INTRODUCTION

median incomes is roughly $6,900 when comparing cities and counties, and $8,900 when comparing cities and MSAs. These disparities have major implications for housing affordability because new developments with income-restricted units may still remain unaffordable to individuals with incomes far below the official AMI. Although this paper will not address the complex historic and macroeconomic factors that have contributed to the gap in income levels between geographies, it will address how the labor market specifically helped shape regional wealth inequalities across the United States.

age stagnation and a rising cost of living are two central factors contributing to growing economic inequality in the United States. Between 1980-2018, the rise in housing costs outpaced the rise in household incomes by 22 percent.1 In urban areas, the extreme disparities between income and housing costs are now especially difficult to track. Since household area median income (AMI), a value used to identify housing affordability, is recorded at the county or Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level, the real median income within city limits is often left unaccounted for in local plans for affordable housing development.

General wage stagnation is even more alarming when considering how it is segmented across different income groups. While wages for workers in the bottom 10 percent of the earnings distribution only increased by an inflation-adjusted 4.3 percent between 2000-2018, those in the top 10 percent increased by approximately 15.7 percent over the same time period.2 This dynamic contributes directly to the housing

Table 1 illustrates an analysis of annual household incomes across 16 urban areas. Of the 16 areas analyzed, 15 show lower median incomes at the city level when compared to county and MSA measures, with 11 showing gaps of more than $5,000. Overall, the average disparity between

Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)

Median Household Income

County

Median Household Income

Principal City

Median Household Income

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA

$72,998

Los Angeles County

$68,044

Los Angeles

$62,142

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Ill

$71,770

Cook County

$64,660

Chicago

$58,247

Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX

$67,516

Harris County

$61,705

Houston

$52,338

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

$56,775

Miami-Dade County

$51,374

Miami

$39,049

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX

$70,281

Dallas County

$59,607

Dallas

$52,580

Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA

$65,121

Riverside County

$67,005

Riverside

$69,045

Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV

$59,340

Clark County

$59,340

Los Vegas

$56,354

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

$86,856

King County

$94,974

Seattle

$92,263

Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA

$65,121

San Bernardino County

$63,362

San Bernardino

$45,834

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX

$70,281

Tarrant County

$67,700

Fort Worth

$62,187

San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX

$60,327

Bexar County

$57,157

San Antonio

$52,455

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

$56,775

Broward County

$59,547

Fort Lauderdale

$59,450

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA

$122,478

Santa Clara County

$124,055

San Jose

$109,593

Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI

$60,984

Wayne County

$47,301

Detroit

$30,894

San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA

$106,025

Alameda County

$99,406

Oakland

$73,692

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

$56,775

Palm Beach County, FL

$63,299

West Palm Beach

$54,334

Source: United States Census Bureau, 2019 ACS 5-Year Estimates Table 1. Illustrates an analysis of annual household incomes across 16 urban areas. Of the 16 areas analyzed, 15 show lower median incomes at the city-level when compared to county and MSA measures, with 11 showing gaps of more than $5,000.

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affordability issue. Urban areas with high concentrations of residents employed in high-opportunity sectors drive housing prices up to a point that largely excludes low- and moderate-income workers from the housing market. This market exclusion decreases the accessibility of urban housing opportunities for both prospective and current residents, meaning the story of rising housing prices is also a story of displacement.

Figure 1. GEO-AFT Local 3550, a labor union based in Ann Arbor, help organize a protest of Washtenaw County’s decision to discontinue sheltering houseless individuals at the local Red Roof Inn in December 2020. Other organizers involved include Washtenaw Camp Outreach, Ann Arbor Tenants’ Union, and the Weshtenaw General Defense Committee (McBurnett, 2020).

Although the inaccessibility of high-quality housing for the poor and working class has plagued the United States for over a century, new trends emerged due to shifting institutional arrangements in the mid-20th century.3 Prior to the 1970s, the federal government leveraged an arsenal of robust legal and policy interventions to correct for market failures in affordable housing production. Through partnerships with labor unions, these policies directly linked the increase in affordable housing production to the number of quality employment opportunities nationally. As unions secured federal construction contracts, increases in union membership not only meant a larger

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labor force for housing construction, but also greater bargaining power for union workers seeking to maintain prevailing wages. However, after major changes to labor laws, housing subsidies, and production programs in the 1970s-1980s, the federal government’s role in addressing these issues receded substantially. In a general sense, the changing legal and political environment that informed this process at the national level led to a dramatic decline in the role of labor unionism in the United States.4 Although labor unions still exist today, their numbers have dropped drastically, and their oncecommanding presence in federal policy and law formulation has also diminished by a comparable magnitude. Since labor unions historically influenced federal interventions for worker compensation and affordable housing issues, the juxtaposition of growing income inequality and housing unaffordability is evidenced by the shifting role of organized labor over the past century. By identifying the variety of resources that unions can leverage in the current process of affordable housing development, I argue that labor unions still maintain a vital position in the production of affordable housing policies and programs today. In the first section, I provide a historical overview of the role of labor unions in the production of housing to show how substantial union involvement in the past directly affected quality employment opportunities, progressive housing policies, and rates of affordable housing production. In the second section, I discuss how the shifting legal, political, and economic environment over the past half century has changed both the development of affordable housing and the role of labor unions in the housing market. Lastly, I discuss how these changes create new opportunities for labor unions to become involved in both affordable housing production and advocacy around housing rights today at the local level.

The Historical CONNECTION BETWEEN LABOR AND HOUSING Labor unions, and federations of those unions, played historically formative roles in affordable housing production and policy in the United States. Because of both the diverse set of industries to which unions are individually focused and the broad network of coalitions unions built, unions and union federations engaged with policy and production in the housing market at both the local and federal level. Depending on the union, roles ranged from the direct production of affordable housing for both union members and non-union residents to the creation of legislation concerning housing production programs at the federal level. An analysis of union labor organizing in New York City offers a case study that exemplifies the degree to which union labor organizing influenced the housing sector at both the local and national level. Starting as early as the 1920s, worker coalitions successfully coordinated both the financing and construction of quality affordable housing units in New York City. This was especially popular with workingclass immigrant collectives, where groups like the Yiddish United Workers and the Jewish National Workers Alliance pooled funds to finance affordable cooperatively owned developments through bond sales and small loans contributed by worker families.5 This grassroots approach was eventually scaled up and officially sponsored by labor unions across New York City throughout the 1940s-1960s. The first of these union-sponsored developments was the Amalgamated House in 1926, a cooperative in the Bronx built by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). At full occupancy, the Amalgamated Houses contained about 1,500 units and incorporated multiple uses, including a library and a grocery store, that

added to the overall quality and vitality of the cooperatives’ residents and the surrounding community.6 This cooperative framework eventually spread to other unions in other boroughs. In Queens, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 coordinated the construction of Electchester in 1949. Built on 103 acres over three decades, the Electchester development included 38 buildings, 2,500 residential units, an auditorium, a cocktail bar, a shopping center, and many other social and recreational institutions.7 IBEW, ILGWU, and 17 other unions and community organizations came together to form the United Housing Foundation (UHF) in 1951, which coordinated the development of nearly 50,000 residential units by the late 1960s through a partnership with the union-sponsored general contractor Community Services Incorporated.8 Classified as limited-dividend nonprofits, these cooperatives partnered with unionowned banks to finance construction using a variety of capital sources such as union pensions, state and city tax abatements, and ‘equity shares’ pooled between cooperative residents.9 Although many housing units were reserved for the local unionized workforce,10 the cooperatives incorporated amenities for the broader community and provided many units open to any prospective resident whose income was below a certain threshold, regardless of union affiliation.11 The growing presence and influence of UHF resulted in the organization’s ability to secure both public financing and large tracts of land across New York City. Enabled by the state’s Mitchell Lama program, the UHF was a strategic partner in the City’s broader urban renewal. As part of the state’s 1955 Limited Profit Housing Companies Law, the Mitchell Lama program enabled UHF’s large-scale production of middle-income, cooperatively owned housing across the city.12 UHFaffiliated unions also partnered with the

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federal government on the construction of public housing as part of the infamous urban renewal program that displaced many of the City’s poorest residents.13 Although UHF focused on building limited-equity cooperatives for residents whose incomes were considered either too high for public housing or too low for the private market, the organization contributed to the construction of around 100,000 public housing projects, limited equity cooperatives, and market-rate luxury apartments that were each tailored to residents of particular racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.14

Just as labor’s constituency began to shift toward homeownership, so too did federal housing legislation.” Beyond New York City, the parent federation to many of the UHF-affiliated unions, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), created major inroads for federal housing policy and production programs in the 1930s-1950s that helped spur local affordable housing development. As the nation’s largest federation of labor unions during its time, the AFL helped advance federal policies and programs that would produce both union jobs and affordable housing to very low- and moderate-income residents on a national scale.15 Perhaps the AFL’s most influential moment came during the Labor Housing Conference, a coalition of union members and housing advocates headed by AFL official Catherine Bauer Wurster in the 1930s. Through their annual meetings in 1934-1935, Wurster and the Labor Housing Conference helped draft the 1937 Housing Act that paved the way for the nation’s public housing production

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program.16 Following the passage of this landmark act, the AFL continued to support subsequent legislation and policies related to the federal public housing program principally because it was a major source of jobs for construction trade union members.17 Organized labor’s strong support for the public housing program began to change after the AFL officially merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1955 to form the AFL-CIO. This merger was pursued primarily to eliminate competition between the union federations, which were both struggling to recruit new members and maintain political power under the conservative Dwight Eisnenhower administration.18 Now with a much broader constituency spanning the political spectrum, the newly branded union federation began to shift its focus toward homeownership for union members while retaining the production of public housing as a secondary goal.19

The Decline of Labor Unionism and the Production of Affordable Housing The AFL-CIO’s shift toward homeownership advocacy for union members is indicative of a broader political and economic reorientation starting in the Postwar Era. Politically, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 significantly influenced a shift away from more progressive housing advocacy within labor unionism; the legislation limited legal methods of labor organizing, introduced the first right-to-work laws at the state level, and forced union leadership to dissociate from communism.20 A growing affinity for market-oriented solutions for housing development also became part of the AFLCIO’s official housing platform in the 1950s as union members became increasingly suburbanized.21 Although labor still played a

Labor’s decline in housing policy influence coincided with a broader decline in union membership starting in the second half of the 20th century. For the United Steelworkers Union (USW) alone, membership dropped by roughly 665,000 (51 percent) from 1980-1987.24 Although many factors have contributed to this general decline, decreasing membership numbers hindered the oncecommanding political and economic influence of labor overall. The decline in union membership coincided with a drastic decrease in federally subsidized housing units. According to a 1995 report by the AFL-CIO, the number of affordable units supplied through government subsidy fell from 250,000 in 1970 to under 50,000 per year starting in the early 1980s.25 As the federal government’s role in housing

Labor Union Membership Among US Workers, 1985-2020 18000000

17000000

16000000

15000000

14000000

13000000

12000000

19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 20 17 20 19

Just as labor’s constituency began to shift toward homeownership, so too did federal housing legislation. The nation’s public housing program became the subject of major controversy and re-evaluation beginning in the late 1960s, when President Richard Nixon’s New Federalist approach began to decentralize the government’s housing programs. Although public housing production continued, eventually reaching its apex in 1991, demand-side housing affordability programs and homeownership advocacy began to take center stage.22 In 1973, Nixon’s declaration of a moratorium on federal housing subsidies drew a harsh response from the AFL-CIO through the National Ad Hoc Housing Coalition.23 However, the wholesale shift of housing production and affordability programs to the private sector marked the beginning of the end for labor’s central role in housing production.

production and finance began to decrease substantially, non-profit intermediaries such as the Enterprise Foundation and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) were created by private enterprises to fill the void.26 As a result, a growing preference for private-market incentives for affordable housing development led to a focus on cutting the costs of production and increasing the financial return on investment. Thus, the prevailing wages demanded by union members in the construction trades came in direct conflict with the financial motives of private-market housing developers.

Unionized Workers

formative role in the development of housing legislation into the late 1960s, the growing preference for private enterprise over federal housing production began to shift the strategic role of unions in the housing market.

Year

Figure 2. Figure 2 illustrates the decline in labor Union membership for all US workers between 1985-2020.

Indicative of the zeitgeist, the AFL-CIO created a Housing Investment Trust (HIT) in 1981 to retain a role in the housing industry. As a fixed-income investment fund, the HIT was designed to combine union pensions with private investment in the form of mortgage-backed securities to finance both affordable and market-rate developments that committed to using union labor.27 This fund dramatically shifted the role of union labor in housing development because it focused on producing a financial return for the fund’s private investors. Previous to the HIT, unions would directly invest pension funds into individual affordable housing developments.28 This created both job

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contracts and quality affordable units, both of which benefited many union members. With the HIT’s focus on private investment, however, market-rate projects became attractive because of their potential financial return. Thus, union labor began to shift away from affordable housing production in the interest of strengthening union pensions and securing union job contracts through market-rate projects. Given the high level of integration between union labor and affordable housing advocacy during the height of production in the Postwar Era, it should be no surprise that a shift in methods of production would result in dramatic changes for both labor and housing markets. Organized labor’s involvement in the production of affordable housing decreased simultaneously with a general decline in union membership. As the housing industry began to favor demand-side affordability programs, affordable housing production dwindled and opportunities for a socially interested role for labor in housing production became substantially more limited.29 The increasing popularity of securitized mortgages through the turn of the millennium created an environment where housing in the private market was largely commodified as an investment vehicle for corporate investors. The sale of mortgagebacked securities on the secondary market standardized this practice, as investors began to require a certain increment of profit to rationalize their investment in housing development.30 Through this financialization process, private-market actors now pursue affordable housing development more for financial incentives than through a commitment to broader social interest. Although tax incentives like the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program encourage the continued production of affordable housing by making it more financially attractive to private investors, the limits on profitability for affordable housing development constrain a

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private investor’s motivation to pursue it as an end in itself. Unions became complicit in this phenomenon through financial vehicles like the AFL-CIO HIT, where the production of housing (affordable or otherwise) is now largely pursued as a vehicle for job production and return on investment. Despite union efforts to maintain a role in the housing market under changing circumstances, there is no clear incentive for developers to use capital from the HIT over conventional capital sources. Corporate banks are now highly motivated to invest capital in socially interested development (especially LIHTC projects) because of requirements of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977.31 To a developer, this capital may be more attractive simply because it comes without prevailing wage requirements. Consequently, these mechanisms limit both the degree to which labor can serve a continued role in the housing industry and the scale to which new affordable housing units can be developed.

A Path Forward: Leveraging Labor Organizing in Affordable Housing Production The current circumstances of the housing industry provide limited avenues for labor unions to play the role they historically held. With membership decreasing from roughly 20 percent of all salaried and wage workers in 1983 to 10 percent in 2019,32 unions may now struggle to effect broad change through federal laws and policies. However, organizing at the local level – and beyond the sole interests of union members – may be a substantive path forward. Labor unions maintain a vital interest in affordable housing production and can leverage their power at the local level to create a more

equitable, sustainable, and productive system of affordable housing development that benefits the interests of the broader community. A major asset labor unions maintain is their ability to build coalitions around social justice issues at the local level. Since organizing is a foundational practice to labor unionism that has become professionalized over time, unions are uniquely equipped with the skills required to engage people on issues of social interest. Although unions traditionally organize around issues directly related to workplace environments and must comply with contract bargaining rules, evidence shows unions have successfully engaged in broader community activism both presently and historically. Community Benefits Agreements Effective community engagement is another strength labor unions can leverage in local housing policy advocacy, especially in the realm of Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs). CBAs are contracts between community coalitions and developers that are intended to make residential and commercial developments maximally beneficial to the surrounding community. This means effective community engagement is vital to a CBA’s legitimacy and success.33 Unions are well-equipped to engage with CBA negotiations because of their capacity to ally with community groups and organizations, as well as the diversity of their membership across multiple sectors. CBAs with major union involvement have provided a diverse set of benefits to many urban communities. In addition to affordable housing, these benefits have included promises from developers to commit funds to local parks, hire locally, and guarantee a living wage for workers of commercial tenants on-site.34 However, the power of CBAs is often limited by local politics.35 The need to improve upon the CBA model provides additional opportunity for labor unions to engage in the local development

process. A persistent weakness of CBAs is their varying level of popularity and enforceability across different jurisdictions. While CBAs are mandated and enforced by the city government in Detroit, cities like Milwaukee lack the experience and political support required to make CBAs reliably enforceable.36 One possible avenue for communities to make CBAs more broadly effective – regardless of local politics – is to organize around local legislation that makes CBAs mandatory and governmentenforced, like the Community Benefits Ordinance in Detroit. Organized labor could provide strategic support for local legislative advocacy by leveraging the technical expertise of employees in the public sector. Since public-sector employees tend to have the highest rate of labor union membership,37 union organizing could be particularly advantageous to this cause because public-sector members may have a greater level of experience with local legislation and policy. Through coalition building between union members employed across both public and private sectors – and through partnerships with local community groups – labor unions could potentially build a broad coalition that includes the knowledge, skills, and public interest needed to propose and pass necessary legislation and policy to strengthen the contractual enforceability of the CBA. Improving the CBA model would undoubtedly provide a systematic avenue for communities to secure quality affordable housing development, but other options should also be pursued. Considering alternative forms of land use and residential development typologies that are not dependent on the market offers another meaningful way for labor unions to help expand access to affordable housing. Drawing on a history of successful cooperatively owned housing development, labor unions stand to be a major asset in popularizing contemporary

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century.40

Drawing on a history of successful cooperatively owned housing development, labor unions stand to be a major asset in popularizing contemporary forms of collective ownership, such as the Community Land Trust (CLT).”

forms of collective ownership, such as the Community Land Trust (CLT). Community land trusts According to the Institute for Community Economics, a CLT, in its basic form, is “an organization that owns land and makes it available on a long-term basis for specific community use…[where] ownership of land is separated from ownership of its use or uses.”38 Because the purpose and organizational structure of a CLT can vary widely depending on the context, the model can be an effective mechanism for both rural and urban communities to provide valuable community resources the market fails to reliably supply, such as affordable housing. Although the CLT model remains largely underutilized in cities across the country, the successful cases that do exist indicate the model remains valuable and relevant to labor unions. Current CLTs like the Dudley Neighbors Incorporated in Boston and the Cooper Square Community Land Trust in Manhattan remain viable due to both their ability to sustain a culture of activism among their members and their ability to work productively with the local municipality.39 In Cooper Square, the culture of activism that created and still sustains the CLT is linked to the legacy of labor union organizing and activism in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th

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As discussed in the first section, labor unions have a long history of successful affordable housing development through models of cooperative ownership, and many unions still retain resources that could be beneficial to the CLT model. As IRS-registered 501(c)(5) organizations, labor unions are both exempt from federal income tax and eligible for limited grants and donations, which are typical requirements for registered CLT entities.41 Additionally, labor unions have strong direct and indirect links to individuals in need of affordable housing through both their internal membership and their connections with local community groups. Since union pension funds are popular sources of investment capital, they can potentially provide the financing needed to front the initial land and development costs of CLTs. New York City already set a precedent for significant affordable housing investment using pension funds – the city’s five retirement systems pledged a combined investment of $150 million to the AFL-CIO HIT in 2015 to develop and preserve approximately 20,000 affordable units.42 Since pension funds have a characteristically long lifetime before their payout, they are well-suited for investment in affordable housing development, which tends to produce a lower rate of return than market-rate developments. Because CLTs effectively take land out of the private market by enforcing price ceilings that restrict the sale of shares, or land improvements,43 union pension funds may prove to be opportune forms of up-front investment due to their longevity. Internally, CLTs can provide permanently affordable housing for low- and moderate-income people because the cost of housing is not affected by trends in the housing market. Although the CLT’s land continues to appreciate because the entities typically pay property tax and are therefore subject to assessment,44 the cost burden can be

distributed across all members and even potentially lowered through the use of grants and charitable donations. Beyond the financial resources labor unions can potentially provide CLTs, the strong history of activism in labor organizing meshes well with the activist tradition of many successful CLTs still in operation. Organizationally, CLTs are embedded in the local community primarily through their governing boards, which are usually composed of CLT residents, residents of the surrounding community, and public interest representatives.45 With their robust organizing capacity and network of community connections, labor unions can help recruit board members in each category that are committed to the interests of low- and moderate-income residents across the community.

Larger structural forces that create and sustain housing inequality across the country underlie the issue of affordable housing production. Labor unions can address these structural forces by leveraging their capacity for community engagement around broader issues of social justice.” Bargaining for the common good CBAs and CLTs serve as great focus points for labor unions to redeem their collective role in affordable housing production. However, addressing housing issues beyond production is also vital to confronting housing inequality in the United States. Larger structural forces that create and sustain housing inequality

across the country underlie the issue of affordable housing production. Labor unions can address these structural forces by leveraging their capacity for community engagement around broader issues of social justice. Labor unions set precedents for participating in deep community engagement in pursuit of broader social equity goals through the increasing popularity of the Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) model. According to labor organizers Stephen Lerner and Christina Livingston, the BCG model is “built around the idea that unions, in partnership with community allies, need to expand collective bargaining demands to include issues that go beyond wages and benefits to confront the structural forces that drive inequality and worker disempowerment.”46 In Los Angeles, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ (AFSCME) Local 3299 used the BCG model to build a broad community coalition with the goals of creating quality community spaces in the inner city, ending the school-to-prison pipeline, and ending predatory lending in disadvantaged communities. Organized labor helped build similar coalitions in Seattle and Chicago to further community goals related explicitly to housing, including the increased production of affordable housing and the enforcement of rent control measures.47 By popularizing and expanding upon the BCG model, labor unions can embed themselves in organizing efforts that increase the vitality of their membership and vulnerable members of the community. Recently, labor union membership has become increasingly composed of vulnerable groups. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers identifying as Black or African American have a higher rate of union membership than any other racial group.48 Additionally, union members in the food service industry retain characteristically low wages that actually

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dropped between 2018 and 2019, making them highly susceptible to increased living costs.49 Low-income residents and communities of color face risks related to housing that extend far beyond affordability to issues resulting from the legal framework around housing rights. By getting involved with organizing work that addresses these underlying issues, labor unions can make substantive progress toward improving the lives of their most vulnerable members and the broader communities those members call home.

conclusion The historical role of labor unionism in the development of housing policy, legislation, and production programs cannot be overstated. Through a strong partnership with local, state, and federal government agencies, labor unions increased access to affordable housing for both their membership and the broader community on a massive scale. Although political and economic shifts through the mid-20th century severely limited the degree to which labor unions are now able to engage in federal affordable housing production and policy, there is still ample opportunity for unions to engage with policy, law, and housing production at the local level. Unions can optimize local engagement by leveraging their traditional strengths of organizing and coalition building through contemporary avenues of housing production, like Community Benefits Agreements and Community Land Trusts. Unions have already demonstrated they

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Ultimately, organized labor can move beyond housing production to focus on the deeper structural issues that sustain housing inequality by leveraging new forms of coalition building through the BCG model that produce benefits beyond the workplace, for the common good.”

can play a meaningful role in the CBA process, but can continue to capitalize on their strategic power by building coalitions around local policies and laws that strengthen the efficacy and enforceability of CBAs beyond the project level. Financially, labor unions can provide a viable path toward alternative forms of affordable housing development by helping redirect pension fund investments toward CLTs and local affordable housing trust funds. They can also provide technical assistance by offering their nonprofit legal status to community groups that want to create a CLT, enabling those groups to secure public funding sources. Ultimately, organized labor can move beyond housing production to focus on the deeper structural issues that sustain housing inequality by leveraging new forms of coalition building through the BCG model that produce benefits beyond the workplace, for the common good.

about the author Nathan is a Candidate in the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of Michigan. Focusing in housing policy, finance, and community development, he is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development. Outside of his studies, Nathan is an active labor organizer and housing activist with the Graduate Employees Organization (AFT Local 3550).

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end notes 1. Christos A. Makridis, (Why) Are Housing Costs Rising? ([under Review] American Economic Association), 2019. 2. Drew Desilver, For Most U.S. Workers, Wages Have Barely Budged in Decades, (Fact Tank: News in Numbers, 2018, Pew Research Center). 3. Darrin Hodgetts and Ottilie Stolte, Greed Versus Need: Historical Tensions in Responses to Urban Poverty (Vol. 1), (Routledge, 2017), 23. 4. Graham Boone, Labor Law Highlights, 1915-2015, (Monthly Labor Review, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015) 5. Erik Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis, (In These Times, 2018) 6. Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis, (In These Times, 2018) 7. David W. Chen, Electchester Getting Less Electrical: Queens Co-op for Trade Workers Slowly Departs from Its Roots, (New York Times (1923-Current file), B1, 2004) 8. Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis, (In These Times, 2018) 9. Chen, Electchester Getting Less Electrical: Queens Co-op for Trade Workers Slowly Departs from Its Roots; Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis 10. UHF-built cooperatives like Concourse Village in the Bronx, Seward Park Houses in Manhattan, and Big Six Towers in Queens were all built primarily for specific Locals across the garment, printing, and meat processing industries. 11. Chen, Electchester Getting Less Electrical; Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis 12. New York (State), New York City’s Mitchell-Llama Housing Program: The Management of the Middle Income Housing Program by the Housing and Development Administration of New York City, (1973), 3.

20. Hillary Botein, Labor Unions and Affordable Housing, (Urban Affairs Review, 2007), 804; National Labor Relations, 1947 Taft-Hartley Act Substantive Provisions 21. Hillary Botein, Labor Unions and Affordable Housing, (Urban Affairs Review, 2007), 805 22. James Hanlon, The Origins of the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program and the End of Public Housing (Housing Policy Debate, 2017), 615 23. Hillary Botein, Labor Unions and Affordable Housing, (Urban Affairs Review, 2007), 806 24. Steven Mellor, The Relationship Between Membership Decline and Union Commitment: A Field Study of Local Unions in Crisis, (Journal of Applied Psychology, 1990), 258 25. Frank Parente, “Housing and the American Dream: Unions Have a Role; So Does Government” AFL-CIO Reviews the Issues, Report 85, (Cornell University IRL School, 1995) 26. Hillary Botein, Labor Unions and Affordable Housing, (Urban Affairs Review, 2007), 807 27. AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (2020) 28. Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis 29. Hanlon, The Origins of the Rental Assistance 30. Raphael Bostic, A Primer on Mortgage Lending Practices, (University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate, 2004). 31. P. Kaboth, History and Overview of the Community Reinvestment Act, (Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, 2017), 396 32. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 33. Laura Wolf-Powers, Community Benefits Agreements and Local Government, (Journal of the American Planning Association, 2010)

13. Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis

34. Wolf-Powers, Community Benefits Agreements

14. Forman, How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis; New York (State), New York City’s Mitchell-Llama Housing Program, 4

35. Wolf-Powers, Community Benefits Agreements

15. Hillary Botein, Labor Unions and Affordable Housing: An Uneasy Relationship, (Urban Affairs Review, 2007), 799-822 16. Hillary Botein, Labor Unions and Affordable Housing, (Urban Affairs Review, 2007), 802-803 17. Hillary Botein, Labor Unions and Affordable Housing, (Urban Affairs Review, 2007), 810 18. Walter Howard & Brett Gibble, Values and Institutions in Conflict: The Shotgun Merger of the AFL and CIO in Florida, (Labor History, 1996), 189

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36. Wolf-Powers, Community Benefits Agreements 37. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 38. Community Land Trusts and Rural Housing, (Housing Assistance Council, 1993), 3 39. Engelsman, Udi, Rowe, Mike, & Southern, Alan, Community Land Trusts, Affordable Housing and Community Organising in Low-Income Neighbourhoods, (International Journal of Housing Policy, 2018), 110 40. Engelsman, Udi, Rowe, Mike, & Southern, Alan, Community Land Trusts, Affordable Housing and Community

Organising 41. Community Land Trusts and Rural Housing, (Housing Assistance Council, 1993) 42. Press Conference: NYC Retirement Systems to Invest $150 Million to Expand Affordable Housing in NYC, (AFL-CIO HIT via Cision PR NewsWire, 2015) 43. Community Land Trusts and Rural Housing, (Housing Assistance Council, 1993) 44. Community Land Trusts and Rural Housing, (Housing Assistance Council, 1993) 45. Community Land Trusts and Rural Housing, (Housing Assistance Council, 1993) 46. Stephen Lerner and Christina Livingston, Why Unions Must Bargain for Affordable Housing –and How, (The American Prospect, 2019) 47. Stephen Lerner and Christina Livingston, Why Unions Must Bargain for Affordable Housing–and How, (The American Prospect, 2019) 48. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 49. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 50. Substantive work around improving housing conditions for vulnerable groups through tenant-led policy interventions in the housing market has been done in Washington DC through the DC Preservation Network, a broad coalition of organizers similar to those described previously in Seattle and Chicago (Howell, 2019).

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Winning at All Costs: Why Cities look beyond the X’s and O’s to Finance Professional Sports Venues THOMAS BAGLEY Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2021

ABSTRACT Despite widespread criticism over public spending on professional sports venues due to their high costs and seemingly narrow economic benefits, the public sector often finds itself at the negotiation table with billionaire professional sports team owners over subsidizing new venues. Because American professional sports leagues operate as protected monopolies, community leaders are forced to negotiate in ways that differ from negotiations for other public services and often under the pressure that failure could lead to the departure of a sports franchise, an often beloved regional asset, to another city. However, this paper looks to evaluate what community leaders may have to gain in this negotiation process and how public spending on professional sports venues can assist in larger public goals. Specifically, this paper will evaluate how public spending on professional sports venues can positively affect three areas: localized economic growth, the formation of a unique economic environment, and a shared communal experience and asset.

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n September 2017, Little Caesars Arena opened in Midtown Detroit as the new home of the Detroit Red Wings National Hockey League (NHL) franchise. The Detroit Pistons National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise joined the Red Wings in the new arena later that year, solidifying all four of Detroit’s major American sports league teams within a few downtown blocks of each other. The design of the new arena was praised for its sightlines, fan experience, and neighborhood scale, but the planning process and the financial negotiations between the team and the City drew considerable criticism from the local press and community members. After decades of political and financial turmoil in the City, the public was subsidizing $324.1 million for the arena’s development. The Ilitch family, who own the Red Wings and Little Caesars Pizza, financed $538.8 million through their development arm, Olympia Development.1 A concerned public could not help but ask why the city, less than 10 years removed from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, was willing to subsidize an arena for a family with a net worth of over $6.1 billion. The controversy over stadium financing in Detroit mirrors many other public financing negotiations across major U.S. cities. Despite increased criticism over the use of taxpayer money to subsidize professional sports venues, the amount of public spending on stadium development continues to increase.2 Many public officials, community members, and scholars view these enormous expenditures as a waste of valuable taxpayer money and argue that stadiums never generate the revenue that is marketed to communities in the planning process. Others argue that money spent by fans attending games would be equally spent elsewhere in the local economy and that stadiums do not generate the outside tax dollars that are so often advertised in the negotiation process. After all, sports venues sit empty for most of the year, with the NBA and NHL only playing 41 home games each season, Major League

Baseball (MLB) playing 81, and the National Football League (NFL) playing only eight. In other words, public subsidies for stadium development are viewed as an egregious form of corporate welfare. I do not disagree with these criticisms and would add that team owners often unfairly force the hands of municipalities through claims that public funding is needed to build a winning franchise, pay top-team talent, or ensure that the franchise does not relocate to another city. Yet, the general objection to publicly subsidized professional sports venues undervalues the financial and societal returns the public is looking to gain from that subsidy. Public spending for professional sports venues is driven by policy-makers’ goals of fostering particular community benefits. Within the local context, public investment in professional sports facilities is used (1) as an economic development tool, (2) to retain human capital, and (3) to foster neighborhood-level and community-wide benefits. Far from looking at just the financial return on the investment, communities invest in sports venues to achieve larger public goals.

Urban Decline and the Need for Tailored Reinvestment Starting in the 1950s, U.S. cities became less monocentric as economic activity and residents moved out of the dense urban centers and into the country’s growing suburbs. Central cities faced declining populations and a loss of property tax revenue as high-income employers and residents fled to lower tax areas in the suburban periphery. Between 1950 and 1980, Baltimore lost 17.2 percent of its population, Cleveland 37.3 percent, and Detroit 34.9 percent.3 By 2000, more than half of the country’s residents lived in the suburbs, and an average of only 22 percent of people worked within three miles of a city center.4 Today, metropolitan areas are

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increasingly segregated by income and race, and lower-income population groups face even more limited opportunities for upward social mobility.5 For the past 60 years, city leaders have been assessing ways to reverse this trend to better support economic growth in central cities. Studies have shown the strong, direct effect that neighborhood context can have on a person’s economic outcomes.6 Increasingly, the city’s economic base is vital to support public policies for income redistribution and social equity. While some scholars argue that these trends are simply the realities of the modern decentralized U.S. economy, other studies show that people’s residential and work choices are not entirely driven by accessibility to workplace destinations, but by individual preferences.7 If people prefer to live in dense walkable neighborhoods, they will consider walkability in their residential and work decisions. If people want to live

near entertainment, bars and restaurants, they will look for mixed-use neighborhoods. By making areas more attractive for businesses and residents, cities can successfully invest in local economic development, and that is where professional sports venues can be an effective tool. This idea of using stadiums for economic development was first explored in the 1960s and 1970s, when many policy-makers claimed that public investment in stadiums would lead to the revitalization of entire downtowns.8 This was not true then and remains untrue today. With public financial support, professional sports venues can help facilitate the redevelopment of specific district-level areas and relocate economic activity. Stadiums alone will not generate economic growth nor be a major job creator, but they can be unique entertainment assets that relocate economic activity.

Figure 1. Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, MI 2017. The arena was part of a multi-million dollar public-private partnership between the Ilitch Family, the City of Detroit, and the State of Michigan. The arena was championed as an economic development tool for a largely vacant area of Midtown Detroit. (Kohn, 2017)

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The Downtown Stadium Migration The modern idea of relocating a professional sports venue to generate district-level redevelopment was first explored in 1992 with the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.9 For most of the post-World War II era, professional sports stadium design was focused on large seating capacities, multi-sport use, and automobile access. These so-called cookie cutter stadiums, because of their shared circular design, became the standard in cities like Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Stadiums of this era were notorious for their austere utilitarian appearance and for being surrounded by a wasteland of asphalt parking lots. Access to surrounding commercial and retail space was extremely limited, and the traffic associated with leaving these sprawling parking lots incentivized fans to leave the venue as soon as any event finished. Scholar Robert Baade put it best: “on the way from the stadium in their automobiles, fans encountered car windows not store windows.”10 In Baltimore, the ballpark designers and City officials learned how the critical mass of people that go to games could help lead to many spillover benefits, including bar and restaurant patronage, sidewalk activity, and development interest.11 Camden Yards became part of a new mixed-use district and an extension of both the downtown and the nearby Inner Harbor neighborhoods. While large-scale development did not materialize as robustly around Camden Yards as around other ballparks, it continues to be celebrated locally and nationally for helping reinvigorate downtown Baltimore and drawing daily activity.12 By the mid 1990s, city leaders across the country were looking to create their own version of Camden Yards. One such effort took place in San Diego, where City officials were eager to move the MLB’s

Figure 2. San Diego Stadium, San Diego, CA (1967-2020). The stadium was the home of the NFL’s San Diego Chargers from 1967-2016 and the MLB’s San Diego Padres from 1969-2003. The stadium is an example of many automobile-oriented multi-purpose stadiums built between 1959 and 1992 in the United States. The Padres moved to downtown San Diego for the 2004 MLB season, while the Chargers moved to Los Angeles in 2017 after being unable to secure public financial support for a new stadium in San Diego. (Vazquez, 2005).

San Diego Padres from their previous home, San Diego Stadium (previously Qualcomm Stadium), into downtown as part of the City’s plan to create a new urban residential neighborhood.13 The City agreed to spend $191.6 million on a new stadium if the Padres’ owner agreed to move the team and would guarantee $487 million in private development in the surrounding neighborhood. The Padres’ Petco Park opened in 2004, and by 2007, 3,000 marketrate apartment units, 594 price-restricted apartment units, and 500,000 square feet of retail space were built in the surrounding area.14 By 2018, 34,984 residents lived in downtown San Diego, an 83 percent increase from 2000.15 Today, 16 years after the completion of the ballpark, $2.87 billion in new real estate has been developed in the area, in addition to a new children’s ballfield and public park.16 San Diego leaders achieved their goal in creating new housing units and in the process turned downtown San Diego into a thriving residential mixeduse district.

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Figure 3. Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD. Camden Yards revolutionized stadium design in the United States. Lead architect Janet Marie Smith used her background in urban planning to create a unique urban ballpark gameday experience. The design was modeled after the classic “ jewel box” ballparks of the early 20th century and incorporated the red brick typology of the former B&O Railroad Warehouse (center right) into the ballpark’s aesthetic. The project was championed as a revitalization tool for a stagnating downtown Baltimore (Highsmith, 2006).

A smaller-scale effort took place in Columbus, Ohio in 2000, where the creation of the Arena District around the home for the Columbus Blue Jackets NHL franchise spurred $1 billion in private investment.17 Columbus officials wanted to promote development activity in the City’s traditional downtown, and the Arena District was successful in adding 7,000 jobs between 2002 and 2011.18 The area also generated a new tax base, brought more residents into downtown, and kept activity in the neighborhood past normal workday hours. Another example is in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where construction began in 2016 on the Ice District in the City’s downtown. This neighborhood redevelopment is a public-private partnership, with Rogers Place, the new home to the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, at the center of the redevelopment plan. The Oilers’ previous home, Northlands Coliseum, was built in 1974 and was located 2.5 miles from downtown. Like so many other professional sports venues built

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in that era, Northlands Coliseum was surrounded by surface parking lots. Easy freeway access made the arena accessible for suburban residents, but the lack of amenities outside the arena left little incentive for fans to linger before or after games. By entering into a public-private partnership with the Oilers, the City of Edmonton ensured that the Oilers would move into a dense downtown neighborhood. With Rogers Place secured as the district’s anchor tenant, investors eagerly jumped into the wider Ice District redevelopment plan. Ultimately Rogers Place was the catalyst for the development of 300,000 square feet of new multi-level retail space, including new bars, restaurants, and entertainment space. The Ice District has also been the center of a new Edmonton skyscraper boom including the mixed-use Stantec Tower and JW Marriot Residence, the two tallest buildings in the City.19 The Ice District has successfully transferred a large amount of economic activity back downtown and allowed for greater business opportunities to serve gameday patrons.20

For local leaders, a downtown venue could help support the image of a vibrant city center and further differentiate the city center from the suburbs through its unique concentration of entertainment venues, and residential, recreational, and commercial activity.” While downtown professional sports stadiums are not massive job creators, they can relocate economic activity into downtown areas and bolster redevelopment efforts. A 2011 study by Arthur Nelson

verified that major league teams that play in suburban venues generate less regional income for the metropolitan area as a whole than teams that play in central city locations.21 Many professional sports team owners could remain extremely profitable by keeping their teams in suburban venues, but public subsidies create an opportunity for policy-makers to influence team owners’ decisions on where the municipality would like to see the venue located. For local leaders, a downtown venue could help support the image of a vibrant city center and further differentiate the city center from the suburbs through its unique concentration of residential, recreational, social, and commercial activity.22 With so much uncertainty about how the public should best spend to encourage economic development, the above case studies show professional sports venues’ potential as a tool in the public’s economic development toolkit and their ability to generate highly sought-after development in downtown areas.

Cities as Places to Create a Competitive Advantage While stadiums can be the catalyst for localized redevelopment, they can also help support a city’s efforts to create a unique economic environment. Unlike their suburban counterparts, cities are conglomerates of labor, markets, and people, and their concentration of amenities and entertainment can be a major attraction for the modern workforce. American cities used to distinguish themselves by having a comparative advantage, meaning they could produce a good or service for a lower relative price than other cities or regions.23 Detroit had a comparative advantage through its location along the Great Lakes, which enabled car manufacturers to receive iron from the Upper Great Lakes and coal from the Ohio River Valley. As water became a less viable transportation source and was replaced by railroads and highways, Detroit

began to lose its comparative advantage to other regions with cheaper land prices and greater geographical access.24 Labor and production costs furthered the exodus of manufacturing from Detroit and led to the loss of 134,000 manufacturing jobs between 1947 and 1963 alone.25 Today cities are reorienting their economic development philosophy away from bringing back their comparative advantages and towards establishing competitive advantages. A competitive advantage describes economic success that comes from the competition of specialized businesses. These specialized firms foster clusters of unique business activity that emphasize the importance of place to attract human capital. Public money spent on reestablishing a community’s comparative advantage will likely only yield short-term gains because it only temporarily lowers the opportunity cost of production before additional public assistance is likely needed.26 A competitive advantage forms when industries, such as information technology and advanced manufacturing, create a labor market driven by human capital. By attracting human capital, cities can take advantage of the sectors in their economy that are innovating and have growth potential from the ‘start-up’ phase. Focusing on these types of businesses means that cities can create clusters of local firms that rely on their physical location to innovate and work collaboratively.27 Within a geographic cluster, businesses have the ability to share knowledge, foster ancillary and cottage industries around the cluster economy, and attract skilled workers to the region.28 For example, in the Greater Boston area, the concentration of top universities, including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Tufts University, allows education-driven sectors to flourish, such as healthcare, biotechnology, financial services, management consulting, and

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computer technology.29 Laboratories and technology firms have created the East Coast’s response to Silicon Valley due to their access to top-tier talent and cuttingedge research coming out of neighboring universities.30 Competitive clusters, like Boston’s, have the ability to transfer knowledge and allow the flow of ideas to permeate other industries and the local economy.31 The competitive relationship between firms also pushes them to innovate and continue the process of creative destruction, or the idea of destroying existing products and methods in order to build something better.32 Local leaders can propel their cities to a competitive advantage by investing in professional sports venues and, subsequently, the human capital these venues help attract and retain.33 In order to attract a skilled workforce, companies and communities look at ways they can differentiate themselves and create clusters of educated workers. Professional sports venues can help in that process by attracting the critical mass needed for the modern economy. In the words of scholar Mark Rosentraub, “corporations locate where they believe people want to live and in areas where they have the greatest confidence that they can attract and retain the human capital required to foster innovation.”34 Communities that are able to offer a mix of desirable amenities, like sports and entertainment venues, are better able to appeal to a highly mobile workforce.35 As individual incomes rise, people are more likely to spend in the “experience economy,” where tourism, entertainment, and experiential activities take up more of the time and disposable income of middle- and high-income individuals. Sports venues, in particular, foster congregation, invite people to interact in unique and productive ways, and signify a higher quality of life.36 Taken a step further, venues that implement placemaking strategies are able to become even better centers of clustered engagement. Amenities such as open

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floor stadium suites, commercial space surrounding the venue, communal plazas, and art installations become places for people to entertain guests and help drive personal interactions.37

The Civic Benefits of Professional Sports One major criticism of public spending on professional sports facilities is the idea that the taxpayer is subsidizing a private venture. However, this idea may ignore the value sports have as a public good.38 Sports offer many positive externalities including a sense of civic pride in a nationally recognized professional sports venue and community excitement when the franchise is successful ‘on the field.’ Anecdotally, many of us can point to ways that professional sports frequently become an essential icebreaker among peers, co-workers, family, and friends.39 Communities often show this passion with celebratory parades and civic spectacles after a championship win. Studies show a general appetite of team fans to spend public money on stadiums to ensure that their favorite teams do not leave the region.40

Sports offer many positive externalities including a sense of civic pride in a nationally recognized professional sports venue and community excitement when the franchise is successful ‘on the field.’” Communities can also differentiate themselves from other regions by their professional sports teams, and those teams can become an important element of a

region’s character and culture. If sports are to be viewed as a public good, communities should be able to weigh the value of professional sports teams as they weigh spending on other public amenities like parks, schools, and the arts.41 People who do not attend games or have any interest in sports may also benefit from having professional sports in their region, like a business-owner or resident of a community without school-age children may benefit from an excellent public school system. Of course public spending on professional sports venues should never take away from expenditures on more important public goods like education and public health, and any municipality attempting to subsidize a stadium through budget cuts to essential services would face tremendous pushback from the public. However, professional sports venues are often financed through capitalized tax revenue streams like sales taxes, taxes on event or game-day tickets, and so-called sin taxes on alcohol, tobacco and gambling.42 Other financial structures include taxes on the hospitality and tourism sectors and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts. These financing strategies are meant to concentrate the tax burden on particular behaviors and activities and away from the community as a whole. Taxes on game-day tickets would ensure that only people interested in attending games are the ones bearing the public costs, while hospitality and tourism taxes often export the tax burden more broadly onto visitors and tourists into the city or region.43

The Cost-Benefit Debate A major frustration with sports stadiums subsidies over the past 30 years is the lack of accountability for the promised new jobs and tax revenue the projects will create. When put under the microscope of simple cost-benefit analyses, sports venues consistently do not make good public investments.44 Yet, even in the face of community-wide opposition, elected

officials continually feel pressure to move ahead with multi-million dollar subsidies for sports facilities. In turn, this can lead officials to shield the true cost of stadium development from the public and allow team owners to dictate the terms of publicprivate negotiations. One major issue is that the sports industry is simply not big enough to support the often-inflated job and tax revenue figures offered up to the public by elected officials.45 A 1997 study by Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist observed that the top ten universities in the U.S. received more federal grant money in 1994 than the combined annual revenue of the NFL and NHL.46 The study shows the relative smallness of the sports industry compared to higher education, but also that the sports industry is not alone in receiving considerable financial assistance from the public sector.47

With a more complete understanding of the financial gains and losses, cities can better negotiate the terms of publicprivate partnerships, and in the process, increase transparency in their decision making, gain a better understanding of their long term financial obligations, generate political goodwill, and hold team owners more accountable.”

Numerous scholars have attempted to show the wider economic benefits professional sports can have in a metropolitan region. A 2004 study by Gerald Carlino and Edward Coulson found that cities with NFL teams had higher average monthly rents than cities

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that did not.48 They note that in 1993, Dallas and Houston had average monthly rents of $440 and $435. Houston lost its NFL franchise in 1994, while Dallas continued to have the Cowboys playing in nearby Irvine, Texas. By 1999, average rents in Dallas were $73 more than in Houston. Over that same period, St. Louis and Jacksonville also gained NFL teams, and both saw their rents increase by $76 and $158, respectively. The scholars stressed that the presence of a professional football team was not the only factor to account for changing rent prices, but when controlling for those additional factors using an NFL dummy variable, they still concluded that the presence of an NFL team raised rents by approximately 8 percent in U.S. cities.49 Ultimately, Carlino and Coulson conclude that the presence of professional sports can be worth as much as $98 million to $168 million per year to the economy of a metropolitan area.50 However, the study has been refuted by other scholars who found minimal evidence that professional sports franchises generate a positive economic impact. In their own study, Dennis Coates, Brad Humphreys, and Andrew Zimbalist found Carlino and Coulson’s NFL dummy variable to be statistically insignificant.51 The larger issue, as pointed out by scholar Judith Grant Long, is that the current academic and public discourse over stadium financing lacks understanding over the full count of costs and benefits.52 As Long writes, “more accurate cost estimates could strengthen the cost-benefit analysis in cases where the full public costs are measured against the full set of public benefits, including urban development and symbolic benefits.”53 With a more complete understanding of the financial gains and losses, cities can better negotiate the terms of public-private partnerships, and in the process, increase transparency in their decision making, gain a better understanding of their long-term financial obligations, generate political goodwill, and hold team owners more accountable.54

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Conclusion When financing professional sports venues, the public sector should enter more nuanced and strategic public-private partnerships. As public officials, policymakers need to work in a community’s best interest and weigh the repercussions and outcomes of sports stadium development. Is public investment always necessary and warranted? The answer is no, and cities like Boston, San Francisco, and Toronto have been successful in holding a hard line against taxpayer funding for new professional sports venues.55 Unfortunately for many other municipalities, professional sports leagues operate as monopolies and have the legal ability to limit competition by controlling the number of teams in their respected leagues. The leagues are able to distort the demand for professional sports teams, thus forcing cities to compete for teams through financial incentives and subsidies.56 Yet, communities should also realize that despite the public scrutiny surrounding stadium financing, there can be tangible financial benefits and intangible symbolic benefits in subsidizing professional sports venues.57 These subsidies can lead revitalization efforts in downtown neighborhoods as in Baltimore, San Diego, Columbus, and Edmonton; they can assist in the process of attracting human capital for the modern economy; and they can help develop people’s sense of place within a city or region. When negotiated smartly, professional sports venue financing can be a very useful tool in facilitating certain economic ends, meeting community goals, and creating social benefits.

about the author Thomas Bagley is a Master of Urban and Regional Planning Candidate at the University of Michigan. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University Maryland in 2015. His research interests focus on economic development and urban revitalization in the post-industrial cities of the American Northeast and Midwest. He is also passionate about how urban design, history, sports, and culture shape cities and influence future urban growth patterns.

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endnotes 1 Bill Shea, “How Olympia financed an arena in a bankrupt city,” Crain’s Detroit Business (Detroit, MI), Sept. 10, 2017. 2 Jason Winfree, Mark S. Rosentraub, Brian M. Mills, and Mackenzie P. Zondlak, Sports Finance and Management: Real Estate, Media, and the New Business of Sport (New York: Routledge, 2019), 129-160. 3 Mark S. Rosentraub, Reversing Urban Decline: Why and How Sports, Entertainment, and Culture Turn Cities into Major League Winners (New York: CRC Press, 2014), 5. 4 Edward L. Glaeser, Matthew Kahn, and Chenghuan Chu, “Job Sprawl: Employment Location in U.S. Metropolitan Areas,” The Brookings Institute, Jul. 1, 2001. 5 Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff, “Growth in the Residential Segregation of Families by Income, 19702009,” (New York: U.S. 2010 Project, 2011), 2. 6 Reardon and Bischoff, “Growth in Residential Segregation,” 2. 7 Rosentraub, Reversing Urban Decline, 10. 8 Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 8.

23 “Trade: Comparative Advantages,” in Managerial International Macroeconomics (unpublished manuscript, 2016), 215. 24 Glaeser et al., “Job Sprawl: Employment Location in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.” 25 Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 128. 26 Mark S. Rosentraub and Michael Przybylski, “Competitive Advantage, Economic Development, and the Effective Use of Local Public Dollars,” Economic Development Quarterly 10, no. 4 (Nov. 1996): 315-330. 27 Stephen Talman, Mark Jenkins, Nick Henry, and Steven Pinch, “Knowledge, Clusters, and Competitive Advantage,” Academy of Management Review 29, no. 2 (2004): 262. 28 Leonard I. Nakamura, “Economics and the New Economy: The Invisible Hand Meets Creative Destruction,” Business Review - Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (July/August 2000): 15-30.

9 Timothy S. Chapin, “Sports Facilities as Urban Redevelopment Catalyst,” Journal of the American Planning Association 70, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 197.

29 Edward Glaesar, The Triumph of the City (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2011), 234.

10 Robert Baade, “The Impact of Sports Teams and Facilities on Neighborhood Economies: What is the Score?” in The Economics of Sports, ed. William S. Kern (Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2000), 23.

31 Rosentraub and Przybylski, “Competitive Advantage, Economic Development, and the Effective Use of Local Public Dollars,” 315-330.

11 Chapin, “Sports Facilities as Urban Redevelopment Catalyst,” 207. 12 Chapin, “Sports Facilities as Urban Redevelopment Catalyst,” 201.

30 Glaesar, The Triumph of the City, 235.

32 Leonard I. Nakamura, “Economics and the New Economy,” 15-30. 33 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 129-160. 34 Rosentraub, Reversing Urban Decline, 71.

13 Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 455.

35 Rosentraub, Reversing Urban Decline, 71.

14 Rosentraub, Reversing Urban Decline, 150.

36 Elizabeth Currid, “How Art and Culture Happen In New York: Implications for Urban Economic Development,” Journal of the American Planning Association 73, no. 4 (Autumn, 2007): 455.

15 U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2018 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, prepared by Social Explorer, (accessed Nov. 21, 2020). 16 Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 457. 17 Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 209.

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22 Mark S. Rosentraub and David Swindell. “Of Devils and Details: Bargaining for Successful Public/ Partnerships between Cities and Sports Teams,” Public Administration Quarterly 33, No. 1 (2009): 121.

37 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 107.

18 Rosentraub, Reversing Urban Decline, 222.

38 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 148.

19 Kent Gordon, “Stantec Tower in Edmonton set to be Canada’s tallest outside Toronto,” Edmonton Journal, (Edmonton, AB), Sep. 16, 2015.

39 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 130.

20 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 112.

40 Jeffrey G. Owen, “The Intangible Benefits of Sports Teams,” Public Finance and Management 6, no. 3 (2006): 321-345.

21 Arthur C. Nelson, “Prosperity or Blight? A Question of Major League Stadia Locations,” Economic Development Quarterly 15, no. 3 (2001): 261.

41 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 131.

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42 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 140-152.

43 Jason Winfree et al., Sports Finance and Management, 129-160. 44 Judith Grant Long, Public-Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities (New York: Routledge, 2013), 4. 45 Long, Public-Private Partnerships, 8. 46 Robert Baade, “The Impact of Sports Teams,” 25. 47 Robert Baade, “The Impact of Sports Teams,” 25. 48 Gerald Carlino and Edward Coulson. “Compensating differentials and the social benefits of the NFL.” Journal of Economics 56 (2004): 25-50. 49 Carlino and Coulson, “Compensating differentials and the social benefits of the NFL,” 29-30. 50 Carlino and Coulson, “Compensating differentials and the social benefits of the NFL,” 48. 51 Dennis Caotes, Brad R. Humphreys, and Andrew Zimbalist, “Compensating differentials and the social benefits of the NFL: A comment,” Journal of Urban Economics 60, no. 1 (2006): 125. 52 Long, Public-Private Partnerships, 180. 53 Long, Public-Private Partnerships, 180. 54 Long, Public-Private Partnerships, 182. 55 Long, Public-Private Partnerships, 183. 56 Rosentraub and Swindell, “Of Devils and Details,” 121. 57 Judith Grant Long, “The Real Cost of Public Funding for Major League Sports Facilities,” Journal of Sports Economics 6, no. 2 (2005): 120.

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