Agora Volume 16

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Agora

2007

Growth Management

2008

Change

2009

Detroit

2010

Endurance and Adaptation

2011

Connection

2012

Public | Private

2013

Alternatives

2014

Divisions

2015

Progression

2016

Perspective

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Semblance

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Transformations

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Convergence

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R\Evolutions

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University of Michigan A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design Volume 16: 2022

The Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design in an annual, studentrun, 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 COPYRIGHT

LICENSING

TYPE

PRINTING

2331-2823

Agora Volume 16 2022, the Regents of the University of Michigan

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

Calibri-Regular, Calibri-Light, Warnock Pro, TRAJAN

ULitho Ann Arbor, Michigan 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 16 was made possible by the Taubman Endowment Fund.

We would also like to thank the following individuals for their generous support for Agora 16: María Arquero de Alarcón Lan Deng Lesli Hoey Christine Hwang Kim Kinder Joy Knoblauch

Jen Maigret Kit McCullough Martin Murray Marc Norman Taru Taru Ana Paula Pimentel Walker

We would also like to give special thanks to our faculty advisors, Dr. Scott Campbell and Dr. Julie Steiff

A16 Staff Editors-in-Chief Laura Melendez Caroline Lamb

Creative Directors Jon Haadsma Srishti Jaipuria

Deputy Editors Lauren Ashley Week Harrison Clark

Symposium Directors Aaron Cohen Alex Spofford

Symposium Deputy Director Luke Ranker

Manager of Finance Brigitte Smith

Blog and Website Manager Arin Yu

Social Media and Outreach Camilla Lizundia

Content Editors Brooke Bulmash

Kiley Fitzgerald

Danielle Contorer Tara Grebe Katie Economou

Dylan Vaughn-Jansen Sam Limerick

Ashley Jankowski Brigitte Smith

Layout Editors Khalid Aburajab Altamimi

Gurleen Kaur

Maria Garcia Reyna

Tara Grebe

Judy Mendoza

Rebeka Rooks

Manvi Nigam

Sydney Weisman

Camilla Lizundia

FEEDING THE PEOPLE OF POLETOWN FROM THE GROUND UP

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CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS IN RURAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING POLICY

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PUBLIC BANK

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ACCESSING LENDING IN THE DECLINING CITY

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ADDRESSING TRAUMA IN THE PLANNING CONTEXT

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DIMENSIONS OF DISEMPOWERMENT IN URBAN PLANNING WE(B)EIRUT

71 PA R T I C I PA C T I O N 85

IN THE BLOOD

107

CHING CITY: THE NEW HUTONG PLAYSCAPE

119

JUDAISM IN AN ARGUMENT TO COMPLICATE WHITENESS

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CLIMATE RISK & HOUSING TENURE

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MAKING HISTORY, MAKING WORLDS

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LETTER FROM FACULTY

Scott D. Campbell

It’s a chilly gray April in Ann Arbor, heading into the last hectic days of the semester, weighed down by two years of a protracted pandemic and its disjointed hybrid of inperson and online education. Despite all these challenges, the stalwart editors of Agora 16 are soon sending these pages to press, ably continuing Michigan’s contribution to planning scholarship.

In these articles you hear the voices of the next generation of planners and urbanists, designers and policy advocates. One readily sees how planning is a dynamic, shifting discipline, both reconciling itself with past shortcomings and pushing the field into new and more enlightened directions.

Ever-present is the conscientious attention to the plight of those left behind in our volatile, uncertain urban society: by the unaffordable housing market, by growing income and wealth inequality, the precarity of the gig labor market, disruptive shifts in the geography of growth and decline, widening holes in the social welfare state, the fragmentation of public life and the urban social contract. It is a time where we can no longer take the assumed prerequisites of modern planning — rationality, democracy, a shared public consensus on the validity of data and evidence — for granted.

This critical perspective is directed not just outward, at society in general (including

private firms, lenders, governments, affluent enclaves), but increasingly inward as well, reflecting on planning and design’s culpability.

The field is increasingly confronting the legacies of our own professional past: in zoning and housing segregation, auto-centric sprawl, the climate crisis.

There is an undercurrent of atonement, exploring pathways towards reconciliation and reparations. One hears the field experimenting with new language to map this terrain — intersectionality, postcolonialism, inclusiveness, resilience, spatial justice, white supremacy, trauma — often building on long-running ideas (of justice, equality, voice, identity, empowerment) inherited from civil rights, feminist, labor and indigenous rights social movements to create new hybrid ideas for urbanism. It is a fluid time for planning, a time of critical reappraisal, trial-and-error and resetting the field’s internal compass. One is curious to see, in the coming decades, which of these ideas will endure and take hold in the planning lexicon.

But it is also a time of urban innovation: new ways to fund, build and own housing; growth in urban farming; expansion of community engagement practices; efforts to end single-family zoning; creating new community-based financial institutions; rethinking (and sometimes replacing) urban statues and monuments; designing equityfocused transit-oriented-development. More

broadly, planners are not content with adding sustainability and social justice as merely lastminute appendages, but instead substantively weaving these values into projects from the start, giving these two priorities tangible urban forms. And in this increasingly fluid, globalizing field, we see more sharing of designs and practices across national and cultural borders. In these articles we see vivid evidence that planning has largely shifted away from its earlier preoccupation with constructing synoptic visions of grand, modern cityscapes, replete with high-speed road networks and glimmering glass boxes (though that tradition lives on elsewhere in the “smart cities” rhetoric). Planning is a field for pragmatic optimists, engaging complex local problems in an ever-changing global environment, with a mix of social activism, resistance, scrappy entrepreneurialism and community building.

The faculty and staff offer our wholehearted congratulations to the authors and Agora staff, especially co-editors Caroline Lamb and Laura Melendez, for a job well done.

We appreciate your tireless efforts, during these hectic and uncertain days, to continue this important tradition of providing a public forum for emergent voices in urbanism.

Scott Campbell Faculty co-adviser (with Julie Steiff)

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Caroline Lamb Laura Melendez

The 16th volume of the Agora Journal arrives after yet another unprecedented year. We have seen our cities adapt and transform from a pre-pandemic world into cities better prepared to challenge existing systems and meet the needs of their diverse communities.

It’s Agora’s goal to contribute to the literature documenting this transformation. Together, our incredible team of staff and authors from across Taubman College and the University of Michigan created a collection of innovative written and design work that powerfully critiques past urban planning practices and presents a call to action for an equitable and sustainable future for all. We are very grateful that Agora remains a medium through which student knowledge, perspectives, and experiences can be shared. And we are so proud of all of the dedication and work of all who have made this year’s journal possible.

From sharing ideas to proposing action, this year’s theme, Participaction, centers values of participation and redistribution of power to better understand the ways in which urban planners, designers, and policymakers can help shape more equitable cities.

Interdisciplinary analysis is central to our symposium pieces and the journal as a whole.

Agora 16 opens with Kat Cameron’s Feeding the People of Poletown from the Ground Up, which covers the history of Detroit’s Poletown neighborhood, and against this backdrop takes a deep dive into how Poletown leaders

are creating community through a local food system. Emily Soderberg’s Climate Risk & Housing Tenure brings attention to the disproportionate impact that the climate crisis will continue to have on renters without proper intervention. Mack Schroeder’s In the Blood looks at the relationship between planning and public health through an analysis of the shortcomings in Detroit’s lead remediation programs, and Victoria Wong’s Ching City: The New Hutong Playscape reimagines public space, visualizing what people-oriented, informal urban spaces can be. This is just a snapshot of the thoughtful contributions from all Agora 16 writers and designers. The pieces in this journal are rich in history, cross-disciplinary analysis, and reflection, and we’re excited to share this work with you.

Thank you to our advisors, Dr. Julie Steiff and Dr. Scott Campbell, who help make Agora a success every year. We also want to give a huge thanks to the hard work of our layout and content editors, who undoubtedly make this journal possible. And finally, to our board — your guidance and dedication throughout the editing process has made this year’s journal one of Agora’s best. Thank you!

Caroline Lamb Laura Melendez Editors-in-Chief

Ngo Dong River in Tam Coc, Ninh Binh, Vietnam Photographer: Laurin Aman

Feeding the People of Poletown from the Ground Up How the Polish Catholic Church and Urban Farming Built a Community

KAT CAMERON Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Master of Environment and Sustainability

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ABSTRACT Once home to ribbon farms, the soil in East Poletown, a Detroit neighborhood near Hamtramck, has been tilled to produce food and compacted to bear the weight of institutions over the centuries.

Poletown’s initial growth and its current rebirth are unique in the organizations and people that build the foundations of structure and community – the Polish Catholic Church and urban farming. The Church was the guiding light for the neighborhood of Poletown East as new immigrants poured in from Europe.

These Polish immigrants erected grand churches and developed a parochial school system along with establishing seminaries and convents to provide priests and nuns to run these institutions. However, post-World War II disinvestment in the community and the city at large led to white flight, and much of the Polish community moved to the suburbs. In the 1980s, a decision by the city to sell a large section of Poletown to General Motors ripped the community apart so that it seemed that it would never recover.

Nevertheless, replacing services with shovels to build a sense of community, current-day urban farming has taken up the Church’s mission of nurturing the community. The 2008 Great Recession forced many Detroit residents experiencing financial duress to turn to agriculture. At the helm of Poletown’s urban farming movement is retired teacher, Paul Weertz, whose numerous ventures not only have transformed not only the street on which he lives but also have helped to inspire many to return to the earth as a way to transform the neighborhood.

INTRODUCTION At first glance, the story of the Poletown East neighborhood in Detroit resembles much of the rest of the city’s: an accelerated rise followed by a rapid fall. Poletown did experience impressive growth and then an abrupt departure of residents followed by a drawn-out disinvestment, but its initial growth and its current rebirth are unique.

The Polish Catholic Church, present-day urban farming, and the community members who carry out the work built the foundations of structure and community from the ground up.

The Polish Catholic Church was the guiding light for the neighborhood of Poletown East as new immigrants poured in from Europe.

With its mission to nourish the spirits of the Polish people, the Church became a stalwart institution that held the neighborhood together. Current-day urban farming has taken up the Church’s mission, using shovels instead of worship services to build a sense of community. Local farmers do more than cultivate the land: they also create a place for people to gather as the neighborhood continues to transform. The Church, coupled with farming, has shaped the past and present lives of Poletown residents by nurturing both souls and soil.

Figure 1: Typical Polish immigrant home (circa 1907) Source: Królewski, St. Hyacinth Church (Detroit, and Królewski, The Prayer of St. Hyacinth Parish, Detroit, Michigan (Poletown).

THE POLISH CATHOLIC CHURCH, POLETOWN’S BEDROCK FROM FERTILE SOIL The land on which Poletown sits is fertile soil that the French colonists recognized as ideal for farming. Pear trees, planted by the French, and “ribbon” farms lined the Detroit River. The long and narrow strips of land gave each farmer access to the river and a shorter walk to town.1,2 Irish and German immigrants arrived in the mid-1800s, attracted to the industrialization of the city with its prominent location in the Great Lakes, which made it a center for commerce and trade. The French, and then the Germans and Italians, were among the first of many immigrant groups to leave their unique marks on the landscape and history of Detroit.

Prussian Polish immigrants began to arrive en masse in 1857 seeking economic improvement.3 Having just left a Poland partitioned between multiple countries and empires, these new Detroit residents were eager to pass down their Polish history, culture, and language to their children.4 Not wanting to be influenced by their German neighbors, these new Detroit residents began erecting their own institutions, beginning with the Church. With a parish of 70 families, St. Albertus was formed in 1871, and a wood-framed building was erected a year later.5 However, St. Albertus was more than a structure; it was the foundation on which the Polish community began to build itself.

The budding community soon outgrew the new parish’s pews, and the community quickly added new churches. St. Albertus was such an impressive feat that the Detroit News was astonished that within thirteen years of the Polish community establishing itself, this bunch of newcomers could amass enough wealth to build the largest church in Michigan. Detroit swelled as it became the fourth-largest Polish community in the world, and the community took great pride.6 Between the 1871 founding of St. Albertus and 1907, when St. Hyacinth was built, pews overflowed as the Polish AGORA 16

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population increased to over 60,000 people shepherded by nine churches, each with its own parish school.

Poletown and the western Polish neighborhoods in Detroit felt like they were in a world of their own. The area was almost an isolated province with each parish an individual village. Poletown residents were so tied to their parish that when asked where they were from, the answer was likely “I’m from St. Hyacinth” or “I’m from St. Albertus.”

Each parish was seen as a microcosm, an urban village. While it harkened back to tight-knit Eastern European villages, Poletown’s “parishas-village” system allowed for the support of those in need, the education of the youth, the financing of the church, and the preservation of the Polish culture and language.

Increasing numbers of Polish immigrants, this time peasants from Galicia, began to arrive in 1872, the same year that the wooden St. Albertus was built. These new Poles were often referred to as za chlebem, or ‘for bread,’ due to their extreme poverty.7 Despite this, these new arrivals joined the working class in Detroit and helped lay the physical foundation and infrastructure of the city. They paved streets, dug sewers, laid street railways, and installed water pipes. They built their own houses on small lots and traded skilled labor with acquaintances to keep costs low and avoid living in crowded tenements like many other immigrant groups.8 Intricate detail adorned their homes, and beautiful gardens bloomed in their front yards (Figure 1). The Polish people were proud of the Little Poland they were building.

The success of Poletown was undoubtedly accomplished through hard work and dedication. The Polish immigrants were essentially pioneers, living off meager day laborer wages, often with little schooling themselves. They persevered to build rectories, convents, and schools. The Polish Catholic Schools ended up being one of their greatest accomplishments. Their hard work funded more than simply steeples; they built stable community institutions. Yes, there

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were beautiful churches, with stained glass glinting in the sunlight and impressive towering steeples, but there were also a seminary and a motherhouse to train Polish priests and nuns, an orphanage, convents, rectories, and a school for each church. To avoid persecution by the Germans and the pressures placed on their children to speak German and English at school, they recruited nuns to teach.

The Poletown community funded a level of schooling that was more extensive than that of any other group of immigrants. Even after World War I, the schools continued to grow as the auto industry attracted families to the Detroit area. Unaware of the Great Depression looming around the corner, it seemed as if Poletown would continue its upward trend forever.

Figure 2. Polish immigrants walk to their Pingree Potato Patches Source: Larry Gabriel, “Detroit’s Urban Farms Are Nothing New — City Farmer News,” Detroit Free Press, June 4, 2013.

POST-WAR CHANGES That elated feeling of growth was cut short by the Great Depression, which ravaged the city of Detroit and the Poletown neighborhood.

Auto sales plummeted and factories laid off thousands of workers. During the slow rebuilding, there was a short resurgence of factory work due to wartime demands, but after World War II, the population began a downward slide. Buoyed by the GI Bill, Polish American vets sought better jobs and larger homes.9 They used the newly built highway and interstate systems to relocate to the suburbs of Warren, Sterling Heights, and Harper

Woods. Nevertheless, although they had left their home parishes, they were still loyal to them. When asked where they were from, they would still answer, “I’m from St. Stanislav.”10 The Polish were not the only group of people to head to the suburbs; many, mostly white, Americans also left the city. Whites’ higher socioeconomic status and access to Federal Housing Association–backed mortgages allowed for such moves, and in their place, less-well-off minority, immigrant, and Black families were left. With inner-city jobs continuing to disappear, the tax base declined, so the city was unable to support the remaining infrastructure.11 Foreclosures were common, and an attempt to remedy the situation via urban renewal only worsened the problem. In the 1970s, an uptick in arson accelerated the demolition of many remaining buildings. This left Detroit pockmarked with disaggregated empty lots and abandoned buildings across upwards of 30,000 acres of vacant land.12 These grassy lots would soon be eyed for a hopeful reindustrialization project that would break the community apart.

During the 1980s, in a desperate attempt to attract companies and factories back into the city, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young brokered a deal that ultimately changed Poletown forever.

With the promise of thousands of jobs and a new life for the neighborhood, General Motors Corporation (GM) and Young arranged for the creation of the Central Industrial Park (CIP), which would house a brand-new GM plant modeled after GM’s new suburban factories.13 However, the plan required the purchase of a large parcel of land that included the shuttered Dodge Main plant and the individual properties on which sat up to 1,500 homes, 140 businesses, 12 churches, a 278-bed hospital, and several schools.14 The CIP site was a significant section of the neighborhood. It was situated between St. Aubin Street and Mount Elliott Street, just north of the I-94 interstate highway that had broken up the neighborhood in the 1950s.

The site was selected because the city had deemed it void of life and unworthy of being

St. Albertus was more than structure; it was the foundation on which the Polish community began to build itself.” saved.15 CIP land made up a large portion of Poletown, and it was more intact than other areas considered for demolition. Its proximity to the enclave of Hamtramck also increased its prosperity. Even as some residents gave into the buyout offer for their homes, resistance to the plant continued to grow.

STANDING THEIR GROUND While local community groups had already been hard at work trying to revitalize the community since the 1970s, these groups, backed by the Polish Catholic Church, were pushed to the front of the anti-CIP movement even though fewer than half of Poletown’s post-war residents were Polish.16 The first anti-CIP meeting took place in St. Hyacinth’s in August 1980 in an effort to save Poletown and the two Polish Catholic churches that lay within the demolition zone. The Immaculate Conception Church had long been an anchor of the community and a symbol of its faith and the Polish people’s hard work, but now, slated for demolition, it was a symbol of the resistance. Its pastor, Rev. Joseph Karasiewicz, became a spokesperson for the church and its aging Polish population. However, despite all their efforts including protests, media attention, and Ralph Nader’s support, the neighborhood eventually lost the fight after a sit-in that lasted 29 days and ended when 20 people were evicted from the church.17 While many of the protestors were not even Poletown residents, the Polish Catholic Church was at the center of and on both sides of the conflict. While protestors were attempting to save the church, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit had furtively approved a deal to sell Immaculate Conception to pay off diocesan debt. The Polish Catholic community

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was in shock not only over the loss of its parish but also over the alignment of the diocese with “the enemy.” The Church and its faith had been a rallying point but now had let the community down.

Poletown seemingly never recovered from the destruction of a portion of its community.

Blight settled comfortably down in the neighborhood as urban renewal, demographic change, and industrial development prompted more and more residents to flee to the suburbs.18 Today, the Polish Catholic community still rallies behind its remaining churches even though few Polish Catholics live in the neighborhood. The churches, which some see as “[their] spiritual home” and “shrine[s] to the region’s Polish heritage,” still hold occasional masses.19 Clearly, the Polish Catholic community is not dead, even if most have moved out of the city. Perhaps the city should have reconsidered its opinion of the neighborhood as “a blighted urban wasteland not worth preserving.”20 In the Polish community’s wake, a different community can be seen rising from the now vacant lots of Poletown.21

Figure 3. Urban Garden Source: Photo by Andrew “Birch” Kemp

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URBAN FARMING BRINGS NEW LIFE IN POLETOWN A COMMUNITY ENRICHED BY SOIL Today, the landscape of Poletown has changed from pastel picket fences and overflowing gardens in Polish front yards to a nearly deserted neighborhood where vacant lots outnumber occupied structures. However, new life is growing in the empty lots of Poletown in the form of urban farms. Farming in this area is nothing new. Like the original French colonial farmers, Poletown and the rest of Detroit once again embraced farming after the Panic of 1893, a significant economic downturn that caused unemployment to skyrocket to 43 percent in the state.22 With factories laying off workers, then-Mayor Hazen S. Pingree made a public appeal for the use of vacant land for gardens and potato patches. The Detroit Free Press declared that the “lowly potato…[was] Detroit’s weapon to fight the depression of the ‘90s.” Funded by the mayor’s sale of his own prize horses, Pingree’s Potato Patches kept many, including those in Poletown, from going hungry during the winter of 1894.23 The Detroit News even featured a story about the “industrious” Polish immigrants who had turned to harvesting potatoes in 1896.24 The author seemed surprised that Poles would take so readily to farming—but Poles had been farmers in the old country and were already known for taking much pride in maintaining their magnificent front gardens (Figure 2).25 Agricultural practices in Poletown continued to be adopted over the century.

Detroit’s fertile soil proved lucrative throughout the 20th century as different programs were employed to encourage community gardening. Like Pingree’s Potato Patches, many of the programs aimed to reduce the cost of living during hard economic times by making it easy to acquire a permit for farming in the city. In response to the Great Depression, Detroit Thrift Gardens came about in 1931 with a simple application that included a pledge of what each gardener agreed to, including not selling their produce at market.26

The National Victory Garden Institute also had a regional office in Detroit during World War II. Victory gardening was meant to promote citizen participation in the war effort while providing additional health, recreation, and morale benefits.27 In the 1970s, Coleman Young, the same mayor who would go on to endorse the development of the GM assembly plant, promoted urban agriculture with his “Farm-a-Lot” program to put vacant land to good use.28 The program, which continued until 2002 when farming’s popularity dropped, provided seeds and tilling services with the ultimate goal of the community being selfreliant.29,30 Farm-a-Lot received a boost in 1976 when the US federal government started the “Urban Garden Program” through the Department of Agriculture’s cooperative extension service, which would help fund educational programming such as food preservation and gardening basics.31 Programs such as these laid the groundwork for urban agriculture’s revival later during the 21st century.

Detroit residents have historically returned to the land during economic hardships, including more recent downturns. The 2008 Great Recession caused urban farming to rise in popularity while simultaneously forging community as the Polish Catholic Church had done over 100 years ago. The Recession ignited an interest in families cooking and eating at home and growing their own food, as many urban households experienced financial distress.32 A lack of available fresh food and the closing of local grocery stores only exacerbated this problem.33 In contrast, a 2009 study by a Michigan State University student revealed that Detroit had enough vacant land to grow 76 percent of the vegetables and 42 percent of the fruits consumed by city residents.34 Through DIY urbanism, vacant lots were places of opportunity and hope for those experiencing food insecurity. With tall grasses and trees rooting down into old foundations, the vacant lots have become the home to Detroit’s newest rebirth.

One of the first residents to take up this

challenge was Paul Weertz. He had been a teacher at Catherine Ferguson Academy, a school for pregnant and parenting teens. The school taught the young women agricultural skills, which in turn taught them to be more

Every Shovelfull of soil reveals the interconnectedness of East Poletown” independent and appreciate nutritious food.35 Weertz oversaw the agricultural component of the students’ unorthodox education, incorporating orchards, bees, livestock, and fields with produce into the curriculum.36 Weertz, who moved to Poletown on Farnsworth Street in the 1980s, started buying up the houses around his own home in order to dissuade arsonists, a growing issue in the city. In an attempt to keep drug lords from occupying a home on his street, he filled the house full of hay. He began to garden on his lots and would sell to those he trusted. The people Paul permitted to move in also picked up his knack for gardening. Just as Poletown’s founding residents took to the fields, the modern community’s members and agrarian aims have grown.37 The ties that hold the Farnsworth Street community together are more than just Weertz and his family, who have also settled on the block. Weertz was intentional about how he built the community as well. He made sure he knew all the neighborhood kids by setting up a basketball hoop and engaging them in his farming activities, which taught them practical skills and let them earn a little money. He hopes they will choose one day to stay in the community and invest in it. His block of Farnsworth could easily be described as an “unintentional intentional community” – the focus is heavily community-minded, which makes it a safe place for people to raise their kids. Related to Weertz’s ventures is also an orchard on what was once abandoned

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lots.38 The city owns some, while two other Farnworth residents purchased some in 2014.

The orchard grows heritage apples like the Detroit Red and sports a cider mill.39 Weertz views his plantings as doing no harm despite their informality; the plots can easily be turned back into a development if the other owners come back.40

The pheasant ‘is the product of emptiness,’ and thrives in urban prairies much like the people of Detroit.”

The welcoming nature of the Farnsworth community and Weertz have planted the seeds of community in other areas of Poletown as well. Rising Pheasant Farms is one of the closest of the Weertz offshoots. Adjacent to Farnsworth, since 2009, Carolyn Leadley and Jack VanDyke chose to raise their four children and take on farming the land as well. What started with turning the attic of the house they rented from Weertz into a grow room has now expanded to encompass nearly 17 city lots near Farnsworth.41,42 The couple harvests micro and heritage greens and delivers them to nearby restaurants and farmers markets via cargo bike. The cargo bike attracts a lot of positive attention, saves the farm money, and helps them adhere to their goal of sustainability.43 Another important component for Rising Pheasant Farms is taking care of the Detroit community, and Detroit itself was the reason why they chose the pheasant for their name. According to Leadley, the pheasant “has flourished under rough circumstances’’ and thrives in urban prairies, much like the people of Detroit and consistent with the city’s motto of Speramus Meliora, Resurget Cineribus (“we hope for better things, it will rise from the ashes”).44 Poletown is an enduring example of a city doing just that.

Figure 4. Pink Pony Express Mapping Session Source: Pink Pony Express Art Collective. “Pink Pony Express..” 2010.

GROWING MORE THAN FOOD ARBORETUM DETROIT Beyond gardening, agroforestry is also taking root in Poletown. Unsurprisingly, Paul Weertz sits on the Board of Directors for the Arboretum Detroit (“The Arb”), a nonprofit whose aim is to inspire environmental consciousness and cultivate an arboretum across the city. Originally the new trees were acquired from Earth Day giveaways, but the project now has two small arboretums, Treetroit 1 and 2, a tree nursery known as the Neighborhood Tree Bank near Farnsworth Street, and Circle Forest, a native habitat restoration. So far, over 24 vacant lots have been reforested under their care, and the Arb expands into new properties each season.

Another nascent project is Oxygen Alley, a series of trees that will one day wind between existing Arb lots and residential properties. The alley not only will increase connectivity but also stand in defiance of the recently closed incinerator that polluted the neighborhood for decades.45 The Arb also works with Poletown residents, known as Neighborhood Tree Stewards, to adopt and plant upwards of sixteen trees in their yards.46 The young trees in the nursery will one day reroot themselves along the streets, or “arbs,” of Poletown, and Poletown’s new life will unfurl with every new leaf.

Arboretum Detroit is also pondering the

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Figure 5. Hand-drawn map of the neighborhood Source: Pink Pony Express Art Collective. “Pink Pony Express..” 2010.

history of the land and its future. When removing invasive species to make space for the planting of the native wildflower seed and 200 new native trees in Circle Forest, the Arb left in place the venerable oaks, maples, and hackberries—the same trees that have silently witnessed Poletown’s metamorphosis over the decades. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge, learned from before a time that even the trees can remember, the Arb is just beginning its land back initiative in the hopes of making “a better way forward for the Earth, our future with her, and with the original people of this land.”47 Through restoration, the Arb’s deference to Detroit’s original residents and their descendants is also an invitation back to the land for everyone in the community.

RECOVERY PARK Not all the cultivated areas are Paul Weertz’s creations, but all seek to better the community they serve through caring for land and people. RecoveryPark and RecoveryPark Farms are situated on over 75 acres in Poletown. Since its establishment in 2010, Recovery Park has been trying to start “a conversation about blight and beauty, abandonment and maintenance” through its work.48 RecoveryPark aims to revitalize Poletown and create jobs for people who face barriers to finding employment: usually those dealing with poverty, homelessness, addiction, incarceration, or mental illness.49 The organization owns a series of prominent

hoop houses for growing vegetables on the east side of Poletown near Chene Street and a community vegetable garden near its offices with a large sign reading “Pick as You Please” to encourage neighbors to snack on whatever is growing there. Additionally, RecoveryPark’s Housing Support Platform partners with other organizations, including the Michigan Department of Corrections, to help find permanent housing for those in need.

The program also cares for the earth through the use of green infrastructure to reduce stormwater and improve the aesthetics of vacant lots.50 Like Poletown’s predecessors, RecoveryFarms is helping people rebuild their lives, not as new immigrants in a new city but as those in recovery, through working the land.

It is programs like these that continue to care for and restore Poletown.

PEACEMAKERS INTERNATIONAL Another urban farming project is run by Peacemakers International and headed by a spirited Detroit-native pastor. The pastor started Chene Street Outreach Ministry in the early 1990s, which eventually changed its name to Peacemakers International as it rapidly grew. The ministry operates soup kitchens, halfway houses, and, of course, community gardens. Often those living in the halfway houses take part in gardening. Some, having lived their entire lives in the city, have never seen food grown before.51 Although the gardens are magnificent and one even resides within an abandoned house without a roof, the future of the gardens is uncertain as Peacemakers looks for a leader to take over the master planning of the garden.52 Even when there is no harvesting taking place, the organization plays a vital role in supporting those most in need in the community.

CALLAHAN PARK Although not agricultural, the transformation of Callahan Park on East Ferry Street from an abandoned dumping ground to a wildflowerfilled grassland has had a profound impact on the neighborhood.53 The Detroit Audubon,

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Figure 6. Yarn represents the interconnectedness of Farnsworth Source: Pink Pony Express Art Collective. “Pink Pony Express..” 2010.

with grant money from National Geographic, cleared the park of debris, sidewalks, and turf grass and opted to till the soil rather than use pesticides. Callahan Park was the first of 17 city parks to be converted into a native bird habitat for Audubon’s Detroit Bird City program.54 The park features over 39 varieties of wildflower and 6 species of native grasses to attract Indigo Bunting, American Goldfinch, native sparrows, Catbird, and Detroit’s ever-present Ring-necked Pheasant. As the city’s unofficial bird, the pheasant thrives in Detroit, which is something few cities can claim.55 Callahan has many connections with the community besides the pheasants. Community members were an integral part of the planning and implementation efforts. Locals cleaned up the 2.9 acres and sowed seeds, and Paul Weertz built the bulletin board that explains the field to ecotourists and passersby.56 With less than one percent of native grassland habitat

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protected, Callahan Park is a refuge for birds, grasses, and people alike.57 Every shovelful of soil reveals the interconnectedness of East Poletown. The work of the interdisciplinary collective Pink Pony Express may be the ideal representation of the community’s unique bonds. Pink Pony Express hosted a neighborhood barbeque where residents participated in a mapping session. Residents mapped out their connections with each other as a way to explore the social-interaction patterns of the people living on Farnsworth (Figures 4 & 5).58 They brought the hand-drawn maps to life by stringing 20,000 feet of yarn between the houses with different colors to represent different kinds of relationships (Figure 6). Paul Weertz’s centrality to the neighborhood is evident through the many strings attached to his home (Figure 7).59 The more than decadeold exploration of relationships on just one

Figure 7. Spools of yarn spin off Paul Weertz’s House Source: Pink Pony Express Art Collective. “Pink Pony Express..” 2010.

block in Poletown can be easily extrapolated to the entire neighborhood.

What was and will continue to be more important to Poletown than the physical structures and land uses is the social infrastructure that buttresses the community.

While both the Poles and today’s farmers were given a nearly blank canvas with which to work, they relied on their pew mates and neighbors to map out Poletown’s future. At its core, the community has to believe in its values because just as the Polish Catholics were tested by the city, one day the presentday residents may also face development pressures. Standing one’s ground is easier as a community. Their interwoven patches of farmland and freshly planted forests and fields represent the trust and faith the community is built upon. These earthbound connections are similar to the spiritual building blocks of the Polish Catholic Church that previously

served as the foundation for the Poletown community. These days, residents are linked to each other by another higher power: the desire to build up the Poletown neighborhood.

Poletown has seen many changes in its long history. Perhaps its transformations are reflected in the line “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the well-known text from the Rite of Christian burial, which would have been repeated in Polish by priests at Polish Catholic funerals.60 The neighborhood has risen from the stream-fed fertile soil many times to be a strong community; one almost more akin to a phoenix than a pheasant. The Polish Catholic Church and agriculture have been interwoven across time with each as a prominent leader in the community at different times. Each built the city from the ground up, choosing how to convert the land into a use that best supports their community. For the Polish Catholics, school buildings and church

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steeples sprouted where potato plots had once sustained freshly arrived immigrants.

They planted roots so deep that they felt the call to fight to protect that ground from demolition. Even when Poletown’s streets emptied and grasses grew up amongst old brick foundations, the soil lay in wait, a time for restoration. New residents used tools to aerate the land, breathing oxygen into the neighborhood again through the reforming of the community and the determination to grow.

As Poletown and the rest of Detroit continue to rebuild, new farmers and neighbors will have their opportunity to roll up their sleeves and continue the hard work of feeding people, spiritually and physically.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kat is a second-year, dual degree Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Environmental Policy and Planning Student at SEAS who hails from Wisconsin. After working in the film industry in New York City, she now focuses on assisting Great Lakes communities in creating their own stories of resilience in the face of climate change. Kat is also a passionate NUMTOT and bike commuter.

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ENDNOTES 1. “Ribbon Farms.” Detroit Historical Society Encyclopedia of Detroit. accessed April 28, 2021. https:// detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/ribbonfarms.

2. “Jesuit Pear.” Slow Food Huron Valley. accessed April 29, 2021. https://www.slowfoodhuronvalley.com/ arkoftaste.

3. Vinyard, JoEllen McNergney. “For Faith and Fortune: The Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit, 1805-1925.”

1998. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015047097939.

4. Królewski, Michael A.. St. Hyacinth Church: The Prayer of St. Hyacinth Parish. 1984. Detroit, Michigan (Poletown).

5. Królewski. St. Hyacinth Church.

6. Vinyard. “For Faith and Fortune.”

7. Vinyard. “For Faith and Fortune.”

8. Vinyard. “For Faith and Fortune.”

9. Bukowczyk, John J.. “The Decline and Fall of a Detroit Neighborhood: Poletown vs. G.M. and the City of Detroit Tensions between Religious or Ethnic Communities and the Larger Society: A Frances Lewis Law Center Colloquium.” Washington and Lee Law Review 41, no.

1 (1984): 49-76. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein. journals/waslee41&i=63.

10. Vinyard. “For Faith and Fortune.”

11. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Detroit.”

Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www-britannica-com. proxy.lib.umich.edu/place/Detroit.

12. Mogk, John E.et al.. “Promoting Urban Agriculture as an Alternative Land Use for Vacant Properties in the City of Detroit: Benefits, Problems and Proposals for a Regulatory Framework for Successful Land Use Integration.” Wayne Law Review 56, no. 4 (December 22, 2010): 1521.

13. Bukowczyk. “The Decline and Fall of a Detroit Neighborhood.”

14. “Poletown vs. GM: A Close-Knit Neighborhood Vanishing.” Polish American Journal 70, no. 3-N (March 16, 1981).

15. Bukowczyk. “The Decline and Fall of a Detroit Neighborhood.”

16. Bukowczyk. “The Decline and Fall of a Detroit Neighborhood.”

17. Murry, Martin et al.. “Perforated Detroit: Roubled Histories and Imagined Futures.” January 2021.

18. Radzialowski, Thaddeus Casmir. “Polish Americans in the Detroit Area” 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ mdp.39015071310455.

19. Zaniewski. “Polish Pride to Be on Display at St. Albertus Mass Mob, Pierogi Festival.”

20. Bukowczyk. “The Decline and Fall of a Detroit Neighborhood.”

21. Murry et al.. “Perforated Detroit: Roubled Histories and Imagined Futures.”

22. Verhaeghe, Jason. “Setting the Scene: Women of the 1890s - Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service).” accessed March 9, 2022. https:// www.nps.gov/klgo/learn/historyculture/women1890s.htm.

23. Austin, Dan. “Hazen S. Pingree Monument | Historic Detroit.” accessed April 29, 2021. https://historicdetroit.org/ buildings/hazen-s-pingree-monument.

24. “Detroit News.” News Bank inc. October 4, 1896. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/apps/ news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=image/ v2%3A143B808DB2B45FAC%40WHNPX14C8C4341EFAEC7F%402413837-14C67729E1E10CF8%401214C67729E1E10CF8%40 25. Królewski. St. Hyacinth Church.

26. Lawson, Laura J.. “City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America.” 2005. http://hdl.handle. net/2027/mdp.39076002465784.

27. Lawson, “City Bountiful.”

28. Thompson, Bankole. “Farm-A-Lot Is Community Driven.”Michigan Citizen XXIV, no. 15 (March 9, 2002).

29. “Urban Farming in Detroit | Looking Glass.” accessed May 8, 2021. https://glass.hfcc.edu/2018/05-23/urbanfarming-detroit.

30. Thompson. “Farm-A-Lot Is Community Driven.”

31. Lawson, “City Bountiful.”

32. Pothukuchi, Kameshwari. “‘To Allow Farming Is to Give up on the City’: Political Anxieties Related to the Disposition of Vacant Land for Urban Agriculture in Detroit.” Journal of Urban Affairs 39, no. 8 (November 17, 2017): 1169–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1319239.

33. “Urban Pioneers Turn Vacant Lots Verdant | Great Lakes Echo.” September 8, 2009. http://greatlakesecho. org/2009/09/08/urban-pioneers-turn-vacant-lots-verdant/.

34. Greene, Jay. “Getting from Motown to Growtown; Plan to Narrow Detroit’s ‘green Gap’ Includes Recycling, Urban Farming.” Crain’s Detroit Business. August 3, 2009. http://bi.gale.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/global/article/ GALE|A205040915?u=umuser.

35. “Grown in Detroit – Documentary Features Transformation of Teen Moms into Urban Farmers — City Farmer News.” accessed April 14, 2021. https:// cityfarmer.info/grown-in-detroit-documentary-featurestransformation-of-teen-moms-into-urban-farmers/.

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36. Jackman, Michael. “How Paul Weertz Helped Stabilize the Tiny Detroit Neighborhood You Almost Never Hear About.” Detroit Metro Times. accessed April 15, 2021. https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/how-paul-weertzhelped-stabilize-the-tiny-detroit-neighborhood-youalmost-never-heard-about/Content?oid=2343926.

37. Jackman. “How Paul Weertz Helped Stabilize the Tiny Detroit Neighborhood You Almost Never Hear About.”

38. Jackman. “How Paul Weertz Helped Stabilize the Tiny Detroit Neighborhood You Almost Never Hear About.”

39. Taylor, Kimberly Hayes. “Detroit’s Apple Orchards Are Expected to Generate Future Yields.” The HUB Detroit.

March 15, 2017. https://www.thehubdetroit.com/detroitsapple-orchards-expected-generate-future-yields/.

40. Jackman. “How Paul Weertz Helped Stabilize the Tiny Detroit Neighborhood You Almost Never Hear About.”

41. Jackman. “How Paul Weertz Helped Stabilize the Tiny Detroit Neighborhood You Almost Never Hear About.”

42. Leadley, Carolyn. Email, 2022.

43. Detroit Public TV. “Detroit Performs Clip: Rising Pheasant Farms.” 2015. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fv2mAKCHTMs. 44. “Rising Pheasant Farms.” accessed April 15, 2021. http://risingpheasantfarms.blogspot.com/.

45. Perkins, Tom. “How Environmental Activists and Attorneys – Not Politicians – Beat Detroit’s Toxic Trash Incinerator.” Planet Detroit. December 17, 2020. https:// planetdetroit.org/2020/12/how-environmental-activistsand-attorneys-not-politicians-beat-detroits-toxic-trashincinerator/.

46. Osz-Kemp, Kinga. “Annual Report 2021.” https://docs. google.com/presentation/d/1otCLxYg3MoShPXeaSjYElg7B u6xKFFvFrkCMu0ZRVUk. 47. Osz-Kemp. “Announcing our Next Project.”

48. Suh. “The Detroit Model: Greater than the Sum of Its Parts.” The Detroit Model: Greater Than the Sum of its Parts. accessed April 1, 2021. https://www.juliasuh.co/ blog/the-detroit-model-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts.

49. “RecoveryPark Farms Is Planting Seeds of Change Farm Flavor.” accessed March 26, 2021. https://www. farmflavor.com/michigan/michigan-farm-to-table/ recoverypark-farms-planting-seeds-change/.

50. “A Tale of Two Urban Farms: Public Health Happens in Communities, Not Just in Clinics.” Citizens Research Council of Michigan. August 23, 2018. https://crcmich. org/a-tale-of-two-urban-farms-public-health-happens-incommunities-not-just-in-clinics.

51. McGlashen, Andy. “Urban Pioneers Turn Vacant Lots Verdant.” Great Lakes Echo. September 8, 2009. https:// greatlakesecho.org/2009/09/08/urban-pioneers-turnvacant-lots-verdant/.

52. “Peacemakers International.” Peacemakers

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International. accessed April 15, 2021, https:// peacemakersinternational.org/.

53. Walker, Micah. “Detroit Audubon Turns East Side Park into a Haven for Bird Watchers.” Detroit Free Press. accessed April 15, 2021. https://www.freep.com/story/ news/local/michigan/detroit/2019/09/03/detroit-auduboneast-side-park-native-grassland/2134471001/.

54. “Detroit Bird City | Detroit Audubon.” accessed April 15, 2021. https://www.detroitaudubon.org/conservation/ detroit-bird-city/.

55. Atwell, Alex and Haddad Ken. “Pheasants Turn Detroit’s Formerly Blighted Open Spaces into Natural Habitat.”

WDIV. April 4, 2017. https://www.clickondetroit.com/ features/2017/04/04/pheasants-turn-detroits-formerlyblighted-open-spaces-into-natural-habitat/.

56. Walker. “Detroit Audubon Turns East Side Park into a Haven for Bird Watchers.”

57. Haddad. “Pheasants Turn Detroit’s Formerly Blighted Open Spaces into Natural Habitat.”

58. Pink Pony Express Art Collective. “Pink Pony Express.”

Drawing on Farnsworth. 2010. http://www.pinkponyexpress. nl/archive/?id=18.

59. Pink Pony Express Art Collective.

60. National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Order of Christian Funerals with Cremation Rite. Catholic Book Publishing, 1998.

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Challenges and Limitations in Rural Affordable Housing Policy An Examination of the History and Challenges in Rural Housing

GREG HARDISON Master of Urban and Regional Planning

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ABSTRACT Rising rents and increasingly high costs of homeownership have led to a housing affordability crisis, yet this phenomenon is not limited to the US’s urban centers. Across the country, rural areas are facing challenges for a myriad of reasons. Depopulation in some areas has led to a dilapidated housing stock with little resources or ability to mitigate the issue, while other areas face challenges related to rural gentrification resulting in increasingly high costs of living and a shortage of affordable housing options. To better understand the complexities of rural housing challenges, it is important to understand the history of rural affordable housing policy alongside existing programs.

Four of the largest methods for providing affordable housing in rural areas are examined: Public Housing, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, Housing-Choice Vouchers, and USDA Multifamily Housing Rental Program properties. All of these programs help to mitigate the issues of affordable housing in rural areas, yet while there are signs of promise within these programs, there are also significant shortcomings. This essay seeks to develop an understanding of the current landscape of affordable housing challenges and detail out these shortcomings and potential remedies so that planners may better educate themselves on an important yet oft-forgotten issue within housing policy.

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS THE RURAL HOUSING PROBLEM? Discussions surrounding housing policy in the United States display an overwhelming focus on providing affordable, safe, and quality housing for low-income residents in major cities and their respective metropolitan areas. Trends of urbanization, gentrification, and displacement within the context of the urban core and developing areas are at the forefront of urban planning policy. However, planners cannot claim to promote adequate and equitable housing for all if they fail to understand and acknowledge the housing challenges facing rural populations in the US. Thus, planners must establish a stronger understanding of the barriers rural populations meet in regard to housing, and the reasons that past affordable housing policies have fallen short in addressing rural community needs.

The field of planning often deemphasizes rural housing issues relative to urban housing issues. This may be attributed to a false belief that there are limited housing challenges in rural areas, mainly due to the high level of homeownership found in these communities.1 However, severe and chronic poverty is prevalent in many rural areas. Housing costs are often very low in rural areas, yet household incomes are often lower in comparison to housing costs relative to metropolitan areas.

Nearly 95 percent of the counties in the US that meet the criteria of “persistent poverty” (i.e., poverty rates greater than 20 percent in every census year since 1960) are located in rural areas.2 Additionally, these povertystricken counties tend to be disproportionately African American, Latino, or Native American.3 Difficulties arise in planning for rural housing due to the divergent nature of challenges facing rural areas of the country. Some

Figure 1. Underserved Rural Regions, This map highlights some of the areas which have significant challenges with both adequate housing and persistent poverty. There is a significant cluster in the Southeastern US and along the US’s border with Mexico. Additionally, Tribal Areas across the US face challenges with poverty and housing regardless of geography.

Source: Shelterforce.com

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areas grapple with rural gentrification, while others experience increasing rates of depopulation and vacancy.4 The phenomenon of rural gentrification has resulted in the increasing prevalence of exclusive upper-class neighborhoods where the housing stock is predominantly used as a secondary residence.

Typically, high-income families from larger cities will buy or build vacation homes that

the historical context alongside existing programs. I examine four of the largest methods for providing affordable housing in rural areas: public housing, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, Housing-Choice vouchers, and USDA Multifamily Housing Rental Program properties. The strengths and shortcomings of the programs are highlighted alongside potential areas for policy recommendations.

Planners cannot claim to promote adequate and equitable housing for all if they fail to understand and acknowledge the housing challenges facing rural populations in the US.”

Difficulties arise in planning for rural housing due to the divergent nature of challenges facing rural areas of the country.

Some areas grapple with rural gentrification while others experience increasing rates of depopulation and vacancy.”

attract these community outsiders who can pay substantially more than local residents.

This has the effect of increasing the price of housing and rents significantly across entire communities where the permanent residents may have incomes much lower than those who have second homes.5 In other areas, depopulation due to loss of industry and jobs has cost communities tax revenue, increased political apathy, and contributed to a deteriorating housing stock.6 Rural areas in general face a limited supply of adequate and affordable housing, and with little ability to renovate existing structures or finance developments on their own, affordable housing in rural areas is often highly dependent on state and federal programs. In 1980, 30 percent of the nation’s poor lived in rural areas, comprising 33 percent of US residents who lived in substandard housing.

Yet rural areas received only 20 percent of the federal allocation for housing support.7 To analyze these programs and provide recommendations for improvements, it is imperative to understand the history of rural housing programs and the reasons that rural housing affordability continues to be a great concern in the US. To do so, we must analyze

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HISTORY OF FAILURE IN RURAL HOUSING POLICY Due to processes of economic transition and urbanization, there has been a massive change in the availability of rental housing in rural America over the last 50 years. In 1970, there were approximately 500,000 more affordable units (as calculated by rent affordable for families making 30 percent of the national average income) than there were low-income households. By 1985, this situation had flipped: there were 500,000 fewer rural low-rent units than there were low-income households.8 This shortage was due to the significant decline of new construction in these areas, coupled with the lack of restrictions on affordable housing units that allowed renters with higher incomes to occupy some of these units.

Despite these difficulties, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, fewer than one in three renters in rural areas received subsidies for housing or lived in public housing.9 During this period, the main source of housing assistance was

the Farmers Home Administration, which provided homeownership loans and grants.

Unfortunately, the agency’s ability to cover the pressing need for housing assistance was inadequate. Less than 25 percent of those who applied for these loans or grants received any assistance from the Farmers Home Administration.10 The Farmers Home Administration was later terminated, and rural housing programs were moved under the jurisdiction of the USDA Rural Development.11 USDA multifamily housing continues to be one of the largest sources for financing and subsidizing low-income housing in rural areas, yet the program has met significant setbacks since the ’80s. To this day, there are declining numbers of properties enrolled in the program despite policies designed to preserve these affordable units.12

CURRENT HOUSING POLICIES AND THEIR LIMITATIONS PUBLIC HOUSING In the collective imagination, the idea of public housing often conjures images of poorquality high-rise tenements in large cities, yet this depiction is not always accurate. Public housing in rural areas has often persisted as an option for affordable housing; however, there are concerns about the longevity of properties as well as the feasibility of renovating or developing new public housing properties. In the rural context, public housing units tend to be newer and of higher quality than their urban counterparts.13 Although the majority of these rural public housing units have not been renovated recently, many were constructed in the ‘60s and ‘70s and appear to be in better structural condition than city-based public housing. Public Housing Authorities in rural areas manage over 230,000 units and continue to construct new dwellings that are often subsidized by USDA programs.14 Some rural housing advocates believe that these units will remain viable, but there are several reasons to doubt their longevity as an

affordable housing solution. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and local housing authorities have historically been the primary vendor of public housing units. The population density of rural areas makes public housing a difficult affair, and the number of eligible families within the radius of public housing may be too low to make a project financially viable. While public housing is inherently costly, the inability to capture economies of scale offered by concentrated populations means that it may be infeasible to develop housing projects that capture a large enough population.15 In some cases, the local housing authorities are unable to continue operating the properties and seek to sell to private management firms. If these properties were controlled by private management firms, it is unlikely that they would remain truly affordable for the rural poor for a long period of time. Although public housing contributes a portion of the affordable housing stock in rural areas, it is not a long-term solution.

Planning for the end-of-life cycle must be made as these projects age and the funds and desire to rehabilitate these programs lessen.

LOW-INCOME HOUSING TAX CREDITS The Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) program is the US’s most successful policy for supporting the development of new affordable housing, as determined by the number of units created through the project. Rural areas have also adapted to using the new program to develop affordable housing units. LIHTC has created over 270,000 units of affordable housing in rural areas since the program began in 1987. Despite these successes, rural areas still face challenges when seeking to develop affordable units through LIHTC.16 Many states include tax credit set-asides for rural areas in their Qualified Allocation Plans (QAP), which dictate the scoring and application criteria for proposed LIHTC properties. These QAPs have some requirements from the federal government, including a selection criteria, preferences for certain applications, and

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Figure 2. USDA Rural Development Eligible Areas: This map highlights all of the areas across the US that are eligible for USDA RD programs, including the Multifamily Rental property programs.

Source: Shelterforce.com

procedures for compliance monitoring. Yet these federal requirements are quite limited, and many of the criteria of the QAP are dictated on a state-by-state basis.17 Many states have included set-asides, which dictate the tax credit allocation for different types of developments, including set-asides for developments in rural areas.18 Yet these setasides may be only a small portion of total tax credits. For example, Michigan’s QAP has a setaside of 10 percent of total tax credits for rural areas, which are determined as communities located outside of metropolitan areas or those that are already supported by federal loans or programs for rural homes.19 Michigan is one of only 20 states that specifically includes a setaside to support rural communities.20 While the states may allocate funding for rural areas, rural development of LIHTC properties faces additional challenges. LIHTC allocations are very competitive, with preference given to properties that can provide a higher number of units, guarantee units affordable to the

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lowest income levels, and commit to longer affordability terms than required. Proposals for rural LIHTC units often suffer from the same problems as public housing in rural areas due to the lack of economies of scale. As rural population density is too shallow to create large housing structures, the cost-per-unit to private developers dramatically increases if the proposed development is spread out. As area median income (AMI) in many rural counties is often much lower than in metropolitan areas— in which poor urban centers may still have high AMIs due to the presence of wealthy suburbs— the rents are often much lower due to lower income levels across the entire county.

Similarly, while the price of development may be much lower and be subsidized by LIHTC and other tax credits, it is often not as profitable for developers to create these units in rural areas as it may be in urban areas.21 There may be some benefits to developers as the total project cost tends to be smaller, and there are opportunities to leverage other programs such as the USDA Section 515 Rural

Rental Housing Loan program (Section 515) or the HOME Investment Partnership program (HOME). These benefits may be particularly effective when developers renovate existing properties.22 While there is significant promise in using LIHTC to produce affordable housing units in rural areas, challenges remain. The federal government does not require a rural set-aside, and less than half of states choose to do so. Funding for LIHTC has also been declining at the federal level despite general bipartisan support. Both Section 515 and HOME have faced significant funding cuts over the past decade, and LIHTC’s design as a tax credit program means tax reforms over the past decades have led to varied and often lessened value of the credits.23 To ensure that LIHTC and these complementary programs can effectively develop and rehabilitate existing properties, these tax programs must be better funded and considered when lawmakers attempt tax reforms.

HOUSING CHOICE VOUCHERS One of the other major focuses of federal housing policy is the Housing Choice Voucher Program, often referred to as Section 8. The program works to provide affordable housing through the private market, with vouchers covering the difference between 30 percent of a qualifying resident’s monthly income and the fair-market rate rent.24 Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) are popular for many reasons, chiefly their supposed economic efficiency compared to other affordable housing programs and [their ability to provide voucher recipients a choice about where to live.

Housing vouchers are prevalent in rural areas, yet there are reasons to be hesitant about developing a system where HCVs are the basis of rural affordable housing. It is not possible to create true “choice” amongst rural populations seeking affordable housing due to the relatively low supply of quality affordable housing. With limited options available, low population density, and long distances required to reach alternatives, rural populations who are reliant upon housing vouchers are constrained in their choice of

housing.25 Additionally, the HCVP sometimes allows for negotiated contracts between renters and landlords; thus, there is significant room for negligence and predatory behavior when landlords may attempt to take advantage of renters with few options. In some ways, the lack of choice combined with some landlords discriminating against voucher holders means that there may be little truth to the name of the program. These risk factors, coupled with the relatively short five-year term of HCVs, can create housing security threats for rural populations.26 While HCVs can make higherquality housing affordable for low-income rural residents, they also present significant risks and fail to deliver the choice that is heralded as one of the primary benefits of the program.

USDA MULTIFAMILY PROPERTIES The USDA Rural Development Office runs multifamily housing programs that work to provide affordable rental housing in rural areas through the financing of affordable housing with guaranteed loans. The program includes over 14,000 properties across the US, wherein the USDA provides grants for repair and rehabilitation in addition to subsidizing rents for low-income tenants.27 The programs include both Rural Rental Housing and Farm Labor Housing properties, which may be owned by public, non-profit, or private entities. In many USDA units, rents and landlord-provided utility costs are capped at 30 percent of a resident’s income, which ensures that the units remain affordable. The landlord receives significant subsidies in the form of unit-based rental assistance, as well as aid through either HUD or Section 8 vouchers.

This assistance, combined with an additional subsidy to reduce the interest paid on the loan, reduces rents required for the properties and maintains financial viability for landlords while simultaneously providing affordable rents to tenants.28 While there are a substantial number of properties in the program, this large portfolio is quickly depleting. An analysis of USDA multifamily properties enrolled in

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Figure 3. Rural LIHTC Units Leveraging Section 515. This graph demonstrates the notable decline in the complimentary use of Section 515 and LIHTC to help fund affordable housing development in rural areas.

Source: Razoga Associates

these programs showed that between 2017 and 2020, the properties were leaving the program at a rate of 1.4 percent to 2.0 percent annually.29 The aggregated loss meant that 947 projects were no longer enrolled, and 17,804 units were likely no longer operating as affordable housing. There are two reasons the number of units is depleting so rapidly.

First, properties are required to operate as subsidized affordable housing only for as long as the guaranteed loans provided by the USDA have not run their full term or have been paid off. Many of the disenrolled properties abandon the program between the 30- to 50year mark as the loans reach their maturation date. Though this has already led to significant closure of units, the number of properties with maturing loans is likely to increase rapidly after 2028. A second and more insidious reason for the loss of properties in the USDA multifamily rental assistance program is the process of “prepayment.” Prepayment of loans is a process that allows property owners to pay off the remaining balance on their USDA loans, thereby freeing themselves from any

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requirements for housing affordability.30 Property owners who seek to prepay must meet the following two conditions: they must market units for sale to a nonprofit or public agency, and they must impose restrictive use covenants so that tenants are not burdened with undue rent increases resulting in displacement.

The process of prepayment is a key contributor to the downfall of the program. The problem is severe because the USDA cannot enforce the rules and regulations that structure the prepayment process. The loss of rural affordable housing due to this process dates back to 1987, when the Emergency Low Income Housing Preservation Act was passed to make the process for prepayment more strictly regulated and provide incentives for properties to remain enrolled in USDA programs. Despite these heightened restrictions on property owners, studies have shown that the system can be manipulated to allow undeserving properties to obtain the benefit that is intended for long-term affordable housing units.31

The USDA is required to provide additional financial incentives to property owners to dissuade further program withdrawal, yet these preventative tactics are often ineffective.

In the case of program exit, the property is required to be on the market for 180 days.

During this period, if a non-profit or public organization places a “fair-market” bid on the property, the owner is required to sell.

Subsequently, the property undergoes a “Civil Rights Impact Analysis.” The requirement to place the property on the market for 180 days does little to ameliorate the issue, as nonprofit organizations often have little cash on hand, and the relatively short period provides little time for any interested organizations to raise capital necessary for purchase.32 The process for Civil Rights Impact Analyses also falls short on its intended promise.

The impact analysis is designed to halt the prepayment process if there is an insufficient amount of affordable housing in the area or if the loss of the project would result in significant displacement. In reality, the USDA has loosened these standards, and the agency only requires evidence that the prepayment process will adversely disproportionately affect minorities.33 Additionally, many properties that have adopted the model of prepayment and enacted restrictive use covenants have been found to be noncompliant, yet tenants lack meaningful legal and technical assistance, and the USDA does little to enforce the restrictions of the covenant.34 While the USDA’s policies play an important role in providing rural affordable housing, a plethora of policy issues plague the program and its regulation capacity.

If the current decline in properties enrolled in the program is to be curtailed, critical changes must be implemented.

WORKING WITH CURRENT SYSTEMS While the current programs are insufficient, there are opportunities to build upon initiatives and policies that have already been implemented. The differences in the housing markets of rural areas compared to urban areas can explain the problems that plague some of the national programs, such as HCVs

and LIHTC. USDA multifamily housing has the greatest potential to be altered, as the current program provides a solid framework for providing adaptable and affordable housing options in rural areas.

USDA multifamily housing would be significantly improved if the USDA provided model leases for programs seeking to prepay their guaranteed loans. These model leases could serve as a template or be a requirement for property owners seeking to leave the program. These templates would ensure that property owners are drafting lease agreements that stipulate all of the requirements established by the USDA and help provide additional insurance against landlords’ predatory behavior. When these restrictive use covenants go into effect, both tenants and landlords should be offered training on the rights and responsibilities of the property.

Finally, during the period when the property is operating under the restrictive use covenant, the property should be subject to both proactive and reactive checks for compliance with the program. This action will ensure that residents are not facing undue price increases or facing displacement following the property’s departure from the program.

The prepayment process could be mitigated if the property were required to stay on the market for twice as long (i.e., 360 days). The longer period would allow non-profits or state agencies to accumulate capital and apply for grants to make the acquisition of the property financially feasible. Additionally, the USDA and partner federal agencies could work to provide funding and additional financial incentives for these prospective buyers to help ensure the property does not undergo the prepayment process and use policy to overhaul requirements for affordability. The USDA must hold itself accountable in complying with the regulations to prevent these properties from leaving due to loosened scrutiny during the Civil Rights Impact Analysis Process. Finally, it is difficult to understand the true significance of properties leaving or failing to comply with the program, since the USDA does little to gather

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Figure 4. Maturing USDA Section 515 Loans. This graph shows the expected loss of units operating and subsidized through the USDA Section 515 Rural Multifamily Loan program. It is predicted that without change to policy, the program will begin a steep decline in the number of properties in 2040.

Source: Razoga Associates

this information. More on-the-ground work is necessary to prepare detailed tabulated information about these properties to ensure that the program is working equitably and efficiently.

REBUILDING THE SYSTEM Many of the issues presented by nationally applied federal programs result from applying them outside of urban and suburban settings, leaving rural areas vulnerable. Affordable housing programs would be best designed if they were no longer divided between many different departments, such as the USDA and HUD, so that they are better equipped to meet needs of rural low- and middle-income families seeking affordable housing.35 An independent agency dedicated to providing housing and economic development programs for rural areas would help simplify the current ecosystem of grants, subsidies, financial tools, and other programs while eliminating the inefficiencies that result from

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administering programs through multiple agencies. Additionally, a single department would be more efficient in resource allocation, thereby coordinating the long-term goals of creating comprehensive affordable housing options. HUD’s current programs should be directed towards metropolitan areas where they have already achieved success, and the USDA can continue to provide funding for rural communities in need, while programs that could be transitioned to a new department would be a focus area instead of an afterthought.

Finally, regional land banks could address the needs of areas experiencing increased depopulation. Land banks are public or nonprofit entities that are entitled to acquire, manage, sell, and redevelop properties that may be tax-delinquent or abandoned. This provides a benefit by managing the housing stock before it deteriorates or ensuring that the property can be sold to a responsible owner or developed for community goals.36

Many Rust Belt cities utilize land banks to mitigate the issues posed by vacant houses; rural areas could apply a similar model. Though rural communities often have little technical and financial ability to create a stand-alone land bank, a model of regional partnerships at the county or regional level could provide greater viability.37 Establishing regional rural land banks could generate an opportunity to preserve existing higher-quality structures that become vacant, allowing for the preservation of some of the naturally occurring affordable housing in rural areas before these units become dilapidated to the point of permanent inhabitability. Rural land banks can be successful through the usage of Community Development Block Grant funding and through proper administration from regional planning organizations.38

CONCLUSION Developing a strong understanding of rural contexts that shape housing policies and their outcomes is crucial when addressing issues of sparse affordable housing, depopulation, and other maladies affecting rural communities.

As existing programs have been either unsuccessful or completely obsolete in rural areas, it is imperative that policy intervention focuses on reversing and mitigating these concerning trends.

Some areas of the country are facing issues of rural gentrification, which leads to increasingly high costs of rent and homeownership.39 In other areas of the country, depopulation and rising unemployment have created economic hardship and income loss that results in an inability to pay for rent or maintenance for a home. There are innovative housing policy solutions for financing the development of affordable housing in urban areas, but the same cannot be said for rural housing.

Similarly, although urban housing struggles are a focus of urban planners and housing policy researchers, little research is devoted to the topic of rural housing crises. Planners and policymakers alike must acknowledge the struggles that rural communities face in finding sufficient and high-quality housing. Instead of abandoning the needs of rural populations and abiding by a dogma of “out of sight, out of mind,” those who work in planning and development must engage in an important dialogue about rural housing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Greg Hardison is a Candidate in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program and the Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development the University of Michigan. The focus of his academic studies have been on the intersection of urban planning, housing policy, and residential development.

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ENDNOTES 1. Paul J. Cloke., and Paul Milbourne.

“International Perspectives on Rural Homelessness.” London etc.: Routledge, 2012.

2. Cloke & Milbourne. “International Perspectives on Rural Homelessness” 3. Cloke & Milbourne. “International Perspectives on Rural Homelessness” 4. Peter B. Nelson, Alexander Oberg, Lise Nelson. “Rural Gentrification and Linked Migration in the United States” Journal of Rural Studies. Vol. 25, Issue 4, 2010, pp. 343-352.

5. Gkartzios, Menelaos, Nick Gallent, and Mark Scott. “Rural Places and Planning: Stories from the Global Countryside.” Bristol: Policy Press, 2022.

6. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. “Rural Population Loss and Strategies for Recovery.”

Accessed March 20, 2022. https://www. richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_ focus/2020/q1/district_digest.

7. Craig Arnold. “Ignoring the Rural Underclass: The Biases of Federal Housing Policy.” Stanford Law & Policy Review, 2, 1990, p. 191-206.

8. Edward B. Lazere, et al. “The Other Housing Crisis: Sheltering the Poor in Rural America.”

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Housing Assistance Council. December 1989.

9. Kelly Owen and Scott Crain. “Rural Housing in the Crosshairs: How USDA Affordable Housing Is Targeted for Market Rate Conversion and What Advocates Can do to Preserve It.” Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, vol. 30, no.

1, 2021, p. 77-92.

10. Owen and Crain. “Rural Housing in the Crosshairs: How USDA Affordable Housing Is Targeted for Market Rate Conversion and What Advocates Can Do to Preserve It” 11. United States, Farmers Home Administration. “Brief History of the Farmers Home Administration” The Administration, 1980.

12. Owen & Crain. “Rural Housing in the

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Crosshairs: How USDA Affordable Housing Is Targeted for Market Rate Conversion and What Advocates Can Do to Preserve it” 13. Carrollton Basmajian and Jane Rongerude.

“Hiding in the Shadow of Wagner-Steagall: Understanding Rural Public Housing in the United States.” Journal of the American Planning Association. Vol 78, issue 4: “American Public Housing at 75: Policy, Planning, and the Public Good.” 2012, p. 406-414.

14. Basmajian & Roungerude, “Hiding in the Shadow of Wagner-Steagall: Understanding Rural Public Housing in the United States” 15. Craig Arnold. “Ignoring the Rural Underclass: The Biases of Federal Housing Policy.”

16. Rapoza Associates. “The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: Overcoming Barriers to Affordable Housing in Rural America”. Accessed 03/18/2022 from https://www.novoco.com/ sites/default/files/atoms/files/rapoza_rurallihtc-report_081313.pdf 17. Novogradac & Company. “LIHTC Qualified Allocation Plans, Explained”. Accessed 03/18/2022 from https://www.novoco.com/ notes-from-novogradac/lihtc-qualifiedallocation-plans-explained-series 18. Novogradac & Company. “QAP Set-Asides”.

Accessed 03/18/2022 from https://www.novoco. com/notes-from-novogradac/qap-set-asidespost-2-10 19. Michigan State Housing Development Authority. “Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program, 2021 Qualified Allocation Plan”.

Accessed on 03/18/2022 from https:// www.michigan.gov/mshda/-/media/ Project/Websites/mshda/developers/lihtc/ assets/liqap/mshda_li_qap_2022_2023_ qap_final. cac47b7d458ca72bf17 83912f5d9&hash=9BD84D FDED17EA8BE7F844791 036B737 20. Michigan State Housing Development Authority. “Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program, 2021 Qualified Allocation Plan”.

Accessed on 03/18/2022 from https://www. michigan.gov/mshda/-/media/Project/ Websites/mshda/developers/lihtc/assets/liqap/

mshda_li_qap_2022_2023_qap_final.pdf?rev= db31cac47b7d458ca72bf1783912f5d9&hash =9BD84DFDED17EA8BE7F844791036B737 21. Andrew M. Dumont. “Rural Affordable Rental Housing: Quantifying Need, Reviewing Recent Federal Support, and Assessing the Use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits in Rural Areas,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-077 (2018). Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 22. Rapoza Associates. “The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: Overcoming Barriers to Affordable Housing in Rural America” 23. Rapoza Associates. “The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: Overcoming Barriers to Affordable Housing in Rural America” 24. US Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Housing Choice Voucher Program: Fact Sheet” Accessed on 03/18/2022 from https://www.google.com/url?q=https:// www.hud.gov/topics/housing_choice_ voucher_program_ section_ 8&sa=D&source= docs&ust= 1647824280183925&usg= AOvVaw3KDkx0Bgs NSSckRtROMdKs 25. Craig Arnold. “Ignoring the Rural Underclass: The Biases of Federal Housing Policy.”

26. Craig Arnold. “Ignoring the Rural Underclass: The Biases of Federal Housing Policy.”

27. United States Department of Agriculture, Rural Development. “Multifamily Housing Programs.” n.d. Accessed on 12/13/2021 at https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/ multi-family housing-programs 28. United States Department of Agriculture, Rural Development. “Multifamily Housing Programs.”

31. Gkartzios “Rural Places and Planning: Stories from the Global Countryside” 32. Owen. “Rural Housing in the Crosshairs: How USDA Affordable Housing Is Targeted for Market Rate Conversion and What Advocates Can Do to Preserve it” 33. Owen. “Rural Housing in the Crosshairs: How USDA Affordable Housing Is Targeted for Market Rate Conversion and What Advocates Can Do to Preserve it” 34. Owen. “Rural Housing in the Crosshairs: How USDA Affordable Housing Is Targeted for Market Rate Conversion and What Advocates Can Do to Preserve it” 35. Arnold. “Ignoring the Rural Underclass: The Biases of Federal Housing Policy.”

36. Local Housing Solutions. “Land Banks” Accessed on 03/20/2022 from https:// localhousingsolutions.org/housing-policylibrary/land-banks/#:~:text=Land%20banks%20 are%20public%20authorities,housing%20or%20 stabilizing%20property%20values.

37. Dawn Jourdan, Shannon Van Zandt, and Nicole Adair. “Meeting Their Fair Share: A Proposal for the Creation of Regional Land Banks to Meet the Affordable Housing Needs in the Rural Areas of Texas.” Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, Vol. 19, no. 2, Winter 2010, p. 147-150.

38. Jourdan, Van Zandt, and Adair “Meeting Their Fair Share: A Proposal for the Creation of Regional Land Banks to Meet the Affordable Housing Needs in the Rural Areas of Texas.”

39. Peter B. Nelson, Alexander Oberg, Lise Nelson. “Rural Gentrification and Linked Migration in the United States”

29. Owen. “Rural Housing in the Crosshairs: How USDA Affordable Housing Is Targeted for Market Rate Conversion and What Advocates Can Do to Preserve it” 30. Arnold. “Ignoring the Rural Underclass: The Biases of Federal Housing Policy.”

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Public Bank A More Equitable Financial System for All

ABSTRACT

PRESCOTT TRUDEAU Master of Architecture

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On October 30, 2020, Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation to facilitate the creation of state and locally administered public banks – the Public Banking Act.1 Recognizing that local institutions best represent the needs of local communities, the measure seeks to redress a history of discrimination and environmental injustice in America’s private banking practices. Unlike highly compensated executives and Wall Street middlemen, public banks offer lower debt burdens to city and state governments, fund public infrastructure projects, and provide lowinterest loans to small businesses and underbanked individuals. Prohibited from investing in fossil fuels, public banks can also increase ecological health by financing renewable energy. As evident in the legislation, public banks are socially minded financial institutions, operating with equitable practices that prioritize public access over profit. The following design proposition studies the history of public banking in order to critique the unabated capitalism and ongoing settler-colonial policies of America’s private financial institutions.

Figure 1. The public bank’s commodities warehouse, interior view

PRECEDENT Although the concept has been met with skepticism, there is one prototypical public bank that has successfully served its community for over a century with no political pushback. The state-owned Bank of North Dakota was established in 1919 to eliminate local farmers’ dependence on out-of-state financial institutions, which frequently took advantage of them.2 As residents of a sparsely populated, decentralized agricultural state without a robust banking economy, farmers in North Dakota were vulnerable to predatory lending and undercut grain prices by financial centers in Chicago and Minneapolis. Seeking to redress the state’s status as a banking desert,

the Depression-era Nonpartisan League won statewide offices by convincing voters of the merits of state-owned banks and agricultural apparatuses like mills and elevators.3 This socialist-minded civic infrastructure protected farmers’ rights and enhanced their collective production capacity. Operating to this day, the Bank of North Dakota acts as an economic incubator within a deeply conservative red state by offering some of the lowest student loan rates nationwide and by partnering with local banks and credit unions to extend their lending capacity. The newly introduced Public Banking Act legislation builds on the Bank of North Dakota’s example by subverting certain aspects of national capitalist banking systems in order to represent the needs of local communities.

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CONTEXT Throughout history, privately owned financial institutions have proven their inability to address structural racism, systemic corruption, and environmental injustice. As a result, the poorest Americans have little recourse within a disenfranchising system.

Over 55 million Americans lack access to basic financial services due to minimum deposit requirements, fees, and other costs.4 This leaves the most at-risk individuals vulnerable to a deluge of deregulated cashadvance stores. A 2020 study by the National Community Reinvestment Corporation found that Black business owners were less likely than their white counterparts to receive bankadministered Coronavirus financial aid through the Paycheck Protection Program.5

A 2021 report by the Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network details a series of regional case studies wherein the fossil fuel investments of major financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, are directly linked to air, water and soil pollution that disproportionately affects women of color and Indigenous communities.6 In 2013, Goldman Sachs was discovered to be manipulating global commodity prices by moving massive caches of aluminum ingots between 27 Detroit-based warehouses.7 This unnecessary shuffling between facilities lengthened storage times, creating fulfillment delays that increased the value of aluminum – a price hike that was ultimately passed onto consumers.

PROPOSITION

Figure 2. American Vernacular Barn. “Barn Quilts: A Beautiful Story from Our Recent Past.” Suzy Quilts, July 10, 2020.

Figure 3. Industrial Warehouse. “Steel Structure Warehouse.” Hebei Weizhengheng Modular House Technology Co., Ltd.

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The theoretical proposal presented here materializes a new civic infrastructure by combining elements from two existing building typologies in order to produce a new spatial scenario. The American Vernacular Barn, rooted in the history of public banks through its affiliation with the Bank of North Dakota, provides an element of social representation through a reference to the iconic red and geometric quilt squares that adorn many family barns. The Industrial Warehouse, a facility for commodity storage and economic fulfillment, informs the project’s spatial logic and uniform envelope. Combining these precedents produces a typological morphology that, through commodity storage, critiques privatized, profit-seeking financial institutions.

Throughout history, privately owned financial institutions have proven their inability to address structural racism, systemic corruption, and environmental injustice.”

Figure 4. Public Bank Facade Study

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Figure 5. Plan

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Figure 6. Elevations and Sections

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Figure 7. Interior view of commodities warehouse

ORGANIZATION The project is sited on the west side of Ann Arbor, at the diagonal intersection where West Stadium Boulevard becomes North Maple Road. Behind the public bank’s uniform facade lies an interiority of different scales, where buildings within the building fulfill the bank’s programmatic diversity, consisting of offices, retail, storage, park and bank. The triangular floor plan is defined by the tension inherent in

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acute angles – reflecting the need for efficiency of space as well as the radical will of geometry.

Orthogonally divided by program and bisected by a through street, the design’s mass is organized around the central commodities warehouse, with a public-facing bank, corporate offices and secure delivery dock adjacent to this central square. The triangle’s vertex contains the bank’s commons, where courtyard parks provide public space and the bank’s spatial loan program helps incubate

Figure 8. Interior view of commodities warehouse

small businesses with micro-retail units.

Amassing its own inventory of raw commodities, the public bank acts with opposite intentions to Wall Street’s avaricious stockpiling by providing local infrastructure projects with a reliable and below-market-rate supply chain. Ceiling-height stacks of industrial metals like aluminum ingots, steel tubing and copper coils surround a central vault where precious rare-earth elements are securely stored. Committed to adding transparency

to banking, the public bank manifests its investment portfolio, making its material storage visible to the public in both its lobby and outdoor spaces. The courtyard represents a neutral ground where the friction between public and private interests can be mediated.

Raw commodities become playthings, and the day’s trading exchange values adorn the building’s apex watchtower, which functions as a lookout for capitalist encroachment.

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Figure 9. Courtyard perspective

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Figure 10. Exterior Perspective

CONCLUSION The need for socially conscious banking institutions is now greater than ever.

Perpetuating the Gilded Age’s income inequality and economic deregulation that instigated the creation of the first public bank, America’s current financial system supports neoliberal models that continue to prioritize profit over people and the environment.

Untethered from the needs of the general

public and accountable only to shareholders expecting high returns, private banks operate under the principles of endless material growth – a deeply flawed system that disenfranchises citizens and exacerbates climate crises. The history of public banking offers an alternative model for ethical and inclusive banking, one that provides services to vulnerable communities and invests in sustainability. The logic is simple: local institutions best represent the needs of their constituents.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Prescott Trudeau is a Master of Architecture candidate at University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and was recently a Dow Sustainability Fellow at U-M’s Graham Sustainability Institute, researching agricultural waste production and the circular economy. He has served in the Taubman Public Design Corps and Americorps, and has professional experience as a curator, exhibition designer and educator.

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ENDNOTES 1. Representative Rashida Tlaib. “Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez Introduce Legislation Enabling Creation of Public Banks,” October 30, 2020. https://tlaib.house.gov/tlaib-aoc-public-banking-act.

2. Peischel, Will. “How a Brief Socialist Takeover in North Dakota Gave Residents a Public Bank.” Vox, September 24, 2019. https://www. vox.com/the-highlight/2019/9/24/20872558/ california-north-dakota-public-bank.

3. Langer, William. The Nonpartisan League; Its Birth, Activities and Leaders. Mandan, N. D.: Morton County farmers press, 1920. https:// catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006495287.

4. “How America Banks: Household Use of Banking and Financial Services, 2019 FDIC Survey.” 2019 FDIC Survey. https://www.fdic.gov/ analysis/household-survey/.

5. “Lending Discrimination within the Paycheck Protection Program” National Community Reinvestment Corporation, July 15, 2020. https://ncrc.org/despite-gaping-holes-in-government-data-tests-show-ppp-borrowers-faced-discrimination/.

6. Cissoko, Safia, Livia Charles, and Osprey Orielle Lake. “Gendered and Racial Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Industry in North America and Complicit Financial Institutions.” Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, April 14, 2021. https://www.wecaninternational.org/2021-divestment-report.

7. Kocieniewski, David. “A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold.” The New York Times, July 20, 2013, sec. Business. https://www. nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffleof-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html.

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New Orleans, Louisiana Photographer: Hannah Boettcher

Accessing Lending in the “Declining” City: How the History of Racist Lending Practices Perpetuates Barriers to Sustainable Homeownership

DANIELLE WALLICK Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Master of Public Policy

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ABSTRACT For decades, the American lending industry has perpetuated explicit and implicit offenses against people of color. The impacts of this systematic exclusion remain apparent to this day in communities across the country, where segregation, low housing values, and weaker housing markets tend to reflect redlined boundaries from the 1940s and 1950s. The impacts on communities also remain visible through racial disparities in access to conventional mortgage lending over half a century later. In Detroit, Michigan, over a quarter of prospective homebuyers in 2018 and 2019 were denied mortgages and loans.

However, Black prospective buyers made up over 50% of denials, while the percentage of approved loans for white buyers in Detroit proper was double their population percentage. While some policy makers may argue that income and credit histories, exclusive of race, drive these ostensive disparities, such an argument does not adequately consider the complex role the mortgage industry played in systematically barring people of color from accessing homeownership throughout the twentieth century.

This paper concludes with a brief discussion of potential policy options at the federal and local levels to increase access to financing and sustainable homeownership for lower-income and historically marginalized buyers.

INTRODUCTION For decades, the American mortgage lending industry has perpetuated explicit and implicit offenses against people of color. Prior to the Great Depression, homeownership policies largely legally prohibited owners from selling their homes to anyone who did not appear white, helping to maintain monochrome neighborhoods and often relegating people of color to areas with poor housing conditions.1 Following the Great Depression, redlining – originated by private market banks but systematized by the public sector – codified racial segregation and barred people of color from accessing properties in most areas.2 Though the 1968 Fair Housing Act officially banned redlining, the private real estate industry identified predatorial ways to profit from mortgages given to the same populations previously barred from lending institutions throughout the 1970s.3 In the 1990s and beyond, risky lending practices contributed to the 2008 crash of the housing market, which disproportionately affected people of color.4 This paper comments on the post-Depression era of lending to explain how housing finance reforms helped systematize explicit racial segregation as suburban homeownership became the norm for white, middle-class American households. As the century progressed, explicit exclusionary policies, such as redlining, gave way to implicit, predatory, and exploitive private market practices. The aftermath of these practices continues to restrict access to conventional mortgage financing and sustainable homeownership on a systematic scale for many historically marginalized populations.

The impacts of systematic exclusion remain apparent to this day in communities across the country, where segregation, low housing values, and weaker housing markets tend to reflect redlined boundaries from the 1940s and 1950s.5 The impacts on communities also remain visible through racial disparities in access to conventional mortgage lending over half a century later. In Detroit, Michigan, over a quarter of prospective homebuyers in 2018 and 2019 were denied mortgages and

loans. However, Black prospective buyers made up over 50% of denials, while the percentage of approved loans for white buyers in Detroit proper was double their population percentage.6 While some policy makers may argue that income and credit histories, exclusive of race, drive these ostensive disparities, such an argument does not adequately consider the complex role the mortgage industry has played in systematically barring people of color from accessing homeownership throughout the twentieth century. To that end, this paper concludes with a brief discussion of potential policy options at both the federal and local level to increase access to financing and sustainable homeownership for lower-income and historically marginalized buyers.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN LENDING INDUSTRY POST-DEPRESSION HOUSING FINANCE REFORMS Prior to the Great Depression, few families had access to homeownership: the high expense of purchasing property restricted homeownership to the predominately white upper echelon of society. Despite the wealth required to own a home at the time, the Great Depression uprooted homeowners. Monthly mortgages went unpaid and foreclosures ensued on a massive scale.7 The Roosevelt Administration established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) the next year to reduce post-Depression unemployment through housing construction and its related job creation. Through the FHA, the federal government backed private mortgages from qualified lenders. This provided insurance for banks, which would receive their investment back even if the buyer defaulted on their property; if the buyer failed to keep up on their payments, the FHA would also cover the unpaid balance. Thus, with less risk of losing capital in investments, banks could increase their lending capacity for home building and purchase.

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significantly scale up lending activity, the FHA fundamentally changed the housing market by creating uniform lending and construction practices.8 However, in doing so, it codified racial segregation throughout the United States through a practice that would become known as redlining. The FHA devised strict lending criteria to control for the risk of insuring mortgages that end up exceeding market value. As a result, its lending standards included unwaivable guidelines regarding the location of a property and the racial composition of a neighborhood. It attributed categories to neighborhoods based on their lending desirability and perceived risk, utilizing labels including “best,” “still desirable,” “declining,” and “hazardous” to describe communities throughout the country.9 These guidelines always granted a “declining” or “hazardous” label to predominantly Black and other minority urban neighborhoods, specifically based on the presence of Black residents as well the property conditions present in these neighborhoods due to forcibly constricted supply.10 This deterred lenders and realtors from operating in these neighborhoods for both private and federally backed loans. It became significantly more difficult for residents to buy or sell homes in urban areas, impacting individuals’ ability to access place-based opportunity and build wealth.11 While the post-Depression era housing finance reforms exponentially expanded homeownership for many white middle-class families, they actively stifled the ability of people of color to attain the same opportunities. The reforms created a number of new, monochromatic communities, while contributing to decline in many others.

PREDATORY INCLUSION Urban rebellion across the country in the late 1960s encouraged legislators to pass the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which included antidiscrimination legislation in the mortgage market.12 This legislation made it illegal to bar lending or homeownership based on race or ethnicity, to steer a family toward a different neighborhood based on race, or to

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partake in any other explicitly discriminatory practice. Enforcement, however, was lax at best.13 Segregation continued, as conditions in the urban core worsened, encouraging those with means to migrate to the suburbs and reestablish their lives – and their property tax payments – there. Many residents with no other options were left behind, intensifying concentrations of poverty in many urban areas as their tax base declined.14 The Fair Housing Act marked a shift from realtors and lenders explicitly discriminating against people of color. Lenders evolved shrewder, less detectable techniques of exclusion in order to prosper from what they saw as a less sophisticated, previously unpenetrated market while still maintaining the status quo.15 Though explicit exclusion was made illegal, inclusion remained only an ideal.

In the late 1960s, new regulations from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) promised FHA mortgage coverage in the urban core that would expand the opportunities available for Black residents.

Real estate agents and mortgage brokers became savvy as they gained access to a new market of potential home buyers who had previously been barred from conventional lending institutions.16 They figured out how to attract people of color, often those in vulnerable demographic buckets like lowincome single mothers, into buying property in poor condition for oftentimes exorbitant prices. Agents and brokers used inaccurate appraisals and extra fees to extract as much value as possible from vulnerable prospective homebuyers.17 These sales forced Black residents to pay comparatively more for significantly less quality.18 In 1938, the Roosevelt Administration also introduced the Federal Housing National

THE SECONDARY MORTGAGE MARKET AND THE SUBPRIME LENDING BUBBLE Mortgage Association (known colloquially as Fannie Mae).19 The federal government formed Fannie Mae to purchase FHA-insured

mortgages in bulk, providing a new source of funding to ensure that banks could keep their assets fluid to grant loans.

regulations on lending organizations and placing governmental agencies like Freddie Mae under conservatorship.24

Banking industry deregulation in the 1980s encouraged the proliferation of a secondary mortgage market, one that extended outside of the federal government to include private investment firms and lending institutions.

This secondary mortgage market grew increasingly complex and widespread. Over the same period, adding to the complexity, subprime loans and risk-based pricing became widespread.20 Risk-based pricing describes adopting more lenient lending standards for homeowners who normally would not qualify for a mortgage, raising the cost through higher interest rates, predatory fees, etc. to offset the added institutional risk. The ensuing loan is considered “subprime,” as it does not conform to conventional underwriting standards and is considered to have a much higher chance of default. Subprime loans were particularly popular among investors because they offered higher yields for a seemingly similar threshold of risk, but it soon became clear that these practices were unsustainable.21

THE POST-CRISIS NEIGHBORHOOD

By the 1990s, mortgage lending had changed as a reflection of the growth of the secondary mortgage market. Banks and brokers often enticed prospective homeowners with deceptive and subprime products, such as adjustable-rate mortgages. Mortgage brokers disproportionately targeted lower-income Black and Latinx borrowers for these highcost, risky products – using aggressive tactics such as appealing to the prospective buyer’s desire to achieve the American dream through homeownership.22 This lending era halted in 2007 when the subprime mortgage market collapsed, a result of failures among all actors involved.23 Across the country, delinquency and foreclosure increased rapidly, investors fled, and investment banks shuttered under thousands mortgages that were suddenly unsellable. Subprime lending evaporated postcrisis, but its damage was done. The Obama administration responded by re-tightening

Many neighborhoods in cities across the country are still reeling from the aftermath of the mass amounts of mortgage foreclosures that resulted from high-risk subprime lending practices.25 In the depth of the crisis, the combination of mass foreclosures, the expanding stock of bank- and publicly owned properties, and rising vacancy created significant neighborhood-level strife. Home values plummeted, residents moved away, and many community organizations were forced to shut their doors. Many formerly strong neighborhoods became rife with vacant and blighted homes and empty lots.26 Non-white homeownership took a particular hit, a result of both intentional targeting by mortgage institutions and the aftermath of decades of systematically unjust policy choices.27 When federal oversight forced lenders to tighten their lending criteria, in many cases, it became more difficult for a modest-income family to secure an affordable mortgage.

This trend is particularly prevalent in neighborhoods with moderate to weak housing markets, as home prices and appraisals tend to remain low compared to those of neighborhoods with stronger markets. They also tend to have fewer comparable sales that lenders require to assess risk when making a loan. This makes it more difficult for such areas to recover, as residents who qualify and want to purchase a home for rehabilitation effectively cannot – conventional banks often prefer to lend in neighborhoods with enough comparable sales to demonstrate resale value and mitigate their risk of not recouping their investment.28 As a result, when homes enter the market, it is often cash-wielding, absentee speculators who are able to purchase them for investment purposes, typically without further investing in more than the minimum amount of repairs to turn around and rent or resell.29 These changes again make it more difficult for

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historically marginalized communities to access conventional lending as they are denied under the guise of economic risk but without thought for the historic inequity behind the veil.

and endure in many forms.

The foreclosure crisis greatly affected Detroit, Michigan, and the impacts of disinvestment remain visible throughout many neighborhoods to this day. The metropolitan area was ranked among the top two markets in subprime loan penetration rate in the early 2000s. As Figure 1 shows, in Detroit in 2005, 68% of Detroit’s loan originations were subprime, compared to just over a quarter (27%) statewide and just under a quarter (24%) nationally.32

LENDING IN A “DECLINING” CITY TODAY: DETROIT Histories of housing discrimination matter because unequal access to homeownership in neighborhoods of higher opportunity has lasting impacts on average life outcomes, individually and generationally.

Homeownership offers low- to moderateincome families substantial opportunity to build individual wealth and generational wealth.30 Granting the promise of homeownership to some groups without doing so for others creates a lasting disparity in the ability of these groups to build wealth over time and access quality services like education and healthcare.31 Systematically barring people of color from creating wealth and accessing higher opportunity neighborhoods – whether through explicit redlining and racial steering or implicit subprime loans – continues to promote cycles of concentrated poverty and segregation along racial lines. These lines often mirror the geographic patterns present in the redlining maps of the early twentieth century

In Detroit, dual waves of mortgage and tax foreclosures have amplified the neighborhoodlevel impact of the foreclosure crisis. These crises have altered ownership patterns in the city as significant portfolios of land and structures enter auction annually, and speculative investors buying in bulk dominate this market. Homebuyers with limited access to credit and conventional mortgages often must rely on predatory land contracts to attempt to gain property ownership, but these often end in eviction.33 Lending data disclosed through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act showcases Detroiters’ limited access to lending, particularly compared to the rest of the MSA. Despite comprising 16% of the MSA’s population, only

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Figure 1. Share of Type of Mortgage Lending (2005) Source: Deng, et. al., 2017, p. 2

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11% of the region’s single-family purchase loans occurred in Detroit proper in 2018 and 2019. Loan denials as a percentage of all loans submitted for approval are also disproportionately high for the city proper.

While loan denials make up over a quarter (27%) of all loans submitted for approval in Detroit, they make up only 13% in the rest of the region. Of loans denied in the city proper, Black borrowers make up 50% of denials and white borrowers make up 19%. It is more difficult for Detroit residents to qualify for a loan than it is for residents in the rest of the region, and there is evidence of disparity in the racial makeup of those whose applications are denied.

It is more difficult for Detroit residents to qualify for a loan than it is for residents in the rest of the region, and there is evidence of disparity in the racial makeup of those whose applications are denied. ” mortgages originated for white borrowers and the racial composition of the city.

Figure 2 demonstrates additional considerations: (1) white borrowers tend to access lending for higher-value properties than non-white borrowers, (2) the MSA does not demonstrate this same trend, and (3) there is a clear difference in range of property values between the city and the rest of the region. These considerations indicate that non-white borrowers may face greater barriers in accessing lending than white borrowers do.

The disparity also indicates that low property values in the city proper are a barrier to accessible lending in the city.

Loans originated in Detroit city proper are disproportionately granted to white residents.

Detroit is a majority (79%) Black city. Whites are a minority in the city, making up 15% of the population. However, whites are overrepresented in loan applications, with 30% of loan applications originating in Detroit proper in 2018 and 2019 coming from white would-be borrowers. Black borrowers made up less than half of all borrowers (46%), though for a significant portion of applications (20%), race was not available. Regardless, there is a clear mismatch between the number of

SHARE OF TOTAL LOCATION MORTGAGES

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White Borrower, City Non-White Borrower (incl. NA), City White Borrower, Metro Non-White Borrower (incl. NA), Metro

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Figure 2. Property Value for Originated Loans by Race and Location (2018-19) Source: Author analysis of 2018 & 2019 HMDA data, Missouri Census Data Center Geographic Correspondence Engine Note: “Metro” is exclusive of loans granted within census tracts in City of Detroit proper. Corresponds to Detroit MSA.

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Figure 3 shows loan approvals compared to loan denials for the city proper and the rest of the region. City property values are disproportionately skewed to the lower quartile of values among the data set for both approved and denied loans. This provides further support that low property values are a barrier to accessing conventional lending in Detroit. While a number of loans are being granted for properties in the lowest quartile of property values, more are not being granted.

This is potentially due to a combination of ratio of prospective buyer income to repairs that need to be done, lack of collateral, and/or low credit scores.

neighborhoods with moderate or weaker housing markets. If prospective owneroccupants can’t access these lower-value properties, the properties may continue to decline. Racial disparities are also evident through disproportionate loan denials among non-white borrowers. While the exclusionary policies and practices discussed throughout this piece do not address Detroit’s entire history and how it continues to impact its housing market, they help explain a portion of why such disparities in access to financing and homeownership persist today.

POLICY CHANGE BEYOND THE BUBBLE

A wealth of follow-up analysis can and should be done to better understand these trends, but the trends demonstrate a few important takeaways. Relative to those in the rest of the region, residents of Detroit clearly have a more difficult time accessing lending, partly due to low property values that have resulted from decades of systematic disinvestment perpetuated by exclusionary policies. Difficulty in accessing lending in Detroit, particularly for low-value properties, can bar residents from homeownership and communities from the benefits of revitalization, specifically in

SHARE OF TOTAL LOCATION MORTGAGES

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As showcased in Detroit, many neighborhoods hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis have yet to recover, and barriers to accessing lending slows progress. Creative rebuilding of the postcrisis housing finance system can proactively prevent another mortgage crisis.34 Georgia State University professor Dan Immergluck advocates for a permanent public option for restructuring the housing finance system in the United States, where a fully public entity would purchase mortgages from lenders, bundle them, and issue securities backed by Loan Approved, City Loan Approved, Metro Loan Denied, City Loan Denied, Metro

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Figure 3. Property Value for Loan by Loan Action and Location (2018-19) Source: Author analysis of 2018 & 2019 HMDA data, Missouri Census Data Center Geographic Correspondence Engine Note: “Metro” is exclusive of loans granted within census tracts in City of Detroit proper. Corresponds to Detroit MSA.

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these loans.35 Immergluck also underscores the need for sustainably increasing access to affordable homeownership for low- and moderate-income households. He advocates for increased use of responsible low-downpayment mortgages as one method for advancing this goal.36 To further support access to homeownership for low-income and historically marginalized communities, local and federal agencies should create policies that increase access to conventional banking services and help lower-income families avoid using the same risky financial services that contributed to the 2008 housing crisis altogether. Historically marginalized communities are more likely to lack access to conventional lending services, and unbanked American households pay higher fees for riskier financial products than those offered on the conventional financial market.37 Policy reforms should focus on regulations that require banks to invest in all areas where they generate revenue, strengthening community development financial institutions, and developing regulations and incentives for banking service providers to protect their customers from abusive financial practices.38

Finally, to support neighborhood revitalization for areas hit hard by the mortgage foreclosure crisis, localities should pay close attention to their housing market and create sustainable mortgage products that fit the needs of their residents. Cities should explore sustainable options for improving lending options available for properties in lower-value areas and those in need of substantial rehabilitation.

Access to conventional lending, whether through explicit discriminatory policy or through implicit institutionalized practices, has been a barrier for historically marginalized populations to achieve sustainable homeownership. Moving forward, policy makers should consider solutions that promote affordable homeownership, innovate the housing finance system, and seek to repair decades of inequity at both the federal and local levels. Historically marginalized populations and disinvested communities deserve access to fair financial services and sustainable homeownership, a freedom that has been difficult or impossible to attain for many groups throughout the history of America.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Danielle Wallick is a second-year dual Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Master of Public Policy student. Her planning and policy interests include housing, community-focused neighborhood and corridor revitalization, and improving access to opportunity. She returned to graduate school after four years in the field with the Detroit Land Bank Authority and a real estate and economic development consulting firm in Washington, D.C. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Michigan and is originally from mid-Michigan.

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ENDNOTES 1. Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 43-44.

2. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 43-44.

3. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 133-164.

4. Alex Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2015), 80.

5. Andre M. Perry, Jonathan Rothwell, and David Harshbarger, “The Devaluation of Assets in Black Neighborhoods: The Case of Residential Property,” Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings (November 2018).

6. Author analysis of HMDA data 7. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 71.

8. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 71-75.

9. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 43-44.

10. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 73-74.

11. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 73-74.

12. Camille Charles, “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation,” Annual Review of Sociology 29 (August 2003): 167-207.

13.Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 358-360.

14. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 181.

15. Taylor, Race for Profit, 133-164.

16. Taylor, Race for Profit, 133-164.

17. Taylor, Race for Profit, 133-164.

18. Taylor, Race for Profit, 133-164.

19. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 80.

20. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 80.

21. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 80.

22. Alan Mallach. The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2018), 134.

23. Dan Immergluck, Foreclosed: High-Risk Lending, Deregulation, and the Undermining of American’s Mortgage Market (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2009), 100110.

24. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 95-102.

25. Dan Immergluck, Preventing the Next Mortgage Crisis: The Meltdown, the Federal Response, and the Future of Housing in America (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 137.

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26. Mallach, The Divided City, 134.

27. Dan Immergluck, Stephanie Earl, and Allison Powell, “Black Homebuying after the Crisis: Appreciation Patterns in Fifteen Large Metropolitan Areas,” City & Community, 18, no. 3 (2019): 983.

28. Kea Wilson, “Who Can Afford to Invest in a Poor Neighborhood? (Part 2),” Strong Towns (May 2018).

29. Mallach, The Divided City, 135-136.

30. Immergluck, Preventing the Next Mortgage Crisis, 117.

31. Jason Richardson, Bruce C. Mitchell, Helen C.S. Meier, Emily Lynch, and Jad Edlebi, “Redlining and Neighborhood Health,” National Community Revinvestment Coalition (September 2020).

32. Lan Deng, Eric Seymour, Margaret Dewar, and June Manning Thomas, “Saving Strong Neighborhoods from the Destruction of Mortgage Foreclosures: The Impact of Community-Based Efforts in Detroit,” Housing Policy Debate 28, no. 2 (July 2017): 2-5.

33. Joshua Akers and Eric Seymour, “The Eviction Machine: Neighborhood Instability and Blight in Detroit’s Neighborhoods,” Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan Working Paper Series, 5 (July 2019): 1.

34. Immergluck, Preventing the Next Mortgage Crisis, 130132.

35. Immergluck, Preventing the Next Mortgage Crisis, 130132.

36. Immergluck, Preventing the Next Mortgage Crisis, 137.

37. William J. Bynum, Diana Elliot, and Edward Sivak, “Opening Mobility Pathways by Closing the Financial Services Gap,” US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty (February 2018): 8-14.

38. Bynum, Elliot, and Sivak, Opening Mobility Pathways by Closing the Financial Services Gap, 8.14.f

North Bund, Nanjing, China Photographer: Qilmeg AGORA 16

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New York, New York Photographer: Hannah Boettcher

PARTICIPAC TION

The Symposium section of Agora showcases timely discussions in the urban planning profession. This year’s theme seeks to strengthen our understanding of just how important participatory and communitycentered planning approaches truly are, as follows: Discrimination and inequity are deeply seated in our society, from our constructions of social behavior to the structures that shelter where we work, study, play, and rest. The fields of planning and design must challenge existing practices by centering equity and equality in our scholarly and professional institutions. This also requires understanding how planning and design problems are interconnected with fields like public health, environmental policy, social work, law, and many others. Agora Journal’s previous volume, R/evolutions, reflected the urgency needed within the profession and our communities to re-envision a society that prioritizes equity, racial justice, and sustainability accentuated by the Covid pandemic.

This year’s symposium theme challenges students to take the next step and investigate actions that address racial capitalism, settlercolonial structures, gender inequality, and climate injustice. How can advocacy, participatory, and community-centric methods innovatively re-evaluate positions of power to create equitable and sustainable cities?

Our three symposium pieces consider power and urban trauma, each in their own way. Addressing Trauma in the Planning Context sets the scene, examining the meaning of trauma in the urban context and showcasing healing frameworks for planners. Dimensions of Disempowerment discusses the the implications of social identity, in relation to racial discrimination and injustice, challenging us all to look inward on our own power as planners. We(B)eirut shifts the lens, investigating the trauma created through destruction of built environments, presenting design frameworks for healing. These pieces are especially poignant given the disparate impacts of global events including the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. We hope these pieces inspire you to take action to address the historical and ongoing trauma in the communities you serve.

Alex Spofford and Aaron Cohen Symposium Co-Directors Luke Ranker Symposium Deputy Director

PA R T I C I PA C T I O N

Addressing Trauma in the Planning Context Trauma-Informed Approaches for Urban Planning Education and Practice CAMILLA LIZUNDIA Master of Urban and Regional Planning

ABSTRACT Planning has historically been executed from a top-down, emotionless perspective with little incentive for internal reflection.

This is problematic when planners are largely to blame for trauma-inducing realities such as racial covenants, redlining, discriminatory lending, and highway construction gutting communities. Community healing requires that those in power acknowledge and address past, present, and future trauma. While planning curriculum and professional practices often fall short in trauma-informed competencies, frameworks such as therapeutic and reparative planning can be possible steps forward. With a better understanding of our collective trauma, urban planners can increase their capacity to design and plan in a way that is both sympathetic to trauma and conducive to healing.

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and contexts. While the term is still used to describe injury in clinical settings, trauma has become a multidimensional concept stemming beyond the field of medicine. It permeates political discourse, media, and everyday language,6 pushing people to expand their understanding of human emotion and its role in society. This led me to ask, how is trauma defined in the urban planning context?

INTRODUCTION Over the past eighteen years, Google searches for the term “trauma” have steadily risen, peaking in 2021.1 Trauma has become part of our collective vocabulary – used to describe anything from posttraumatic stress disorder to tongue-and-cheek references to minor inconveniences.2 Headlines during the coronavirus pandemic suggest that people are suffering from mass trauma due to prolonged isolation, uncertainty, and fear, while selfhelp books educate everyday readers on how trauma remains in the body as a fightor-flight survival mechanism.3 Public health professionals explore the trauma accumulated from deep-seated inequities in healthcare for communities of color while environmentalists advocate for traumatized ecosystems, or the pervasive abuse and destruction of the natural world. And similar to the “ruin porn” movement that showcases the decay of the built environment, popular media showcases Black and Brown pain for white viewers’ entertainment, a phenomenon known as “trauma porn.” Trauma is everywhere – from our water pipes to our streets, our bodies, and our minds. It is ingrained in North American soil with footprints of land theft, cultural erasure, slavery, violence, and white supremacy. The following essay analyzes trauma from a contemporary urban planning lens to reveal that planners can increase the capacity to design and plan in a way that is sympathetic to trauma and conducive to healing.4

The idea of collective trauma emerged in the early twentieth century as a general theory that communities, not just individuals, could be “in shock.” Urban planning scholar Jocelyn Poe defines communal trauma, a type of this collective trauma, as harm and wrong committed against targeted racialized groups so horrendous that it disrupts conceptions of time, place, and identity. It inflicts harm on the psychological, racial, and cultural levels.

Communal trauma results from the destruction of places and one’s relationship to place, and it instills a sense of threat to the collective well-being of targeted groups.7 Poe posits that communal trauma is a place-based theory rarely discussed in academic literature that can help urban planners understand how racialized communities hurt and develop traumaremediation strategies. Before urban planners can understand how to remediate trauma, they must know how it is created so as to not perpetuate these wrongs.

HISTORIC AND CONTEMPORARY TRAUMA IN PLANNING AND URBAN STUDIES

DEFINING TRAUMA

Urban planners are, in part, responsible for inflicting pain and trauma on countless individuals, principally Black Americans.

Following the First Great Migration (from 1910 to 1940) and during the Second Great Migration (from 1940 to 1970), geographical segregation based on federal policies and programs dramatically stratified communities and neighborhoods by race and class.8 Beginning under the Housing Act of 1949, the United States government, with assistance from state and local governments, bulldozed 2,500 neighborhoods in nearly 1,000 cities,

Trauma results “from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”5 The term trauma originates from the Greek word sraῦma: a wound, a hurt, a defeat.

Through time its usage has evolved, much like our cities, taking on new use and meaning through borrowing across cultures

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REVISITING EYES ON THE STREET

displacing a million people under the policy ironically known as urban renewal.9 In the name of so-called “progress,” urban renewal often took the form of “slum” removal and urban highway construction, which destroyed lower-income, Black, and immigrant communities. Displacement inflicted profound traumas resulting from social disorientation, and, in addition to the psychological harms of urban renewal and highway construction, forced displaced individuals to live in neighborhoods of greater health risk.10

“Safety, eyes on the streets / since the nights are darker than they once seemed.”13 Darian Razdar Often left out of traditional planning discussions is the impact of police surveillance and violence on urban America. Urban planning has contributed to the formation of exclusionary, discriminatory, and violent policing practices through determining who and what belongs in which spaces. Zoning and code enforcement also serve as mechanisms for police officials to surveil private property and public space. Just like planners, police aim to manage the safety and security of urban spaces; however, while urban planners assess safety and security through several metrics (e.g., quality of life, healthy streets), police officials target crime. Dealing with crime involves thinking about the nature and use of public space, and relations among social groups and between citizens and the State.14 However, far too often, police are asked to address the violent effects of poor planning and policy choices, while given directives that do little to solve the problems underlying crime (Figure 1).

Top-down, rational planning resulted in the decision to build highways through urban neighborhoods in the mid-twentieth century (and still persists today). A rational planning framework holds that planners should make decisions by analyzing copious information logically, systemically, and without bias; however, research has discussed how emotion is central to understanding human activity and behavior, both crucial aspects of planning.11 Without acknowledging emotion, planning practitioners are unable to recognize the human trauma they are creating. Institutional programs like the Housing Act of 1949, the Federal Interstate Highway System, and public housing projects likewise contributed to sociocultural dynamics between races.12

Urbanist Jane Jacobs formulated the natural surveillance strategy eyes on the street, a natural phenomenon for self-policing in well-trafficked public spaces.15 She posited that eyes on the street would preserve social order and ward off fear.16 Of course, this vision was premised on urban unrest and the role of police in the 1960s; in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, self-policing and police power are at odds with each other. The role of police officers, typically white men, has become misconstrued in the public (and private) realm to mean the ultimate pillar of authority. In 2020, a white woman called the police to report a black man who was simply birdwatching in Central Park, abusing her power to self-police and further widening the “adventure gap” between social groups and their opportunities to explore the outdoors.17

Beginning in the mid-1960s, activists of the black power movement called for the rejection of non-violence as well as the affirmation of self-determination and racial pride. Directly following the series of riots colloquially termed the “long, hot summer of 1967,” civil disorder led to the release of the 1968 Kerner Report—a document born out of the lack of understanding of urban America during 1968 and years prior. The Kerner Report explained how poverty and institutional racism were driving violence in cities, but following widespread media attention, little was done to address the racialized poverty in the United States. What followed was a decades-long urban crisis of police brutality and racialized mistreatment of Black Americans with police as the occupying force.

City officials, developers, and planners work

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Figure 1. Artwork originally paired with 1982 article “Broken Windows” by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson Source: Seymour Chwast

with the police to manage public spaces.18 If harassment, abuse, or violence inflicted upon citizens by police occurs in the public realm, this is a planning problem. Policing can be used as a racialized tactic for spatial containment, keeping “undesirable” people out. Planners have direct authority over what happens on the street and should take this responsibility seriously.

planners rush decisions, it becomes difficult to be inclusive, to encourage thoughtful decisionmaking, to think long-term, and to consider consequences; in turn, practitioners may sacrifice genuine engagement and potential allies for quick, highly visible results. After major events of racial injustice, like the murder of George Floyd, for example, white people are often reactive to these events and temporarily engage in activities that soothe their white fragility, like joining an anti-racist book club or hosting a one-time reflection session. A sense of urgency can also be harmful when planners sacrifice the interests of BIPOC communities to win victories for white people, as when they try to meet (arbitrary) deadlines.20 These dynamics within organizations, in particular, are reflective of a hyper-capitalist fervor that reduces people into workplace producers and extracts as much labor from workers as they can give.21 A sense of urgency keeps white planners disconnected from the broader context of injustice by not allowing time for discernment, reflection or real repair. And the era of social media and mass informationsharing further perpetuates this notion of brief spurts of attention and giving high value to

WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE, RETRAUMATIZATION, AND LANGUAGE A large contributor to contemporary planninginduced trauma is white supremacy culture, or the ideology that white people and their thoughts, beliefs, actions, and ideas are superior to their Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) counterparts.19 Baked into this culture is the idea that both overtly and covertly, whiteness holds value and is value. Many characteristics of white supremacy culture show up in organizations and influence people’s thinking. Urgency is one characteristic that perpetuates and reinforces the culture of white supremacy. When

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open conflict among group members. Planners should explicitly make discomfort warranted and should acknowledge it as a useful tool to explore why someone feels uncomfortable.23 Planners must understand that discomfort is necessary for growth and learning and should be welcomed.

When planners rush decisions, it becomes difficult to be inclusive, to encourage thoughtful decision-making, to think longterm, and to consider consequences; in turn, practitioners may sacrifice genuine engagement and potential allies for quick, highly visible results.”

Steps must be taken to address trauma directly in the field of urban planning; if not, these characteristics remain (unconsciously) reinforced by planners and will continue to traumatize (non-white) communities. In the process of addressing trauma and harm, planners must not inadvertently retraumatize people. Retraumatization can occur when a situation or environment resembles an individual’s trauma and then triggers feelings and reactions associated with the original trauma. For instance, misguided attempts at participatory planning enable planners to misuse power by requiring marginalized communities to retell their trauma for the sake of diversifying community participation.

This act of requiring vulnerability without reciprocity is extractive. For example, planners might expect attendees of a community town hall on affordable housing to share their struggles paying rent or affording the cost of groceries, education, or healthcare. By reinforcing this notion, planners perpetuate an illusion of participation that is absent of true power.24

all content. Unfortunately, the field of urban planning is complicit in addressing harm and racism; however, recognizing, disrupting, and dismantling white supremacy cannot be rushed.

Another damaging characteristic of white supremacy culture is known as the “right to comfort.” This is the norm that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort.22 Planners can shield themselves from discomfort by working and making decisions away from the public eye for fear of open conflict or criticism, further limiting opportunities for communities to speak out against injustices and affect the planning process. When issues are raised, planners may default to shifting blame to protect themselves rather than attempting to resolve the issue at hand. For example, consider a group of planners working on a project to improve transit funding in Detroit. It is well known that there are many racialized layers to this project: Black Detroiters’ labor was the basis of the auto industry, those who rely on transit the most are predominantly working-class residents, and certain neighborhoods (like Southwest Detroit) experience poorer air quality and more adverse health outcomes than others.

A planner’s idea of the right to comfort may manifest when one chooses to not address this portion of history because of how it may incite

Planners can also retraumatize by labeling and referring to individuals by aspects of their identity, rather than seeing people as holistic individuals. This often looks like emphasizing people’s vulnerabilities instead of strengths with terms like low-income, marginalized, or underprivileged.25 Terms like disadvantaged, under-served, and under-resourced should be used with caution and consideration, as they support a deficit-based, rather than assetbased, model of people and communities.

Equity-focused alternatives include historically and intentionally excluded and disinvested.26 Similarly, planners should avoid dehumanizing language (e.g., the homeless, disabled person) and instead use people-first language (e.g.,

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conversation about how dry the neighboring farmland was or the region’s water shortages, as this was not new information to me. It wasn’t until the extreme weather events became substantially worse that my family started to worry. Every wildfire season, my grandparents were forced to evacuate, and every year, more homes were burnt to the ground. Once, a wildfire blazed through the forest heading straight to my grandparents’ home. Unexpectedly, the fire met the edge of their property but stopped short and reversed direction, terrorizing another neighborhood instead. After one more season of evacuations and stocking up on survival supplies, this time with my grandmother bedridden, they finally decided that enough was enough. My grandparents packed up their belongings and became climate migrants, moving to the more predictable climate of Rochester, Minnesota.

Misguided attempts at participatory planning enable planners to misuse power by requiring marginalized communities to retell their trauma for the sake of diversifying community participation. This act of requiring vulnerability without reciprocity is extractive.” people who are experiencing homelessness or houselessness, people who are experiencing (condition or disability type)). It is the responsibility of planners to develop and embody critical consciousness and be aware of how words reinforce dominant narratives, and when words move toward greater equity.27 Actions today shape the future of cities and can either heal or re-inflict trauma for generations to come. As the world shifts to new and frightening equilibriums, every action, if not embodying healing, is inhibiting it.

It has been less than a year since my grandparents moved, and the image of their home amongst the flames is still fresh in my mind. While I have not experienced the anger, despair, or fear of losing my home, climate trauma is what ultimately fueled my desire to become a planner. The psychological damage and toxic stress of climate change is a kind of trauma that is inseparable from the planning profession. Lenient climate adaptation regulations, a failure to update infrastructure, and blatant inaction all contribute to climate trauma. So too does the exclusion of indigenous wildfire management practices, which is a form of colonial ecological violence,28 as well as the disproportionate effects of federal and state disaster responses, which highlight the institutional and systemic nature of racism, classism, and sexism.29

CLIMATE TRAUMA; PLAYING WITH FIRE Trauma is not an abstract concept; it permeates our lives, our homes, and our communities. I offer one personal anecdote that will forever stay with me.

On holidays, my family would drive through winding roads and vineyards to my grandparents’ home in Santa Rosa, California.

For as long as I can remember, towering oak trees lined their hilly property while deer and turkeys roamed about the patches of native flowers and shrubs. In the morning, dew drops covered the patio, and my mother went for her daily run. In the afternoon, my grandfather played classical piano, and my grandmother made fresh bread. It was my home away from home. I rarely paid attention to dinner table

My sister and I visited the San Francisco Mission District a few months ago (Figure 2). We always make a point of observing the street art because the neighborhood is ripe with activists and creatives using art as a medium for community change. During our visit, I snapped this photo of my sister in front of an especially provocative mural, not thinking much of it at the time other than its social

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Figure 2. Sister of the author in front of a mural in the Mission District, San Francisco

media potential. But when I sift back through these memories, I am horrified that this is the world she must live in – a world figuratively and literally in flames.

THERAPEUTIC PLANNING So far, I have argued that a humanistic approach to planning is not possible without giving proper attention to historical traumas and conflicts. Underpinning this notion is one definition of planning: a discipline and profession concerned with community building – not just city building and regional development.31 At first glance, the term therapeutic planning may have a negative connotation. In the planning context, therapy is one of the lowest rungs of Sherri Arstein’s ladder of citizen participation and represents non-participation.32 The therapy metaphor alludes to a counselor-patient relationship where the patient has a one-sided need for change, and the counselor listens.33 But a planner should not assume the responsibility of a counselor or therapist, who have different roles in the therapeutic process than that of

FRAMEWORKS: A PATH FORWARD Fortunately, there are many frameworks in the field of urban planning tailored to addressing trauma in cities and communities, including therapeutic planning and reparative planning. All of these are types of traumainformed frameworks, which means that their approaches aim to do no further harm.30 These frameworks provide a guide for addressing trauma in planning curriculum and in practice.

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In my undergraduate studies, I had several close friends and mentors involved in the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), a collection of volunteer and academic programs at the University of Michigan. The PCAP community includes students, faculty and staff, volunteers, youth and adults in detention and treatment programs, and formerly incarcerated individuals. Some of my fondest memories include attending exhibits featuring artwork of incarcerated artists and teaching poetry writing at a youth detention center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Through my interactions with PCAP, my eyes were opened. I learned about reparations in the context of the criminal legal system and how restorative justice can be used as an alternative to retributive or punitive justice. I also became more aware of crime as a symptom of larger societal problems, and the trauma associated with incarceration in the prison industrial complex.

planners. Planners are good candidates for the task of supporting communities on a healing journey. First, their practice involves collective and public activities, making the general public relatively accessible through planning processes. Second, planners aim to negotiate the relationships between the past and the future. And third, planners are uniquely positioned to ground group discussion around trauma and healing in material realities of everyday life like homes and streets.34 Hence, therapeutic planning is the first framework I will offer planners. It is defined as the process of bringing people together not only to share their experiences and work in solidarity, but also to work through their differences in transformative ways.35 Therapeutic planning is about empowerment through organizing and solidarity at the community scale,36 and it is a way for public institutions to undergo social learning processes that elevate the position of historically oppressed voices and bodies.37

City governments are starting to address reparations, such as in Evanston, Illinois and Asheville, North Carolina. In the case of Evanston, the city aims to address the historical wealth and opportunity gaps that Evanston’s African American and Black residents experienced through the lens of housing. The city’s Restorative Housing Program provides grants of up to $25,000 to help residents purchase a home, make home improvements, or pay their mortgages. These grants make reparations available for the harm caused by discriminatory housing policies and practices as well as inaction on the city’s part.41

Therapeutic planning creates an opportunity for planning to heal relationships with communities that have a collective memory of harm in ways that incite a social and institutional transformation toward inclusivity.38 Of course, this is dependent on planners having the skills and sensitivities for this type of work – something that is not a focus in planning education.

REPARATIVE PLANNING Reparative planning is another traumainformed framework; it considers urban planning’s entanglement with white supremacy and, as a process of transitional justice, seeks to redress past harms, redistribute resources, undermine dominant power structures, and honor community agency.39 Similar to reparative justice, reparative planning emphasizes the annulment of both wrongful gains and losses, including the distribution of holdings or entitlements.40 And what ought to be done in reparation for injustice is the obligation of wrongdoers, or their descendents or successors.

In my eyes, however, reparations are more than monetary and compensatory justice.

Reparations extend toward practices of atonement and apology-making.42 Planners have the ability to transform the status quo, starting with changes in planning curriculum. Planning educators must commit to decolonizing the field of urban planning, and by extension, planning education. Planning has been used as a tool to establish power over BIPOC populations, and the legacies of colonialism continue today in the form of segregation, displacement, and exclusion.

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It is crucial that educators teach about and support academic research on conflict resolution, dialogue, and reconciliation. In my experience, many academics do not have anti-racism teaching competency, which allows white supremacy to persist in classrooms and educational institutions. Along with the therapeutic planning framework mentioned in this essay, reparative planning should be explicitly addressed in planning studies.

As a planner, it is my responsibility to acknowledge the trauma in the built environment and to strive for a less traumatic future.” stomachs digesting nutrients necessary for survival. And we are earth in its purest form.

Together, the elements make us who we are.

Planning forums are sometimes the only constructive, collective spaces where community members can show up, be heard, and listen to others’ experiences while collaboratively influencing programming and decision-making. Planners can facilitate respectful conversation and consensus building between folks of different opinions and lived experiences within the same community.

As I open my eyes, collect myself, and walk home, I am reminded that I carry this trauma with me wherever I go. In my hands, or pockets, if you will. Trauma is in our parks, our classrooms, and our homes. As a planner, it is my responsibility to acknowledge the trauma in the built environment and to strive for a less traumatic future. Urban planners are capable of designing and planning in ways that are sympathetic to trauma and conducive to healing; trauma-informed frameworks can and should be taught in planning curriculum and in professional practice.

In addition, planning discussions – if held with the intention to heal – make for good doorways to healing because they link internal and external conflicts and historical traumas to tangible things in people’s everyday lives. The city is important in peace building because it is in the streets and neighborhoods that there is negotiation over abstract concepts such as democracy, fairness, and tolerance. Debates over proposed projects and physical places provide opportunities to anchor and negotiate dissonant feelings and opinions.43

I want to bring attention back to the weight of our words and their ability to shift the lens of the planning process. There seems to be a shift among scholars and practitioners, away from the terminology of trauma-informed approaches and toward healing-centric approaches as we realize how the lens of trauma-informed planning forces people to identify with their worst experiences.

Trauma-informed approaches often become an attempt to treat the symptom (trauma) as opposed to the root cause (i.e., poverty, violence). By reframing these strategies as healing-centric approaches, one can shift the focus from the individual to the systemic.44 Yet there must be flexibility in how to refer to and envision the purpose of this practice, for some people may not consider their experiences traumatic and do not want them to be labeled as such. Similarly, some may not consider themselves in need of healing.45 When working with community members, it is important

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Today, I sit under a large pine, closing my eyes and feeling the pulse of the wind upon my lips. With one hand I caress my own personal trauma. With my other hand I hold the trauma of my ancestors, elders, and future children.

Nature is a teacher, reminding us that humans contain all elements of nature in our body.

Air, water, fire, and earth. We breathe in new air to cleanse our bodies and release what we do not need. The Latin root of the word ‘anxiety’ means ‘to be without air,’ so when we allow the breath to flow, we release tension.

Water replenishes our bodies and our minds, circulating to every limb, and fire is in our

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to follow their lead and use language that is familiar and relatable to them.46 Our words are powerful, and they may unify or alienate. They exist in a constant state of flux, as definitions and connotations evolve through time.

Nonetheless, trauma is an neglected concept in the planning field. A crucial step forward for planners is to begin acknowledging planninginduced trauma, reflecting on our own trauma and how it impacts our work, and addressing trauma through frameworks like therapeutic and reparative planning. My ultimate goal is to address trauma with the intent of healing individuals and communities; however, sometimes healing must come from within individuals and across community groups, and planners may only foster and support these processes. But in other settings, planners may take a more proactive role, and even prevent trauma from occurring. Moreover, I feel strongly that there is hope because if traumas can be collective and inherited, then so can healing.

CAMILLA LIZUNDIA Camilla is a second-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning candidate. She originally hails from the San Francisco Bay Area and received a B.A. in Environment in 2020 from the University of Michigan.

Camilla participates in research with the University of Michigan Urban Scenarios Lab, interns with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and manages social media for the Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design.

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END NOTES

14. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

2011. Introductory handbook on policing urban space. https://www.unodc.org/pdf/criminal_ justice/Introductory_Handbook_on_Policing_ Urban_Space.pdf.

1. Lexi Pandell, “How Trauma Became the Word of the Decade,” Vox, January 17, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22876522/ trauma-covid-word-origin-mental-health.

2. Jessica Bennett, “Opinion | If Everything Is ‘Trauma,’ Is Anything?,” The New York Times, February 4, 2022, sec. Opinion, https://www. nytimes.com/2022/02/04/opinion/caleb-lovebombing-gaslighting-trauma.html.

15. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).

16. Stuart Schrader, “Harvard Design Magazine: Reading Jane Jacobs in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter,” accessed March 19, 2022, http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/ issues/42/reading-jane-jacobs-in-the-era-ofblacklivesmatter.

3. Bessel A. Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2015).

4. Maria A El Helou. “Towards A Post-Traumatic Urban Design That Heals Cities’ Inhabitants Suffering From PTSD.” Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs 4, no. 1 (June 1, 2020): 79–90.

17. James Edward Mills, The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2014).

5. Protocol, A. Treatment Improvement.

“Trauma-informed care in behavioral health services.” Rockville, USA: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2014).

18. Brandi Thompson Summers and Kathryn Howell, “Fear and Loathing (of Others): Race, Class and Contestation of Space in Washington, DC,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43, no. 6 (November 2019): 1085–1105, https://doi.org/10.1111/14682427.12811.

6. Aftab Erfan. “Confronting Collective Traumas: An Exploration of Therapeutic Planning.” Planning Theory & Practice 18, no. 1 (2017): 34–50.

19. Okun, T., and Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks), “White Supremacy Culture.”

Dismantling Racism Works [Online workbook]. https://www.dismantlingracism.org/whitesupremacy-culture.html.

7. Jocelyn Poe. “Theorizing Communal Trauma: Examining the Relationship between Race, Spatial Imaginaries, and Planning in the U.S. South.” Planning Theory, 2021: 11.

8. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Root Shock. (New Village Press, 2016), http://www.myilibrary. com?id=972172.

20. Okun and dRworks, “White Supremacy Culture,” 2.

21. Curtis Ogden, “Confronting the (White Supremacist/Hyper-Capitalist) ‘Frenzy of Activism,’” Interaction Institute for Social Change, January 22, 2019, https:// interactioninstitute.org/confronting-the-whitesupremacisthyper-capitalist-frenzy-of-theactivist/.

9. Carolyn Levine, “Beyond Trauma: A HealingCentered Framework for Urban Planning.”

Pratt Institute, 2021.

10. Levine, “Beyond Trauma,” 11.

11. Howell Baum. “Planning with Half a Mind: Why Planners Resist Emotion.” Planning Theory & Practice 16, no. 4 (2015): 498–516.

22. Ogden, “Confronting the,” 7.

23. “White Supremacy Culture in Organizations: A Taubman College Guide” (University of Michigan, March 2022).

12. Fullilove, Root Shock, 23, 26-27, 43.

13. Darian Razdar, “Watching You Watch Me,” March 6, 2022, https://darianrazdar. com/2022/03/06/poem-watching-you-watch-

24. Levine,”Beyond Trauma,” 20.

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25. American Medical Association and Association of American Medical Colleges, “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts,” https:// www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamcequity-guide.pdf.

36.

37. Leonie Sandercock, ed., Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History, California Studies in Critical Human Geography 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

38. Lisa Schweitzer. “Restorative Planning Ethics: The Therapeutic Imagination and Planning in Public Institutions.” Planning Theory 15, no. 2 (May 2016): 130–44.

26. American Medical Association and Association of American Medical Colleges, “Advancing Health Equity,” 11.

27. American Medical Association and Association of American Medical Colleges, “Advancing Health Equity,” 9.

39. Rashad Akeem Williams. “From Racial to Reparative Planning: Confronting the White Side of Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research, August 5, 2020, 0739456X2094641.

28. Kari Marie Norgaard and Sara Worl, “What Western States Can Learn from Native American Wildfire Management Strategies,” The Conversation, accessed March 3, 2022, http://theconversation.com/what-westernstates-can-learn-from-native-americanwildfire-management-strategies-120731.

40. Williams, “From Racial to Reparative,” 8.

41. Morris (Dino) Robinson Jr. and Jenny Thompson, “Evanston Policies and Practices Directly Affecting the African American Community, 1900 - 1960 (and Present),” Draft (August 2020), https://www.cityofevanston.org/ home/showpublisheddocument?id=59759.

29. Fayola Jacobs. “Black Feminism and Radical Planning: New Directions for Disaster Planning Research.” Planning Theory 18, no. 1 (2019): 24–39.

42. Margaret Urban Walker, “Restorative Justice and Reparations,” Journal of Social Philosophy 37, no. 3 (2006): 377–95, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2006.00343.x.

30. Healing Communities: Infusing TraumaInformed Practices. NeighborWorks America, 2020.

43. Erfan, “Confronting Collective Traumas,” 44.

31. Erfan, “Confronting Collective Traumas,” 35.

44. Levine, “Beyond Trauma,” 23.

32. Sherry R. Arnstein, “A Ladder Of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35, no. 4 (July 1969): 216–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225.

46. Levine, “Beyond Trauma,” 23.

45. Levine, “Beyond Trauma,” 23.

33. Lisa Schweitzer. “Restorative Planning Ethics: The Therapeutic Imagination and Planning in Public Institutions.” Planning Theory 15, no. 2 (May 2016): 130–44.

34. Efran, “Confronting Collective Traumas,” 43.

35. Leonie Sandercock, “Towards a Planning Imagination for the 21st Century,” Journal of the American Planning Association 70, no. 2 (June 30, 2004): 133–41, https://doi. org/10.1080/01944360408976368.

36. Erfan, “Confronting Collective Traumas,”

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Dimensions of Disempowerment in Urban Planning

ARIN YU Master of Urban and Regional Planning

ABSTRACT Intersectionality is a highly valuable perspective within social justice and critical race theory scholarship. It also has significant implications within the field of urban planning, which must grapple with a multiplicity of overlapping and conflicting identities, spaces, and powers. To make the field of planning take on greater responsibility for urban and social injustices than it has in the past, practitioners and scholars must recognize the ways in which planning plays into systems of oppression and inequality. Without critically interrogating our field’s relationships with power and intersectionality, we will never meaningfully serve or understand the people and cities we are committed to. Drawing upon the work of feminist scholars, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups, this paper discusses the importance of assessing planning’s understandings of power, identity, and difference in urban spaces.

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groups. Despite intentions and efforts to achieve justice and equality, practitioners and scholars have not always situated planning’s role in systemic racism, marginalization, assimilation, and disempowerment. We still have much to learn from marginalized communities themselves about creating empowering spaces and environments. Black feminist theorists, Black Geographies scholars, Urban Clan Mothers, and other groups provide critical frameworks for analyzing power in the built environment. Urban planning that fails to understand the real, lived experiences of intersectional people and their power is urban planning that continually perpetuates oppression.

INTRODUCTION Urban planning is a highly interdisciplinary field with deep-running consequences for the everyday experiences of our lives.

From its particular position of influence and authority, the discipline has incredible potential to generate intersectional solutions and viewpoints on critical issues. Yet the field has only recently begun to recognize that intersectionality has primarily been a superficial undertaking in our built environments, and one that obscures planning’s own role in perpetuating societal injustice and inequality. The planning profession places enormous value on communities and neighborhoods we can describe as “strong,” “diverse,” or “inclusive,” based on multifunctionality and a multiplicity of visible cultures. Rather than valuing these places for the different people, however, we tend to value the profitability of their difference. Being an intersectional person in a hierarchized society becomes an avenue for disempowerment and systemic oppression, rather than empowerment and meaningful inclusion.

POWER Power can be understood as the ability to produce change. It is an expression of dynamic interactions and relationships within our social and built environments that come out through individuals. Every individual being, regardless of their level of privilege, possesses power.

Being powerless, therefore, is not the lack of power, but the incapacity to use it.

Restricting opportunity, and therefore power, has been a part of integrating non-white people into a white-dominated society from the beginning of American society. The very first civil rights bill enacted in 1866 used language tying the right of property ownership to freedom and citizenship.3 The United States government created conditions for being seen as a whole, respectable American based on obtaining something physical and material. Tethering citizenship and freedom to land creates an avenue for exclusion and disempowerment that remains largely within the control and occupancy of the dominant.

Preeminent political theorist and feminist scholar Iris Marion Young emphasizes the ways in which power can be further enabled or constrained by “the rules and practices that govern one’s action, the way other people treat one in the context of specific social relations, and the broader structural possibilities produced by the confluence of a multitude of actions and practices.”4 People are significantly impacted by both the physicality

As planners, we often state that our primary obligation is serving “the public interest.”

The American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct recognizes that “the public interest” is formulated by continuous and conscientious debate.1 It also includes pledges that planners will “pay special attention to the interrelatedness of decisions” and “seek social justice by working to expand choice and opportunity for all persons, recognizing a special responsibility to plan for the needs of the disadvantaged and to promote racial and economic integration.”2 While these principles reflect a commitment to centering social justice issues in practice, planners must first understand the ways in which our practice itself shapes and is shaped by unequal power dynamics. Planning for the “disadvantaged” and promoting integration may appear to be goals of equity and inclusion, but they come from a specific perspective of power and value that does not actually benefit marginalized

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of their space – such as the quality of their neighborhoods – and the perceived boundaries of their social environments. This is where urban planners play a critical role in societal equality – though planners are often dealing with the material-built world, their actions and practices influence people’s capacities to be powerful in their environments.

Tethering citizenship and freedom to land creates an avenue for exclusion and disempowerment that remains largely within the control and occupancy of the dominant.”

Black feminists insist on self-definition to validate their power as human beings.

They go beyond protesting the accuracy of society’s image of Black women to scrutinize “the power dynamics underlying the very process of definition itself” and question “the credibility and the intentions” of those who craft definitions for others.5 Urban planners and others in powerful positions do not have to actively suppress other groups to help advance dominant interests. Not listening to these other groups, or fabricating incomplete ideas of their needs and interests, is enough to maintain the illusion of an equally representative “public” interest. Commitment to this “ideal of impartiality” makes the privileged standpoint seem universal and the claims of other groups more biased or “special,” while obscuring the partiality of the privileged.6 Being attuned to how groups choose to define themselves, and how they are enabled or constrained in relation to one another, is a key step for planners to meaningfully understand their intersectional, powerful “public” of people.

one’s group largely defines one’s power. While group identity serves to benefit whiteness, it is prejudicially and deliberately wielded against racially subordinated groups. Since its founding, American law has “recognized and codified racial group identity as an instrumentality of exclusion and exploitation” but has refused to extend recognition of group identity to racially oppressed groups as “a basis for affirming or claiming rights.”10 It would ruin the exclusive benefits of whiteness to admit that it is just another social group, fabricated to maintain a racial hierarchy.

In reality, every person finds themselves in intersecting social groups and identities. We are each defined by the multiple layers and groups we are members of. Sometimes this works to one’s benefit, but in other instances it can be incapacitating because people may find themselves further disempowered by their intersectional identities.

People are affected both by how others around them define their group identities and the structural processes that contribute to societal differentiation. A social group emerges from a collective of people differentiating themselves in relation to at least one other group.7 In the U.S., systemic white supremacy ensures that simply being white increases “the possibility of controlling critical aspects of one’s life rather than being the object of others’ domination.”8 There is no intrinsic quality that grants whiteness its elevated status – its exclusivity is constructed on “an illusion of unity” among white people.9 When a social hierarchy is predicated on exclusion, defining

Women of color, who face both racial and gender injustices, frequently embody intersectional marginalization from their own racial and gender groups. Leading critical race theory scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw articulates intersectionality through the experiences of Black women. In the fight against racism, some Black men “seem to expect Black women to serve as vehicles for the achievement of a ‘liberation’ that functions to perpetuate [Black women’s] own subordination.”11 Black feminists can be genuinely enthusiastic to fight for the integrity of men of their color and still remain fiercely committed to their

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work alongside other women. Mainstream antisexism work, however, remains grounded in the white woman’s experience. The racialized experience of minority women who face violence is largely ignored, extracted only to gain support for domestic violence programs when a white community deems it valuable.12 Meaningful empowerment remains elusive for women of color as long as white feminism and male-centric antiracism dominate both discourses. Neither allows women of color to properly grapple with the split they might be facing between these two sides of their oppression, “a dimension of intersectional disempowerment that men of color and white women seldom confront.”13

Being attuned to how groups choose to define themselves, and how they are enabled or constrained in relation to one another, is a key step for planners to meaningfully understand their intersectional, powerful “public” of people.”

In addition to noting the various ways in which identities intersect to shape a person’s experiences, Crenshaw also utilizes intersectionality as a tool for reconceptualizing difference and group politics. It can be a way of acknowledging societal differences, and the means by which these differences express themselves.14 Intersectionality helps us view others as the complex, layered, and multidimensional people they are, expanding their personhood rather than collapsing them into their traits. Upholding this understanding of identity and experience is crucial to empowering marginalized groups and empowering planners on their goals to advance social justice

when their difference is scrutinized or erased, but they can also be oppressed through exploitation and commodification of their identities.

There are many ways to live in and occupy urban space, but forcing groups to integrate and share space in the name of diversity and conviviality reflects a fundamental failure to achieve true empowerment. Post–World War II federal relocation policies moved Native Americans off reservations and into cities such as Detroit, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. Newspapers and the Bureau of Indian Affairs shared a rhetoric of “progress,” “modernizing,” and aiding Natives to become “part of American society” to convince Natives and non-Natives that this was key to economic survival.16 By the start of the twenty-first century, 60 percent of the Native American population was living in urban centers, according to the 2000 census.17 Many of these groups continue to be marginalized as they re-occupy spaces they are not represented in physically or politically. A common narrative of these communities claims that there are limitations to Indigenous living in urban places because they are supposedly disconnected from Indigenous territories, homes, and sacred places. The “urban Indian” narrative reinforces logics of dispossession and elimination by marking urban land as non-Indigenous.18 This obscures two key facts: today’s urban lands

INTERSECTIONALITY IN THE CITY The production of urban spaces as places of consumption, conviviality, and so-called “diversity” is inherently tied to the production of difference.15 Planners rely on the presence of difference to make public spaces – such as downtown streets lined with restaurants or murals – more interesting and inclusive, but it is difficult to grapple with multitudes of overlapping identities and power.

The desire to meet many needs and interests with the greatest efficiency possible leaves planners vulnerable to essentializing peoples’ identities into smaller, less multidimensional experiences. People can be marginalized

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were also taken from Indigenous peoples, and “integration” can actually be a mechanism for further fragmentation and disempowerment of marginalized groups.

People can be marginalized when their difference is scrutinized or erased, but they can also be oppressed through exploitation and commodification of their identities.”

W. E. B. Du Bois articulated the way in which integration did not mean actual inclusion as equal members of society for Black people in post-slavery America as a “double consciousness.” The feeling of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity,” is one that still persists for many people of color.19 Because being non-white is seen as “having” color, whiteness can make itself seem neutral, blank, or invisible. It puts everyone else in a separate category to be observed and scrutinized, while pretending that whiteness is not an assigned color, just like the others. The more whiteness is allowed to be invisible, the more the very concept of race and its problems are associated primarily with people of color.20 The invisibility of whiteness and the illusion of unity among white people help them lose their own particularity and intersectionality.

Privileged groups have traditionally assumed the authority of knowledge and definition, solidifying their perspectives as truth.

White people’s power as the dominant decisionmakers elevates their privilege, and whiteness becomes a disembodied, seemingly “universal view from nowhere.”21

– whether they benefit or suffer as a result.22 As intersectional people themselves, not all urban planners are empowered to pursue their missions, or treated with the same level of dignity. The ability to assess planning’s position within societal power relationships, as both a perpetrator and bearer of oppression, is a crucial element of understanding the planner’s role in city life.

Urban planners themselves have been disempowered from pursuing meaningful social change through policies of austerity. The pattern of “‘rolling back’ the state to facilitate the privatization of the urban” via major budget cuts and a deteriorating welfare system has had layered consequences.23 Ongoing restructuring dictated by cost-saving logic has targeted cities for decades, but it has become more extreme since the 2008 economic crisis.24 Cities, and therefore planners, are compelled to create, find, and assign value in ways that can be capitalized to generate more value. This system of austerity urbanism ultimately forces the commodification of everything, from public space in the streets to private homes, in order to extract as much capital as possible. Forces like poverty and marginalization, sustained by austerity policies and value-chasing urban planners, often keep those who are less able to adapt to urban changes compelled to do so more frequently.25 It becomes easier to focus more attention on a space’s exchange value rather than its use value; the former is far easier to define and compare in terms of its contribution, whereas the latter has a multiplicity of meanings and possibilities that are harder to plan for.

As agents of change in a variety of environments, urban planners are powerful decision makers who depend on observation, evaluation, and investigation of people and their communities. They take on a group identity of being more knowledgeable, authoritative, and objective when it comes to shaping the built environment. Yet many fail to question the authority they grant themselves in the first place to observe marginalization and injustice and, in doing so, fail to question their role as perpetrators of the very problems associated with oppressed groups. Every member of society is impacted by the unequal “hierarchical relations of race, gender, class, and nationality” – including urban planners

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Targeting cities therefore results in a “dual regressive distribution” of targeting the poor and marginalized, because better-off residents, neighborhoods, and communities have more capacity to protect themselves from the damaging consequences of austerity urbanism.26 Even well-intentioned planning can only go so far with such limited understandings of people, space, and their value.

The ability to assess planning’s position within societal power relationships, as both a perpetrator and bearer of oppression, is a crucial element of understanding the planner’s role in city life.”

Ill-intentioned planners and officials, however, have also capitalized on the layerable consequences of hierarchizing difference and commodifying space. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA)’s low-income homeownership programs that were launched in the 1970s transformed definitions of people, space, and value in order to profit from including poor Black women in the programs.

The likelihood that these women would fail to make their payments and fall into foreclosure, formerly seen as a risk, became an excuse to commodify housing as a material good for selling, rather than an empowering and enabling use of space.

agent to discuss the condition of her house, he claimed no responsibility for selling her a dilapidated house.27 Thousands of women were left to deal with similar conditions upon buying new homes through the FHA. The state of the houses and limited choices available to people like Johnson reflect a systemic reluctance to invest in inner-city housing and low-income residents, unless there is opportunity to extract value from them. At its surface, the opportunity for homeownership seemed to subvert both racial and gender norms for thousands of American women. However, in the lived reality of this “predatory inclusion,” owning a home returned almost no value to the women while generating great profits for real estate and mortgage bankers.28 As authoritative figures, the FHA and local officials were able to transform the logic of a federal low-income homeownership program into the legitimization of a hierarchized housing system.

In 1970, Janice Johnson was a Black single mother whose decaying apartment building in Philadelphia had recently been condemned by city officials. Because she was on welfare, she was refused an apartment in another building – instead, the landlord suggested that she buy a house under the FHA’s new program. Johnson met with a landlord-turnedreal-estate-agent who showed her a house in the city that had been “approved” by the FHA. Weeks before Johnson was to move in, however, the agent informed her that the floor of the house had collapsed – but there was another house he could sell her. Though concerned, Johnson was facing eviction proceedings from her condemned apartment and needed housing for her son. Within days of moving into the new home, the sewer line broke and spewed wastewater all over the basement, the electricity for the house was sporadic, the foundation had holes and other irregularities, all the windows were nailed shut and inoperable, and the house was infested with rats. When Johnson called her real estate

These types of policies and programs deliberately ignored the specificity of Black womanhood in America because doing so generated a greater profit for the dominant interests. In 1972 the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Assistant Secretary openly acknowledged the prescriptive nature of FHA actions: “We took a program designed for the suburbs where the family had the resources to adapt to mistakes… and we pushed it into the inner city where you had different consumers with different resources

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and different values.”29 Difference was not respected, but intentionally exploited. For the white middle class, a group with the material privilege to further solidify their particular worldview, homeownership is seen as the standard form of land occupancy and tenure. Assuming that this is therefore the universal standard, however, is another element of planning that the field has largely failed to question. Most of the women of color manipulated by the FHA programs would rather have rented property than become further marginalized by the surveillance, repeated inspections, and financial debt accompanying their dilapidated housing.30

constructed between the self and those seeing the performance, resulting in a “moving target” of identity that changes with the environment.34 For some, public performance requires little adjustment from how they behave and perceive themselves in private.

Those who are marked out as “different” from the dominant group, however, face obstacles to gaining the same respectability. Even when “women, disabled people, Blacks, Latinos, gay men, lesbians, and others… successfully exhibit the norms of respectability, their physical presence continues to be marked, something others take note of.”35 Inextricably tied to their physical bodies, they cannot be “fully and unself-consciously respectable and professional” and must “prove” their respectability constantly throughout their lives far more regularly than those who present as straight, white males.36 Our self-defined identities matter, regardless of who we are, but our performed identities matter even more when it comes to power and intersectionality.

Planners must be critical in their understanding of difference and intersectionality as it pertains to people’s actual, lived experiences.

Planning can influence housing policies and create fantastic neighborhoods, but those changes might mean nothing – or sometimes even cause harm – to the groups that have their own knowledge of how to meet their needs. Interventions privileging “experts” over community-led strategies can reduce complex societal problems into narrow technological ones, limiting the possibilities of social change. Worse, they obscure ideologies that “perpetuate and even rationalize the very asymmetries in power, access, and rights that allow for the problem to arise in the first place.”31 Planners do not have to assume or try to know what every individual wants from their built environment, but they must start by giving people the right to be intersectional and powerful on their own terms – such that every Black female has “the right to be Black and female and respected.”32

The invisibility of whiteness once again protects the status of the privileged while placing others’ public performances under scrutiny. When whiteness assumes itself to be the universal standard, anything designated as “public” undoubtedly includes a white public.

On the basis of their race, white people are more freely admitted to public spaces with the assurance of police protection – rather than surveillance or violence – and their children continue to have greater access to well-placed, more expensively built schools.37 Within higher education institutions, many universities in the U.S. demonstrate a white preference for spatial design, while praising their campus environments for being welcoming, inclusive, and safe. When a majority of campuses were designed and established, white males held primary positions of power, memorializing their names on buildings that slaves constructed (such as at Yale University).38 Though all students deserve to feel safe on campus, students of color may have experiences and perceptions of safety that differ from those of racially privileged students; a well-lit campus with visible police

THE RIGHT TO BE The lived experience of a space is as important as the intention behind its existence. Spaces are defined not only by their physical state, but also by “the ways in which social practice is enabled, abridged or changed.”33 Appearing in public space is always a performance. The overlap between one’s self-defined identity and the one presented for others is mutually

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presence does not protect against linguistic aggressions, nor does it acknowledge the fear and apprehension of police violence or targeting that minority groups may feel.39 Automatic deference to whiteness helps make white people seem unproblematic and undisturbing to the general population. This further entrenches the association of societal issues and lack of dignity with people of color – as though race is something to be suffering from.

Iris Marion Young’s work on the implications of difference offers a meaningful way of reframing group difference to recognize and humanize beings, instead of assigning value based on their presentation: The alternative to an essentializing, stigmatizing meaning of difference as opposition is an understanding of difference as specificity, variation. In this logic…group differences should be conceived as relational rather than defined by substantive categories and attributes. A relational understanding of difference relativizes the previously universal position of privileged groups, which allows only the oppressed to be marked as different.

When group difference appears as a function of comparison between groups, whites are just as specific as Blacks or Latinos, men just as specific as women, able-bodied people just as specific as disabled people. Difference thus emerges not as a description of the attributes of a group, but as a function of the relations between groups and the interaction of groups with institutions.43

If white people do not see themselves as “having” color, they can racialize other people and places by evaluating their proximity to whiteness – a logic that produces a system of racial capitalism.40 In order to facilitate the spatial reasoning of dispossession and displacement, racial capitalists promote land-valuation strategies that deprive people of their personhood and dignity, allowing for further disinvestment and predatory exploitation.41 Devaluing these populations, and therefore the spaces they occupy, reflects the same logic that facilitated settler colonialism. In urban planning and racial capitalism, this assumed “a-spatiality” of populations of color deem non-white spaces as open for occupation and capitalization, contributing to “practices such as white flight, gentrification, urban renewal, incarceration, and policing.”42 When inequality is normalized, it becomes far easier to devalue bodies and space according to the standards established by the privileged.

Can planners use power with this mindful understanding of difference? Can we see groups for what they value and assert about themselves, instead of through standards that depend on fabricated hierarchies?

Various movements for self-empowerment have sought divergence and distinction from dominant white culture, rather than integration or assimilation with it. The Black Power movement in the 1960s was critical of relying on white liberal support for civil rights and instead encouraged Black people to “assert the specificity of their own culture, political organization, and goals.”44 They believed in celebrating Blackness as a distinct culture that could provide “recovery and

When whiteness assumes itself to be the universal standard, anything designated as “public” undoubtedly includes a white public.”

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makes it possible to understand the relations between groups as mere difference “instead of exclusion, opposition, or dominance.”50 It also avoids the harms of colorblindness. Defining race reductively as simply color ignores its real usage as a determinative of one’s value and “denies the real linkage between race and oppression under systematic white supremacy.”51

revaluation of an Afro-American history” and the “creation of new cultural forms” in their own, separate neighborhoods.45 Native Americans, who have been resisting assimilation throughout America’s history, continue to assert a right to self-government and seek to preserve their languages and cultures. The Red Power movement, in alignment with Black Power advocates, fought for land rights claims and control in “a fierce commitment to tribal self-determination, the desire to develop and maintain Indian political and economic bases in but not of white society.”46

Suppressing the dignity of marginalized groups has made it easier for dominant groups to remain dominant. Repressing the knowledge of others and restricting their opportunities to share it has been critical in maintaining social inequalities.52 While systemic disempowerment has largely tied people’s identities and power to their bodies, there is an array of experience and knowledge that is produced outside the body. Black Geographies scholarship, for example, asserts that space is not a “blank canvas upon which racist activity unfolds,” but an active reflection of societal power relations and understandings.53 This scholarship views Blackness and Black knowledge as embodied in, but not limited to, the people. It emphasizes the ways in which “Blackness has been central to both the production of space and to the formation of Western, Eurocentric” geographies, countering narratives of Black people as “lacking” or “victims” of geographies because of transAtlantic slave trade or segregation.54 Shifting the focus of analysis “from the body to space and place...allows for a reading of Black life as not reducible to racism, violence, and death.” Black geographic knowledge provides alternative understandings of space, and pathways to healing violent spatial practices.

Overcoming the negativity of difference necessitates seeing dignity in everything.

Dignity respects the full humanity of a person, and the full possibilities of non-living things like space and knowledge. Difference becomes a positive contribution that marks uniqueness and capacity. The “individual, group, and formal educational ways of knowing” that marginalized groups carry are their own special way of empowering themselves and rejecting objectification, commodification, and exploitation.47 Having formed a positive selfidentity and self-definition through knowledge and cultural expression, oppressed groups “can then confront the dominant culture with demands for recognition of their specificity.”48

Asserting the positivity of group difference is empowering for all.”

Oppressed groups have done significant work to build sovereignty and safety within a system that did not do it for them. While hoping to bring redistributive change to the oppressed, these alternative options for empowerment and services aim to develop people’s capacities to “collectively take some control over their environment.”56 Marginalized communities in particular may share an ethic against public intervention that results from the “desire

Asserting the positivity of group difference is empowering for all. Reclaiming an identity as something to celebrate removes the deprecating gaze of double consciousness and “[punctures] the universalist claim to unity that expels some groups and turns them into the Other.”49 Positive group specificity

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to create a private world free from the diverse assaults on the public lives of racially subordinated people.”57 Black women’s safe spaces, often situated in African-American churches or among organizations with known community members, have served as locations for safe discourse on resistance.58

Reframed with critical perspectives, the problem of societal inequality perpetuated through urban planning has less to do with what is lacking in marginalized groups and more to do with the ways we see and value difference.”

Homes may also function as havens from life in an oppressive society. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Urban Clan Mothers – Indigenous women in cities who serve as heads of key households – open their homes as gathering spots that provide various needs: short-term or extended housing and food, health and healing practices, ceremonial locations, emotional and spiritual support, entertainment, and transportation and communication resources.59 Urban Indigenous communities differ from the common conception of a neighborhoodbased minority – their community structure is often more of a network of relations, rather than a geographically clustered space of residences and commercial enterprises with shared cultural attributes.60 The fluid and flexible nature of the urban Indigenous community “contributes to its resiliency and persistence, as well as its invisibility from an outside perspective.”61 The privacy of the home is valued not because it allows the owner to exclude others, but because it gives these marginalized and repeatedly harmed communities the space to exercise their cultures, support each other, and survive in the city. Without the work of people making safe spaces for themselves, we would not have them at all – let alone actually safe, inclusive cities.62

decision-making power. From the work of critical race theory scholars and marginalized groups, we can analyze oppression as what has been done in the name of protecting whiteness and other dominant interests as they manifest in the urban environment.

CONCLUSION With critical understandings of intersectionality and difference, planners can build more empowering relationships with the people and the environments they engage with. Systemic racism and other forms of oppression will not dissipate easily.

Marginalization and exploitation have been built into cities over time, as people repeatedly failed to confront the deeper roots of systemic inequality. Some overt forms of racism and oppression have been examined and ultimately discontinued – redlining, for example. Yet other forms of disempowerment are still in full force, in part because many planners still do not question their own understandings of difference, dignity, and power as they apply to space, people, and themselves. In particular, planners must grow their understanding of marginalized people as intersectional beings with multiple identities and powers, many of whom are already working to make cities better places to live.

Reframed with critical perspectives, the problem of societal inequality perpetuated through urban planning has less to do with what is lacking in marginalized groups and more to do with the ways we see and value difference. When neighborhood hierarchies are no longer understood as a given, “the infrastructural and educational inequalities across communities becomes deeply problematic.”63 This provides people like urban planners with new directions for using their

Although difference has repeatedly been used against people to either exclude or integrate, depending on how it could benefit dominant

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groups’ interests, it has also been asserted as an important dimension of empowerment by oppressed groups. In the U.S., white identity has been able to maintain its particular status by restricting others from exercising power with the same freedoms, while further obscuring its role in societal hierarchization over time. There is no functional opposite of whiteness, only the dominating urge to protect its exclusivity. Creating a more equal and diverse society, therefore, does not entail taking away white power and giving it to anyone else, or mere integration by offering other groups similar opportunities and privileges. Instead, we can uphold people’s rights to diverge from enforced standards and deprecating gazes, helping them feel included in society but not forced into a certain place within it. Our society is already diverse and powerful, but with meaningful equity and inclusion, and critical understandings of oppression, we can help make difference feel safer and welcomed in our cities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arin Yu is a Masters student in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan. She approaches urban planning from multiple angles, including affordable housing, creative street design, and equitable access to the city. She is particularly interested in meaningful representation and storytelling in urban spaces to create a more just and transformative environment. Arin works for the City of Ann Arbor’s Affordable Housing Commission, and has previously worked in sustainable tourism in Amsterdam.

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Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” 1299.

END NOTES 1. AICP, “AICP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct,” Introduction.

15. Camilla Hawthorne, “Black Matters Are Spatial Matters: Black Geographies for the Twenty‐first Century,” Geography Compass 13, no. 11 (November 2019), 3.

2. AICP, “AICP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct,” Section A. 3. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, Justice, Power, and Politics Series. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 2.

16. Mishuana R. Goeman, “Notes toward a Native Feminism’s Spatial Practice,” Wicazo Sa Review 24, no. 2 (2009), 171.

17. Mishuana R. Goeman, “Notes toward a Native Feminism’s Spatial Practice,” 172.

4. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference. Paperback reissue. Princeton, N.J (Princeton University Press, 2011), 26.

18. Megan Bang, Lawrence Curley, Adam Kessel, Ananda Marin, Eli S. Suzukovich, and George Strack, “Muskrat Theories, Tobacco in the Streets, and Living Chicago as Indigenous Land,” Environmental Education Research 20, no. 1 (January 2, 2014), 42.

5. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Rev. 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 114.

19. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk.

Dover Thrift Editions. (New York: Dover, 1994), 2.

6. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 116.

20. Edward Goetz, Rashad A. Williams, and Anthony Damiano, “Whiteness and Urban Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association 86, no. 2 (April 2, 2020), 146.

7. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 43.

8. Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness As Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993), 1713.

21. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 127.

9. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law,” Harvard Law Review 101, no. 7 (May 1988), 1372.

22. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 127.

23. Sawyer Phinney, “Rethinking Geographies of Race and Austerity Urbanism,” Geography Compass 14, no. 3 (March 2020), 2.

10. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law,” 1761.

24. Sawyer Phinney, “Rethinking Geographies of Race and Austerity Urbanism,” 3.

11. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (July 1991), 1293.

25. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 246.

12. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” 1260.

27. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, 1-3.

13. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” 1252.

28. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, 5.

14. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Mapping the

29. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit:

26. Sawyer Phinney, “Rethinking Geographies of Race and Austerity Urbanism,” 4

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How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, 174.

41. Prentiss A. Dantzler, “The Urban Process under Racial Capitalism: Race, Anti-Blackness, and Capital Accumulation,” 127.

30. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, 184.

42. A. Bledsoe and W.J. Wright,“The antiBlackness of Global Capital,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37, no. 1 (2019), 13.

31. Yanna Lambrinidou, “When Technical Experts Set Out to ‘Do Good’: Deficit-Based Constructions of ‘the Public’ and the Moral Imperative for New Visions of Engagement,” Michigan Journal of Sustainability 6, no. 1 (2018), 8.

43. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 171.

44. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 159.

32. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 115.

45. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 160.

46. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 160.

33. Brandi Thompson Summers and Kathryn Howell, “Fear and Loathing (of Others): Race, Class and Contestation of Space in Washington, DC,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43, no. 6 (November 2019), 1088.

47. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 289.

48. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 155.

34. Petra L. Doan, “The Tyranny of Gendered Spaces – Reflections from beyond the Gender Dichotomy,” Gender, Place & Culture 17, no. 5 (October 2010), 645.

49. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 166.

50. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 166.

35. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 141.

51. Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness As Property,” 1768.

36. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 141.

52. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 3.

37. William E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860 - 1880, 1. ed. (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1998), 700-701.

53. Camilla Hawthorne, “Black Matters Are Spatial Matters: Black Geographies for the Twenty‐first Century,” 5.

38. Nolan L. Cabrera, Jesse S. Watson, and Jeremy D. Franklin, “Racial Arrested Development: A Critical Whiteness Analysis of the Campus Ecology,” Journal of College Student Development 57, no. 2 (2016), 124.

54. Camilla Hawthorne, “Black Matters Are Spatial Matters: Black Geographies for the Twenty‐first Century,” 4.

39. Nolan L. Cabrera, Jesse S. Watson, and Jeremy D. Franklin, “Racial Arrested Development: A Critical Whiteness Analysis of the Campus Ecology,” 127.

55. Camilla Hawthorne, “Black Matters Are Spatial Matters: Black Geographies for the Twenty‐first Century,” 5.

56. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 85.

40. Prentiss A. Dantzler, “The Urban Process under Racial Capitalism: Race, Anti-Blackness, and Capital Accumulation,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City 2, no. 2 (July 3, 2021), 127.

57. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and

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Violence against Women of Color,” 1257.

58. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 100-101.

59. Susan Lobo, “Urban Clan Mothers: Key Households in Cities,” American Indian Quarterly 27, nos. 3 & 4 (2003), 505.

60. Susan Lobo, “Urban Clan Mothers: Key Households in Cities,” 507.

61. Susan Lobo, “Urban Clan Mothers: Key Households in Cities,” 506.

62. Kian Goh, “Safe Cities and Queer Spaces: The Urban Politics of Radical LGBT Activism,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, no. 2 (March 4, 2018), 469.

63. Junia Howell, “The Unstudied Reference Neighborhood: Towards a Critical Theory of Empirical Neighborhood Studies,” Sociology Compass 13, no. 1 (January 2019), 9.

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We(B)eirut Design Frameworks For Collective Urban Healing & Recovery HUITING QIAN Master of Urban Design

YUE XU Master of Urban Design

ABSTRACT A cycle of trauma and recovery shaped modern Beirut. Years of destruction and reconstruction in Beirut have evolved into growing gentrification. In 2020, the explosion at the Port of Beirut shook the northeastern side of the capital, generating unprecedented losses of life and destroying large sections of the city. In the aftermath of the explosion, it became integral to the city’s recovery that post-trauma efforts address the remarkable pain and ongoing gentrification. This design proposal introduces a viable and inclusive space by connecting existing community assets through a web system to strengthen geographical, spatial, and social solidarity. Thus, the project’s name of We(B)eirut can be interpreted as “Web Beirut,” as well as “We Beirut.” The integration of multiple groups is intended to create a united community capable of resisting ongoing gentrification.

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important sectors of the Lebanese economy.5 The reconstruction project of Beirut's Central District transformed its downtown into a high-end business and tourism hub and subsequently triggered the cycle of reconstruction.6 The rebuilding also increased the price of land, rendering it unaffordable for the lower- and middle-class residents and creating an area exclusively for the wealthy.

Investors and real estate developers gradually destroyed the old buildings and evicted the long-time residents. Many neighborhoods in Beirut had already been gentrified and redeveloped rapidly over the past decade.7 Neighborhoods that previously featured low-rise residential buildings with shops on the ground level are now dominated by garish high-rises.8 Furthermore, the unique demographics and urban fabric of the city

PA R T I C I PA C T I O N

INTRODUCTION In the modern history of Beirut, wars and conflicts play a significant role in processes of redevelopment and displacement.1 The Lebanese Civil War, which ended in 1990, destroyed downtown Beirut, creating a modern city born through trauma and recovery.2 Roughly 40% of the buildings suffered irreversible damage.3 After the war, the SOLIDERE, a Lebanese company in charge of planning and redeveloping Beirut Central District, began demolition, with many new mega-blocks built where the original buildings had stood. The crudeness of renovation after the civil war resulted in the destruction of 80% of the buildings, bringing the second wave of destruction to the neighborhood.4 Thus, real estate boomed and became one of the most

Figure 1. We(B)eirut opening concept collage.

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HOUSING 10,610 buildings with minimal damage (122,890 households); 2,570 buildings with moderate damage (28,980 households); 240 buildings with severe damage (2,310 households), US$ -1,8301 million financial requirements.

BUSINESS 26,560 businesses with a low level of damage; 3,870 businesses with a medium level of damage; 505 businesses with a high level of damage. $865 million financial requirements.

CULTURE

On August 4, 2020, a large

8 historical areas; 480 heritage buildings; 160 additional buildings with special features. $285 million financial requirements.

explosion occurred in the port of Beirut, killing at least 180 people and injuring over 6,000. Over 40,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. The cause of the blast has been attributed to

HEALTHCARE

2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate

17 damaged hospitals of which 4 were severely damaged; 16 damaged primary healthcare centers. $75 million financial requirements.

that was inadequately stored in a port warehouses.

Figure 2. The extent of the Beirut blast in numbers.

On August 4, 2020, a large explosion occurred in the port of Beirut, killing at least 180 people and injuring over 6,000. Over 40,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. The cause of the blast has been attributed to 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that was inadequately stored in a port warehouses.

make these neighborhoods particularly sensitive to the impacts of gentrification.

Reactions to the explosion of the Port of Beirut have sounded the alarm of permanent displacement, and fingers are already pointing to predatory real-estate developments that could accelerate the process”

Gentrification occurred in the Monot and Gemmayzeh neighborhoods. Monot, which was heavily damaged during the war due to its proximity to the demarcation line, began to attract a group of artists and other creatives.9 Within a decade, Monot transformed into one of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods.

This cycle of the artist- and nightlifeled transformation spread to the nearby neighborhood of Gemmayzeh in 2006.10

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Mixed-Use Building F&B: Bar Tartine + SUD Restobar Built Year: N/A

Mixed-Use Building Craft: ABCO Built Year: N/A

1

The blast impacted the historical neighborhoods of Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh, which are known for their architectural heritage. The vital, creative, and multicultural neighborhoods were severely damaged. This project will focus on the atmosphere and the change that occurred in these two neighborhoods to heal the trauma, rebuild community assets and resist the divinable gentrification.

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11 10

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ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE AND CREATIVE INDUSTRY

Residential Building Built Year: 1970 13

The port-facing neighborhoods have a high concentration of historical buildings and working-class dwellers of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Those neighborhoods are considered among Beirut’s most distinct neighborhoods.13

RESIDENTIAL SYSTEM

12 8

However, many social and cultural assets were lost in the blast.14 In considering the aftermath of the explosion and the foreseeable real estate speculation in surrounding neighborhoods,15 it is clear there is an urgent need to strengthen the unity of local communities so they can confront the growing capital eviction and the increasing risk of permanent displacement. This concept encourages the design elements in the following steps.

COMMERCIAL SYSTEM

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On August 4, 2020, an explosion in the Port of Beirut rocked this already vulnerable city. The blast itself devastated neighborhoods, and the aftermath destroyed around 200,000 housing units in the northeastern side of the capital.11 As Lebanese urban scholar Mona Fawaz said, “Reactions to the explosion of the Port of Beirut have sounded the alarm of permanent displacement, and fingers are already pointing to predatory real-estate developments that could accelerate the process.”12

Figure 3. Mapping the key neighborhoods.

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Mixed-Use Building Gift Shop + Graffiti Built Year: 2015

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CREATIVE SYSTEM

HISTORICAL SYSTEM

Mixed-Use Building Airbnb Built Year: 1920

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Mixed-Use Building Art: Galerie Tabitha Built Year: 1920

4 Sursock Palace Built Year: 1860 5

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4

3

1

2

Sursock Museum Built Year: 1912 6

5

6

7

Villa Linda Sursock Built Year: 1875 7

Mixed-Use Building Cynthia Jewelry Built Year: 1935

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Mixed-Use Building China Club + Studio Built Year: N/A

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Mixed-Use Building Shops: N/A Built Year: 1960

Saint Joseph Church Built Year: 1932 9

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Figure(s) 4. Snippets of the neighbourhoods impacted by the Beirut Blast.

Source: Google Street View.

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THE LOOP

TOBAJI GARDEN

THE WEB

The land measures 4,695 square meters and has been a garden for over 100 years. In 2014, the garden served as a meeting ground for many activists opposed to a highway project. After the explosion, because it overlooks many of the neighboring houses, rescue workers and volunteers carved out a path through the orchard to access buildings and clear the rubble. It also became a place of rest.

ARMENIA STREET Graffiti can be created from a variety of mediums, including spray paint, charcoal, and stickers. Graffiti forms some of the neighborhood’s visual identity.

DR. CHUCRI HOSRI Dr. Chucri Hosri Street connects Pasteur Street and Gouraud Street.

The Building Cyrano has a view of the silo near the explosion’s crater.

TEQUILA (RMEIL 733) The building was built in 1920.

The first floor is the Tequila Bar, and the upper level is residential.

The building was destroyed in the explosion.

STAIRS For locals, the stairs are particularly symbolic. The old stairs of Beirut have seen the city transform around them. They hold memories of the city’s past.

COLLÈGE DES TROIS DOCTEURS

Villa Linda Sursock is located on Saint Nicolas Street and is one of Beirut’s historic landmarks.

The ETD was founded in 1835; it has its origins in a building next to St. George's Cathedral in downtown Beirut. At that time, it was nicknamed "the great school" because it was then the largest educational institution in the capital.

GEMMAYZEH

SURSOCK PALACE

Holy Heart Church, Santa Church, and Sacre Coeur Church and College are all located in Gemmayzeh. Built in the nineteenth century, these churches have quietly witnessed the prayers of all the believers and visitors for ages.

The Beirut explosion devastated Sursock Palace. Built in 1860 by Moussa Sursock, it was recognized at the time as one of Beirut’s grandest townhouses.

SAINT NICOLAS

ST. NICHOLAS STAIRS The St. Nicholas stairs are the longest stairway in the Middle East with 125 steps and 500 meters in length. Since 1973, the stairs have been used as an open-air art exhibition site twice a year.

demolished buildings evicted buildings heritage buildings damaged buildings restaurants/ pubs design alternative art form craft

Figure 5. Mapping key assets of the Web and the Loop.

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WEB GENERATION

the project Web Beirut can also be interpreted as We Beirut, which represents a unified Beirut of its people.

With the intention to bond local communities and memorialize the damaged community assets, the alternative approach to Bierut's urban design introduces an inclusive space by connecting existing community assets as a cohesive loop. The loop connects damaged key heritage sites and structures, which are distributed across Beirut’s urban environment.

The web system strengthens geographical, spatial, and social solidarity.

SYSTEMS IN WEB This extensive web creates a spatial dialogue between commercial, residential, historical, and creative systems. The integration of each group, such as residents, artists, and business owners, will create a united and powerful community to resist gentrification. Beirut has already witnessed multiple reconstruction projects that transformed a highly exclusive space and removed the city’s previous scars.16 However, injuries and illnesses are a mark of time and history.17 Following this argument, our design interventions will preserve those urban scars to ensure the preservation of the urban history of Beirut.

The organic form of the neighborhood of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael is characterized by its topographical height difference and the intricate network of community pathways, including walkable streets, covered alleyways, hidden gardens, and staircases. Propelled by the penetrable features of the neighborhood, the loop naturally sprawls into an extensive web. The web creates unity and inclusion in each neighborhood it touches, as well as extending to Beirut’s navigable footprint. Thus,

before the blast

after the blast

implementing healing strategies

KEY immediate reaction

damaged living unit creative industry business

Figure 6. Diagrammatic sectional study highlighting the design approach incorporating the healing strategies.

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DESIGN CONCEPT The strong will of the community is essential to advancing these healing strategies. After the explosion, banners reading "we are staying," written in both English and Arabic, were ubiquitous in Beirut, elaborating the life which continued to inhabit the city’s ruins.18 Their willingness to survive became the motivation to initiate healing.19 This project envisions a process of reconfiguration of urban functions in response to historic vulnerabilities and injustices.

KEY web key moment identification healing green healing

Figure 7. Diagram identifying locations for the healing interventions.

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contemplation healing

healing strategy shows great respect to the habitants’ lifestyles in the rebuilding of Beirut’s hurt urban identity. Thus, we named this strategy “Identification Healing.”

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HEALING STRATEGIES IDENTIFICATION HEALING A few catastrophic seconds erased aspects of the city’s rich identity. It was defined by a composition of buildings and structures left from the late Ottoman period and French colonial rule.20 When Lebanon gained its independence from France in 1943, these heritage buildings received modern architectural adaptations.21 Years of renovations created a unique architectural scene: bustling business activities on the ground and quiet residential life on the upper levels. The collective memory of Beirut has been engraved in the buildings.

Many locals chose to repair their ground floor first so they could reopen their businesses and generate income. The damaged upper levels would require longer-term reconstruction.

Our concept follows the local will to rebuild, beginning with the street-level. To memorialize the neighborhood’s trauma, the project keeps the broken façade as it is; the scar will become a mark of time and history. The upper level will be set back so that, in this manner, the corridor can become the extension of the narrow street. The second floor can be used for creative spaces like art galleries or design studios. The upper level is designed for residential use.

To preserve shared memories and identities, and to benefit future life in the place, our

Figure 8. Concept illustration.

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BUILDING AFTER THE EXPLOSION

DESIGN STRATEGY

Zone A

Zone B

Zone B

Zone C

SECTIONAL STUDY

street bench

connected corridor

store

balcony

photography studio

dining area

corridor

residence

restaurant

street

Figure 9 & 10. Identification healing design strategy and sectional study

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GREEN HEALING

The green healing would also create an open space network that the city lacks, and urban gardens would increase access to hyper locally-grown food.”

While the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a minimum of 9 square meters of green space per capita,22 Beirut has less than 1 square meter per capita. With this in mind, we propose redesigning several collapsed structures into green spaces, like gardens, pocket parks, or community commons.

These added open spaces would stimulate communication and community participation between residents. The green healing would also create an open space network that the city lacks, and urban gardens would increase access to hyper locally-grown food.

Figure 11. Concept illustration.

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BUILDING AFTER THE EXPLOSION

DESIGN STRATEGY

Zone D

Zone E

Zone F

AXONOMETRIC STUDY

urban agriculture roof garden stair

fake facade

connected street local market

store

ramp way

college

roof garden

second street

Figure 12 & 13. Green healing design strategy and an axonometric study

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CONTEMPLATION HEALING

This center is an active testimony of the traumatic events, and it triggers empathy for Beirut’s experiences.”

Beyond immediate responses to destruction and its resulting trauma, healing-centered recovery also calls for a space for further contemplation. Next to Sursock Palace, a monumental structure made of fragmented stones and other debris from damaged historic sites offers both a tangible and intangible sense of belonging. This center is an active testimony of the traumatic events and triggers empathy for Beirut’s experiences.

BUILDING AFTER THE EXPLOSION

DESIGN STRATEGY

Figure 14 & 15. Contemplation healing design strategy and concept illustration.

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COMBINED DESIGN STRATEGY

GREEN SPACE SYSTEM

INTERVENTION SYSTEM

WEB SYSTEM

Figure 16. Combined design strategy diagram illustrating the systems at play.

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Figure 17. We(B)eirut in 2025 diagram highlighting the interventions.

Figure 18. Opening concept collage reimagined with the “We are staying” banner.

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CONCLUSION The project envisions a collective, therapeutic, and inclusive urban recovery that incorporates the memories, identities, and promises of life after trauma, through a people-centered, place-specific, and heritage-led framework.”

In 2020, the city of Beirut fell instantly into distress following the explosion of its main port. The blast left thousands of people homeless and displaced, and many neighborhoods in the northeastern side were severely damaged.23 After the blast, real estate brokers flocked to the neighborhoods to purchase damaged buildings to demolish for expensive future towers.24 Under such circumstances, We(b)eirut sheds light on the urban recovery needs of Beirut and collective resistance to the ongoing threat of gentrification. The web system creates a unified power to protect the urban and social fabric of the Lebanese capital. The project envisions a collective, therapeutic, and inclusive urban recovery that incorporates the memories, identities, and promises of life after trauma, through a people-centered, placespecific, and heritage-led framework.

ABOUT HUITING QIAN Huiting Qian received her Master of Urban Design from University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Southeast University. Her research interests center on bringing multidisciplinary problem-solving methods to progressive gentrification.

ABOUT YUE XU Yue Xu is a graduate student in the Urban Design program at the University of Michigan. She received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from the South China University of Technology. Using active and empathetic approaches through design mediums is a key research interest for Yue. You can chat with Yue on Instagram at @noraxuyue.

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END NOTES https://www.archdaily.com/946829/ beirut-between-a-threatened-architecturalheritage-and-a-traumatized-collectivememory?ad_medium=widget&ad_ name=related-article&ad_content=961336.

1. Krijnen, Marieke and De Beukelaer, Christiaan.

"Capital, state and conflict: The various drivers of diverse gentrification processes in Beirut, Lebanon." Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement (2015): 285-309.

12. M. Fawaz, and S. Mneimneh, 2022.

“Beirut’s Blasted Neighborhoods: Between Recovery Efforts and Real Estate Interests.” [online] The Public Source. Available at: <https://thepublicsource.org/beiruts-blastedneighborhoods-between-recovery-effortsand-real-estate-interests> [Accessed 11 March 2022].

2. Schmid, Heiko. "Privatized urbanity or a politicized society? Reconstruction in Beirut after the civil war." European Planning Studies 14, no. 3 (2006): 365-381.

3. "Beyrouth: Destructions, Reconstructions Et Spéculations." 2020. Le Monde. Fr. https://www. lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/09/08/ beyrouth-destructions-reconstructions-etspeculations_6051412_3210.html.

13. Zgheib, Marie-Line. 2020. "Beirut Recovered A Series Of Articles On Post-Disaster Recovery". Dar.Com. https://dar.com/Content/ Publications/PUD/Beirut-Recovery-Article%20 2-26112020HR.pdf.

4. "Beyrouth: Destructions, Reconstructions Et Spéculations." 2020. Le Monde. Fr. 5. Marieke Krijnen, "Capital, state and conflict: The various drivers of diverse gentrification processes in Beirut, Lebanon." 285-309.

14. Zgheib, Marie-Line. 2020. "Beirut Recovered A Series Of Articles On Post-Disaster Recovery". Dar.Com. https://dar.com/Content/ Publications/PUD/Beirut-Recovery-Article%20 2-26112020HR.pdf.

6. Beirut Recovered a Series of Articles on PostDisaster Recovery. 2020. Ebook. https://dar.com/ Content/Publications/PUD/Beirut-RecoveryArticle%202-26112020HR.pdf.

15. Pietrostefani, Elisabetta, Joana Dabaj, Yara Sleiman, Mayssa Jallad, Sara Maassarani, and Efrosini Charalambous. "Assessing Vulnerabilities for Urban Recovery Solutions in Beirut Post-Explosion: The Case of Mar Mikhael Neighborhood." University College London and Catalytic Action(2022).

7. Chehayeb, K., 2022. “‘in Limbo’: Beirut Blast Victims Still Struggling To Return Home.” [online] Aljazeera.com. Available at: <https://www. aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/2/one-year-onbeirut-blast-victims-still-struggling-to-returnhome> [Accessed 11 March 2022].

16. Zgheib, Marie-Line. 2020. "Beirut Recovered A Series Of Articles On Post-Disaster Recovery". Dar.Com. https://dar.com/Content/ Publications/PUD/Beirut-Recovery-Article%20 2-26112020HR.pdf.

8. Krijnen, "Capital, state and conflict: The various drivers of diverse gentrification processes in Beirut, Lebanon." 285-309.

9. Lisa Gerbal, 2016. Linking Economic Change with Social Justice in Mar Mikhael. https:// www.aub.edu.lb/ifi/Documents/publications/ research_reports/2015-2016/20160627_linking_ MarMikhael.pdf.

17. Mousse Magazine and Publishing. 2022.

“Injury and Repair: Kader Attia.” [online] Available at: <https://www.moussemagazine. it/magazine/injury-and-repair-kaderattia-2018/> [Accessed 11 March 2022].

10. Gerbal, Linking Economic Change with Social Justice in Mar Mikhael.

18. Harrouk, Christele. 2020. "Beirut: Between A Threatened Architectural Heritage And A Traumatized Collective Memory". Archdaily.

Available at: <https://www.archdaily.

11. Christele Harrouk, "Beirut: Between a Threatened Architectural Heritage and a Traumatized Collective Memory." 2022. Archdaily.

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com/946829/beirut-between-a-threatenedarchitectural-heritage-and-a-traumatizedcollective-memory.> [Accessed 11 March 2022].

19. Harrouk, "Beirut: Between A Threatened Architectural Heritage And A Traumatized Collective Memory".

20. Harrouk, "Beirut: Between A Threatened Architectural Heritage And A Traumatized Collective Memory" 21. Marina Apaydin, Rami Baassiri, and Karim Ahmad. Balancing Heritage and Tourism in Tripoli (Lebanon). SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals, 2016.

22. Maryam Nazzal, and Samer Chinder.

"Lebanon Cities’ Public Spaces." The Journal of Public Space 3, no. 1 (2018).

23. K. Chehayeb, 2022. ‘In limbo’: Beirut blast victims still struggling to return home. [online] Aljazeera.com. Available at: <https://www. aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/2/one-year-onbeirut-blast-victims-still-struggling-to-returnhome> [Accessed 11 March 2022].

24. Chehayeb, ‘In limbo’: Beirut blast victims still struggling to return home.

Umbrella Alley, Baytown, Texas Photographer: Lauren Ashley Week 104

Baroda, Michigan Photographer: Vera Tikhonova

In the Blood The Impact of Lead Poisoning on Detroit’s Children

ABSTRACT

MACK SCHROEDER Master of Social Work and Master of Public Policy

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Toxic exposure from lead continues to adversely affect children in Detroit. Although lead-based paint has been banned since 1978, a disproportionate number of Black families in the city live in homes built before the ban had been enacted. Knowing the City of Detroit could do more to minimize the risk of elevated blood lead levels among children of color, advocates have been pushing for stricter housing regulations and greater lead remediation efforts in recent years. This paper outlines the causes and consequences of lead poisoning in children. I then explore possible solutions and provide recommendations to address this problem.

Regulatory frameworks, while somewhat effective, often fall short as landlords and property owners lack the resources and support to keep up their properties. Instead, the City should fund largescale remediation efforts in tandem with lead risk awareness programs. This would not only improve health outcomes for children, but also reduce crime rates, enhance educational attainment, and save billions of dollars for the City of Detroit.

INTRODUCTION Lead-based paint remains a main source of lead exposure among children in Detroit, and until paint containing lead was banned in 1978, homes and rental properties could be renovated using this toxic element.1 In 2010, the City of Detroit amended its property maintenance code to require rental owners to have a lead inspection before renting units out to tenants.2 If lead is found within the dwelling, the chemical must be controlled through abatement or other measures before being occupied.3 However, this additional provision has not been enough to minimize the disproportionate health risks of lead exposure on Detroit’s Black and low–socioeconomic status communities. By implementing widespread remediation alongside educational awareness programs, the City of Detroit could greatly reduce elevated blood lead levels among children, particularly those of color.

HEALTH AND SOCIAL IMPACTS OF LEAD-BASED PAINT Children are the most susceptible to lead poisoning because of their smaller physiological composition. Even the slightest amounts of lead exposure can cause permanent neurological damage in children, and there is no safe level of lead exposure.4 The chemical also produces long-lasting cardiovascular and kidney defects when inhaled or ingested.5 This can greatly impact whether a child succeeds in school, and children with increased blood lead levels (BLLs) were over 50 percent more likely to underperform academically than students who showed negligible levels of lead in their bloodstream.6 Given that lead-based poisoning can lead to permanent neurological damage for children, its impact on academic performance has the ability to last throughout an individual’s lifetime.7 Increased childhood BBLs have also been linked to comorbid health outcomes through adulthood.8

Children with increased blood lead levels were over 50 percent more likely to underperform academically than students who showed negligible levels of lead in their bloodstream.”

Elevated BLLs also place significant financial burdens on children and families.9 Treating even low levels of lead exposure requires parents to pay for routine monitoring and testing for three to nine months.10 And to treat high levels of exposure, children must undergo an often painful chelation process, which can cost over $3,000.11 This treatment involves injecting a synthetic solution known as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) into the bloodstream to remove heavy metals from the body.12 EDTA has been known to damage arteries and kidneys, remove important minerals from the body, and cause irregular heartbeats. Furthermore, when a child experiences developmental delays from elevated BBLs, parents may need to cover fees for special education and additional tutoring.13 Children with developmental disabilities are also less likely to graduate high school and find stable employment in later stages of life, and since lead exposure correlates with higher rates of juvenile delinquency and crime from “social and emotional dysfunction,” the financial and social consequences of incarceration can create compounding challenges for children and families.14 Studies found that young adults who had experienced elevated BBLs in childhood were significantly more likely to be arrested for a violent crime than those who had never been exposed to the chemical.15 Further research could be done to consider how systemic issues like racial bias in policing and concentrated poverty may correlate with higher arrest rates in areas where lead is most present, but given the wide range of evidence highlighting the link

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between exposure and antisocial behavior, it is clear that reducing lead poisoning among children would produce profound social, economic, and physical benefits.

HOUSING IN DETROIT In 2020, 90 percent of Detroit’s children lived in housing built before 1979.16 57 percent of children lived in housing built before 1950, and 87 percent lived in homes built before 1960, periods when paint contained higher concentrations of lead.17 In 2017, Detroit had one of the highest rates of lead pollution in the country. Given that Detroit also had the highest rate of childhood poverty in the nation in 2019 at 60 percent, these conditions have contributed to widespread enhanced blood lead levels (BLLs) among the city’s children.18 In 2016, 8.8 percent of Detroit children who were screened by the Michigan Department of Health’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (CLPPP) showed high levels of lead in their blood.19 In one Detroit ZIP code, over 22 percent of children tested had toxic BBLs.20 Given that 18 percent of housing structures with children were classified as inadequate, having major functional or structural issues, compared to 11 percent of households without children as of October 2021, these findings are unfortunately not surprising.21

In one Detroit ZIP code, over 22 percent of children tested had toxic blood lead levels.”

In 2016, only 3 percent of Detroit’s rental units had been registered with the city due to a widespread lack of enforcement and relaxed inspection laws.22 This major oversight has led to a widespread lack of enforcement of lead-based paint inspections, especially in neighborhoods where properties containing the chemical are most prevalent.23 In October 2021, 16 percent of Detroit renters lived in

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In 2016, only 3 percent of Detroit’s rental units had been registered with the city due to a widespread lack of enforcement and relaxed inspection laws.” housing classified as inadequate, compared to 12 percent of homeowners.24 Without pressure to comply with these regulations, property owners have little incentive to maintain properties on their own. Lead inspections and abatements can be costly, and older housing is often more expensive to maintain than newer properties.25 When landlords lack the necessary funds for maintenance, they may perform no remediation at all or allow their properties to foreclose. Moreover, because the demand for housing in Detroit is so high, there is often little incentive for upkeep because individuals may be willing to rent without considering the condition of the property.26 And since 78.1 percent of white residents owned a home in the Detroit metro area compared to just 40 percent of Black residents in 2019, Detroiters of color are more likely to rent housing that has not undergone inspection.27 Both low-income Black children and lowincome white children in the Detroit metropolitan area are at increased risk of lead exposure when compared to Black and white children from high-SES neighborhoods.28 However, most children in low SES neighborhoods who exhibited enhanced BBLs were from predominantly Black communities with housing built before 1978 – the year lead-based paint was banned.29 As of October 2021, 14 percent of Black Detroiters live in inadequate housing compared to 8 percent of white residents.30 Within this demographic, only 44 percent of Black residents have undergone major home repairs, compared to 69 percent of white residents.31

A HISTORY OF INEQUITY Racial inequities in Detroit’s housing system can be traced back centuries. For the purposes of this piece, I will not thoroughly cover the city’s expansive and complex history of segregation and discrimination. However, I will provide a basic overview of how Detroit’s housing history eventually precipitated its lead crisis.

After World War II, the federal government provided subsidized mortgages to white veterans under the G.I. Bill but largely excluded Black veterans from these benefits.32 White Detroiters often aggressively kept Black people from moving into all-white neighborhoods by denying them the right to purchase mortgages and employing other discriminatory practices, which further increased racial tensions throughout the 1940s and 50s.33 As the auto industry moved to the surrounding suburbs of Detroit, so did the white population, shrinking the city’s tax base.34 This loss of revenue led to a gradual decline in funding for public schools, infrastructure, transportation, and other social services, spurring increasing levels of crime in predominantly Black neighborhoods throughout the 1960s.35 Issues of homelessness, poor educational infrastructure, segregation, and racist policing eventually precipitated the infamous 1967 Detroit Riot.36 The five-day-long confrontation began after the police raided a blind pig, an unlicensed bar in a predominantly Black neighborhood.37 As attendees at the bar were arrested and forced into police vehicles, residents protested by looting and setting fire throughout the neighborhood.38 Eventually, Michigan State Police and the National Guard arrived to intervene in this ongoing clash between the city’s largely Black community and the Detroit Police Department.39 The number of white individuals moving to the suburbs doubled to over 40,000 in 1967 and then again to 80,000 in 1968.40 Between 1967 and 1973, partially in response to the 1967 Riot, white and Black residents fought for political control of the city.41 And after Detroit elected its first Black mayor in 1973, the city experienced one of

the largest waves of white flight in its history, which shrank its urban tax base to disastrous levels.42 Thirty-five years later, the 2008 recession exacerbated the consequences of Detroit’s longstanding housing crisis. Between 2005 and 2013, the City carried out over 70,000 mortgage foreclosures, which accounted for 30 percent of the city’s residential properties.43 Thousands of the low- and middle-income homeowners hit hardest by these foreclosures were dispossessed of their homes and left with no choice but to rent from property investors.44 By 2010, the number of renters in the city had surpassed the number of homeowners.45 Many landlords would rent out units with numerous health and safety hazards to low-income families.46 These dangerous living conditions, in addition to rising rates of unemployment and poverty from the recession, further deepened Detroit’s racial and socioeconomic inequities.47

CURRENT EFFORTS Over the past decade, the City of Detroit has worked to mitigate the impacts of leadbased paint on children through regulatory and remediation efforts. However, given the limited scope of these initiatives, the City could do more to prevent the lead poisoning.

REGULATORY ACTION Pushing for stricter regulations on local, state, and federal levels may reduce the risk of lead poisoning for children in Detroit, but not as effectively as would direct remediation programs. The sharp decline in the use of lead-based paint after 1978 demonstrates the effectiveness of a regulatory policy in this area, even if the law did not require remediation for older houses.48 In 2017, the City of Detroit amended its 2010 Property Maintenance Code to include more stringent requirements for landlords to inspect every home. Landlords who fail to do so do not receive certificates of compliance.49 This means that landlords

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who do not properly inspect and remediate lead-based paint within their properties may be barred from collecting rent.50 Although data on the number of homes remediated after 2017 is not available, the passage of this amendment brought greater awareness to the issue of lead poisoning and inspired future abatement programs.51 However, critics also point to the slow and reactive nature of these regulatory policies for home inspections.52 Passing legislation, even on a local level, often requires a great deal of political maneuvering and bipartisan support. In 2017, Republican lawmaker Derek Merrin of Ohio went so far as to call the city of Toledo’s lead ordinance “unconstitutional” for targeting a “small minority of property owners.”53 The ordinance mandated that landlords who fail to inspect their properties and follow up with cleaning and repairs could be subject to up to $10,000 in fines.54 The environmental director of the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department said the fines collected by landlords would go towards a grant fund that would help pay for remediation and other lead-based safety services.55 However, Merrin and other critics claimed that imposing fines upon landlords would lead them to raise tenants’ rents and would decrease property values, despite evidence that lead abatement actually increases them.56 Even after a law is enacted, it can be difficult to hold property owners accountable. If landlords in Detroit know that the City is not enforcing the Property Maintenance Code in their area, they may get away with neglecting their properties. And despite evidence that the social benefits of remediation often far outweigh its costs, landlords may not feel connected to its positive impact.57

REMEDIATION PROGRAMS In 2016, the City of Detroit convened a coalition of departments and community partners to form Lead Safe Detroit.58 The coalition provides a variety of services to Detroit residents including in-home lead testing, lead abatement, rental inspections,

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and landlord outreach.59 These programs target areas in Detroit where children have the highest average BLLs and work to identify lead-based paint in homes before a child is poisoned.60 In 2020, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development provided the City of Detroit with $9 million to fund Lead Safe Detroit.61 Homes that were built before 1978 with children under six years old living in them are eligible for lead abatement through this funding.62 Having received nearly $850 million in federal relief through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in June 2021, the City of Detroit has the capacity to take its remediation efforts to the next level.63 As of March 2022, the City planned to allocate $30 million dollars to home repairs for seniors, low-income communities, and individuals with disabilities.64 However, it remains unclear how much of this funding will go towards lead abatement, and many residents have expressed that this is not enough funding to effectively repair and remediate housing throughout the city.65

The City of Detroit has the capacity to take its remediation efforts to the next level..”

The City plans to spend an additional $95 million of ARPA funding on “commercial and industrial blight remediation” and demolition.66 But studies show that demolitions can actually increase lead exposure among children.67 Between 2014 and 2019, the City of Detroit demolished 19,000 of vacant structures, including many containing lead-based paint.68 Although research showed no connection between demolitions and increased BBLs among children in Detroit during this time, there remains a high risk of potential exposure to lead dust if careful measures are not taken to protect children in the surrounding community.69 Additionally, since a high

percentage of the city’s residents live in homes containing lead-based paint that are not being treated, this funding could be more effectively spent on programs that target these occupied households.70 Lead poisoning remains a pressing issue among Detroit housing justice advocates today. During a Detroit City Council meeting in September 2021, several residents joined for public comment.71 One special education instructor spoke out about how rates of autism are higher in Detroit than any other city in Michigan, citing the developmental consequences of exposure, and another resident expressed that two of her children had been directly impacted by lead poisoning.72 Advocates at the meeting, including a former employee from the Detroit Health Department, urged the City of Detroit to conduct risk assessments every two years, emphasizing that interim controls like repainting the walls are not enough to mitigate the effects of the chemical.73

SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Because children in low-income areas are the most susceptible to lead-based poisoning, these recommendations are targeted towards individuals under the age of 18. Furthermore, reducing the impact of the chemical would benefit adults who would typically be exposed.

INCREASE LEAD REMEDIATION SERVICES ALONGSIDE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING Given studies of successful cases and evidence-based research, the City of Detroit should implement lead remediation along with educational programming.74 Policies that set standards for property owners to conduct home inspections and pay for lead abatement on their own may begin to reduce the risk of elevated BLLs among children.75 However, without proper government support through funding and education, as well as sufficient accountability measures, property maintenance compliance rates are likely to

remain low.76 Studies on a national scale show that investing in remediation can increase property values by reducing the potential risk of exposure and need for lead abatement in the future.77 Each dollar put into remediation efforts can return over two and half dollars in benefits to property owners, city governments, and residents.78 Proper lead remediation in low-income communities can also reduce the amount of funding needed for crime prevention, healthcare, special education, and social services, since elevated BLLs have been linked to higher rates of violence, neurological problems, and many other issues.79 Just $1.2 billion to $11 billion invested in remediation strategies can save a total of $192 billion to $270 billion in medical treatment, taxes, crime prevention, and more.80 And since lead abatement has also been shown to increase property values, the City of Detroit could spur economic development and create further employment opportunities across the City.81

Just $1.2 billion to $11 billion invested in remediation strategies can save a total of $192 billion to $270 billion in medical treatment, taxes, crime prevention, and more..”

The City of Detroit should also implement educational programs in tandem with lead remediation programs. The case of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania demonstrates the importance of educating the public on lead hazards when offering abatement services.82 In 2016, the county received $1.33 million in federal funding for Lead Hazard Control.83 But the county government received few requests from residents to have their homes abated; as a result, it was slow to act on remediation projects, and lead levels remained high among

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the population.84 Researchers suggest that this is because many community members lacked a comprehensive understanding of lead poisoning and did not even think to reach out to have their homes remediated.85 If local governments launch educational campaigns through social media, community groups, and other networks, more residents may feel inclined to experience the benefits of a leadfree home and leverage this funding.86

CONCLUSION Until the City of Detroit allocates significantly greater funding towards remediation and educational awareness programming, a disproportionate number of Black children will continue to bear undue social, economic and health burdens from lead poisoning. Enforcing stricter rental ordinances on landlords may begin to decrease cases of exposure, but with so many unregistered properties, poor accountability measures, and property owners who cannot afford remediation, regulations alone are not enough to effectively prevent lead poisoning. Having received close to $1 billion in federal funding, the City of Detroit can and should abate nearly every household with lead-based paint, an action that would produce transformational changes for Detroiters everywhere.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mack Schroeder is a dual Master of Public Policy and Master of Social Work student at the University of Michigan focusing on policies that expand affordable housing and increase social mobility for historically underserved communities. With experience in improv comedy, he is also interested in exploring the intersection of performance art and social justice as a catalyst for change.

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ENDNOTES 1. City of Detroit, Buildings, Safety, Engineering, and Environmental Department.

“New Lead Ordinance Requirements for Rental Property Owners.” City of Detroit.

Accessed March 10, 2022. https://detroitmi. gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2020-07/ Lead_Ordinance_Requirements-for_Rental_ Property_Owners%207_29_20.pdf.

2. City of Detroit, Buildings, Safety, Engineering, and Environmental Department.

“New Lead Ordinance Requirements for Rental Property Owners.”

3. City of Detroit, Buildings, Safety, Engineering, and Environmental Department.

“New Lead Ordinance Requirements for Rental Property Owners.”

4. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ ehp.0800408.

5. Health Effects of Lead Exposure.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 9, https://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/ ty3205spec 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ lead/prevention/health-effects.htm.

6. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.” Health & Place.

England: Elsevier Ltd, n.d. doi:10.1016/j. healthplace.2020.102390.

7. Heather A. Moody and Sue C. Grady. 2021.

“Lead Emissions and Population Vulnerability in the Detroit Metropolitan Area, 2006– 2013: Impact of Pollution, Housing Age and Neighborhood Racial Isolation and Poverty on Blood Lead in Children” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 5: 2747. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph18052747 8. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning:

Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ehp.0800408.

9. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ehp.0800408.

10. Recommended Actions Based on Blood Lead Levels.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 15, 2022. https://www.cdc. gov/nceh/lead/advisory/acclpp/actions-blls.htm.

11. “Recommended Actions Based on Blood Lead Levels.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

12. “Chelation Therapy.” Chelation Therapy | Michigan Medicine. Accessed March 15, 2022. https://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/ ty3205spec.

13. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ehp.0800408.

14. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

15. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

16. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.” Health & Place.

England: Elsevier Ltd, n.d. doi:10.1016/j. healthplace.2020.102390.

17. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.”

18. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s

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Single-Family Rental Market.”

19. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.”

20.Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.”

21. DMACS. “Using American Rescue Plan Funds To Meet Detroiters’ Home Repair Needs.” Dmacs. Accessed March 17, 2022. https://detroitsurvey.umich.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2021/10/DMACS-ARPA-funds-tomeet-home-repair-needs-reduced.pdf.

22. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.” Health & Place.

England: Elsevier Ltd, n.d. doi:10.1016/j. healthplace.2020.102390.

23. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.” Health & Place.

England: Elsevier Ltd, n.d. doi:10.1016/j. healthplace.2020.102390.

24. Dmacs. “Using American Rescue Plan Funds To Meet Detroiters’ Home Repair Needs.” Dmacs. Accessed March 17, 2022. https://detroitsurvey.umich.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2021/10/DMACS-ARPA-funds-tomeet-home-repair-needs-reduced.pdf.

25. Dmacs. “Using American Rescue Plan Funds To Meet Detroiters’ Home Repair Needs.”

26. JC Reindl. “Metro Detroit Housing Market Cools Only Slightly with Arrival of Fall.” Detroit Free Press. Detroit Free Press, November 18, 2021. https://www.freep.com/story/money/ business/2021/11/18/metro-detroit-housingmarket/8664725002/.

27. Jung Hyun Choi et al. “Detroit Market: Keys Unlock Dreams Initiative.” Urban Institute, November 17, 2021. https://www.urban.org/ research/publication/detroit-market-keysunlock-dreams-initiative.

28. Jung Hyun Choi et al. “Detroit Market: Keys Unlock Dreams Initiative.”

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29. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.” Health & Place.

England: Elsevier Ltd, n.d. doi:10.1016/j. healthplace.2020.102390.

30. Dmacs. “Using American Rescue Plan Funds To Meet Detroiters’ Home Repair Needs.” DmacS. Accessed March 17, 2022. https://detroitsurvey.umich.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2021/10/DMACS-ARPA-funds-to-meethome-repair-needs-reduced.pdf.

31. Dmacs. “Using American Rescue Plan Funds To Meet Detroiters’ Home Repair Needs.”

32. Ross Eisenbrey. “Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism.” Economic Policy Institute. Accessed March 11, 2022. https:// www.epi.org/blog/detroits-bankruptcy-reflectshistory-racism/#:~:text=This%20is%20black%20 history%20month,bankruptcy%20he%20 steered%20it%20into.

33. Heather Ann Thompson. “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City: Detroit, 1945-1980.” Journal of Urban History.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, n.d. doi:10.1177/009614429902500201.

34. Ross Eisenbrey. “Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism.” Economic Policy Institute. Accessed March 11, 2022. https:// www.epi.org/blog/detroits-bankruptcy-reflectshistory-racism/#:~:text=This%20is%20black%20 history%20month,bankruptcy%20he%20 steered%20it%20into.

35. Ross Eisenbrey. “Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism.”

36. “Encyclopedia of Detroit.” Detroit Historical Society - Where the past is present. Accessed March 15, 2022. https://detroithistorical.org/ learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/uprising-1967.

37. “Encyclopedia of Detroit.” Detroit Historical Society - Where the past is present 38. “Encyclopedia of Detroit.” Detroit Historical Society - Where the past is present 39. “Encyclopedia of Detroit.” Detroit Historical Society - Where the past is present

58. “Making Detroit Lead Safe.” City of Detroit.

Accessed March 25, 2022. https://detroitmi. gov/departments/water-and-seweragedepartment/dwsd-projects/making-detroitlead-safe.

59. “Making Detroit Lead Safe.” City of Detroit.

60. “Making Detroit Lead Safe.” City of Detroit.

61. Lester Graham,. “Detroit Gets $9 Million from HUD for Lead Abatement in Homes.”

Michigan Radio, September 21, 2020. https:// www.michiganradio.org/environmentscience/2020-09-21/detroit-gets-9-millionfrom-hud-for-lead-abatement-in-homes.

62. Lester Graham,. “Detroit Gets $9 Million from HUD for Lead Abatement in Homes.”

63. “City Has Programmed over $500m of Its $827M ARPA Funds; Launches New Website Detailing Status of Each Initiative.” City of Detroit, March 16, 1970. https://detroitmi. gov/news/city-has-programmed-over-500mits-827m-arpa-funds-launches-new-websitedetailing-status-each#:~:text=The%20City%20 of%20Detroit%20has,federal%20America%20 Rescue%20Plan%20Act. 64. “Intergenerational Poverty 1.” City of Detroit. Accessed March 16, 2022. https:// detroitmi.gov/departments/office-chieffinancial-officer/how-detroits-arpa-funds-arebeing-spent/intergenerational-poverty-1.

65. Nushrat Rahman and Dana Afana.

“Detroit Is Getting $426 Million. Here’s Where Detroiters Say That Money Should Go.” Detroit Free Press. Detroit Free Press, June 28, 2021. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/ michigan/detroit/2021/06/28/detroit-homerepairs-neighborhood-investment-federalmoney/5303492001/.

66. “Blight Remediation.” City of Detroit.

Accessed March 16, 2022. https://detroitmi. gov/departments/office-chief-financial-officer/ how-detroits-arpa-funds-are-being-spent/ blight-remediation.

67. Carla Bezold et al. 2020. “Demolition Activity and Elevated Blood Lead Levels among Children in Detroit, Michigan, 2014–2018”

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 17: 6018. https://doi. org/10.3390/ijerph17176018 68. Carla Bezold et al. 2020. “Demolition Activity and Elevated Blood Lead Levels among Children in Detroit, Michigan, 2014–2018” 69. Carla Bezold et al. 2020. “Demolition Activity and Elevated Blood Lead Levels among Children in Detroit, Michigan, 2014–2018” 70. Carla Bezold et al. 2020. “Demolition Activity and Elevated Blood Lead Levels among Children in Detroit, Michigan, 2014–2018” 71. Detroit City Council Formal Session Minutes, September 28, 2021, City Council Meeting Archives, Detroit, Michigan http:// video.detroitmi.gov/CablecastPublicSite/ gallery/3?channel=1&page=3 72. Detroit City Council Formal Session Minutes, September 28, 2021, City Council Meeting Archives.

73. Detroit City Council Formal Session Minutes, September 28, 2021, City Council Meeting Archives.

74. Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel.

“The Value of a Healthy Home: Lead Paint Remediation and Housing Values.” Journal of Public Economics. Elsevier B.V, n.d. doi:10.1016/j. jpubeco.2017.07.006.

75. Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel.

“The Value of a Healthy Home: Lead Paint Remediation and Housing Values.”

76. Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel.

“The Value of a Healthy Home: Lead Paint Remediation and Housing Values.”

77. Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel.

“The Value of a Healthy Home: Lead Paint Remediation and Housing Values.”

78. Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel.

“The Value of a Healthy Home: Lead Paint Remediation and Housing Values.”

79. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United

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40. Heather Ann Thompson. “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City: Detroit, 1945-1980.” Journal of Urban History.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, n.d. doi:10.1177/009614429902500201.

Michigan Chronicle, May, 2017, https://proxy. lib.umich.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest. com/newspapers/detroit-program-requirelandlords-bring-rental/docview/1911197337/se2?accountid=14667 (accessed March 17, 2022).

41. Heather Ann Thompson. “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City: Detroit, 1945-1980.” Journal of Urban History.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, n.d. doi:10.1177/009614429902500201.

51. AuJenee Hirsch. “Detroit Health Department Launches New Lead Poisoning Prevention Pilot Program.” Michigan Chronicle, Mar, 2018, https://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=https:// www-proquest-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/ newspapers/detroit-health-departmentlaunches-new-lead/docview/2025723418/se2?accountid=14667 (accessed March 17, 2022).

42. Heather Ann Thompson. “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City: Detroit, 1945-1980.”

43. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.” Health & Place.

England: Elsevier Ltd, n.d. doi:10.1016/j. healthplace.2020.102390.

44. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.”

45. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.”

46. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.”

47. Alexa Eisenberg et al. “Toxic Structures: Speculation and Lead Exposure in Detroit’s Single-Family Rental Market.”

48. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ ehp.0800408.

49. “New Lead Ordinance Requirements for Rental Property Owners.” Accessed March 17, 2022. https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi. localhost/files/2020-07/Lead_Ordinance_ Requirements-for_Rental_Property_ Owners%207_29_20.pdf.

50. “Detroit Program to Require Landlords to Bring Rental Properties into Compliance.”

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52. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ehp.0800408.

53. Ignazio Messina and Lauren Lindstrom.

2017. Lawmaker calls city lead ordinance unconstitutional. TCA Regional News, Apr 29, 2017. https://proxy.lib.umich.edu/ login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy. lib.umich.edu/wire-feeds/lawmaker-callscity-lead-ordinance/docview/1892936280/se2?accountid=14667 (accessed March 17, 2022).

54. Ignazio Messina and Lauren Lindstrom.

2017. Lawmaker calls city lead ordinance unconstitutional.

55. Ignazio Messina and Lauren Lindstrom.

2017. Lawmaker calls city lead ordinance unconstitutional.

56. Ignazio Messina and Lauren Lindstrom.

2017. Lawmaker calls city lead ordinance unconstitutional.); Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel. “The Value of a Healthy Home: Lead Paint Remediation and Housing Values.”

Journal of Public Economics. Elsevier B.V, n.d. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.07.006.

57. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

Environmental Health Perspectives. United States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ehp.0800408.

States: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, n.d. doi:10.1289/ehp.0800408 80. Elise Gould. “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control.”

81. Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel.

“The Value of a Healthy Home: Lead Paint Remediation and Housing Values.” Journal of Public Economics. Elsevier B.V, n.d. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.07.006.

82. Margaret Cherney et al. 2021. “Insights into the Slow Uptake of Residential Lead Paint Remediation Funds: A Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Case Study.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 2: 652. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich. edu/10.3390/ijerph18020652 83. Margaret Cherney et al. 2021. “Insights into the Slow Uptake of Residential Lead Paint Remediation Funds: A Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Case Study.

84. Margaret Cherney et al. 2021. “Insights into the Slow Uptake of Residential Lead Paint Remediation Funds: A Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Case Study.

85. Margaret Cherney et al. 2021. “Insights into the Slow Uptake of Residential Lead Paint Remediation Funds: A Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Case Study.

86. Margaret Cherney et al. 2021. “Insights into the Slow Uptake of Residential Lead Paint Remediation Funds: A Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Case Study.

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Ching City: The New Hutong Playscape Urban Design Proposal for the New TOD District in Tongzhou, Beijing

VICTORIA WONG Master of Architecture

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ABSTRACT Propositions Studio: Urban Design in the Pacific Rim—Tongzhou, Beijing, led by Professor Roy Strickland in 2021 Winter, was part of a continuing series of studios in a multi-year Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning (TCAUP) research and design effort addressing cities that were part of the Pacific Rim, a trans-continental region undergoing rapid transformation as part of global economic, social, and environmental changes.¹ The Ching City project proposal aims to honor Chinese tradition while at the same time addressing modern challenges. Ching, a spectrum of colors generated by the color of ores in ancient China, represents growth and possibilities. Ching City aims to reframe the Chinese street as a public space and focuses on discussing informal public spaces to promote the idea that different users can reclaim those pocket spaces. This urban design proposal promotes transitoriented development and argues that urban spaces should be designed with a pedestrian scale in mind.

BACKGROUND Every winter semester, architecture students at the University of Michigan’s TCAUP participate in the Propositions studio which provides them with the opportunity to explore architectural problem solving at various scales, anywhere from furniture making to urban design. A series of these studios focused on the urban design of the Pacific Rim transcontinental region, an area consisting of the five countries that border the Pacific Ocean.

This region has experienced significant changes in recent decades and as a result has seen exponential growth.

Professor Roy Strickland’s Winter 2021 Urban Design in the Pacific Rim—Tongzhou, Beijing studio focused on the Tongzhou sub-center in central Beijing. Tongzhou is located in one of the world’s most important global cities, a place that’s dynamic, historical, and rich in architecture and urbanism. The studio culminated in proposals for high-density

mixed-use development for Beijing’s largest Transit-Oriented Development (TOD).

During the term, Taubman Architecture and Urban Design graduate students interacted with AECOM/Beijing, a leading branch of the world’s largest architecture and urbandesign firm, through remote communication.

They also worked in parallel with urban design students at the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, one of China’s leading design schools. Later on in the semester, students communicated with Beijing’s city planning department.1 On May 27, 2016, Tongzhou was announced as the official Beijing Sub-Center by the Chinese Central Government. With the introduction of a transit-center-based network, including local rail systems and high-speed railways, Tongzhou shares a great legacy as a critical affiliated town to Beijing, the current capital.

Figure 1. A Special Exhibition of Paintings on “Up the River During Qingming” Source: National Palace Museum Collection. https://theme.npm.edu.tw/exh108/npm_anime/AlongtheRiver/en/index.html.

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Figure 2. Mindmapping Exercise - Comparative Timeline

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SITE INFORMATION The AECOM proposed site, where Ching City: the New Hutong Playscape is situated, includes the largest underground high-speed rail station with four subway line interchanges.

It is designated to be a hyper-mixed-use, developable site with no floor-to-area (FAR) limit in this studio setting and takes up to 43.5 hectares (roughly 107.4 acres). The AECOM team created the masterplan and zoning plan of the larger area of the whole parcel. The purpose of the proposals was to facilitate discussion between TCAUP students, faculty, AECOM representatives, and local government officials on a variety of potential urban spaces and use urban design to support the area’s commercial values.2

THE DESIGN The design process began with studying architectural developments, arts, literature, warfare, and significant events in Western and Chinese histories. A mind-mapping exercise emerged from the research in the form of a comparative timeline (Figure 2) to organize and compare information as well as decode the unseen connections between events. The timeline features curated events from Chinese and Western culture that juxtapose the social and historical dynamics that influenced how the people and varying cultures adapted and utilized the concept of urban spaces over time in relation to the micro and macro social context in different eras.

The basis for many of the urban open spaces seen today in western countries can be traced back to London in the 17th and 18th centuries, where most of those spaces were paved public plazas.3 Meanwhile, in Chinese history, the idea of public (usable and occupiable) spaces did not historically exist. The first glimpse of public space and street life was depicted in the painting Along the River during the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan (Figure 1), created in the Song dynasty and dating back to the 10th12th century B.C.4

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Figure 3. Experiential Perspective Collage

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Figure 4. Urban Design Concept Axonometric

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Figure 5. Public Space and Site Organization Diagrams Background Sources: Getty Images and Google

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Figure 6. Site Plan and Axonometric Drawing

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HUTONG + PLAYSCAPE Modern public spaces in China are composed mainly of hardscape and ceremonial squares.

This type of space is the opposite of welcome gathering space and deters people instead of encouraging street life.

In contrast to the West, ancient Beijing was not organized by streets and urban lots. Instead, it was determined by the combination of hutong and its surrounding urban conditions. Hutong, a regional street organization methodology in ancient Beijing, was defined by the exterior boundaries of residential siheyuan, an enclosed courtyard surrounded by singlestory buildings on four sides where the water sources determine the location of these residential units.5 Traditionally, a siheyuan was occupied or owned by a single family; in modern days, it could be separated into units for multiple families with a shared space in the middle. The exterior of the siheyuan then became leftover spaces, and the urban void thus composed networks of passageways with various widths and scales, becoming hutong. Ching City: The New Hutong Playscape mimicked this logic of hutong. It was designed and organized inside-out, allowing the public spaces to be the site’s foundation, while the architecture filled in afterward.

After identifying the locations of public spaces, urban playscapes were designed accordingly.

Instead of the standardized hardscape in modern China, the idea of urban playscape is proposed in this project to encourage people to share and reclaim public areas, instead of allowing authorities to control public space.

The playscapes incorporated spaces of various scales, some with fixed programs and others for flex-use, allowing the playscape to adapt to different needs in the new development.

Playscapes are connected by informal pathways, allowing pedestrians to freely explore the site on various levels and scales. By combining hutong and playscape, Ching City: The New Hutong Playscape adapts existing cultural values and traditions and transforms the development into a new interpretation of modern Chinese cities and their citizens.

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Figure 6. Section Drawing of Cityscape

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Victoria Wong is a Candidate in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Michigan. She also hold a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with dual Minors in Environmental and Sustainable Studies, and Urban and Public Affairs. She is passionate about creating architecture that respects cultures and encourages coexisting relationships between human and non-human agencies.

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ENDNOTES 1. Roy Strickland, “Urban Design in the Pacific Rim”, (studio brief, TCAUP, Ann Arbor, MI, 2021).

2. Wilson Rui Qian, “Tongzhou Project”, (client lecture, AECOM, Ann Arbor, MI, 2021).

3. Lawrence, Henry W. “The Greening of the Squares of London: Transformation of Urban Landscapes and Ideals.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83, no. 1 (1993): 90–118. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1993.tb01924.x.

4. A Special Exhibition of Paintings on “Up the River During Qingming” in the Museum Collection. National Palace Museum. Accessed March 25, 2022. https://theme.npm.edu.tw/ exh108/npm_anime/AlongtheRiver/en/index. html.

5. Heath, T., and Y. Tang. “Beijing’s Hutong and Siheyuan: Conservation of an Urban Identity.”

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Municipal Engineer 163, no. 3 (2010): 155–61. https://doi.org/10.1680/muen.2010.163.3.155.

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Vienna State Opera, Vienna, Austria Photographer: Vera Tikhonova AGORA 16 132

Judaism in an Argument to Complicate Whiteness And Its Implications for Urban Planning ABSTRACT

AARON COHEN Master of Urban and Regional Planning

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Throughout the history of the United States, different nationalities and ethnicities have been assimilated into mainstream American whiteness, which spreads white privilege into new areas.

This assimilation demonstrates that the bounds of whiteness are not set but rather are malleable spatial tools used to continue white privilege or oppress people of color as needed. The development of American cities and neighborhoods has been greatly impacted by the power wielded by mainstream whiteness, and as whiteness has evolved, so have the composition and challenges within neighborhoods.

Studying the negotiation White-Ashkenazi Jews have had within ‘white’ spaces offers a unique way of examining the value American society places on whiteness in relation to influence over and comfort in spaces. White-Ashkenazi Jews are still in a negotiation of their white privilege status. This negotiation appears during anti-Semitic attacks, discriminatory zoning polices, and spatially, where Jews live. By analyzing the negotiation between white-Ashkenazi Jews and how it represents itself spatially, one can illuminate the boundaries of white privilege in different ways and demonstrate that those boundaries are themselves moveable.

INTRODUCTION When Jewish immigrants establish a community in a new country, they collectively undergo a cultural negotiation between conforming to new societal expectations and maintaining their Jewish traditions. The negotiation describes an ongoing process of all Jews finding a place within their new society — an undertaking that is never ending.1 In this essay, the focus is on the spaces of white, Ashkenazi, American Judaism (hereafter white Jews) to examine the value American society places on whiteness. This is done not to disregard the spatial issues surrounding Sephardic Judaism or Sephardic/Ashkenazi Jews of color, but rather to illustrate the malleability of white spatial boundaries. In this essay, I explore how white Jews continue to find their place between mainstream American whiteness and Americans of color, from the immediate post-World War II era to the modern day, which illuminates the fluidity of white spatial boundaries and resulting in issues in planning caused by this fluctuation.

I first establish how white privilege obtained some of its perceived value through urban planning mechanisms. Then I describe how the value placed on whiteness affects white Jews in terms of the physical and cultural space they have access to, feel comfort in, and have influence over in an ongoing process of placing themselves in American society, which I refer to as the negotiation. Next, I use two legal cases from New Jersey to provide tangible examples of the negotiation in relation to housing and land use. Lastly, I discuss the implications for the field of urban planning and how the arguments within this paper affect me and my planning decisions.

THE VALUE OF WHITENESS The privilege and autonomy of mainstream American whiteness began to include white Jews beginning in the 1940s.2 At this point, immigrants from Catholic-majority European countries, such as Ireland, Poland, and Italy, were starting to be considered white; however, mainstream American whiteness consisted mainly of straight, white Christians, typically

of Western European descent. The position of white Jews in American society started to shift partially due to the events of the Holocaust.

Mainstream American whiteness began to tolerate white Judaism over Americans of color, as evident by white Jewish access to post-World War II financial benefits to promote homeownership of single-family homes with private yards in the suburbs, which became a vital component to the image of the American Dream.3,4 The government enabled White Americans to buy homes, and access educational opportunities through the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (G.I. Bill). The G.I. Bill allowed white Americans to access new private spaces and establish generational wealth through their houses and land, as these commodities appreciated in value. Meanwhile, Americans of color were barred from purchasing homes due to racial covenants, blockbusting, and redlining — due to dominant racist practices within private banks, the real estate sector, and academic research supported by the U.S. federal government.5,6 As new suburbs and cities developed, exclusionary zoning and policies further entrenched the value of whiteness based on the ability to access amenities. These exclusionary zoning policies include minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, parking requirements, exclusion of multifamily housing, and racial covenants. Members of mainstream American whiteness used these exclusionary policies to create a spatial boundary separating the white race from other races through supposedly race-neutral policies.

Over time, this became reinforced as over- or under-assessing property owned by people of color (according to whether the owner was selling, buying, or determining taxes) further entrenched spatial bounds of whiteness.7 This occurs as some white people who operate American government officials fail to see how white privilege exists and is perceived as necessary,8 and they fail to realize that in the long run, racial equality and economic equity are beneficial to all.9,10 From there, white neighborhoods collected property taxes that steadily increased with AGORA 16 134

their assessed property values. Well-funded cities had better budget stability, ability to fund their schools, and capacity to fund other public amenities for their residents.11,12 The strategic placement of housing and thriving amenities, like well-resourced schools and hospitals, and the exclusion of people of color place values within spatial boundaries through zoning.13,14 These white ‘borders’ serve as a system of racial capitalism that intensifies the connection of whiteness and property, thereby enhancing the financial value American society places on whiteness.15 Racial capitalism, as defined by scholar Prentiss Dantzler, is a “prevailing ideology [that] rests not only upon the racial character of capital production, but also through the reproduction of racist social, economic, and political systems, such as those embedded within the housing market.”16 Dantzler describes a capitalistic system that profits from the notion that owning large, detached houses is an essential element to achieving the American Dream.

These white neighborhoods establish base norms that neighborhoods of people of color are measured against (and told they should strive for), which further perpetuates a system that values white spaces while devaluing neighborhoods of color in the process. This does not mean that whiteness guarantees financial success, but mechanisms, privileges, and racist ideas enable white individuals to access certain services and financial prospects.17,18 To preserve the system of white privilege mainstream American whiteness obscures the structural racism and racial capitalist issues by viewing spaces as raceneutral and enabling colorblind rhetoric and race-neutral policy.19,20

SHIFTING BOUNDARIES “A Jew today who thinks they are passing for white is delusional.”

– A family member, 2021 This quote illuminates the continual struggle of Jewish Americans to place themselves within the white racial frame of American

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society. White, American Jews have debated their whiteness fervently in negotiating their place in relation to mainstream American whiteness.21 By admitting difference, white Jews confirm that they are an ‘other’ group from mainstream American whiteness because they were not seen as automatically white (in the post-World War II context). NonJewish whites also debated their place but made the distinction clear when they barred Jews, like people of color, from living, eating, and recreating in certain places.22 Jews and mainstream American whites othered white Jews by declaring Jewishness as a race, ethnoreligion, or ethnicity. In turn, this process inadvertently otherized people of color by enforcing a white-supremacist racial hierarchy, as white Jews were never considered to be people of color.23 In all of these discussions, white Jews were placed somewhere in the middle of the white-black racial binary.

To understand why the Jewish negotiation within American society occurred within Jews themselves it is important to understand their circumstances. White Jews during this period balanced a psyche of persecution with the desire for acceptance into American society.

This is reflected in the story of the family member from whom the previously mentioned quote originates. Born in 1946, he grew up when being Jewish meant that he could not live in certain neighborhoods or be admitted into certain country clubs, hotels, schools, or restaurants though today people would read him as white. His parents were Holocaust survivors themselves, adding a complex layer to his Jewish identity and a nuanced fear of not wanting to out his Jewishness.

This commonly felt and recurring trauma creates a sense of otherness among white Jews, and though my family member today is viewed as white, he does not necessarily see that as his primary identity as some others might. This belief stems from a real trauma that is coming back to the surface again — what is the Jewish place within American society and what danger does it hold?24,25 My family member’s experience growing up during

a time when the negotiation between white Judaism and mainstream American whiteness was clearly present is crucial to examine because it is here that the spatial bounds of whiteness for white Jews began to change but remained unmoveable for Americans of color. Though white Jews became tolerated in new spaces, many Jews preferred to interact with non-Jewish groups in settings where Jews maintained the majority.26,27 In the post-World War II years, there was a vast increase in white Jewish migration to suburbs, which in some cases created Jewish majority spaces. However, many historic Jewish communities, especially those of the more observant Orthodox Jews, remained within dense urban centers for various reasons. Legal scholar Michael Lewyn points to auto-centric policies as one reason why Orthodox and Hasidic communities did not follow other Jews into the suburbs. First, large financial investments in auto-oriented development reduces the amount of money available for pedestrian-oriented development, which Jews need to observe the Sabbath since they cannot drive (this increases as people age, needing more assistance to be mobile). Second, singlefamily development requires an automobile to get around because mixed-use spaces are not allowed, which further hampers access to daily needs during the Sabbath. Third, low-density development raises housing costs, reduces supply, and increases cost, which creates economic reasons that places homeownership out of reach for certain groups of white Jews.

And finally, certain ordinances prohibit Jewish religious necessities and practices.28 For example, some policies hinder the erection of sukkahs, a temporary hut various sects of Judaism use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot.29 The spatial boundaries that existed in pre-World War II kept “Jewish lifeworlds” essentially free of significant external influences, but the economic and cultural interaction with the “outside” began to change post-World War II.30 In the post-World War II era, white Jews formerly restricted by racial

covenants and personal choice31 were now allowed to move to new places and attend higher education.32 This started a migration of white Jews to new physical spaces (especially the suburbs) that were still denied to people of color. Racial covenants became a way to ensure continual segregation by forbidding any future owner of a house or land from selling the property to a person of color. The practices of racial covenants and redlining were written in ways that precluded Jews from buying homes in certain neighborhoods, though not on the scale of people of color.33 Racial covenants were the standard method to ensure segregation until the Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that enforcing racial covenants is unconstitutional (though having them in deeds is not).34 The paragraphs above describe the physical spatial boundaries to whiteness, which white Jews have been allowed to cross in contemporary American society — but there are also cultural boundaries. These cultural boundaries involve an implicit acknowledgment or code-switching to act in specific ways to survive in white spaces.

This assumes an aspect of oppression which philosopher Iris Marion Young identifies as cultural imperialism — the compulsion that every person, regardless of their race, must act as what is acceptable for a white culture and psyche.35 The idea of cultural imperialism oppression is directly connected to the idea of passing. Legal scholar Cheryl Harris defines passing as “the submergence of a subordinate

White Jews are forced to straddle a precipice between the palatable form of Judaism that appeals to mainstream American whiteness and the form of Judaism they wish to practice.”

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cultural identity in favor of dominant identity, assumed to achieve better societal fit within prevailing norms.”36 Cultural imperialism can occur when people of color can pass and be accepted as white, when the person’s identity is not only presumed but defined by another culture. When this happens, the person of color may witness their own culture become palatable to the dominant group or disappear “from the inside” due to the ability to pass.37 Cheryl Harris describes how her grandmother experienced precisely this type of trauma as she was able to pass as white and thus allowed to work in higher-end stores. During her years of working, she would board the bus in her black neighborhood, then code-switch to show politeness when hearing racial stereotypes of black people from customers she served.38,39 Young and Harris use philosophical and sociological explanations to demonstrate the effects of racism on people of color by exploring different traumas and cultural psyches. These sentiments are prevalent in the quote from my family member. They also appear in one of the legal examples discussed in the next section: white Jews are forced to straddle a precipice between the palatable form of Judaism that appeals to mainstream American whiteness and the form of Judaism they wish to practice.

It is important to understand how Jewish and non-Jewish boundaries are constructed and the power they hold. The boundaries, whether they are culturally symbolic or physical, represent the power of an entity to create and enforce said boundaries. The boundaries create a space where groups themselves can be constrained, enabled to build solidarity for their causes, and used to otherize different groups as needed by continuing to operate with a specific white-black racial binary.

Examples include the ability to elect local leaders that represent the community, access to financial means to improve physical spaces, and the power to create access to daily needs.40 These boundaries, which are always in flux, are important to understand when examining how white Jews complicate the spatial bounds of whiteness,

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The boundaries, whether they are culturally symbolic or physical, represent the power of an entity to create and enforce said boundaries.” the value American society associates with whiteness, and who historically and currently is considered to be “unthreatening” to the established white neighborhoods.

TENAFLY, NEW JERSEY Though white Jews today find themselves in historically unwelcoming neighborhoods, their acceptance is premised on white Judaism being palatable to a mainstream American white psyche. In the Tenafly Eruv Association v. Borough of Tenafly case, tolerance for Orthodox Judaism vanished after public displays of Judaism began to increase through the expansion of the Tenafly Eruv. The intent of the eruv is to ensure that people can easily continue their daily activities while observing the Sabbath. A person is not to carry heavy objects per Sabbath rules, as it is a form of labor; however, people must carry babies, items to their families, or mobility devices.

Eruv markings—which could consist of wires, flags, or ribbons, strung upon utility poles— define a space within which it is acceptable to carry such objects.41 The eruv superimposes a new space on an existing landscape and neighborhood, assuming that everyone within the area agrees on its existence and understands its use.42 A visible sign of Judaism, this spatial boundary redefines a space in different ways for both Jews and non-Jews.

The issue at hand was the black markers tied around the public utility poles that indicate the eruv’s boundaries as people objected to them due to the separation of church and state. This conflict was not just between the Tenafly Eruv Association and the Borough of Tenafly, but

was at the center of the town’s consciousness for some time. Though not central to the legal argument, many non-Jewish whites in the community expressed issues with the eruv because they believed its approval would send a message welcoming more observant Jews to Tenafly and thus affect their property values.43 At the time of the case, Tenafly’s median household income was $132,449; people who could move into Tenafly were affluent and held more economic power than many Americans.44 Additionally — due to the capitalistic structure of the housing market — any potential reduction of market prices represents a diminution of status and worth of the town, which resulted in fervent fighting against any chance this would occur. Examples of property owners fighting for their position based on supposed race-neutral, economic arguments are not new.

The concern over incoming residents and current white Jewish residents made a general statement directed at the modern Orthodox Jews who used the eruv. Reform Jews within Tenafly were not targeted, as they represented a more acceptable version of white Judaism.

Moreover, Reform Jews of the town had their own misgivings of the eruv that were rooted in fear of marking the area as Jewish and being seen as less Jewish themselves due to their religious observance choices.45 This demonstrates varying impacts of the negotiation on white Jewish communities, and more broadly, the choices different groups must make when acceptance by American society for who they are is in question. Like all groups, reform and Orthodox Jews hold many different viewpoints — but in this example, different Jewish voices did not always come through. In this case, it was the personal choices of Orthodox Jews that represented Judaism to many members of the community.

In Tenafly, there are two different white-Jewish groups — reform and modern-Orthodox — seeking to negotiate their position within a predominantly white city. The desire to be accepted as Jews, in the ways they wished to observe the religion, is apparent; however, the

deep-rooted fear of persecution, combined with the desire to access the amenities Tenafly has to offer, caused hesitancy among certain Jewish residents to present more of their identity to their community. The case ended when the Supreme Court denied the Borough’s appeal of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals holding, that since “the town failed to enforce the regulation prohibiting use of the poles by other Borough residents, it could not deny the Eruv Association the right to use the poles.”46 There is a long and complex history of Jews in New Jersey, and Tenafly demonstrates that acceptance of Jews is an ongoing negotiation for white Jews in America, between white Jews themselves and mainstream American whiteness.

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NEW JERSEY Twenty years later, about seventy miles south of Tenafly, the same spatial and legal issues highlighting the white Jewish negotiation with mainstream American whiteness surfaced again. In April 2021, then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal filed suit against Jackson Township for discriminatory zoning policies against Orthodox Jews.47 The current Mayor Michael Riena, along with the Township Council, the Township Planning Board, and the Township Zoning Board of Adjustments, are named as the defendants in the case for many discriminatory acts: improper municipal surveillance of Orthodox Jews, establishing ordinances that prevent yeshivas (Jewish educational centers) and the dormitories they require in residential land-use districts, banning the creation of evurim (the plural of eruv), and inhibiting the erection of sukkahs, specifically in front yards.48,49 The local policy actions and ordinances were taken in response to local calls to ensure that Jackson Township does not become a suburb of neighboring Lakewood Township.50 Lakewood Township’s population of 100,000 consists of two-thirds Orthodox Jews, and the community has the second-largest yeshiva in the world.51 Jackson Township residents feared

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that the Orthodox Jewish population would spill over into their township. This anti-Semitic narrative is what tipped off Attonery General Gurbir in the Facebook post by a Jackon Township resident: “we [Jackson Township residents] need to get rid of them like Hitler did.”52 Town officials openly used zoning mechanisms that were supposed to be neutral but affected Jewish spaces in a way that hindered the observance of Jewish traditions.

The case is currently in litigation.

A difference between Jackson Township and Tenafly is the sect of the Jewish populations; however, both are cases of targeted opposition of an open spatial boundary of Jewishness couched in race-neutral or anti-Semitic logic.

As demonstrated by legal scholar Michael Lewyn, Jackson Township officials used their authority to establish exclusionary zoning policies that hinder the establishment of educational and religious facilities needed by Orthodox Jews, in this case white Jews.53 The exclusionary-zoning ordinances implemented

by Jackson Township are reminiscent of times when all levels of government officials sought out new ways to exclude and segregate neighborhoods after racial covenants were ruled unconstitutional. The policies sought to confine and re-examine where and how Jews could practice their religion. These kinds of exclusionary policies continue to ensure that a racial capitalist structure operates in the United States — maintaining an artificial spatial boundary for Americans of color and their oppression.

IMPLICATIONS FOR URBAN PLANNING As demonstrated by Tenafly, whiteness can be taken, given, and re-examined to serve the purposes of the local mainstream American white community. Tenafly also portrays the different issues present between sects of Judaism, and though different, the various sects of Ashkenazi Judaism are sometimes seen as one. This example also highlights that white Jews, in this case the Reform Jews, can

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The exclusionary-zoning ordinances implemented by Jackson Township are reminiscent of times when all levels of government officials sought out new ways to exclude and segregate neighborhoods after racial covenants were ruled unconstitutional.” be wary and uncertain of how to accept all that comes with mainstream American whiteness.

This is partially due to the disagreement with the discriminatory treatment of Americans of color; however, failure to accept assimilation in the specified ways could jeopardize the current acceptance as seen in the treatment of more observant Jews in the town.54 In Jackson Township, open hostility to white Jews and Judaism as a whole continues to be seen in public arenas. Relating most to urban planning, the hostility towards Jewish people took form through the continued use of municipal authority to pass policies pertaining to the number of unrelated people living in a private dwelling and the use of exclusionary zoning policies to create a rigid interpretation of residential land uses for neighborhoods, which eliminated the possibility that the yeshiva could have dormitories nearby.

This is not new: Legal scholar Kate Redburn demonstrates the numerous ways local zoning laws pertaining to the number of unrelated family members that can live in the same dwelling unit continues to cause discrimination to this day.55 Through a haze of race-neutral and colorblind philosophy, non-Jewish American whites continue to mold whiteness to the time and continue asserting its value56 in a process that is seen in both cases and across different non-white groups.

In these cases, different sub-groups of white

Jews were forced to navigate an outside group’s expectations regarding their behavior and actions. Neither reform, modernOrthodox, nor Orthodox Jews can define Judaism for all Jews or describe the issues that white American Jews face. Planners must understand that no sub-group or person can speak for the entirety of a religion, race, or ethnicity, and trying to compartmentalize a person’s experience as representative of the entire group can lead to tokenization of people. Planners must be able to listen to various voices to understand how seemingly neutral policies may have a disparate impact on a group.

As planners, we must keep this in mind as we enter, navigate, and plan for the spaces of communities of color. By whose standards are we judging success or failure, and why do those standards exist? Are we failing to recognize the varying identities and backgrounds people have that will inform their desires for their community, especially if they are in contrast to our expectations of our American dream? And as the previous examples force us to question, are we passing ordinances and using policy mechanisms, either intentionally or unintentionally, that will disproportionately affect a specific group of people? Our school districts, neighborhoods, political districts, and ZIP codes create cultural and physical boundaries that enable certain groups to be controlled, influenced, separated, or treated differently from other groups. These boundaries often overlap but are nonetheless controlled by government officials and influenced by the power of planners.

The power of planners is not explored in this essay, but it’s important to understand. No one is powerless — however, as seen through exclusionary policies and municipal authority, power can be constrained and tempered in an effort to maintain the status quo. This is an example of legal force, but power dynamics also stem from societal expectations of races and gender roles. In both New Jersey examples, white Jews were able to use their voice to argue for their positions and maintain

legal standing; however, legal scholars like Cheryl Harris and Kimberlé Crenshaw demonstrate that the same does not always occur for people of color, specifically women of color.

CONCLUSION “My parents are not surprised; they expect anti-Semitism to be part of the fabric of daily life, much as I expect racism to be part of it.”

- Karen Brodkin57 The quote from Brodkin describes the negotiation as it currently stands between white Jews and American society today. Like my family members, older generations can easily recall a memory when outing one’s Jewishness, even when one was perceived to be white, was more life-threatening than it is today. The latter part of the quote describes my generation of white Jews today, where most of us understand that when we walk into a room, we are given white privilege. As I have described in brief terms, the ability for white Jews of my generation to be perceived as white did not occur quickly or easily, and it continues to involve strenuous effort.

This can be discussed in relation to W. E. B DuBois’ ideas about double consciousness, which are seen differently by older and younger generations of white Jews. The concept of “double consciousness” is that one can encounter society through the same required mechanisms as everyone else but possess a unique view due to one’s status as an outsider.58 This view also implies that people of color distrust any socially constructed system because the ‘other’ view enables a disadvantaged group to see different weaknesses and biases within the system. This theory is rooted in the deep racial mistrust, specifically that of black people, of the entirety of American culture, society, and law.59 White Jews can see aspects of this, but it is not a full-fledged understanding.

This is because white Jews have never been, nor have they been entirely separate from, Americans of color, and this experience allow

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white Jews to have some aspect of double consciousness. However, as Brodkin’s parents state, aspects of double consciousness could be stronger among older generations, as the fear of anti-Semitism is held differently in the minds of older and younger Jews. I base this conclusion on informal discussions with family members and other white-Jewish friends.

Depending on how the view of holding double consciousness is expressed, on top a failure to fully acknowledge whiteness, often frustrates many members of younger generations of white Jews. The frustrations are often caused by inability to see how supporting colorblind or race-neutral policies can continue the oppression of Americans of color, and the inability to see how white Jews as a whole benefit from those policies due to white privilege; however, the older generations feel that the younger generations forget there was a time when being Jewish, even white-Jewish, could mean bodily harm in certain places.

that the negotiation between white Jews and mainstream American whiteness has granted me white privilege. What granted me my white privilege came and comes at a cost due to a negotiation that some may not see but I understand. Thus, I must question and thoughtfully consider the standards, norms, and expectations that inform my decisions, and I must also consider how their success and failure will be measured by those who are affected by my actions.

When I enter a space, my white identity is the first to be noticed and considered. I will be granted white privilege, and my voice will accordingly be heard. This does not mean that my Jewish identity is negligible or does not influence my stance, thoughts, views, and expectations. Rather, I realize

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Aaron Cohen is a Master of Urban and Regional planning candidate at the University of Michigan. He completed a Bachelor’s of Arts in Theatre and History from Goucher College (Baltimore, Maryland).

Aaron transitioned to urban planning after working as a scenic carpenter for three years. His main planning interests are energy planning and program evaluation. He was raised within the conservative and reform sects of Judaism.

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ENDNOTES 1. Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1.

2. Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 41.

3. Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, Third Edition (New York: Routledge, 2015), 6-9.

4. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1728-1729.

5. Megan Haberle and Sophia House, “Introduction,” in Racial Justice in Housing Finance: A New Series on New Directions, ed. Megan Haberle and Sophia House (New York City: Poverty & Race Research Action Council, 2021), 3.

no. 2 (July 3, 2021): 117.

17. Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (July 1991): 1246.

18. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness As Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1758-1759.

19. Edward Goetz, Rashad A. Williams, and Anthony Damiano, “Whiteness and Urban Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association 86, no. 2 (April 2, 2020): 146.

20. Todd Michney and LaDale Winling. “How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining.” PLATFORM, November 1, 2021.

21. Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1, 11, and 12.

6. Todd Michney and LaDale Winling, “How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining,” PLATFORM, November 1, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/howacademia-laid-the-groundwork-for-redlining.

22. Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, 13-14.

7. Andre M. Perry Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities. (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2020), 104.

24. Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 4-5.

8. Robin J. DiAngelo White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018), 46-48.

25. Gary Rosenblatt, “Is It Still Safe to Be a Jew in America?”

The Atlantic, March 15, 2020.

23. Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, 4, 30, 36, 41, 72.

9. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1772.

26. Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 13.

10. Edward Goetz, Rashad A. Williams, and Anthony Damiano, “Whiteness and Urban Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association 86, no. 2 (April 2, 2020): 144.

27. Judit Bokser Liwerant, “Latin American Jews in the United States: Community and Belonging in Times of Transnationalism,” Contemporary Jewry 33, no. 1–2 (July 2013): 126.

11. Henry-Louis Taylor Jr., “Land Values and the Enduring Significance of Racial Residential Segregation,” in Racial Justice in Housing Finance: A New Series on New Directions, ed. Megan Haberle and Sophia House (New York City: Poverty & Race Research Action Council, 2021), 20.

28. Michael E. Lewyn, “Rooted Cosmopolitans: Why Jews Need the City--or, a Jewish Urbanist Agenda,” Tablet Magazine, May 3, 2021.

12. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1731-1733.

13. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1717.

14. Junia Howell, “The Unstudied Reference Neighborhood: Towards a Critical Theory of Empirical Neighborhood Studies,” Sociology Compass 13, no. 1 (January 2019): 2.

29. Jerry DeMarco and Cecilia Levine, “Jackson Township Officials ‘Weaponized’ Zoning Laws To Suppress Orthodox Jews, State Charges,” Ocean Daily Voice, April 27, 2021. https://dailyvoice.com/new-jersey/ocean/news/jacksontownship-officials-weaponized-zoning-laws-to-suppressorthodox-jews-state-charges/807812 30. Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup, eds. Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History. New German Historical Perspectives Series, volume 8. (New York: Berghahn, 2017), 3.

15. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1714.

31. Michael Lewyn, “Rooted Cosmopolitans: Why Jews Need the City--or, a Jewish Urbanist Agenda,” Tablet Magazine, May 3, 2021.

16. Prentiss A. Dantzler, “The Urban Process under Racial Capitalism: Race, Anti-Blackness, and Capital Accumulation,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City 2,

32. Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 8, 9, 40, and 104.

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33. Catherine Silva, “Racial Restrictive Covenants: Enforcing Neighborhood Segregation in Seattle,” The Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project: University of Washington, Autumn 2008. https://depts.washington.edu/ civilr/covenants_report.htm.

34. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness As Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1777.

35. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference. Paperback reissue. Princeton, N.J: (Princeton University Press, 2011), 58.

36. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness As Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1765.

37. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference. Paperback reissue. Princeton, N.J: (Princeton University Press, 2011), 60.

38. Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness As Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1711-1713.

39. Courtney L. McCluney, Kathrina Robotham, Serenity Lee, Richard Smith, and Myles Durkee, “The Costs of CodeSwitching,” Harvard Business Review, November 15, 2019. https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-costs-of-codeswitching.

40. Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup, eds. Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History. New German Historical Perspectives Series, volume 8. (New York: Berghahn, 2017), 5.

41. Susan H. Lees, “Conflicting Concepts of Community: Diversity and Diaspora in American Suburbs,” in The Seductions of Community: Emancipations, Oppressions, Quandaries (1st ed), ed. Gerald W. Creed (Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press, 2006), 181 and 183.

49. Julie Shaw, “Lawsuits Seek to End Discrimination against Orthodox Jews in Jackson Township, N.J,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 24, 2021, sec. New Jersey News. https://www. inquirer.com/news/orthodox-jewish-community-jacksontownship-lakewood-attorney-general-lawsuit-20210524. html.

50. Jerry DeMarco and Cecilia Levine, “Jackson Township Officials ‘Weaponized’ Zoning Laws To Suppress Orthodox Jews, State Charges,” Ocean Daily Voice, April 27, 2021.

51. Julie Shaw, “Lawsuits Seek to End Discrimination against Orthodox Jews in Jackson Township, N.J,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 24, 2021, sec. New Jersey News.

52. Jerry DeMarco and Cecilia Levine, “Jackson Township Officials ‘Weaponized’ Zoning Laws To Suppress Orthodox Jews, State Charges,” Ocean Daily Voice, April 27, 2021.

53. Michael E. Lewyn, “Suburban Sprawl, Jewish Law, and Jewish Values,” Southeastern Environmental Law Journal 13, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 16-21.

54. Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 190; Samira K. Mehta, “Asian American Jews, Race, and Religious Identity,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89, no. 3 (September 29, 2021): 978–1005.

55. Kate Redburn, “Zoned Out: How Zoning Law Undermines Family Law’s Functional Turn,” The Yale Law Journal, 128, no. 8 (June 2019): 2412–2473.

56. Edward Goetz, Rashad A. Williams, and Anthony Damiano, “Whiteness and Urban Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association 86, no. 2 (April 2, 2020): 146.

43. Susan H. Lees, “Conflicting Concepts of Community: Diversity and Diaspora in American Suburbs,” in The Seductions of Community: Emancipations, Oppressions, 189.

57. Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 25.

45. Susan H. Lees, “Jewish Space in Suburbia: Interpreting the Eruv Conflict in Tenafly, New Jersey,” Contemporary Jewry 27, no. 1 (2007): 65.

46. ACLU of New Jersey, “Tenafly Eruv Association v. The Borough of Tenafly,” January 24, 2022. https://www. aclu-nj.org/en/cases/tenafly-eruv-association-v-boroughtenafly.

47. Jerry DeMarco and Cecilia Levine, “Jackson Township Officials ‘Weaponized’ Zoning Laws To Suppress Orthodox Jews, State Charges,” Ocean Daily Voice, April 27, 2021. https://dailyvoice.com/new-jersey/ocean/news/jackson-

a

48. Jerry DeMarco and Cecilia Levine, “Jackson Township Officials ‘Weaponized’ Zoning Laws To Suppress Orthodox Jews, State Charges,” Ocean Daily Voice, April 27, 2021.

42. Susan H. Lees, “Jewish Space in Suburbia: Interpreting the Eruv Conflict in Tenafly, New Jersey,” Contemporary Jewry 27, no. 1 (2007): 68.

44. Susan H. Lees, “Conflicting Concepts of Community: Diversity and Diaspora in American Suburbs,” in The Seductions of Community: Emancipations, Oppressions, Quandaries, 188-189.

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township-officials-weaponized-zoning-laws-to-suppressorthodox-jews-state-charges/807812/.

58. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk. Dover Thrift Editions. (New York: Dover, 1994), 2.

59. Lily K. Song, “Race, Transformative Planning, and the Just City,” Planning Theory 14, no. 2 (May 2015): 157-158.

Nob Hill, San Fransisco, California Photographer: Vera Tikhonova AGORA 16 144

Kerry Park, Seattle, Washington Photographer: Nick Anello

Climate Risk & Housing Tenure: The Disparate Impact of Climate Disasters on Renters

EMILY SODERBERG Master of Urban and Regional Planning

ABSTRACT This essay highlights the specific challenges renters face following climate change – fueled disasters, how post–disaster recovery dynamics differ between homeowners and renters and across space, and the long-term impact of disasters on families who rent their homes. The legacy of housing segregation in combination with FEMA’s bias in favor of homeowners largely locks out low-income communities of color who rent from receiving the aid they need following a disaster — even though they are more vulnerable to a disaster’s impacts and more in need of public assistance. As practitioners concerned with the present and future impacts of climate change, as well as repairing the historical damage wrought by our profession on communities of color, we must resist seeing these issues as isolated and instead view them as inextricably linked.

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INTRODUCTION Between 2006 and 2020, the United States experienced 173 billion-dollar disaster events, totaling just over a trillion dollars in damages.1 2020 was a record-shattering year for costly climate change–fueled disasters with 22 billion-dollar events, which topped the previous annual records set in 2011 and 2017.2 After decades of efforts to scientifically attribute increased frequency and severity of natural disaster to anthropogenically induced climate change, this connection is better understood and more assured than ever. So too is the disparate impact of these disasters along lines of race, class, and educational attainment. According to recent research, being a person of color, renting your housing, and having lower educational attainment correlate strongly with increased risk for flooding — the most common and costly disaster in the United States.3 In 2017 alone, the cumulative impacts of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria led to just over $8.7 billion in insurance claims.4 This essay explores the intersection of housing tenure and flood risk in the United States, emphasizing the financial and institutional precarity renters face in the wake of a disaster relative to their home-owning peers. While the challenges homeowners face postdisaster should not be ignored, especially the significant and well-documented disparities many Black and brown homeowners face in accessing sufficient federal disaster aid, less attention is generally given to the plight of renters post-disaster.5 To bring to the fore the unique challenges renters face on a hotter planet, I will explore how the housing tenure landscape in the U.S. has changed in recent decades, how post-disaster recovery dynamics differ between homeowners and renters, and the long-term impact severe flooding imposes on families and individuals who rent their homes. Finally, I will discuss the imperative for emerging planners to view the many crises we face – of which the housing and climate crisis are just two – as inextricably linked. As 21stcentury practitioners, we have a duty to plan with an intersectional lens and craft solutions

that cut across numerous interlocking problems at once.

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF HOUSING TENURE IN THE UNITED STATES In 2016, the United States’ homeownership rate was at its lowest point in the last 50 years.6 Rates of homeownership remained relatively stable from the 1960s through the mid-1990s – at which point they began to sharply rise.7 The inverse of this trend is visible in Figure 1: the percentage of renter households fell dramatically between 1995 and 2005.8

Figure 1: Percent of households who rent their homes, 1965-2016 Source: Cilluffo et al., 2017

However, beginning around 2007, the Great Recession and subsequent foreclosure crisis would go on to largely erase this rise in homeownership. Between 2007 and 2010, 3.8 million homeowners would lose their properties, sending millions of families into the rental market.9 The Recession heightened long-standing racial disparities in homeownership as well. From institutionalized racial segregation in the post-Civil War era to practices such as the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) ‘redlining’ predominantly Black neighborhoods to deny them access to mortgage lending, the legacy of racial violence towards Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) throughout the 19th and 20th century AGORA 16 148

created systemic disparities in homeownership between white and non-white households that persist into the present.10 Between 1994 and 2020, homeownership rates for Black and Hispanic individuals were consistently 25-30 percent lower than those of their non-Hispanic white peers.11 While millions of households lost nearly all their home equity when housing prices collapsed in the late 2010s, households of color lost disproportionately more; at the height of the Recession, the foreclosure rate for Black households was estimated to be 8 percent, compared to roughly 4.5 percent for Hispanic and white households, respectively.

Homeowners of color today are more likely than their white peers to owe more in mortgage debt than the market value of their homes.12 The Great Recession of course impacted renters as well. According to the Hamilton Project, multi-family properties were more likely to face foreclosure than single-family properties, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that renters

accounted for up to 40 percent of the families at risk of losing their homes in 2009 by virtue of their landlords facing foreclosure.13 By 2016, 58 percent of Black and 54 percent of Hispanic households were renters, while only 28 percent of white households were – reiterating the seemingly intractable disparity in homeownership rates across race.14 Going into the Recession, renters were already disproportionately burdened by housing costs, which the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines as paying more than 30 percent of a household’s income on housing costs, including rent.15 The overall share of cost-burdened renters peaked in 2011 at 51 percent; eight years later the rate would fall to 46 percent, with 24 percent of those renters defined as severely cost-burdened, or paying more than half of their income on housing costs and rent.16 As Figure 2 demonstrates, housing expenditures are greater across the board for renters in comparison to homeowners, but both the lowest-income renters and the lowest-income homeowners bear an outsized burden in

Figure 2: Median Annual Housing Expenditures and Household Incomes in 2019, by Income and Housing Tenure (Note: Housing expenditures include shelter, utilities, and other housing expenditure.)

Source: Moss et al., 2021

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Figure 3: Median Asking Rent for Vacant Rental Units, 1997-2021 Source: “Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Third Quarter 2021”, 2021.

comparison to their peers. For the lowestincome renters, housing expenditures in 2019 consumed an astounding 60.5 percent of their average annual income; only renter households who made between $100,000 and $120,000 annually had housing costs below 30 percent.17 The substantial burden of housing costs on renters – in addition to their overall lower-income rates – place them in a much more financially precarious situation than homeowners prior to a disaster event. This lack of financial cushion hinders the disasterrecovery process for many renters, and it increases their likelihood of displacement. The COVID-19 pandemic is a recent example of how the financial insecurity resulting from high housing costs can severely limit renters’ ability to cope when an unforeseen, traumatic event occurs.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, median asking rent for vacant units skyrocketed to over $1,200, as seen in Figure 3.18 The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that 8.8 million renter households were behind on their rental payments in December 2020, and Black and Hispanic households were more than twice as likely as white households to report being behind on rent.19 Unlike homeowners,

renters do not have formal policies that allow for deferred housing payments such as mortgage forbearance.20 Therefore, while federal, state, and local eviction moratoriums slowed the pace of evictions for the sake of protecting public health, evictions were not eliminated and still occurred by the thousands throughout 2020.21 The presence of more robust protections for homeowners during the pandemic parallels the structural advantage many homeowners receive when it comes to accessing recovery assistance in the event of severe flooding.

HOUSING TENURE AND RISK, BEFORE AND AFTER FLOODING The extent of impact that a severe flooding event will have on a given community is a function of that community’s flooding-hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability.22 Hazard exposure refers to the probability and intensity of an extreme flooding event, while physical vulnerability refers to “the built environment’s ability to resist and absorb [that] hazard’s physical forces.”23 Social vulnerability, on the other hand, refers to an array of interlocking population characteristics – like a person’s

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race, ethnicity, age, income, and educational attainment – that influence one’s ability to anticipate, cope, and recover from a flooding disaster.24 On average, renters tend to be younger, people of color, and lower income – all of which positively correlate with higher incidences of renting and higher overall social vulnerability.25 “Filtering, a process in which lower-income households successively inhabit homes and neighborhoods as they deteriorate physically,” further pushes low-income and minority communities into poorer-quality homes in less desirable areas.26 Social and physical vulnerability therefore reinforce one another to expose low-income, BIPOC renter households to higher degrees of flood hazard.27 The degree of flood risk renter households face can also vary depending on the rural or urban context of their community. In a paper published last year, authors Danielle Rhubart and Yue Sun developed a model to explore what they called “the social correlates of flood risk” across the rural-urban continuum in the United States, including the extent to which a higher incidence of renter-occupied housing units correlates with an increase in a community’s flood risk.28 According to their model, urban communities with large shares of renters face higher average flood risk, while the inverse is true for rural communities with large shares of renters.29 Across the urban-rural spectrum, however, higher rates of flood risk positively correlate with higher rates of poverty and unemployment.30 Again, the authors point to research that Black households are more likely to live in low-lying, flood-prone regions after decades of housing segregation and discrimination filtered Black communities into less desirable, and riskier, areas.31 According to Rhubart and Sun’s research, lower-income communities are more likely to experience exacerbated poverty following a devastating flood event and are less likely to have flood or renters insurance.32 In fact, only 41 percent of renter households have insurance, while 85 percent of homeowners do.33 Social vulnerability to flooding disasters

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is in large part economic. Individuals and households with fewer economic resources are more likely to rent and are at the mercy of their landlords to prepare their homes to withstand severe weather events, and without flood or renters insurance, there is little recompense outside government assistance to cover personal property losses caused by flood damage. Severe flooding disasters in and of themselves do not immediately increase a community’s social vulnerability; they magnify and exacerbate existing social vulnerabilities.

Once the flood waters come, the primary government entity tasked with helping people in the immediate aftermath is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA primarily aids families and individuals whose properties were damaged by extreme flooding through the Individuals and Households Program (IHP). Both renters and homeowners can seek rental assistance and lodging expense reimbursement through IHP to cover the cost of alternative housing accommodations immediately following a storm, but homeowners can apply for further home repair and replacement assistance through the program.34 The agency clearly states that “IHP assistance is not a substitute for insurance and cannot compensate for all losses caused by a disaster…when you apply for [IHP] assistance, it must be after your insurance, or other forms of disaster assistance services, were not sufficient to cover the expenses and serious needs” directly caused by a disaster.35 This creates a catch-22 for renters: FEMA assistance is intended

Severe flooding disasters in and of themselves do not immediately increase a community’s social vulnerability; they magnify and exacerbate existing social vulnerabilities.”

as a supplement to rental or homeowners’ insurance, but because renters are on average far less likely than homeowners to have insurance at all, it is more likely that public assistance is their only opportunity to receive help. Homeowners meanwhile are more likely to receive recompense from both their private insurance coverage and FEMA’s IHP program.

Because FEMA assistance is intended to be supplemental, private insurance is the core of the United States’ flood disasterrecovery regime. Fundamentally, insurance seeks to quantify risk in order to render it manageable.36 Through the purchase of a predetermined premium, private insurance commodifies risk in order to mitigate the potentially devastating impacts of a severe flood.37 This creates a sense of security and certainty for the policyholder and incentivizes a “return to normal” after a disaster because insurance holders can seemingly depend on their pre-disaster state being restored.

This is supported by the insurance industry’s longstanding operational norm of prohibiting the improvement of damaged properties; the official policy is to restore a property back to its original condition.38 So while the impacts of a severe flooding disaster occur at a community scale, FEMA’s deference to private insurance in the initial wake of a disaster in effect individualizes the recovery process and depresses the incentive to rebuild in a manner that would improve a community’s resilience when the next flood comes.39 This reinforces a sense of ‘personal responsibility’ in managing risk whereby renters are deemed less deserving of assistance or recompense for their property losses because they should have had the foresight to purchase insurance – regardless of their ability to afford either insurance or a home in an area that is less prone to flooding. The opportunity for community-wide adaptation is diminished in service of a return to “business as usual” that largely benefits homeowners and leaves renters to fend for themselves.40 There is compelling evidence that this disasterrecovery system is exacerbating income

inequality in the United States. Authors James R. Elliot and Junia Howell developed a model to measure the long-term economic impact of infusions of FEMA assistance on county-level household incomes in the years after a natural disaster, including severe flooding events.41 Their model showed that homeowner wealth increased and renter wealth decreased in the long term after a disaster.42 As previously discussed, white households are far more likely to own their homes than BIPOC households, which means that increased wealth accumulation following a disaster flows disproportionately to white homeowners, to the exclusion of many minority renters.

In the aftermath of a flooding event severe enough to unlock a large infusion of federal recovery assistance dollars, FEMA assistance is contributing to the widening wealth gap between homeowners and renters, white and BIPOC families.

Furthermore, FEMA assistance is only available when a disaster is a presidentially declared emergency, yet weather events resulting in some degree of property damage are far more chronic than many realize. Since 2000, 99.7 percent of U.S. counties have experienced notable property damage from some type of natural hazard, flooding included.43 Therefore, many renting households are likely impacted by extreme weather events after which no FEMA assistance is available at all. This dynamic played out last June after the Detroit metropolitan area experienced widespread flooding. Over 23,000 instances of flood damage were reported to the Detroit Water and Sewage Department, with 1,000 of those instances classified as dire.44 Soon after the storm, Mayor Mike Duggan met with President Joe Biden to urge him to declare the city a major disaster area so FEMA assistance could be unlocked; “it needs to be a major disaster because [that] is what gets individual assistance to homeowners,” the Mayor told the local press.45 A little less than a month later, the severe storms were granted the presidentially declared status necessary to release the federal funds.46 The

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Mayor conceded that while the incoming FEMA grants were not available to renters for repairs or clean-up costs, FEMA could possibly offer relocation assistance if one’s home was “uninhabitable and your landlord is doing nothing.”47

CONCLUSION Absent dramatic action to halt greenhouse gas emissions and remake the federal disaster recovery system, climate change will only exacerbate the racial inequality embedded within the United States housing market.

Even as the country is increasingly a nation of renters, our primary federal agency tasked with helping families and individuals after a disaster skews overwhelmingly to those with private property assets in the form of homeownership. The legacy of housing segregation in combination with FEMA’s bias towards homeowners largely locks out lowincome communities of color who rent from receiving the aid they need following a disaster – even though they are more vulnerable to a disaster’s impacts and more in need of public assistance. As Elliot and Howell’s research demonstrates, renters of color not only are vulnerable to the impacts of flooding disasters themselves, but also are left behind in the recovery effort. In this way, “hazard recovery [is not] a unified act of resilience but a struggle by privileged residents to restore the local social order.”48 Given the blind spots in the federal disasterrecovery system, it is incumbent upon local planners and government officials to anticipate the vulnerabilities renters will face in the wake of severe flooding and institute plans to help mitigate against further marginalization during the recovery process. One possible step is to incorporate hazard mitigation and disaster recovery into the everyday activities of planners and the comprehensive planning process.49 Recurrent severe flooding in specific areas of a community is in part a land use problem; thus planners need to have a longterm vision for how they can properly “limit development in low-lying high-hazard areas

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Renters of color not only are vulnerable to the impacts of flooding disasters themselves, but also are left behind in the recovery effort. In this way, ‘hazard recovery [is not] a unified act of resilience but a struggle by privileged residents to restore the local social order.’ and guide the adoption of building codes that strengthen structures in those areas as they are rebuilt.”50 Bringing flood hazard mitigation and disaster recovery into the comprehensive planning process also recognizes that the challenges of severe flooding are highly unlikely to recede as we head further into the 21st century, and rightfully acknowledges climate change as an elemental force shaping the future of communities. In our current disaster recovery system, renters are particularly marginalized by two forces: the urge to “return to business as usual” and the focus on individualism. As planners work to incorporate flood mitigation and recovery into everyday planning processes, they should focus on strategies that resist these forces and instead enable communitycentered approaches to recovery and repair.

Disaster recovery can be re-envisioned as an opportunity to improve community resilience and preparation for the next storm, but under our current system, it is more likely to reproduce and exacerbate existing inequities.

As practitioners concerned with the present and future impacts of climate change, as well as repairing the historical damage wrought by our profession on communities of color, we must resist seeing these issues as isolated and instead view them as inextricably linked.

We must consider how disaster assistance can be remade across levels of government to ensure that our most vulnerable community

members can access the assistance they need. We must also reimagine how that assistance can be reoriented away from mere private property restoration and towards bolstering community resilience more broadly.

As disasters intensified by climate change continue to devastate communities across the United States, reimagining the role of local government in disaster recovery and resilience is of the utmost importance for the field of urban and regional planning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Emily is a second-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student fascinated by the intersection of climate adaptation, land use, and environmental justice. She came to graduate school following roughly six years of experience in the sustainability sector, including working for an industrial compost facility, for a rooftop farming company in Washington, D.C., and as an independent solar installer in her hometown of Tucson, AZ. Emily also holds a B.S. in Sustainable Built Environments with a minor in Sustainable Plant Systems from the University of Arizona.

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ENDNOTES 1. Adam Smith, “2020 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters in Historical Context,” NOAA Climate.

Gov, January 8, 2021, https://www.climate.gov/ disasters2020.

2. Smith. “2020 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters.”

3. Danielle Rhubart and Yue Sun, “The Social Correlates of Flood Risk: Variation along the US Rural–Urban Continuum,” Population and Environment 43, no. 2 (December 2021): 232–56, https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11111-021-00388-4.

4. Carolyn Kousky, Howard Kunreuther, Michael LaCourlittle, and Susan Wachter, “Flood Risk and the U.S. Housing Market,” Journal of Housing Research 29, no. sup1 (December 9, 2020): S3–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/1052 7001.2020.1836915.

5. Thomas Frank, “Advisers Rebuke FEMA for Racial Disparities in Disaster Aid,” Scientific American, January 7, 2021, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ advisers-rebuke-fema-for-racial-disparities-in-disasteraid/.

6. Emily Moss, Wendy Edelberg, Sara Estep, and Stephanie Lu, “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” Brookings, April 13, 2021, https:// www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/AComparison-of-Renters-and-Homeowners-in-RecentDecades-2.pdf.

18. United States of America, Department of Commerce, US Census Bureau, “Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Third Quarter 2021,” (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2021), https://www.census.gov/housing/ hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf.

19. United States of America, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “Housing Insecurity and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” (Washington, DC: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2021), https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/ cfpb_Housing_insecurity_and_the_COVID-19_pandemic.pdf.

20. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “Housing Insecurity and the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

21. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “Housing Insecurity and the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

22. Walter Gillis Peacock, Shannon Van Vandt, Yang Zhang, and Wesley E. Highfield, “Inequities in Long-Term Housing Recovery after Disasters,” Journal of the American Planning Association 80, no. 4 (October 2, 2014): 356–71, https://doi. org/10.1080/01944363.2014.980440.

23. Peacock et al., “Inequities in Long-Term Housing,” 356.

24. Peacock et al., “Inequities in Long-Term Housing,” 356.

25. Cilluffo, Geiger, and Fry, “More U.S. Households Are Renting.”

26. Peacock et al.,“Inequities in Long-Term Housing,” 357.

8. Cilluffo, Geiger, and Fry. “More U.S. Households Are Renting.”

29. Rhubart and Sun, “The Social Correlates of Flood Risk,” 246.

9. Moss et al., “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” 3.

30. Rhubart and Sun, “The Social Correlates of Flood Risk,” 247.

10. Moss et al., “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” 3.

31. Rhubart and Sun, “The Social Correlates of Flood Risk,” 234.

11. Moss et al., “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” 2.

32. Rhubart and Sun, “The Social Correlates of Flood Risk,” 234.

12. Moss et al., “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” 3.

33. Rhubart and Sun, “The Social Correlates of Flood Risk,” 248.

13. Moss et al., “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” 4.

34. United States of America, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, “Fact Sheet: Individuals and Households Program,” (Washington, DC: Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2019), https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/fema_ individuals-households-program_fact-sheet.pdf.

15. Moss et al., “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” 2.

16. “America’s Rental Housing 2022,” Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2022, https://www.

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17. Moss et al., “A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades,” 6.

7. Anthony Cilluffo, A. W. Geiger, and Richard Fry, “More U.S. Households Are Renting than at Any Point in 50 Years,” Pew Research Center (blog), July 19, 2017, https:// www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/19/more-u-shouseholds-are-renting-than-at-any-point-in-50-years/.

14. Cilluffo, Geiger, and Fry. “More U.S. Households Are Renting.”

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jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/reports/files/Harvard_ JCHS_Americas_Rental_Housing_2022.pdf.

27. Peacock et al., “Inequities in Long-Term Housing.”

28. Rhubart and Sun, “The Social Correlates of Flood Risk,” 238.

35. Federal Emergency Management Agency, “Fact Sheet: Individuals and Households Program.”

36. Paul O’Hare, Iain White, and Angela Connelly, “Insurance

as Maladaptation: Resilience and the ‘Business as Usual’ Paradox,” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 34, no. 6 (September 2016): 1175–93, https://doi. org/10.1177/0263774X15602022.

37. O’Hare, White, and Connelly, “Insurance as Maladaptation,” 7.

38. O’Hare, White, and Connelly, “Insurance as Maladaptation,” 9.

39. O’Hare, White, and Connelly, “Insurance as Maladaptation,” 6.

40. O’Hare, White, and Connelly, “Insurance as Maladaptation.”

41. Junia Howell and James R Elliott, “Damages Done: The Longitudinal Impacts of Natural Hazards on Wealth Inequality in the United States,” Social Problems 66, no. 3 (August 1, 2019): 448–67, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/ spy016.

42. Howell and Elliott, “Damages Done,” 457.

43. Howell and Elliott, “Damages Done,” 432.

44. Dana Afana, “Crews to Start Flood Cleaning for Detroit’s Most Vulnerable Residents,” Detroit Free Press, March 24, 2022, https://www.freep.com/story/news/ local/michigan/detroit/2021/07/13/detroit-flood-damagehelp-cleanup/7949132002/.

45. Afana, “Crews to Start Flood Cleaning.”

46. Nushrat Rahman, “FEMA, City Officials Walk Detroiters through Applying for Federal Aid,” Detroit Free Press, March 24, 2022, https://www.freep.com/story/news/ local/michigan/2021/07/30/what-know-fema-assistancelate-june-flooding-damages/5383753001/.

47. Rahman, “FEMA, City Officials Walk Detroiters through Applying for Federal Aid.” 48. Howell and Elliott, “Damages Done,” 465.

49. Peacock et al., “Inequities in Long-Term Housing,” 365.

50. Peacock et al., “Inequities in Long-Term Housing,” 365.

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Making History, Making Worlds: Narrative, Power, and Afrikaner Nationalism at the Voortrekker Monument

PEREGRINE GERETY Master of Architecture

ABSTRACT This essay recounts my experience of visiting the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria with some South African friends. Designed and built during the ascendancy of Afrikaner nationalism, the monument was intended to commemorate the Voortrekker victory over the Zulu army and subsequent settlement of the interior. Both beautiful and troubling, its architecture represents the political thought and power structure of a very specific moment, but it also projects this moment into the present, standing as both an enduring reminder of the violence of the past and a point of contestation in contemporary South African political discourse.

As such, the monument encapsulates much of the complicated experience of inheriting settler colonialism and how this experience finds expression in architecturally created space.

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OUR TIME, OUR LAND Crowning a hilltop near central Pretoria, the 40-meter granite façade of the Voortrekker Monument dominates the horizon of the surrounding Highveld. My friends tried to describe it to me before they took me there, but they struggled for words. In Afrikaans they would say imposant, but ‘imposing’ carries the wrong connotations in English. It’s not quite that, they said. It’s something else.

And it is something else. Though well-versed in the precedents of classical architecture, Gerard Moerdyk, the monument’s architect, explicitly sought to eschew historical reference.1 As a child during the Second Boer War (1899-1902), he was interned in a British concentration camp, and he joined the strident nationalist Afrikaner Broederbond in 1920.2 He intended his design to be a challenge to the colonnaded, classically inspired Union Buildings that enshrined British power in Pretoria. It was to be purely Afrikaner – an unprecedented architecture for what he believed to be an unprecedented nation. “We can only have a style of value when it grows out of our own time and our own land. Copy nothing,” he wrote.3

From a distance, the monument appears hewn from a giant cube of granite, each of its four faces featuring an enormous arched window filled with a delicate stone lattice of stars.

Intended to mark the 1938 centenary of the Voortrekker victory over the Zulu army at Blood River – one hundred years of Afrikaner settlement in the interior – the monument was a tool for nation building. Just as Charles Davis asserted that “modern architectural styles and theories of national character became mutually supportive paradigms for delineating the social boundaries of the nation-state,”4 Moerdyk calibrated his design to represent, embody, and instill those virtues which he and his colleagues saw as central to the Afrikaner volksiel: independence, endurance, faith, courage, and selflessness. Like the Great Trek that it mythologizes, the design of the monument begins with a journey.

Figure 1. A photograph of the author and his family in front of the monument

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PILGRIMAGE Leading up to the 1938 centenary celebration, construction proceeded slowly. Only the foundation stone was ready for dedication, but the event still drew over 100,000 attendants, many of whom arrived in ox-wagons, wearing traditional Voortrekker costumes for the occasion. It was a pilgrimage, and though nobody travels there by ox-wagon anymore, the act of pilgrimage remains inscribed in the composition of the site.5 In her recent study of technology and architectural design, Çelik Alexander argues that “the relationship between technics and the human seems to be subtly dialectical.”6 That is, we craft our tools and then, in subtle ways, our tools craft us back. The monument functions as a historical and pedagogical tool for nation building, created by Afrikaners for the explicit purpose of creating Afrikaners who would be able to assert their independence.7 As one nationalist wrote several years later, “The history of South Africa is really the history of the origin of a new nation…with its own calling and destiny… with its own soul and with its own body.”8 Such a soul and body require a home, and the act of pilgrimage, of visiting and revisiting this spiritual home, is an act of nourishment and fortification. Every element of the monument’s design is intended to immerse the pilgrim in this grand sense of national destiny.

To reach the monument, one must first pass through a circular perimeter wall carved with 64 covered ox-wagons in the traditional defensive laager formation. In their analysis of the formative relationship between the global North and South, Jean and John Comaroff argue that “modernity was, almost from the start, a north-south collaboration — indeed, a world-historical production – albeit a sharply asymmetrical one.”9 If this is true, then the Voortrekker laager epitomizes the avantgarde of modernity’s formation. Homefront, defensive wall, and commando battalion rolled into one, it permanently occupies that space where north and south clash against one another, where, to borrow a phrase from Frantz Fanon, the colonist fabricates the

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colonized subject.10 The stone laager carved on the monument’s perimeter wall thus marks the first movement of power through the site, establishing the terms of engagement, illustrating a world in which (again, borrowing from Fanon) “there is no conciliation possible” between the different “species” of men and women.11 Indeed, just a year after the centenary, a group of radical Afrikaner nationalists formed a pro-Nazi paramilitary organization. Recognizing the symbolic power of laager, they named their group the Ossewabrandwag, or Ox-Wagon Sentinel.12 Within the perimeter wall, one must then climb hundreds of steep granite steps. This arduous climb is punctuated at the halfway point by a larger-than-life sculpture of a Voortrekker mother holding her children close to her side. Her grasp is firm, but even as they look up at her in adoration, she does not look down. She stands tall and stares into the distance, projecting strength, courage,

Figure 2. A closeup of the Voortrekker mother Source: Lyytinen, Joonas. Voortrekker Monument.

Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. May, 2006.

and vision. Marking the second movement of power through the site, the sculpture follows the laager in defining the context by which we are to understand the monument. In their definition of the organizing principles that structure empires, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri contend that “although the practice of Empire is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace – a perpetual and universal peace outside of history.”13 While the monument is a celebration of victory in battle, we are intended to understand this battle as an act of establishing peace, as a means of securing the timeless social order in which mothers like the one depicted in bronze can and do protect their children well.

At the end of the climb, stone wildebeest flank the uppermost terrace, and the enormous head of a buffalo stands guard above the monument’s single entrance. This entrance leads into the Hall of Heroes, a cavernous, square chamber filled with the warm light of yellow glass. The Hall has three focal points:

the dome high above, a large circular opening in the center of the floor, and a marble frieze that stretches 92 meters around the perimeter of the room. 14 Despite Moerdyk’s insistence that the design had no classical precedent, it is impossible to miss the similarity between the Voortrekker frieze and Trajan’s Column. Indeed, during his studies in London, Moerdyk had seen an unfurled reproduction of the Roman column’s frieze at the Victoria and Albert Museum.15 Over the course of 27 panels, the Voortrekker frieze recounts the story of the Great Trek into the interior, synthesizing disparate accounts of a series of migrations beginning in 1835 into a single, visually coherent narrative arc.

Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. The LORD your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the LORD your God promised you.” -Joshua 23:4-5 CONVENANT

Figure 3. A view of the inside of the hall of heroes Source: A3alb. Voortrekker Museum, Pretoria, Gauteng.

Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. March 15, 2010.

Blending Calvinist theology and nationalist fervor, Moerdyk and his compatriots saw the story of the Great Trek as a direct retelling of Exodus, casting themselves as God’s covenant people and the interior as their own promised land.16 In fact, the climax of the frieze’s narrative, the events of December 16, 1838, occupy not one but two panels. The Battle of Blood River itself, depicted in spirited detail as a disorderly mob of Zulu warriors

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falling before an orderly charge of Afrikaner horsemen, is preceded by another panel dedicated entirely to the Vow. On the morning of battle, outnumbered thirty to one, the Afrikaner commandos made a solemn vow to keep December 16 as a sabbath forever if God would grant them victory.17 The Day of the Vow plays a central role in the design of the monument. Spiral staircases in towers at the Hall’s four corners lead up to a mezzanine at the base of the dome. I still experience vertigo when I remember looking down. The chevron-patterned floor tiles in the Hall create an optical illusion of movement, pulling the viewer visually down through the opening in the Hall’s floor to the chamber below, where a cenotaph, or empty tomb for the Great Trek’s martyrs, bears the inscription

“Ons vir jou Suid Afrika,” or “We for you South Africa.”18 At noon, every December 16th, a hole in the roof of the dome casts a ray of sunlight directly across the inscription.

Because the tomb remains empty, the cenotaph marks the greatest and final movement of power through the monument.

Holding no particular martyr, it could potentially hold any martyr. Ons vir jou Suid Afrika does not refer to the past, but to the present and future. The cenotaph gives a home to every martyr for the cause of Afrikaner nationalism, past or present, thereby transforming the Great Trek from a strictly historical occurrence into an eternal struggle, the world-defining posture of a promised nation within their promised land.

The cenotaph holds the power to translate the

Figure 4. View down to the cenotaph Source: Gruben, Paula. Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria, South Africa. Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. January 14, 2013.

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memory of the past into the lived reality of the present.

CONTESTS What does the Voortrekker Monument mean in contemporary South Africa? The answer depends entirely on whom you ask. On my visit to the site, I was struck by how closely the imagery and ideology paralleled the romantic stories of American pioneers that filled my own upbringing in Colorado. Descendants of the Voortrekkers commemorated by the monument, the friends who brought me are ambivalent.

Thirty years since the end of Apartheid, today’s South Africa is in many ways further along in the process of grappling with its own difficult history than the United States. Perhaps in a true spirit of reconciliation or perhaps with a pragmatic eye towards avoiding conflict, South Africa’s post-apartheid leaders have treated the monument with remarkable dispassion.

Speaking (unusually) in Afrikaans, Nelson Mandela diplomatically chose to say that the “shared experience of fighting for one’s freedom binds us together in a way that is most profound.”19 This non-confrontational stance has been somewhat successful.

Perhaps the best way to undermine the monument’s role in the power apparatus of white supremacy is to simply ignore this role altogether.

CONCLUSION Monumental buildings have the peculiar ability to inhabit multiple historical epochs and yet remain physically unchanged. It is we who change, but as we change and craft new narratives, we possess remarkable agency over the meaning of these masses of concrete and stone. With this in mind, Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges constitutes a powerful toolkit for deconstructing our

Figure 5. A view of the façade of the Voortrekker Monument Source: Aspeling, Robbie. Voortrekker Monument Side Profile. Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. July 2, 2013.

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violent pasts and constructing new futures of mutual aid and responsibility. The “view from the body,” always “complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured,”20 gives us firm ground to stand on as we engage with others who are positioned differently relative to power.

Monumental buildings have the peculiar ability to inhabit multiple historical epochs and yet remain physically unchanged.

It is we who change, but as we change and craft new narratives, we possess remarkable agency over the meaning of these masses of concrete and stone.”

Maybe our best possible reaction to the violence carved in the monument’s stone is to use it as an opportunity to interrogate our own position or, as Haraway would put it, the blood that was shed to create our point of

view. The monument was built as a boundary project,21 but Moerdyk and his associates no longer get to decide where the racial and social boundaries of the South African nation lie. The continuation of South Africa’s 30-year experiment with post-apartheid democracy testifies to the determination of so many South Africans to see these boundaries expand.

If post-apartheid democracy does survive, it will be the ultimate refutation of Fanon’s contention that no conciliation is possible.

And yet, every year on the Day of the Vow, reframed as Reconciliation Day in the new Rainbow Nation, Afrikaner nationalists still gather to watch the ray of sunlight pass over the inscription on the cenotaph.22 This is still a contested site within the contested history of a contested land. I don’t know how this contest ends, either in South Africa or here in the United States. For a child of settler colonialism, everything is complicated. The frieze is captivating, and I hate that about it. I love the monument and I hate that I love it. The beauty of it all is horrible and overwhelming. That’s the word for it: not imposing but imposant. The monument is overwhelming.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Peregrine Gerety is a Candidate in the Master of Architectue program at the University of Michigan.

His research interests include the relationship between architecture and settler colonialism and architectural possibilities for expanding our conception of kinship.

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ENDNOTES 1. Elizabeth Rankin and Rolf Michael Schneider, “‘Copy Nothing’: Classical Ideals and Afrikaner Ideologies at the Voortrekker Monument,” in South Africa, Greece, Rome, ed. Grant Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 151-153.

2. Elizabeth Rankin and Rolf Michael Schneider, From Memory to Marble: The Historical Frieze of the Voortrekker Monument (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 40, 82. Founded in 1918, the Broederbond sought to further Afrikaner interests in British-ruled South Africa. In the ensuing decades, the Broederbond became central to organizing and promoting the movement for Afrikaner nationalism and separatism.

1988): 585.

21. Haraway, “Situated Knowledges,” 595.

22. Professor Tobias Doyer and Ilse Doyer, both business consultants, in discussion with the author, December 2019.

Our visit to the monument was just a few days before December 16th. The children were all eager to return to see the sun cross the cenotaph, but even if we hadn’t had other plans, our hosts explained that there would be a very different group of people visiting the monument that day and we wouldn’t want to be there. Desmond Tutu developed the term Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural, multiracial nature of post-Apartheid South Africa. Likewise, in 1995 the government chose to rename the Day of the Vow “Reconciliation Day” to reflect its changing aspirations.

3. Rankin and Schneider, “‘Copy Nothing’,” 155.

4. Charles L. Davis, Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 7-8.

5. Rankin and Schneider, From Memory to Marble, 397.

6. Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Design Technics: Archeologies of Architectural Practice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), xi.

7. Rankin and Schneider, From Memory to Marble, 33.

8. Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 184.

9. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Theory from the South (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2012), 6.

10. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans.

Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 2.

11. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 4, 1.

12. Rankin and Schneider, From Memory to Marble, 38.

13. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), xv.

14. Rankin and Schneider, From Memory to Marble, 8-9.

15. Rankin and Schneider, “‘Copy Nothing’,” 168, 204-205.

16. Rankin and Schneider, From Memory to Marble, 24.

17. Rankin and Schneider, From Memory to Marble, 375378.

18. For reasons I cannot fathom, most authors translate the inscription as “We for thee South Africa.” I have simplified it not only because “thee” was no longer in common English usage when the inscription was written, but also because it isn’t faithful to the grammatical simplicity of Afrikaans, which makes no distinctions between second person pronouns of any kind.

19. Rankin and Schneider, “‘Copy Nothing’,” 211.

20. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies Vol. 14, no. 3 (Autumn

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Rani ki Vav, Gujarat, India Photographer:Sai Saranmegha Parimi

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