Reinventing Detroit: The road from ruin

The clank of metal on metal jars the neighbourhood awake.

The excavator unclenches its jaws and dives toward the blackened remains of a modest home on Eastwood Avenue. The machine spits out twisted piles of metal, plaster and concrete; the collapse, when it comes, is mercifully quick.

This is just one of about 10,000 homes that will come down in the next three years as Detroit embarks on a mission to excise its rot. Unprecedented in scope and watched by urban planners around the world, this extreme civic experiment revolves around the planned destruction of huge swaths of residential development.

What will replace these neighbourhoods is anyone's guess, but it could redefine the way cities around the world deal with urban blight and the exodus of residents.

Tomorrow the real conversation begins on how to revitalize Detroit's patchwork neighbourhoods, where more and more homes now stand divided by empty fields. City officials will launch a series of open houses throughout the city on how to move forward, whether by building community centres and houses, protecting open spaces, farming, or something else entirely. Nothing is off the table.

"We know that we will not be a city of two million again," says Karla Henderson, group executive of planning and facilities for the office of Mayor Dave Bing.

"So how do we redefine, or reinvent, the city of Detroit?"

Large swaths of Detroit are dying. Curbs are swallowed up by weeds. Vandals torch the sagging remains of homes waiting for demolition. Grass and gardens gain ground in communities that once boasted wall-to-wall houses; the garbage strewn across overgrown sidewalks is emblematic of their loss.

There is anger, to be sure. You can see it in the eyes of the elderly black man, sitting by old tires on his shabby front stoop and glaring beneath snow-white brows, or in the faces of three young men who linger at the edges of a demolition site, staring defiantly as the excavator swoops in.

"They stay here, but they're wary. They've heard promises before. They're tired," says Gary Wozniak, chief development officer of a local addiction centre who is leading a project to redevelop 890 hectares of mostly vacant lots in the near east side.

"There's a lot of people who still have hope, but there's a lot who have given up."

With a population that has dropped by more than half since its automotive heyday — about 800,000 now, and shrinking — Detroit admits the numbers are unlikely to recover, so the focus is on keeping those who have stayed.

The massive US$100-million demolition plan is being rolled out in phases: This year, 3,000 homes are slated to come down, and by the end of Mr. Bing's term in 2013, the goal is 10,000. The city says this will account for most of the abandoned homes, but non-profit

groups suggest more than 40,000 vacant residential structures should be torn down.

Other troubled cities, such as Flint, Mich., and Youngstown, Ohio, have embarked on similar demolition and rebuilding programs, says Robin Boyle, a professor of urban economic development at Wayne State University — though none on the same scale.

The new Detroit will appear "somewhat of a hybrid," he says. There will be the familiar components of a city, such as roads and sidewalks. But areas where significant amounts of housing have been cleared land will be "semi-rural, semi-natural."

The demolition plan does not entail razing whole neighbourhoods, so residents can stay on even in the emptiest pockets. But Tim Thorland, chairman of a trade association for community development groups, says discussions need to begin on how to "encourage and incentivize folks" to relocate from sparsely populated areas.

In addition to creating more green space, he says, the demolition plan opens the door to a variety of new land uses. His group is suggesting green venture zones and "spacious residential transition zones" as well as industry and downtown areas.

The next step is figuring out what goes where in an updated version of Detroit.

"If we're a neighbourhood that is 95% vacant land, we ought to be looking at being a naturescape or a farm, and not look at being a traditional residential neighbourhood." Mr. Thorland says.

Detroit desperately needs change. It's one of the U.S.'s emptiest and most dangerous cities, with about a third of residents living in poverty. Amid the collapse of the auto industry and fallout from the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the residential vacancy rate has soared to 20%, according to figures from research agency Data Driven Detroit.

In a spring state-of-the-city address, Mr. Bing highlighted the "harsh reality" that some neighbourhoods are no longer viable.

"Clearing what is dangerous and unproductive is the essential first step in moving the city forward," he told the National Post.

"[A]bandoned and dangerous residential structures contribute to an environment of crime, property damage and negative perceptions of the city of Detroit."

John George is a man on a mission, a tornado with a lawn mower who descends on an abandoned home in northwest Detroit in a flurry of energy. The mower grinds through thick weeds, brush, anything in its path.

Mr. George used to sell insurance and ride in a Lincoln. Now he drives a rusty red dump truck and heads a non-profit group, the Motor City Blight Busters, which enlists volunteers to tear down vacant homes and clean up trash-strewn lots. In their place, the group installs gardens, temples, artworks and parks.

"It's kind of like when you go to the dentist and you're missing every other tooth," he says. "You've got to put something in there."

Two decades ago, the Detroit native moved onto a street with a prominent crack house nearby. Police appeared to be doing nothing to eliminate the problem, he says, so one night he went to work with a hammer, plywood and paint.

"I boarded up the house and I painted the boards and I cut the grass, and a couple of neighbours joined me," Mr. George says.

"We worked about nine hours, and we cleaned up the whole block. That evening, when the drug dealers came back, they couldn't get in and they left."

Thus Blight Busters was born. The organization now boasts 10,000 volunteers and is transforming an abandoned Masonic lodge, bought for US$1, in a US$1.4-million renovation.

Mr. George says the group has demolished or restored hundreds of houses throughout the city.

Blight Busters used to work outside official channels, tearing down structures without permits because of what he calls "dysfunction" at City Hall. Now, the city gives them five houses at a time. About 80% of materials can be salvaged or recycled.

Every address, he notes, is a "separate nightmare," but the results are "a breath of fresh air."

"It's a tangible sign that things can change for the better," he says. "It brings the neighbourhood together... If a neighbourhood doesn't look like a ghetto, a lot of times it doesn't act like a ghetto."

Mr. George is part of a growing movement in Detroit, a grassroots effort to rebuild and renew a city that many refuse to leave.

Hundreds of urban gardens and farms have grown in recent years. Art projects spring up in the ruins of desolate neighbourhoods. Other groups work to promote redevelopment in pockets of the city that would otherwise wither and die.

"Detroiters, we are inventors, we are creators," Ms. Henderson says. "There are so many people doing such good work. This spirit is there."

There's Chazz Miller, known fondly as the "Picasso of Detroit," who has been building art projects with Blight Busters since 2003. He paints murals on the sides of abandoned warehouses to bring "a sense of humanity."

"It creates landmarks," he says. "It instills pride in the community."

Andrew Kemp, a high-school English teacher and urban dweller with a pioneer spirit, grows fruit and vegetables on vacant lots around his home. His "farm" bursts with pears, plums, almonds and hazelnuts, and he expects to harvest about 3,000 pounds of food this year to share with neighbours.

"It's attractive to people," he says. "They're like, 'Wow, something's going on here. Signs of life.' "

Tyree Guyton, founded the Heidelberg Project, a community art-scape that has converted a largely abandoned stretch of Heidelberg Street into a prime tourist destination. Vacant lots are now bursting with artwork.

Not everyone sees art in the darkened remains of old homes.

Police say the abandoned properties push up a crime rate that soars well above many U.S. cities. The shells of old homes draw drug users, arsonists and squatters, says Chester Logan, assistant chief of the Detroit force.

"It's not unusual" to find dead bodies in the vacant houses, he says, victims of murder or drug overdoses. When authorities raid illicit operations in empty houses and board up entrances, the criminals simply move elsewhere.

"A lot of the neighbourhoods that they're in are high-crime areas, where people really are not attuned to looking out for their neighbours," he explains.

Some of the city's emptiest communities have become downright eerie. Mr. Wozniak leads a tour through the 890-hectare Recovery-Park in the near east side, where 80% of the buildings have been demolished.

His centre, with help from partners in the non-profit sector, government, education, arts and finance, hopes to redevelop and revitalize the area with new schools, retail outlets, houses and agriculture.

He wants it to become a self-sustaining model for the rest of Detroit as more and more houses are knocked down, disrupting the traditional grid pattern. Solar, geothermal and wind power can fuel the new development.

Today, it is a grim sight. Steam rises in plumes from a sewer by an abandoned factory, whose crumbling facade reveals solid brick beneath. Sidewalks are consumed by weeds — untended by the city, Mr. Wozniak says, because "there's nobody here."

He points to a series of large open fields.

"This all used to be row upon row upon row of houses. You can see what's here. There's nothing."

Perrien Park stands at the heart of the projected development. Sounds from the occasional car are drowned out by the chirping and buzzing of crickets and cicadas.

Mr. Wozniak is pleased when he sees a clump of cattails. That means there is water so the soil is not as contaminated by Detroit's industrial legacy as he had feared.

Across the street, he gestures toward a decrepit warehouse where he hopes to install a multi-tiered urban farm. This would have aquaculture on one level, plants on the next and fish leftovers used as mulch for organic farming. The prospect of employment will help draw residents back to the area, he believes.

"The assets are not the buildings and the land," Mr. Wozniak says. "The assets are the community."

The urban farms will act like "amoebae," working their way around the remaining residential structures; indeed, in some areas, inhabited homes stand in stark contrast, with freshly mown lawns and flowers on windowsills.

Evelyn Brown, senior vice-president of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a community development and financial institution, acknowledges the piecemeal appearance of some neighbourhoods is startling.

Her group has been facilitating loans to help restart stalled communities.

"It's not like you can put a cover over certain pieces ... The city is not going to shrink," she says. "If you have lights, they run through the whole neighbourhood. They can't skip blocks."

Garbage collectors cannot efficiently service only one or two homes on a street, either, nor can the city effectively maintain sidewalks and roads in largely empty communities.

The question then is: What happens to the few homes surrounded by vacancy?

The city has said it will not force anyone to move, but Reverend Horace Sheffield III, executive director of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations, fears the demolition plan will displace the city's poorest African-American residents, some living in homes valued at US$5,000 or less.

"If you tear down everything ... where do they ultimately go?" he asks. "There are a significant number of people who have indicated

that Detroit is too black and too poor, so my concern is [the plan] would be utilized as a way to socially engineer the population of our city."

Rev. Sheffield cuts an imposing figure in Cartier glasses, plaid shorts, an immaculate white T-shirt and gold accessories. He is driven and articulate, with a grin and a handshake for everyone he passes.

His father, Horace Sheffield Jr., was a national labour movement leader and civil-rights activist who became a vice-president of the Negro American Labor Council.

His son continues the good work. He agrees the city must be cleaned up, but says a better option would be to restore damaged houses in an effort to attract new residents.

As he ambles through the broken west side, it is difficult to envision light at the end of the tunnel. On one decaying structure, dolls and stuffed toys are pinned to the door — a sign, says Rev. Sheffield, that a child recently died there.

One house is particularly dear to him. Though empty now, his grandmother's old home—which has been in the family almost a century — is still alive with memories of his childhood and with history, visited by such civil-rights icons as Martin Luther King Jr. and A. Philip Randolph.

"My grandmother used to sit right here," he recalls, conjuring images of an old woman rocking gently in her chair as a soft breeze filters in through the window. That window is now blown out, and junk blankets the scratched and filthy hardwood.

The whole structure is slowly falling apart: The paint peels, chunks of the wall lie strewn across the floor, and in the kitchen counters have been ripped out and piping stripped away. Hauntingly, a blue-flowered curtain still hangs intact.

The city resembles post-Katrina New Orleans, Rev. Sheffield says sadly.

"The only difference is we didn't have a hurricane."

There is a farm on Temple Street where black-eyed Susans, apple trees, lilac, kale, tomatoes and butterflies are surrounded by a white picket fence.

Across the street, wild flowers more than a metre tall protrude from a mound of earth. The curbs have been largely eaten by grass, though the faint outlines of driveways are still visible in some spots.

In the late-afternoon rush hour, the only sounds are of crickets, while the imposing outline of Detroit's iconic blight — the hulking and dilapidated shell that was once Michigan Central Station — is visible above the trees.

Elsewhere in the city, Mr. George's legion of volunteers continue to chip away at the destruction, armed with hammers, nails and seeds of their own. Their work is "a breath of fresh air," he contends: a sign that things can change for the better.

"We just love the city," he says simply.

"We want to do whatever we can to cause it to be whole again."