Single-Family Homes in Campau/Banglatown: Values of Placemaking, Homemaking and Placekeeping in a Neighborhood of Artists and Immigrants in 21st Century Detroit
Abstract
Detroit’s shrinking size has resulted in an overabundance of single-family homes in this single-family home metropolis. On the one hand, the abandoned houses have led to Detroit being declared bankrupt, while on the other hand, it has paved the way for other ways of working and living with and using houses and vacant lots that may not make an immediate profit on the real estate market and may be considered “unreal” estate (Herscher, 2012), but that keep people together as a neighborhood and community. This thesis looks at the circumstances in which residents become homeowners and how as homeowners, artists and immigrants ascribe value to single-family homes and how they make place with their homes in a neighborhood context. The focus is on homeowners’ everyday practices that determine the value of single-family homes when the latter is not considered use value or economic value in a real estate market, but recognized as a social and cultural value. The field of research is Campau/Banglatown, a neighborhood on Detroit’s east side that has been characterized over the years by shifting immigrant communities. The everyday practices of immigrants and artists, including urban gardening, building community- and workspaces, and community engaged art projects, were part of my observation and concern as a single-family homeowner and non-permanent resident of a research residence, FILTER Detroit www.filterdetroit.org, in this neighborhood I wanted to find out more about how living and working in this neighborhood is connected to the single-family homes, and how the different communities’ social and cultural activities inform a sense of belonging in this diverse neighborhood. As an ethnographic field research between 2009 until 2019, the research is approached from three different perspectives. From a historical perspective, focusing on how Detroit evolved into a single-family metropolis and how that affected urban development over the years; from the perspective of the real estate market and its stakeholders and how they deal with single-family homes in post-industrial Detroit; and from the perspective of Campau/Banglatown’s own residents who own homes, with special attention paid to artists and Bangladeshi American immigrants. More specifically, it analyzes how homeowners use their homes to connect to and engage within their neighborhood to form social spaces. It also asks what role they play in a neighborhood, i.e., as creative placemakers, homemakers or placekeepers. In Chapter Two, the theoretical framework, current concepts of value are discussed, from single family homeownership to social capital, migration, community, and social space in neighborhoods. Moreover, it addresses the role of artists in creative placemaking and its consequences for gentrification. Chapter Three contextualizes the historical development of single-family homes in the city of Detroit as part of an industrial, multi-ethnic, shrinking city as well as the driver of a foreclosed city. Chapter Four analyzes current residential real estate developments in Detroit. In Campau/Banglatown newer residents consider visual maintenance and care, DIY culture, density, walking infrastructures, and cultural familiarity as values that inform social spaces in their own community and neighborhood. In the context of placemaking with art, Chapter Five explores how artists work with single-family homes in Detroit. There are different ways artmaking with homes in Detroit unfolds in different neighborhoods. The chapter documents how in Campau/Banglatown artmaking with homes turns into both placemaking with art and homemaking with art. It is this individual strategy of homemaking that informs social space and the neighborhood’s stability. It also shows how the artist’s role as homeowner has changed in the context of the neighborhood’s development sometimes from a creative placemaker to a real estate developer. The final chapter critically discusses placemaking, homemaking and placekeeping in the context of cultural displacement. It considers the attribution of social and cultural values to single-family homes, which consequently become components of economic value, while real estate prices have risen moderately in Campau/Banglatown. The chapter concludes that creative placemaking has become part of an everyday practice of care, a form of placekeeping, in the sense of caring for cultural traditions and residential needs, even while it may cause a constant process of inclusion and exclusion.
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3 Single-Family Homes in Campau/Banglatown: Values of Placemaking, Homemaking and Placekeeping in a Neighborhood of Artists and Immigrants in 21st Century Detroit. Doctoral Thesis at HafenCity University Hamburg Kerstin Niemann First Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monika Grubbauer Second Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kathrin Wildner Addtional Professor: Prof. Dr. Volker Kirchberg
4 A thesis submitted to the doctoral committee of the HafenCity Universität Hamburg in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. phil.) from Kerstin Niemann. Doctoral Committee: First Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monika Grubbauer Second Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kathrin Wildner Additional Professor: Prof. Dr. Volker Kirchberg Chair: Prof. Dr. Dr. Raphael Schwegmann Hamburg, September, 28, 2022 Date of the disputation: November 29, 2022 Imprint HafenCity University Hamburg Metropolitan Culture (dt. Kultur der Metropole) Henning-Voscherau-Platz 1 20457 Hamburg © 2023, Metropolitan Culture (dt. Kultur der Metropole), HafenCity University Hamburg DOI: 10.34712/142.38 Copyright “Single-Family Homes in Campau/Banglatown: Values of Placemaking, Homemaking and Placekeeping in a Neighborhood of Artists and Immigrants in 21st Century Detroit” by Kerstin Niemann is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
5 Summary Detroit’s shrinking size has resulted in an overabundance of single-family homes in this singlefamily home metropolis. On the one hand, the abandoned houses have led to Detroit being declared bankrupt, while on the other hand, it has paved the way for other ways of working and living with and using houses and vacant lots that may not make an immediate profit on the real estate market and may be considered “unreal” estate (Herscher, 2012), but that keep people together as a neighborhood and community. This thesis looks at the circumstances in which residents become homeowners and how as homeowners, artists and immigrants ascribe value to singlefamily homes and how they make place with their homes in a neighborhood context. The focus is on homeowners’ everyday practices that determine the value of single-family homes when the latter is not considered use value or economic value in a real estate market, but recognized as a social and cultural value. The field of research is Campau/Banglatown, a neighborhood on Detroit’s east side that has been characterized over the years by shifting immigrant communities. The everyday practices of immigrants and artists, including urban gardening, building communityand workspaces, and community engaged art projects, led me as both a homeowner and non-permanent resident of a research residency in the neighborhood, to want to find out more about how living and working in this neighborhood is connected to the single-family homes, and how the different communities’ social and cultural activities inform a sense of belonging in this diverse neighborhood. As an ethnographic field research between 2009 until 2019, the research is approached from three different perspectives. From a historical perspective, focusing on how Detroit evolved into a single-family metropolis and how that affected urban development over the years; from the perspective of the real estate market and its stakeholders and how they deal with singlefamily homes in post-industrial Detroit; and from the perspective of Campau/Banglatown’s own residents who own homes, with special attention paid to artists and Bangladeshi American immigrants. More specifically, it analyzes how homeowners use their homes to connect to and engage within their neighborhood to form social spaces. It also asks what role they play in a neighborhood, i.e., as creative placemakers, homemakers or placekeepers. In Chapter Two, the theoretical framework, current concepts of value are discussed, from single family homeownership to social capital, migration, community, and social space in neighborhoods. Moreover, it addresses the role of artists in creative placemaking and its consequences for gentrification. Chapter Three contextualizes the historical development of single-family homes in the city of Detroit as part of an industrial, multi-ethnic, shrinking city as well as the driver of a foreclosed city. Chapter Four analyzes current residential real estate developments in Detroit.
6 In Campau/Banglatown newer residents consider visual maintenance and care, DIY culture, density, walking infrastructures, and cultural familiarity as values that inform social spaces in their own community and neighborhood. In the context of placemaking with art, Chapter Five explores how artists work with single-family homes in Detroit. There are different ways artmaking with homes in Detroit unfolds in different neighborhoods. The chapter documents how in Campau/Banglatown artmaking with homes turns into both placemaking with art and homemaking with art. It is this individual strategy of homemaking that informs social space and the neighborhood’s stability. It also shows how the artist’s role as homeowner has changed in the context of the neighborhood’s development sometimes from a creative placemaker to a real estate developer. The final chapter critically discusses placemaking, homemaking and placekeeping in the context of cultural displacement. It considers the attribution of social and cultural values to single-family homes, which consequently become components of economic value, while real estate prices have risen moderately in Campau/Banglatown. The chapter concludes that creative placemaking has become part of an everyday practice of care, a form of placekeeping, in the sense of caring for cultural traditions and residential needs, even while it may cause a constant process of inclusion and exclusion.
7 Zusammenfassung Im Stadtbild Detroit zeigen sich die Auswirkungen der massiven Schrumpfung besonders durch den Leerstand und Verfall von alten Industriehallen und Einfamilienhäusern. Die ehemals blühende Industriestadt, die nach wie vor eine Einfamilienhaus-Metropole ist, kämpfte seit Jahren gegen sinkende Immobilienpreise im Stadtkern. Das Überangebot von Einfamilienhäusern führte unter anderem dazu, dass Detroit für bankrott erklärt wurde. Andererseits ebnete es den Weg für neue Formen der Nutzung der Einfamilienhäuser und leer stehenden Gebäude und Grundstücke, insbesondere durch neu hinzugezogene Künstler*innen und Migrant*innen. Diese zu Arbeitsund Gemeinschaftszwecken umgewidmeten Häuser und Grundstücksflächen würden vielleicht auf dem lokalen Immobilienmarkt keinen unmittelbaren Gewinn erzielen. Aber die als „unreal estate“ (Herscher, 2012) bezeichneten Immobilien prägen den gemeinschaftlichen Zusammenhalt eines Stadtteils, durch nachbarschaftliche Projekte, kreative Ortsgestaltung und offene Nutzungsformen und wirken somit positiv auf den sozialen und kulturellen Wert einer Immobilie ein. Der Schwerpunkt dieser Untersuchung liegt auf den Alltagspraktiken von Hauseigentümer*innen, die den Wert ihrer Einfamilienhäuser und Grundstücksflächen täglich gestalten, obschon diese nicht als Nutzwert oder wirtschaftlicher Wert auf einem Immobilienmarkt gezählt wird. In der Arbeit wurden die Umstände untersucht, warum Menschen, insbesondere die neu hinzugezogenen Künstler*innen und Einwanderer*innen zu Hauseigentümer*innen werden. Welche Werte schreiben diese ihren Einfamilienhäusern im Kontext ihrer Nachbarschaft zu? Das Forschungsgebiet ist Campau/Banglatown, ein Viertel im Osten von Detroit, das im Laufe des letzten Jahrhunderts von wechselnden Zuwander*innengruppen geprägt wurde. Der Umgang der Migrant*innen und Künstler*innen mit und um ihre Hauser inspirierte mich - selbst Eigentümerin eines Einfamilienhauses, das als Künstlerresidenz operiert - diese Nachbarschaft ethnografisch zu beforschen. Die Arbeit untersucht und diskutiert welche Rollen sie in der Nachbarschaft einnehmen als kreative Ortsund Raumgestalter*innen (creative placemakers), Hausbesitzer*innen (homemakers) oder Raumund Ortspfleger*innen (placekeepers). Die Untersuchung wurde als Feldforschung zwischen 2009 und 2019 aus drei verschiedenen Perspektiven durchgeführt. Eine historischen Perspektive nimmt die Entwicklung Detroits zu einer Einfamilienhaus-Metropole in den Blick und untersucht wie diese Wohnform die Stadtentwicklung und konkret den Stadtteil geprägt hat. Aus der Perspektive des Immobilienmarktes fragt sie, wie sich der Wert der Einfamilienhäusern im postindustriellen Detroit verändert hat. Eine dritte Perspektive ist die der Bewohner*innen von Campau/Banglatown, der Eigentümer*innen von
8 Einfamilienhäusern, mit besonderem Augenmerk auf Künstler*innen und Zuwander*innen aus Bangladesch. Placemaking, homemaking und placekeeping sind individuelle Strategien und alltägliche Praxen in dieser Nachbarschaft, die den sozialen Raum und die Stabilität des Viertels prägen. Diese Methoden das Leben in einer Einfamilienhaus-Nachbarschaft zu gestalten führen zu einem ständigen Prozess der Inklusion und Exklusion von alten oder neuen Stadtteilbewohner*innen. Zudem zeigt die Arbeit und hinterfragt, den Rollenwandel der Künstler*innen als Hauseigentümer*innen im Kontext der Entwicklung der Nachbarschaft, und zwar von kreativen Ortsgestalter*innen zu Grundstücksund Immobilienentwickler*innen. Indes lässt sich in Campau/Banglatown eine Wertsteigerung von Einfamilienhäusern durch soziale und kulturelle Prozesse beobachten. Kulturelle Werte werden in ökonomische Werte transformiert, was sich auf dem lokalen Immobilienmarkt in Form von Preissteigerungen und einer gestiegener Nachfrage widerspiegelt.
9 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people, without whom I would not have been able to complete this research! My gratitude to my professors and supervisors for their invaluable patience and feedback is beyond words. I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Monika Grubbauer, whose insight and knowledge of the subject matter guided me through this research to the end, Prof. Dr. Kathrin Wildner for her enthusiasm for the project, for her support, encouragement, and patience, Dr. Lisa Kosok for her feedback, support, and understanding, and Prof. Dr. Gesa Ziemer, who made this research possible. Special thanks are due to Prof. Dr. Volker Kirchberg, who always supported me with insightful feedback and worked with me on related areas of knowledge, even in times of doubt and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you to my colleagues from the study program Metropolitan Culture at HafenCity University Hamburg, who have supported me. And especially to Prof. Dr. Dr. Raphael Schwegmann, Janina Kriszio and Nicolas Petzold. Special thanks to Dr. Nora Küttel, Dr. Joshua Akers, Franziska Klose, Bettina Steinbrügge, and Cordula Ditz (and thank you for the night shift) who, through their own research and art practices, have contributed with their insights, feedback, and practical handling of the situation. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to those who helped to bring this complex project on the road. I could not have undertaken this journey without my interview partners, the residents of Campau/Bangaltown and Hamtramck, and the artists and makers in Detroit whose feedback, discussions, insights and occasional criticism helped bring this project to life. Major thanks go to Liza Bielby, Mitch Cope, Cornelius Harris, Dimitri Hegemann, Marta Hrecznyj, Richard Feldman, Chido Johnson, Faina Lerman, Katie McGowan, Luke Niewandomski, Gina Reichert, Corine Vermeulen, Jamie Wagner, Walter Wasacz and Graem Whyte. Moreover, thank you all for helping to integrate FILTER Detroit as a research residency into Detroit and connecting it to different contexts and formats. I would like to thank my friends, especially Sylvia Drijvers, Deb Frank, Annette Franklin-Stokes, Chris Köver, Babsi Kröger-Thies with Osman, Christiane Opitz and Nida Yapar, who supported me, encouraged me, and believed that I would finish this work, and sometimes took care of my daughter Hannah. Hannah Kumba Niemann, without you this research would not have been possible. You have showed me how to engage with Detroit and how to stop and observe it patiently. Without
10 knowing it, you opened doors to new encounters and subject matters that I would not have seen or experienced without you. Thank you for your understanding. I know that this long journey has not always been easy for you as child and daughter, because you had to put up with my stress and moans. And my biggest thanks to my family for all the support you have shown me throughout this research. My biggest thank goes to my sister Annette and her family who always shoveled the way free for me to work on my dissertation as a single mother. Major thanks to my brother and his family as well as to Denis and Carol, my second parents in Minnesota, and their children. Their belief in me has kept my spirits and motivation high during this process. So, a very big thank you to: Annette Niemann with Nils Kamprad-Papendorf, Erik Niemann and Antonia Niemann, Ulrich and Ellen Niemann and Denis and Carol Holthaus with Russ Holthaus, Wanda HolthausMonroe, Jackie Mueller and Jill Tilbury. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my editor Ted Fendt as well as Julia Englert, who helped me with the design.
11 Table of Contents Prologue From FILTER Detroit to Ethnographic Field Research with SingleFamily Homes Opportunity in Crisis Campau/Banglatown and Hamtramck FILTER Detroit Ethnographic Field Research in Campau/Banglatown Thesis Structure State of Research and Theoretical Framework From Value to Unvalue to Value Single-Family Homeownership Social Capital: Migration and Community Social Space in Neighborhoods and Sense of Belonging Gentrification and the Role of Artists in Creative Placemaking Detroit – A Single-Family Home Metropolis The Origins of the Single-Family Home From Colonial Fortification to Farming The Privatization of Land Single-Family Homes in an Industrial City Early Industrialization The Auto Industry Single-Family Homes in a Multi-Ethnic City The German Settlement The Polish Settlement The African American Settlement Single-Family Homes in a Shrinking City Suburbanization Urban Reinvestment Single-Family Homes in a Foreclosed City Foreclosure Crisis Auctions and Speculation 1.0. 2.0. 3.0. 17 21 21 24 27 31 33 35 35 39 42 46 49 55 56 58 60 65 65 67 71 72 75 77 83 84 86 88 89 91 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.1.1. 3.1.2. 3.2.1. 3.2.2. 3.3.1. 3.3.2. 3.3.3. 3.4.1. 3.4.2. 3.5.1. 3.5.2.
18 Figure 1.0: Emily Jane Wood, Anatomy of a Hamtramck House, pen on paper, 2015. Courtesy of Emily Jane Wood. The black and white drawing showed the front of a two-family home in detail. A broken attic window, litter on the lawn, and the way the different kinds of siding were peeling off reminded me of how I myself perceived the exterior of the single-family homes in Campau/Banglatown.
19 The handwritten comments next to the house described the imperfect condition of these homes and the makeshift ways damage to them is fixed and the conditions former renters or residents have left them in. Wood’s comments also show that she has given a lot of thought to the condition of the houses. I had to get to know the local artist and her relation to family homes in Hamtramck, because with her art she has indirectly highlighted the social and cultural context to which these homes belong. I reached out to Wood by e-mail and just two days later, Hannah and I accepted her kind invitation to tell us something about her obsession with painting homes, iconic buildings and trash in the city of Hamtramck over the past two decades. As Hannah colored in one of Wood’s homemade Hamtramck house templates, I dug excitedly through her photography and sketch archive of Hamtramck house facades. Corner buildings, single-family homes, duplexes, streetscapes, churches, public buildings, alleyways, front gardens, and trash – Wood’s love for detail and color capture the unique and individually designed anatomy of these homes and the life around and in them, as well as the landscape of this neighborhood in paintings, on coffee mugs, drawings and comics. Again, I found myself quietly thinking: “Someone has to archive this body of work, because she’s documented the visual development of single-family housing in the area in such detail over the past two decades.” Her perspective is certainly that of a white, educated, middle class woman, I thought, but while talking to her about her art practice, I found out that she is untrained and holds a B.A. in Anthropology and an M.A. in Molecular Biology from Wayne State University. Over the years, she has nevertheless become a quite popular local folk artist both for her own fascination with the city’s streetscapes and her willingness to do commissioned work, for example for homeowners painting their houses. For me, a house (like the mind) contains all the tools for living. Also like our minds, our houses are assembled by us but they also dictate how we will live in the future. So, we shape our homes, and our homes shape us. We live within our mental constructs in the same way we physically inhabit the homes we build. (Wood, n.d.) She stresses that how we shape and design our homes as individuals determines how we shape our future. She takes the perspective of an individual and that individual’s lifestyle, connecting it to the way personal choices about how one lives one’s life affect communal ways of living together. However, Wood’s relationship with Hamtramck’s houses was coming to an end. As I became familiar with her body of work, she explained to me that she would be cleaning out her studio and living space over the next few months in order to move in with her boyfriend and his daughter in a much larger space in St. Clair Shores, a Detroit suburb next to Lake St. Clair.
20 Ali and Emily are just two examples of residents – an artist and a newly arrived Bengali American immigrant – whose lives and lifestyles have been shaped through their connections to their homes. They may have different ideas about how they use single-family homes in the context of their neighborhoods, but they are both connected to them through social and economic relations. These particular neighborhoods, Campau/Banglatown and the city of Hamtramck, on Detroit’s east side, have been characterized over the years by shifting immigrant communities. Still, residents occupy the same type of housing – single and two-family homes – built about a century ago. Why and how can these houses function for such distinctive uses? 1.1.
21 From FILTER Detroit to Ethnographic Field Research with Single-Family Homes In this chapter, I describe the setting of my research starting from my own home in Detroit. I give an introduction into my research topic and explain my approach with its objectives and questions. Opportunity in Crisis There is hardly any metropolitan area in the United States with an equally high density of singlefamily homes as Detroit. Shortly after the US’s Subprime Mortgage Crisis, the New York Times article “For Sale: the $100 House” (Barlow, 2009) sparked national and international media attention on devalued single-family homes in East Detroit that had been successfully taken over by a ‘stable’ Bangladeshi American community and, more recently, by artists and cultural entrepreneurs from Detroit. The author of the Times piece, who had moved from Brooklyn to Detroit before the financial crisis, refers to the enthusiastic take-over of abandoned homes as a “strange, new American dream” where anything “imaginable” is possible (Barlow, 2019). He wonders what the new homeowners’ motives are for buying such an inexpensive house, whose initial market value is only $100: “if they were actually worth anything they would cost real money, right?” (Barlow, 2019). Barlow indirectly addresses concerns about investing in something so cheap. He questions the value of a house in a city that has been portrayed for years as run-down, dilapidated, and ruinous because of its abundance of empty single-family homes and industrial buildings. From an economic point of view, it does not make sense to invest in a house whose appraised value has decreased and whose market price is lower than, for example, the mortgage previously taken out. But with what notions of value have the new homeowners in the article been buying vacant homes? Barlow tries to explain their motivation as “new ways of shaping the urban environment,” “the opportunity to accustom and renovate the house the way you want it to be” and “being part of a community” (Barlow, 2009). Detroit’s shrinking over the past decades and the fact that one-third of its single-family homes have undergone foreclosure has resulted in an overabundance of available residential properties (Deng et al., 2017). The city’s post-industrial status as a shrinking or distressed city and its decrease in property values have been widely discussed in urban and architectural theory (Oswalt & Rieniets, 2006; Thomas, 2013; Sugrue, 1996). On a more positive note, Detroit is seen as a site of possibility, a city whose decline enriches urban studies (Dewar et al., 2015, pp. 31). There is hype predicting Detroit’s return and that from the point of view of a growing chorus of optimists, the time is right to invest in the city (Austen, 2014). As performance artist and activist 1.1. 1.0.
22 Invincible (2008) states, Detroit has an unofficial motto: “Opportunity in Crisis.”1 Because of urban decline and distressed conditions and despite its state of bankruptcy, the city of Detroit still has a diverse array of residents living and driving the city (Galster, 2012). In Detroit, concepts of citizenship are linked to community building and the city’s grassroots leadership, especially in terms of how racially divided it is (Ward, 2011). From do-it-yourself culture to the sense of the city’s history and the ability to salvage old materials, Kimberly Kinder (2016) describes the DIY attitude of Detroit’s citizens as a phenomenon that has become routine in deteriorating American cities where public services no longer provide order and safety. Whether it is residents, artists, or immigrants who are invested economically, culturally, or socially in the city, they all, along with many others, believe the city has a future. The specific urban conditions in a post-industrial metropolis like Detroit – a high unemployment rate, school closures, a high rate of housing vacancies, and a lack of public transportation and fresh food – may have been favorable to artists whose practices are influenced by and participate in their daily environment (Kirchberg, 2020). Particularly in diverse and immigrantrich communities, community-based art projects have often been cited as “catalysts for positive change”, which focus attention on the social impact of artmaking (Helicon Collaborative, 2017). Recent research on artists and cultural production has critically contextualized ownership by and the property values of artists as investors (Akers, 2017a), as creative citizens prioritizing an urban middle-class (Peck, 2007), or triggers of gentrification (Herscher, 2012; Carducci, 2015; Flood & Redaelli, 2016). Carducci (2014, p. 150) refers to artist practices that include social empowerments that implement creative neighborhood stabilization strategies to revitalize as “Real Utopias” that bear a potential for overall human well-being in post-bankruptcy Detroit. This describes the activities of artists in the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood in Detroit, who have worked with single-family homes and vacant lots. For him, they are part of an aesthetic community (Carducci, 2012) that envisions life after capital, in which the “Art of the Common” (Carducci, 2014) is extended to the homes and vacant lots in a space like this neighborhood. Yezbick (2020) argues against this perspective and stresses that as long as blight in Detroit is considered the product of a lack of care, creative intervention to blighted properties runs the risk of being instrumentalized by the state and neoliberal partners in a market-driven value regime. A more recent urban recovery narrative is about the influence immigrant communities have had on making places in Detroit’s neighborhoods by improving the economy (Tobocman, 2014). One advocate for Detroit’s immigrant-inclusive economy, Global Detroit, has focused over the 1 Liner statement of Invincible’s 2008 released Hip Hop album “Shape Shifters”, Emergence Music, Detroit.
23 past ten years on establishing immigrant-inclusive institutions and creating equal opportunities for newly arriving immigrants in Michigan (Global Detroit, 2020). Politics and the inclusionary and exclusionary practices of a dominant social group have the power to determine the degree to which migration can inscribe itself in a city (Buckel, 2014, p. 160). In critical migration studies, it is important to recognize the active role of migrants in the production of space (Buckel, 2014, p. 161). In studies of the neoliberal restructuring of cities, migrants’ participation tends to be reduced to their mere presence. For example, as fulfilling economic demands for low-skilled or skilled labor, as is the case in Campau/Banglatown. Moreover, migrants are often identified as a mere resource contributing to the shaping of creative milieus (Buckel, 2014, p. 161). Çaglar & Glick Schiller (2018) challenge this perception of migrants as participants in a pre-defined city structure. Along with Buckel (2014), they have used multiscalar analysis2 to study how migrants are actors of global development on many levels (Çaglar & Glick Schiller, 2018). They identify migrants as active “multiscalar” participants in city-making because of their “relationships to each other and within various hierarchies of networks of power” in a “sociospatial sphere” of practice (Caglar & Glick Schiller, p. 8). Various art and community-engaged projects that consider the equity of residents or the inclusion of immigrant communities in the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood as well as their needs, work with immigrants as multiscalar participants in the “sociospatial sphere” of single-family homes (Knight Foundation, 2022; Global Detroit, 2020). What do these single-family houses mean for different people? Why are they in demand? What role do they play in a neighborhood? In my research, I focus on the ways in what values are attributed to single-family homes from a historical, economic, and ethnographic perspective. I look at homemaking and placemaking practices of homeowners and users. Single-family homes in Detroit have previously been analyzed in relation to land justice (Safransky, 2018), development and race (Thomas, 2013; Sugrue, 1996), as part of an investment strategy (Deng et. al., 2017), through gentrification (Dewar et.al., 2015; Elliot, 2012), in the context of vacancy as part of beautiful ruins (Apel, 2015), through “alternative urbanisms” (Herscher, 2012), and as becoming part of a “Real Utopia” through the way artists have made use of them (Carducci, 2014). In this context, the values of single-family homes are often discussed as resulting from neoliberal politics and the influence of private investors (Peck & Whiteside, 2016; Akers, 2013). But is there not something aside from economic constraints that makes these single-family homes attractive to individual residents and community groups? I assume that artists and immigrants have not merely been buying and auctioning single-family homes in the Campau/Banglagtown neighborhood because of low real estate prices or to achieve 2 Multiscalar analysis is a two-fold methodological framework. This method avoids understanding migration as an act of integration into a foreign nation-state identity or as a shared common homeland identity (Çaglar & Glick Schiller, 2018). It also does not borrow from the concept of ethnic community as a form of shared ethnic identity in the diaspora.
24 a quick return on investment. I want to find out what it is specifically that connects them to these houses, that just corresponds to a greater meaning or value. This is why I chose to observe how they achieve this. What kind of values do they attribute to single-family homes and lots? I would like to look at this by analyzing how single-family homeowners and occupants use their homes in everyday life in this neighborhood. Furthermore, I would like to find out how this production of meaning relates to placemaking and neighborhood residents’ sense of belonging. Moreover, it is not clear what kind of role recently arrived migrants – artists and Bangladeshi American immigrants – obtain as the homeowners of single-family homes. For example, are they placemakers or have they become active real estate developers of the neighborhood? There has not yet been a comprehensive study of the values homeowners and users in Campau/ Banglatown attribute to single-family homes beyond economic real estate and market values. Therefore, this thesis addresses how neighborhood residents and homeowners make space and build community (Zilberstein, 2019; Helicon Collaborative, 2017; Carducci, 2012). It explores different kinds of everyday urbanism in relation to single-family homes (Chase et al.,1999). More specifically, it analyzes how homeowners use their homes to connect to and engage within their neighborhood. Bourdieu’s theory of social space (1986) and the different forms of capital3 he identifies support the basic theoretical framework of this analysis. Do social activities around single-family homes contribute to social cohesion (Forrest & Kearns, 2001) or inform a sense of belonging (Blokland & Nast, 2014) in this diverse neighborhood? What follows is intended to find out how all of these findings affect the value of the single-family homes in the neighborhood. Campau/Banglatown and Hamtramck Campau/Banglatown is just one of many neighborhoods4 in the city of Detroit. Although it is in Detroit, it shares the same zip code, 48212, as the neighboring city of Hamtramck, which is located to the east. The city of Hamtramck is a city within the city of Detroit and borders on their westside with the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood, which is part of the city of Detroit. The City of Detroit refers to the municipality of District 3 as Campau/Banglatown. Others refer to it as Banglatown, i.e., a community of Bangladeshi American residents who live in the Campau/ Banglatown, Davison, and Buffalo Charles neighborhoods (Global Detroit, 2018; goodgood and Global Detroit, 2017). This has also been the case for residents, members of community initiatives, 3 For Bourdieu (1986) a material resource is a form of economic capital because it can be directly converted into money, especially in the case of property rights, which is an institutionalized form of economic capital (1986, p. 242). 4 There exist different definitions of what is meant by a neighborhood. They are for example defined by social communities, historical associations or urban planning decisions. In this case, I use the term neighborhood as an municipal term thatisdefinedgeographically,justasthecityofDetroitreferstoitsurbandistrictsintheirsmallestunitsasneighborhoods. 1.2
25 and other stakeholders whom I interviewed or talked to about the neighborhood. Alexa Bush, urban design director of the East Region for the city of Detroit, explains that the city defines these areas geographically. Therefore, the city of Detroit refers to the neighborhood as Campau/ Davison/Banglatown to avoid territorial identification or discussions with the different ethnic communities (A. Bush, personal communication, March 15, 2019). In this thesis, I will refer to the neighborhood as Campau/Banglatown unless quoting or using someone else’s materials. For people who do not live in either of these places, it is difficult to tell the difference between the city of Hamtramck and the neighborhood of Campau/Banglatown in Detroit, even though their residents and houses are governed by two different municipalities. The architecture of the residential homes and their layout are similar. The stores, which cater to everyday needs, merge into each other on Conant Street and Joseph Campau Avenue, which are both located in Hamtramck and Detroit. Residents of both municipalities use schools, the library, the recreation center, the local bars, grocery stores, clothing stores and other amenities in both municipalities. However, Hamtramck is more densely populated than Campau/Banglatown and, with 2.1 square miles, it is also limited in space. In 2010, the United States Census counted 22,423 people living in the city of Hamtramck with 53.6% of them Caucasian (European, American, and Middle Eastern ancestry), 19.6% African American,5 and 21.5% Asian American (City of Hamtramck, 2021). According to the most recent census data from 2020, the city’s population increased to a total of 28,433 residents, a 26.8% rise over the past decade. From 2005 until 2021 the city was run by a Polish American mayor, Karen Majewski. Neighborhood Public Radio reporters noted that Hamtramck is now closing in on a majority Muslim population, with Bangladeshis and Yemenis as the largest growing immigrant groups (Block & Nadworny, 2017). In 2021, Amer Ghalib, an immigrant from Yemen, became Hamtramck’s mayor (Warikoo, 2021). Reporting in these recent changes, Neighborhood Public Radio reporters noted that Hamtramck is now closing in on a majority Muslim population, with Bangladeshis and Yeminis as the largest growing immigrant groups (Block & Nadworny, 2017) In contrast to Hamtramck, half of Campau/Banglatown’s population of 5,000 residents is identified as Bangladeshi American, followed by large numbers of African American, Yemeni, Polish, Bosnian and other diverse residents (City of Detroit, n.d.b). Like Hamtramck, the “newcomer community” (Imam Mika’il Stewart Saadiq, personal communication, March 14, 2018) Campau/Banglatown has been continuously shaped by migration: in the 18th century by Germans, during the 19th century by Poles, by African Americans during the second wave of the great migration, and by war refugees fleeing economic instability or non-democratic regimes in 5 TheAfricanAmericanpopulation,whichmakesupthemajorityofresidentsinDetroit,hasalwaysbeenpartofthe Hamtramckcommunity,buthasneverbeenamajoritythere(G.Kowalski,personalcommunication,March9,2018;Sugrue 1996).
26 Europe and Yemen in the 1980s and 1990s. While single and two-family homes alternate along Hamtramck’s streets, the majority of the 1,155 homes in Campau/Banglatown are single-family (City of Detroit Government, n.d.). Historically, the neighborhood emerged because of inner-city migratory movements (see Chapter 3.3.) of former European migrants or African Americans moving away from poor living conditions in Detroit’s city center. The most recent wave of immigrants, the Bangladeshi American community, started to move from Queens, New York to Hamtramck and Campau/ Banglatown in the late 1990s and early 2000s in what has been referred to as a mini exodus, creating a Bangladeshi American community within months: A function of economics, word of mouth and the slightly hard-to-figure momentum that often drives such relocations, the migration has escalated in the last year, with dozens of families packing up every month and heading from Astoria to Michigan. (Kershaw, 2001) Economic conditions, such as cheap housing and access to jobs attracted the Bangaldeshi American community to move to Michigan when they were priced out of Astoria (Kershaw, 2001). Hamtramck and Campau/Banglatown are well known for their diverse food culture and fresh vegetable stores that the immigrant communities run. Besides traditional Polish and Bosnian cuisine, there are restaurants serving food from Yemen, India and Bangladesh. There are dozens of neighborhood stores that sell vegetables, daily supplies, and Halal meats as well as several shops for traditional clothing like saris and veils on the main shopping streets, Conant Street, Caniff Street, and Joseph Campau Avenue. Campau/Banglatown has not only seen an increase in immigrant communities from Bangladesh and Yemen, but also a continuous influx of artists migrating from other parts of the city, the suburbs, and other cities in the United States. Local and newly arrived artists working in fields ranging from visual arts to performance, started to shape the very same landscape of former working-class single-family homes. Some of them addressed urban shortcomings and their own immediate needs while transforming the neighborhood with their community engaged art projects involving defensive architectural devices like security barriers to protect against theft and illegal occupation, the establishment of a Free School, and the creation of communal public spaces such as a skate park. Often, vacant single-family houses and their plots served as the starting point for these artists’ own art. 1.3.
27 FILTER Detroit I visited Detroit for the first time in 2007. Chicago artist Jon Brumit recommended I go there to experience its post-industrial cultural infrastructure, a scene that seemed to function without an art market. At that time, I was a research curator at the Van Abbemuseum,6 visiting artists and art projects in former industrial cities and regions throughout the Midwest as part of research for an exhibition called Heartland.7 In Detroit, I was particularly struck by the fact that the local artists did not necessarily follow the art market’s latest trends, but rather incorporated questions of everyday life and survival into art practices. An ongoing point of discussion in Detroit has been how to renovate single-family homes according to these artists’ needs with hardly any money and how to engage in community arts projects in, with, and outside of single-family homes in various inner-city neighborhoods, some of which are more abandoned than others. The challenge has been how to make better use of vacant single-family homes and lots and how to improve neighborhood structures, creating better everyday living conditions. The neighborhood residents of the chosen areas have often become part of these art projects. It was in the Campau/ Banglatown neighborhood that I first observed how community-engaged art projects with artists living on site have influenced urban transformation and urban planning at a neighborhood level. Here specifically as well as in other Detroit neighborhoods, I learned how intertwined the relation between bottom-up social movements, DIY projects, and the influx of newly arrived residents through immigration and art production has been and what possible ways of living together have been initiated. My professional interest as a research curator and former real estate businesswoman attracted my attention to the relationship between art, immigration, real estate, and urban development in Detroit. The low of land with a house were major factors. At the same time, I was fascinated by the serious bottom-up movements led by the artists, immigrants, and activists who lived in and worked with single-family homes. They did more than just experiment with alternative ways of using single-family homes and vacant houses and lots in the different neighborhoods around the city for art projects, they also lived in these neighborhoods and tried to make a living. Only two visits later to Campau/Bangaltown, in December 2009, with the help of Power House Productions,8 I bought a single-family home at auction for $4,300. Buying a house, let alone a plot of land, for less than $5,000 was unheard of. 6 The Van Abbemuseum is a Dutch art museum located at the heart of the post-industrial city landscape of Eindhoven. 7 ForHeartland,aninterdisciplinaryresearchprojectaboutindependentculturalinfrastructures,Iroadtrippedwithmy curator colleagues to various North American cities such as New Orleans, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit to visit artists and their local cultural initiatives and to get to know the communities and networks they have been part of. 8 Power House Productions artists, Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope, had already bought several single-family houses in Campau/Banglatownandwereusingthemasobjects,moreoftenasreferencepointsfortheirartprojectsratherthanashomesto live in. 1.3.
34 family homeownership, social capital, migration, and community as well as social space in neighborhoods. Moreover, it addresses the role of artists in creative placemaking and its consequences for gentrification. It links and discusses the values of single-family homes to social relations and social space. In Chapter Three, history is applied for understanding the emergence of single-family homes in Detroit. Maps are also used as tools and an old and contemporary medium to document the city’s transformation. Furthermore, in the context of an industrial city and as part of a multi-ethnic, shrinking city as well as the driver of a foreclosed city, the analysis documents how homes have structured and shaped the city up to the present. Chapter Four looks at the real estate market in Detroit and which factors play a role in residential real estate today. Value-shaping factors such as pre-existing cultural and educational institutions, public-private investment, and urban digital data shape developments in midtown and downtown. The local market in Campau/Banglatown is driven by other location factors, including affordability and value-in-use factors, such as safety, a high homeownership rate, and strategic neighborhood programming on the part of the city of Detroit. Recent residents value single-family homes as social spaces that create a sense of belonging in the neighborhood or help form different communities. In the context of placemaking with art, Chapter Five explores how artists work with singlefamily homes in Detroit. There are different approaches to how artmaking with homes in Detroit can unfold in different neighborhoods, as shown by the examples of Heidelberg Project, Hamtramck Disneyland, and Dabls MBAD African Bead Museum. Placemaking with art in Campau/Banglatown has turned into homemaking, an individual practice of homeowners that sometimes inspires network infrastructures, gardening, neighborhood stabilization, and real estate development as a community-engaged process. Chapter Six brings together the results of the analysis of artists and immigrants as singlefamily homeowners. Here the three perspectives – history, homeownership and real estate – come together. The chapter critically discusses and explains how the social and cultural values attributed to single-family homes become part of their economic value, while real estate prices have risen moderately in Campau/Banglatown. In this context, creative placemaking has morphed into an everyday practice of caring that can be understood in terms of nurturing cultural traditions and residential needs, even if it may lead to displacement. The chapter looks at how strategies of homemaking produce an extension of social space and the degree to which these timely, ongoing practices can contribute to placekeeping while maintaining a sense of belonging to the neighborhood for the majority of residents. I also develop the notion of placekeeping as a recognized value by residents and actors in Campau/Banglatown. 2.0. 2.1.
35 State of Research and Theoretical Framework In this chapter, I develop and discuss the theoretical framework for analyzing the meaning of the value of single-family homes in the context of placemaking and homemaking. I link changes in residential real estate value and ownership in the context of Detroit’s decline to changes in social relations and social space as well as to creative placemaking. My research draws on theoretical approaches from real estate, housing studies, urban sociology, cultural theory, urban studies, sociology, and art. Detroit has transformed from a fast growing, prosperous industrial city to a shrinking and outlier city that has produced extreme conditions for living and working (Dewar et al., 2015). The shrinking conditions have shaped spatial, social, political, and economic processes that have been researched as a “Model City” (Dewar et al., 2015). This model challenges theoretical concepts around urban growth (Logan & Molotch, 1987). Concepts of growth are, however, important to include in an analysis of the city’s neighborhoods because Detroit’s urban development has been shaped by growth logics and the city has long been a growing city. Nonetheless, vacancy and decay and their consequences on urban space in post-industrial Detroit have generated theoretical concepts all their own. Wherever possible, I underpin the state of research with the current, Detroit-specific research on the topic. The theoretical approaches that I work with are value, unvalue, homeownership, social capital, migration and community, social space, sense of belonging, gentrification, art and placemaking. This theoretical framework provides a point of reference for the analysis in subsequent chapters, as well as for the summary at the end. From Value to Unvalue to Value The city of Detroit has gone through many challenges during its industrial decline, from massive population loss in the inner city as people moved to the suburbs to a decrease in employment, low household incomes, and the city government’s fiscal problems, to name only a few (Dewar et al., 2015, p. 39). As a consequence of Detroit’s shrinking, single-family homes have become available and vacant, and one-third of them have undergone foreclosure, which has resulted in an overabundance of residential properties (Deng et al., 2017, p. 153). The surplus of land and abandoned homes leads to unoccupied houses which leads to further decline in property taxes for the city of Detroit. Financial distress due to unemployment or the 2008 financial crisis led even to more homes being left empty. At first glance, from an economic perspective of growth and surplus, many of these single-family homes no longer serve a residential or investment purpose. The low demand in Detroit for housing and investment in housing has consequently had an effect on the development of the property values of single-family homes. They have lost their value as part of a real estate market system. 2.0. 2.1.
36 But who and what defines value in residential real estate? In real estate economics, “value” is understood as price or worth (Lorenz & Dent, 2018) or as an asset (Poleg, 2020). Lorenz & Dent (2018, pp. 33-42) explain that value acts as a stimulus for decisions and actions, defining and governing space. Real estate value in the real estate market is an economic exchange value, i.e. a piece of land attached to certain property rights and sometimes attached to a building, which is treated like an investment and is worth a certain amount of money. From the point of view of real estate appraisal, Lorenz, Dent, Kauko, Lützkendorf and Hill (2018) explain that different real estate market actors, from bankers and investors to owners or tenants, integrate different value categories such as physical, value-in-use, existent value (cultural and social value), emotional value, image value, and environmental value to economic conceptions of value (Lorenz et al., 2018, pp. 44-49). In terms of market value, they view value-in-use as an economic value of a property. In my research (see Chapters Four and Five), I particularly explore value-in-use as well as what Lorenz, Dent, Kauko, Lützkendorf and Hill (2018) refer to as existent value (social and cultural value) and image value. Value-in-use can be described as an asset that provides for its owner as long as it is in use. It is a functional value and may be affected by the needs, wants and requirements of the individual home owner, their preferences, their perception of risk or their past experiences with homes (Lorenz et al., 2018, pp. 47-48). According to them, social value refers to interaction, social prosperity, well-being, health, and safety, which could reflect the social space in the neighborhood around the property in my field work. They view the cultural value as related to cultural tradition and lifestyles, the image/ sign value as identified with corporate identity, and the image or reputation of the property or neighborhood it is located in (Lorenz et al., 2018.). But they also point out that all forms of property value are timely in terms of overall social contexts arising and disappearing in relation to our needs (Lorenz et al., 2018, p. 44). In their real estate market-orientated theory of value, they address how the links between the economic and non-economic components of property value relate to each other. Therefore, they demonstrate that it is important to appreciate the value of the built environment within which real estate is determined, namely the local market and the many factors that create supply and demand in this environment, which include the needs of the residents. To them, there exists a sense of value that goes beyond economic value, which they identify in a social context as ”lifestyle and identity based on group belonging or individualism” (Lorenz et al., 2018, p. 44). Their theoretical definition of real estate value thus relates “value” to a broader systemic concept that goes beyond price or value-in-use. In my analysis of value categories in Chapter Four, these categories serve as a point of orientation for checking which factors apply in Campau/Banglatown and which ones have not been accounted for in the local context.
37 Urban researcher George C. Galster (2019), who considers value from a social-systemic perspective, expands the definition of value even further. He explains that value is not only determined by its features and location in the neighborhood, but by the surrounding environs, including socio-economic, racial, and family-status composition, environmental amenities, the quality of local public services and infrastructure, and land-use patterns (Galster, 2019, p. 11). Moreover, from a historical perspective of land use in Detroit, Safransky (2018, p. 500) concludes that the value of land “is disputed by people who live on the land, care for it, and imagine different futures on it.” In Safransky’s analysis of land justice movements,11 she highlights the importance of historically developed relationships and networks around homeownership. According to her, homeownership in Detroit may be influenced by residents’ negative feelings, such as uncertainty and resentment because of class or race, revealing “historical traumas around land loss” (Safransky, 2018, p. 501). The cultural historian Scheurmann (2013) takes up this historical discourse and compares the value of a building or land in terms of its urban heritage. She points out that value is a reflection of social negotiation processes over time, which can manifest themselves in value concepts such as commemorative value, symbolic value, and sustainable value (Scheurmann, 2013, pp. 9-10). In my analysis of single-family homes in the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood, I examine the concept of social-systemic relations of value from Lorenz, Dent, Kauko, Lützkendorf and Hill (2018) and Galster (2019) in order to relate the economic value of residential real estate to noneconomic value while analyzing what sense of value exists or has been created by residents and actors in this neighborhood. Urban sociologists Blokland & Nast (2014), who thoroughly studied the use of neighborhoods, further stress that residents’ emotional and cultural practices belong to a spatial value system as well. In this context, my research examines individual and communityrelated daily practices of single-family homeowners and users, their emotional connections to a neighborhood, and their cultural practices within it. To Birdsall, Halauniova and van de Kamp (2021), who explore the spatial and cultural politics of value, economic and non-economic values are co-dependent in placemaking processes. To them, valuation is an activity rather than a product and it is part of a process between human and non-human participants where: [...] the acknowledgement of shifting agencies between those evaluating and those being evaluated open[s] up new possible pathways. (Birdsall et al., 2021, p. 351) 11 Land justice movements such as DetroitersWorking for Environmental Justice or grassroots community activist initiatives such as the Boggs Center and many others help build equal opportunities as well as protect homeowners in Detroit from foreclosures and similar issues.
38 Like the approach of Lorenz, Dent, Kauko, Lützkendorf and Hill (2018), Birdsall, Halauniova and van de Kamp. (2021) identify urban valuation as a multi-sensory practice, which involves concrete acts of moving in, relating to, designing, and experiencing urban spaces. For my work, a multi-sensory approach (Bidsall et al., 2021) is helpful in understanding the dynamics of values in relation to the placemaking projects of artists and migrants that make use of single-family homes in Campau/Banglatown. Vacant single-family homes have then been “rendered valueless according to the dominant regime of value” or have become “unvalues” that hinder the property’s circulation within the market economy (Herscher, 2012, p. 9). Inhabited or not, they have often become unvaluable (Herscher, 2012). In the context of declining single-family homes, they have become less valuable or useless to those that profited through them, such as banks through mortgage payments, the city through property taxes, and the residents and investors who profited through sales or strategic investments. But as the architect and architectural historian Herscher (2012) explains, because single-family homes became “unvaluable” to the dominant regime of value, they have become available to other value systems, i.e., by occupying them with other forms than only residential living, by engaging them in activities that have not been relevant for the market economy but relevant for the people living next to them. He argues that the uselessness of homes as speculative or utilitarian objects forces residents to re-think their relationship to their houses and their land in the neighborhood (Herscher, 2012, p. 7). Herscher refers to Detroit’s urban territories that have fallen out of the real estate market economy12 as “unreal estate” (Herscher, 2012, p. 8). To him, unreal estate arises when the exchange value of a good – in this case real estate – falls to the point where that good acquires a use value not recognized by the market economy. In contrast to urban growth, Herscher sees potential in unreal estate because it becomes more interesting for other value systems such as non-economic possibilities of use and activity (Herscher, 2012, p. 9). He argues that the uselessness of single-family homes as speculative or utilitarian objects for living effects everyday urbanism (Chase et al., 1999), the daily experience of making use of homes and lots in the city. In this context, I work with Herscher’s analysis of unreal estate as alternative, often bottom-up urban cultural projects and initiatives in Detroit that adapt unreal estate to implement it in the everyday context of the urban environment. I argue that empty single-family homes or those that have fallen through the traditional value appraised market network that Herscher defines as unvalues, have established their own use value by becoming, for example, cultural project or community spaces. Therefore, they have again become part of a real estate value-in-use factor. The unvalue of real estate produces value again. Namely, the way in which residents appropriate 12 Real estate is a term describing a plot of land along with any permanent improvements attached to the land, whether natural or man-made – including water, trees, minerals, buildings, homes, fences and bridges (Chen, 2020). 2.2.
39 single-family homes and empty spaces in their everyday practices makes a difference and has the potential to alter and influence value. Expanding on Herscher (2012), Carducci (2014) explains that emerging grassroots initiatives in Detroit, which often work with the city’s material culture on an aesthetic level, have trespassed conventional property relations and enhanced their potential for overall human well-being in the form of common use values for residential homes. Herscher’s theoretical approach of unreal estate is useful in understanding vacant or “nonassessable” property as a complement rather than a negation of value, as a way to re-evaluate space through everyday urbanism into new values (2012, p. 9). Using Herscher’s (2012) theory of unreal estate as a framework, I analyze and discuss the kind of unvalues and new values that citizens – particularly artists and newly arrived immigrants – have formed, identified and related to concerning single-family homes in Detroit’s Campau/Banglatown neighborhood. Single-Family Homeownership A single-family home in a neighborhood or city is not only a house or an architectural structure in a particular location whose purpose is to be occupied. Research on single-family homes has examined them for their functions or disfunctions as locations, as architectural structures, as investment objects, or considered them as urban planning tools. In their research on homes, Saunders & Williams (1988) consider them as socio-spatial entities, providing space for social interaction. Housing studies have described single-family homes as places holding social, psychological, and emotional meanings for individuals and groups (Easthope, 2004, p. 135). In urban studies, homes are often identified by the social and physically built environment such as the neighborhood location or the communities that make use of them or through political and financial agendas. In the context of a shrinking city, Detroit’s single-family homes – in their material form, but empty and abandoned – have been defined as objects of speculation (Akers, 2013), objects of disinvestment (Deng et al., 2017), and as triggers of blight (Yezbick, 2020), as part of a faltering regime of financialized urbanism (Peck & Whiteside, 2016) or as triggers of urban decay represented in ruins (Apel, 2015) with neighborhood-destroying capacities. In this research, a single-family home is considered an immobile location providing shelter for the purposes of living, working, and socializing. Regardless of its renovation status, a singlefamily home can be considered a point of departure for humans to interact in social, cultural, economic, and material environments. Despite its physical immobility, a home is not passive with regards to everyday activities in a neighborhood, it can make active contributions, i.e., to forming social and cultural spaces in a neighborhood. This is why a single-family home can also be considered an actor in urban space, similar to the concept of Actor-Network-Theory 2.2.
40 (ANT) that describes the social activity around, in, and between material things, non-humans, technology, and concepts or human modes of living, such as in a house and the people that make use of it, through network relationships (Latour, 2005). Conversely, as an actant, a home has both the capacity and capital to shape a neighborhood and its value as real estate. Since single-family homes are physically immobile and embedded in a physical as well as nonphysical set of relations and everyday activities, they produce and enforce specific relationships. Relationships can be viewed as an urban assemblage of networks, spaces, and practices (Farias & Bender, 2009). Therefore, it is suggested that any kind of relationship created through and with the location of a property, be they human, environmental, digital, spatial, systemic, related to nature or else, can contribute to the value of that social space: -Relationships with neighbors and within families as well as relationships with other humans at a particular location are human relationships; -Relationships between buildings or facilities and humans are environmental/built environment relationships; -Relationships between a location as a space and other spaces are spatial relationships. All of the aforementioned relationships are temporal but can last longer than a human being’s lifetime. Building relationships can take a long time. Therefore, their timely aspects are essential to their functioning, i.e., environmental and spatial relationships can last for as long as the location and/or the building structure exists. Relationships change due to different life phases and the life circumstances of each real estate user, or external circumstances such as climate change or urban shrinkage. How the relationships are composed may present specific challenges or may make a place particularly livable, beloved, sustainable, or the opposite. In other words, spatial relationships can either add quality to a location or make it more difficult for people to live there. Nevertheless, the physical shape of houses is immobile, whereas the people who live in them are in constant movement within their built environment and between single-family homes, giving them the power to build or destroy these relationships. Homeowners in Detroit have had to deal with the consequences of the city’s shrinking on a variety of levels, including economic decline. They have also been forced to live with the resulting social and spatial consequences in their very own homes and neighborhoods. The distressed conditions often hinder low-income homeowners from selling their houses because they would not receive the amount they need to buy residential property elsewhere. However, some residents have seen opportunity in crisis and possibilities to work with residential homes, i.e., as a form of speculation, buying the houses cheap and selling them for a lot more money later, or with a nonmarket orientation, working with the land for community projects like urban gardens or to build
41 their own homes and communities. Homeownership can be understood as a form of entitlement. It is the right to enact power over a particular piece of land in a particular location. Land or homeownership are limited resources in a specific location. They are “the rich stock that we can never make more of” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 56). In economic sociology, homeownership is understood as a material resource and form of entitlement, but also as part of a social practice in a certain geographic location that produces values and places (Bourdieu, 1986, 2005; Easthope, 2004; Lloyd & Vasta, 2017): House ownership is [the author] most often integrated into a complex system of strategies of reproduction and […] thus laden with the whole history of that which they aim to perpetuate – namely, the domestic unit, itself the product of a work of collective construction, which is once again largely attributable to the state; and that, correlatively, economic decisions are not taken by isolated economic agents, but by a collective, group, family or enterprise functioning as a field. (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 17) In the context of economic sociology Bourdieu (2016) identifies the act of homeownership or taking ownership over a house or lot as an economic, social and cultural practice that shapes social space. For Henri Lefebvre (1974) the production of social space is a constant process shaüed by three dimensions of space, the reprensentation of space, representational space and spatial practoces. On contract to Lefebvre (1974), Bourdieu positions homewonership as a valueladen practice linked to economic, spical and cultural capital in an urban field than a single act that ends with the payment of the purchase price. Analyzing the economic structures of singlefamily homes in postwar France, he points out that the “the purchase of a house is so laden with meaning” (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 16), revealing the complex web of structures in which a family house is embedded. Bourdieu (2005) concludes that the cultivation of the resource of residential homeownership depends on the formation of the social space where the single-family home is located. He links social space closely to economic value and practices of ownership. For this reason, I analyze the connections between single-family homes and the everyday activities of their homeowners that form a social space (Bourdieu, 1986). Invoking Lorenz, Dent, Kauko, Lützkendorf and Hill (2018) on value through everyday activities and social practices, I consider the value of single-family homes from a cultural studies perspective. In North America, land and homeownership have historically been equated to living and pursuing the American Dream as part of social mobility (Reid, 2007). Homeownership is associated with a sense of security, material and social well-being, and civic and economic responsibility. Harvey (2013, p. 50) establishes a connection between homeownership and the capitalist crisis in urban areas, explaining that homeownership in the US has only become a cultural value because attractive government funding programs promoted and supported the idea in the past. He explains how homeownership was promoted as a component of the American Dream (Harvey, 2013). Creative director Toby Barlow (2009) uncritically refers to the sudden hype for purchasing cheap houses
42 in post-bankrupt Detroit as the strange but new American Dream. From the point of view of urban planning, Safransky (2018, p. 500) agrees that 20th century “growing” Detroit celebrated this “dream of homeownership.” But in her historical diagnostic of landownership, she shows the connection between the racialized dispositions and displacements that were created during that time and Detroit’s housing precarity and land crisis today in the 21st century (Safransky, 2018). Unlike Bourdieu (2005), in her engagement with urban land justice movements in Detroit, Safransky (2018) not only addresses the influence of class and capital when referring to land and ownership, she also addresses the impact of institutional racism, segregation and colonialism. According to her, not everyone has access to real estate ownership nor has everyone benefited from owning residential real estate, some have even experienced it instead as a contested space (Safransky, 2018). Various studies, e.g. on low-income homeownership without governmental support, show that low-income homeownership only works under certain pre-conditions such as the time of purchase or the ethnic composition of the neighborhood as a support system, or it often depends on a locally framed and engaged setting of residents in a neighborhood or community (Santiago et al, 2010; Reid, 2007). For my research, I understand homeownership not only as a right or entitlement to use a certain amount of land or a house that one received because one accumulated enough economic capital for that certain location, I also understand it as a constant process of actively making and producing ownership that the house’s user has to actively engage in by forming a social space (Bourdieu, 2005) through the accumulation of other forms of capital13 such as social, cultural, and symbolic capital within the context of a single-family home. I focus on social capital in the context of homeownership. Social Capital: Migration and Community For Bourdieu (1986), in a community or social setting, social capital is a potential resource obtainable through the possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition. He views social capital as a product of individual or collective, conscious or unconscious investment strategies, which aim to establish or reproduce directly applied social relationships (Bourdieu, 1986). In the context of Bourdieu’s research, which assumes that an individual is limited in his or her possibilities of development by 13 Capital is accumulated labor, whether it has a materialized or symbolic form. Bourdieu (1986) distinguishes between different types of capital, from cultural, symbolic, social capital to economic capital. These can all be accumulated individually, butthey alsorelateto eachotherand ultimatelydeterminean individual’sposition andrelationin social spaceinthe field (Bourdieu,1986).Afieldisasystemofsocialpositions,anarenainwhichactorscirculateandappropriatecapital.Thetypesof capitalbroughtinbythedifferentactorsinafieldareimportantdeterminantsthatdefineinfluenceandpositions,thedisposition, inthefield(Bourdieu,1984,1986). 2.3.
43 habitus as well as class relations as forms of distinction, social capital is one form of capital that has a positive influence on an individual’s economic capital. Social and other forms of capital – economic, cultural, and symbolic – make up the structure and functioning of a social world (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 15). For Bourdieu (1986), social capital is manifested in an individual’s social networks. The existence of networks cannot be assumed. Networks must be built up gradually. As a new homeowner, for example, one must first get acquainted with the social environment of one’s neighborhood. However, in the context of a neighborhood community, networks can contribute to the production and reproduction of social mobility or social inequality. From Bourdieu’s European perspective, networks that enhance an individual’s social capital often relate to origin and can indicate group affiliation but, in turn, the exclusion of others. Political scientist Putnam (1993) takes a different view of social capital. He tries to define social capital from a US context by a kind of sense of community and through democratization processes based on social relations or civic engagement (Braun, 2001). He identifies it as a “public good”, a collective characteristic of a specific community that comes together to build up relationships and social trust based on shared norms or out of civic engagement (Putnam, 1993). As an outcome of social organizing, social capital enhances benefits or efficiency while also facilitating mutually beneficial coordination and cooperation to individuals or a group of people. Putnam (1993, p. 2) indicates that “cooperation in a community is more successful when it already has a substantial stock of social capital.” I use both Putnam’s (1993) and Bourdieu’s (1986) approaches to better understand the extent to which each homeowner relies on social capital in the form of an individual network or to be part of collective action when forming communities of intention in the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood. In migration studies, the production and reproduction of social relationships in a community and the accumulation of social capital is defined by how a society defines and deals with migration (Buckel, 2014, p. 160). Political governance and the inclusionary and exclusionary practices of a dominant social group have the power to determine the degree to which migration can inscribe itself in a city (Buckel, 2014). From the point of view of critical urban geography, Buckel (2014, p. 158) stresses that migration is a basic structural condition for cities and not an exceptional situation or a problem of one marginalized ethnic group in one particular neighborhood. Critical migration studies recognize the importance of acknowledging the active role of migrants in the production of space (Buckel, 2014, p. 161). In terms of the neoliberal restructuring of a city, migrant participation tends to be reduced to their mere presence, i.e., fulfilling demands for low-skilled or skilled labor. Alternatively, technology and innovation-savvy and well-educated migrants have been identified as a resource that contributes to the shaping of creative milieus (ibid.) and that become part of the creative class (Florida, 2002).
50 start of gentrification,18 where older residents are displaced by younger residents (Deutsche & Ryan, 1984, p. 111). Geographer Smith (1979, p. 538) recognizes gentrification as a back-tothe-city movement of economic capital where wealthier residents push out residents who cannot afford the rising rental costs. Moreover, according to Smith & Williams (1986), gentrification has become part of an integral process of housing and urban land markets derived by an uneven development of space based on economic advantages. Ryan & Deutsche (1984, p. 111) stress that gentrification is aided by an artistic process. Artists, because of their imaginative and inspiring thinking, are considered commercial vehicles that attract other citizens and creatives by developing milieus or scenes (Landry, 2008; Lloyd, 2006), therefore making investment in urban space more lucrative for real estate developers, but also making real estate less affordable for people that already live in the neighborhoods. Gentrification as a phenomena of displacement and urban revitalization is often analyzed in terms of population growth of people moving into an area from elsewhere, forcing older residents to move out of that area. However, in Detroit the “nodes of growth occur in the context of widespread, profound disinvestment” (Dewar et al., 2015, p. 43). Sociologist Elliot (2012) points out that gentrification in a shrinking city like Detroit, does not necessarily take place on the level of physical displacement within Detroit, but as a form of cultural displacement for those residents who feel they no longer have a voice in the development and shaping of their neighborhoods: By cultural displacement, I mean a sense of place and community and feeling like you have the right to creating the vision for that community’s future. Even if people are not forced from their homes due to rising rents, they may feel like their community is less their own than it used to be. (Elliot, 2012) Elliot connects the experience of gentrification with the loss of a sense of place as well as a loss of power or control over making spaces. Zukin (1991) describes this sense of ownership in the context of urban deindustrialization where gentrification produces “landscapes of power”19, in which spaces of production are abandoned and turned into spaces of consumption. And these landscapes of power, even if they are subtle and gentle, can lead to a feeling of alienation for long-time residents in their own neighborhood because they experience a decline of ownership, control, and belonging in their own neighborhood (Tuttle, 2022). 18 FirstcoinedbysociologistGlass(1964)gentrificationreferstothetransformationofworkingclassneighborhoods throughresidentialrehabilitationbymovingincitizensofhigherincomeandstatus.AccordingtoRuth,gentrificationchanges the social character of the neighborhood. As a consequence, less wealthier residents have been displaced because they could no longer afford the cost for living. 19 Zukin (1991, p. 16) uses the term “landscape” in a geographical context that can be a representation of the material, social and symbolic space in society.
51 The presence of artists in formerly run-down, often working class or industrial neighborhoods also means that they invest cultural as well as social resources, which in turn makes it attractive for capital investment or wealthier residents to move in (Brown-Saracino, 2009; Deutsche & Ryan, 1984). Artists are often criticized in this role for being first-aid kids who pro-actively solve “urban problems in a creative way for urban developers, real estate companies and city managers” (Zukin, 1988) in neighborhoods, more like contract workers for a private developer, the state, or both. According to sociologist Rich (2019), the artist’s presence, courage, energy or their resources spent in formerly less wealthy, less secure neighborhoods, may lead to “arts themed development”, in which the state, the city, or a private developer recognizes the positive effect of the artist’s presence and therefore supports them to extend their stay or engagement through incentives like grants or public programs, which can range from public art projects to painting murals. For example, Rich (2019, p. 719) explains how artists in Baltimore have become tools for gentrification via arts-themed development that helps raise property values and spurs the re-colonization of large industrial buildings in the inner city for middle and upper class living. Similarly, in Detroit, Andrew Herscher (2012, pp. 7-8) notes that the “creative class” – often white, privileged and well-educated artists – has both set itself up as the city’s heroic savior in the process of shrinking while also giving a race and class-oriented portrait of the members of the creative class. According to economic geographer Peck (2005), who argues against creative-city policies in response to what Florida (2002) calls the rise of the Creative Class, art and culture have been discursively commodified and become a productive asset of creative capitalism. He argues that the urge to value and valorize whatever creative asset city might have is the basic recipe for the creativity fix, a distinctive development vision (Peck, 2007) that excludes others who are not part of the creative class. Florida has identified the talent, technological knowledge, and tolerance of the often well-educated creative class as driving forces behind the “creative” economy and guarantors of sustainable prosperity (Florida et al., 2015). This vision is an economic development program that puts creative people in a city first “while raising a favored bundle of middle-class lifestyles” (Peck, 2007), i.e., through tax incentives or particular funding structures that support creative economies as part of an urban development objective. For my research, I analyze the role of the artist as neighbor in the urban development of the city of Detroit, whether or not they have been supported or driven by an economic development vision that connects to the creative class. I focus on the role of artists as residents in placemaking processes with single-family homes in a neighborhood. Art historian Miwon Kwon (2002b) notes that there has been a transformation of public arts practices from “aesthetic concerns to social issues”. She sees the role of the artist in public space as shifting from an individual artistic practice to a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach (Miwon Kwon, 2002a/b) that involves creating networks of connections with other urban actors. Artists have become place-makers, marking sites through site-specific art pieces (Kwon, 2002a). She criticizes
52 what she sees as site-specific or public art that has been “put to the service of generating a sense of authenticity and uniqueness of place for quasi-promotional agendas” (Kwon, 2002a, p. 4). Urban sociologist Sharon Zukin has been critical about overusing cultural strategies for urban redevelopment. To her, culture has economic power and can produce both symbols and spaces, particularly in post-industrial cities (Zukin, 1995). Zukin (1995) has identified the growth potential of culture as a symbolic economy, competing over a city’s image because culture has become the business of cities. Likewise, Markusen & Gadwa (2010) view the implementation of arts-based creative placemaking practices as a strategy for strengthening the global economic role of American cultural industries. Moreover, in their study of creative placemaking, they demonstrate that arts and cultural activities are powerful economic and social catalysts (Markusen & Gadwa, 2010, p. 6) through the way in which they shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood. According to Markusen & Gadwa’s (2010) white paper, whether creative placemaking is on a macro or micro level, it has the power to increase a place’s livability as well as diversity. Like Kwon (2002a/b), they find that process-oriented community projects involving art can improve social and post-industrial infrastructures (Gadwa & Markusen, 2010). Creative placemaking can also be understood as a colonial practice, in which creatively made places are not perceived as places with particular physical value or specific cultural roots, but rather as the results of placemaking (Starowitz & Cole, 2015). On the other hand, Flood & Redaelli (2016) stress that creative placemaking in the US is both a field of knowledge and a practice combining urban planning, public art, community development, and social and cultural policy. In their work about cultural strategies and community revitalization, Flood & Redaelli (2016) do not relate creative placemaking to building wealth for already privileged citizens, but instead to building community: The concept of creative placemaking refers to a variety of community-based practices that draw on local arts and cultural assets to building a stronger community (Flood & Redaelli, 2016, p. 258). My analysis is informed by Flood & Redaelli’s (2016) understanding of creative placemaking as a transformative leverage that builds a stronger community, bringing together different practices such as urban planning, public art and social as well as cultural policy. Until now, creative placemaking in shrinking cities such as Detroit has been analyzed and accounted for as a tool artists use to engage with and inspire neighborhood revitalization among members of a community and neighborhood (Markusen & Gadwa, 2010). Beyond approaching artists “as catalysts for positive change” (Helicon Collaborative, 2017) in placemaking processes, I want to discuss the degree to which the presence of artists as residents and users of single-family homes
53 in Campau/Banglatown creates a sense of belonging through interactions with the immigrantrich communities. Using the example of the city of Baltimore, the sociologist Kirchberg (2016) has analyzed the role of art and culture as an instrument of urban development and concluded that it has changed. With regards to urban development, art went from being an educational tool and instrument of status to an economic incentive for urban and economic growth in a global context to what we find today: art as a socio-political tool for urban stabilization as an element of placemaking (Kirchberg, 2016). Cultural scientist Berger (2018) specifies the role of artists as placemakers, explaining that it has changed with regard to artists’ participation in the urban development process and their own agency due to shifts in hierarchies within the urban design process. Namely, artists have become initiators of (local) processes that can only be developed together collectively (Berger, 2018). The finding that the production and mediation of art is involved in a complex network of actors is not new, however. In his “Art Worlds”, theorist and sociologist Howard Becker (1982) explains that all artistic work requires a larger number of people and a complex system of networks through which art happens. He identifies art as an activity informed by artists’ cultural capital as well as their network of relationships and the social system through which it developed (Becker, 1982). Becker (1982) outlines four different types of artists (integrated professional, maverick, folk artist, and naïve artist) within conventions that he defines as “Art Worlds”. In Chapter Five, I will make use of the typology suggested by Becker (1982), identifying different types of artists that work with single-family homes, because not every artist has intentionally worked with a network of actors to revitalize or improve neighborhoods in Detroit. Kaddar, Kirchberg, Barak, Seidl, Wedler and de Shalit (2020) build on Becker’s theory of network relations but discuss the role of artists in urban space through their level of political engagement in the city. Through inter-urban fieldwork, they look at artists’ perceptions and political roles in the city and their modes of intervention.20 They stress that not every artist is interested in working in the field of art and urban development, but artists have been assigned different roles in cities according to their contextualization in urban processes and the three dimensions of artistic-political engagement: participation, contestation, and efficacy (Kaddar et al., 2020, p.2). Like Becker’s (1982) typology, their theoretical tool identifies artists in terms of their living and working environments. Following Kaddar, Kirchberg, Barak, Seidl, Wedler and de Shalit’s (2020) typology of artistic citizenship, I look at the level of participation of artists in the Campau/ 20 Thisinter-urbanfieldworktookplaceinthecitiesofHamburgandHanoverinGermanyaswellas thecitiesof JerusalemandTelAviv-JaffainIsrael(Kaddar,etal., 2020).
54 Banglatown neighborhood and discuss whether and how their role as placemakers of and with single-family homes has changed. The starting point of my research is the role residents play in social space and how they make place through everyday activities around their home. In my thesis, I build on this to understand the value dynamics related to placemaking projects of artists and immigrants using single-family homes in Campau/Banglatown. With Bourdieu (1986), I link social space to economic value and practices of ownership. I also discuss homeownership as a value-laden practice. My focus is on the social-systemic value relations of residential real estate (Lorenz et. al., 2018; Galster, 2019). I point out how, in the context of a shrinking city, social capital, community and selfprovisioning relate and depend on each other. I argue how the social space and infrastructure of a neighborhood around single-family homes can create a sense of belonging through everyday practices. My analysis of everyday techniques of placemaking through, with and in single-family homes reveals that a sense of value is created by residents, which relates to public familiarity (Blokland & Nast, 2014) and a sense of belonging (Forrest & Kearns, 2001) to their neighborhood. In my analysis, I show how the role of artists in this particular neighborhood has changed from that of a placemaker to that of a homemaker and in some cases to that of a real estate developer. Empowering to some neighbors, this development is positive in the context of a strategic neighborhood development program in terms of urban growth and the economic expansion of value for real estate. At the same time, it has side effects such as the loss of ownership or social space that are felt by those residents who do not partake in the value-adding dynamic created through more recent placemaking projects in that neighborhood. In my final chapter, I critically discuss the positive and negative consequences in the neighborhood through placemaking in relation to cultural heritage and placekeeping, as well as physical and cultural displacement.
55 3.0. Detroit – A Single-Family Home Metropolis In terms of territory covered, the successive growth of single-family housing estates in Detroit created one of the largest cities in North America. As a common architectural style, the single-family home became a significant identifying element that divided communities into neighborhoods and influenced urban planning and the economic development of the city for years. To understand the transformation of space since the city was first settled, this chapter shows the prerequisites for the different stages of development, their possible causes such as privatization, industrialization, migration, shrinking, suburbanization, urban reinvestment and planning, foreclosure, speculation and their mutual entanglement. Here, history is one element for understanding the emergence of the single-family home, its trajectory in the city’s urban economy – from expansion to shrinking – its use-value, as well as its essential role in neighborhoods and communities throughout history until the present day. In this chapter, maps about and mapping projects in Detroit play key roles as tools and mediums documenting the city’s transformation as well as a projection of future and strategic planning in politics and community organizing. I contrast cartographic material with historical geographical maps as well as more recent maps. Maps of cities have specific functions as instruments used to identify spatial and territorial issues. According to urban geographer Denis Cosgrove, maps and mapping techniques are “bearers of urban meaning” (2006, p. 148). Furthermore, maps serve as mediators for understanding and reading cities, regardless of whether they are used for orientation or as political tools to indicate relationships and territories. Möntmann (2004) rather sees maps as depictions of representative spaces that incorporate an authorial standpoint as political, religious and cultural elements. On the one hand, maps are helpful tools for understanding and navigating cities and identifying specific land-related issues such as vacancy or neighborhood development (Bekkering & Thomas, 2015). However, Newman & Safransky (2014) address that participatory acts of “Remapping the Motor City” local residents using their everyday knowledge and how they make use of their living environment have become helpful tools to reassessing a space. Apart from the usage and ownership of the physical space, maps in this participatory process have become tools of power for re-imaging and re-mapping “what a city can be as an urban, ecological, social and cultural space” (Newman & Safransky, 2014, p. 23). Cosgrove (2006) identifies maps as an intervention or process. As a subjective technique, mapping has the power to produce scale, points of reference, or categories, depending on the context in which the maps are produced. However, every map produces property lines while also omitting information:
56 Cartography acts not merely to record the various ways that the city is materially present, but as creative intervention in urban space, shaping both the physical city and the urban life experienced and performed there. (Cosgrove, 2006, p. 148) Mapping can clarify, conceal, or convince. This is why it has always been a complex tool for power, framing spatial relations of material space and their everyday use in a two or three dimensional grid.21 Wildner & Tamayo (2004) describe mapping and maps as cartographic option tools for the cultural and social sciences. They view maps as potential interpretative instruments reflecting the inhabited space within which often floating everyday social, collective, cultural, and political practices are localized (Wildner & Tamayo, 2004). In the case of Detroit, mapping has a long history stretching back to its first fortifications, to redlining, to the city’s division into urban districts and neighborhoods, its shrinking, and the politics of austerity. Here, maps have expanded, shaped, and transformed the uses of the city’s urban space and its identity, i.e., as industrial city, shrinking city, or as design city. Part of my methodological approach is to analyze Detroit’s archaeological maps, historical area maps, plat maps, zoning maps, land price development maps, future city maps, and Google Maps to understand the emergence, proliferation, and impact of single-family homes on the city. The Origins of the Single-Family Home This section describes the course of Detroit’s historical trajectory from Indian territory to a colonized Fort that grew into a township. Detroit became the capital of the Territory of Michigan and eventually one of the most well-known industrial cities in the Western Hemisphere. More recently, it has become one of the United States’ most hotly debated post-industrial regions. A territory long fought over for its natural resources such as the Great Lakes, wetlands, wildlife, and fish, Detroit’s strategic location and infrastructural connections allowed it to develop into an influential metropolis. Before the arrival of French and British colonizers in the seventeenth century, Native Americans had already settled along the Detroit River and on land that would later become the city of Detroit. According to the 2010 census, there are still about 30,000 American Indians residing in Detroit’s metropolitan area (Herberg, 2017). In the sixteenth century, the colonizers recognized the presence of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi, documenting their presence on territory maps and in letters. Also known as the 21 For the most part leaving out sensory information such as sound, smell, and sight. 3.1.
57 “Three Fires People,” they are considered the first inhabitants of the Great Lake Region. Tribes such as the Wyandot, Iroquois, Fox (Meskwaki), Miami, Anishinaabe, and Sauk used Detroit’s riverbanks to hunt and gather (Detroit Historical Society, 2019a). Figure 3.0: Native American trails in Michigan, 1931, by Wilbert B. Hinsdale. Courtesy of University of Michigan. Historian Paul Sewick (2016a) found a map by W.B. Hinsdale in an archaeological atlas of Michigan (Figure 3.0)22 depicting Native American trails that have been preserved as modern roads and highways. Published in 1931, the goal of the atlas was to document and analyze archaeological features via traces such as field notes, narratives, and older maps in order to come to a better understanding about what he refers to as the “lines of Indian travel and transportation by both water and overland use” (Hinsdale, 1931, p. 5). Most contemporary highways run along trails the tribes followed for centuries (Hinsdale, 1931, p. 5). 22 Hinsdale, a medical doctor by profession, had a lifelong interest in archaeology and was named the custodian in charge of the development of collections in Michigan Archaeology in 1922 (deBella, n.d.).
58 Figure 3.0 documents waterways, major roads and trails, townships, and villages. Detroit’s borders are marked in grey. The bold squares represent the state of Michigan with its current division into counties: Lenawee, Monroe, Washtenaw, Wayne, Livingstone, Oakland, and Macomb. The black bold lines indicate the trails of the Indian population. The mapping suggests that different Native American tribes, such as the Saginaws and Potawatomis, inhabited what would later become Detroit territory. The majority of their trails ran alongside the river or from the riverbank in what is now Detroit’s city center out towards the suburbs. Today, these trails are major access roads such as Woodward, Gratiot, and Grand River Avenue, and major highways such as I-94 or I-75. This map documents how historic trails have shaped the landscape in Detroit and how its 300 year old history remains present in the city today.23 As was true for many major American cities in the sixteenth century, Native tribes and their peoples lost their right to the land through trade agreements with white settlers, battles over resources, and territorial wars. In addition, they also lost land for hunting, gathering, and passing on their cultural traditions as Michigan’s “white” population increased through migration – primarily through settlers fleeing Europe to seek a better future. In 1701, French officer Antoine Laument de la Mother Cadillac founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit24 as an outpost for the colony of New France (Bekkering & Liu, 2015). His colonization blocked English expansion and increased the fur trade with the Native American peoples. This initial settlement was located on the right bank of the Detroit River connecting Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie. In an essay on early Detroit, Brian Leigh Dunnigan, associate director and curator of maps at the William L. Clemens Library at the University of Michigan, argues that the reason why the French established a settlement in the region was the potential it had for agriculture, fur trading, and lumber it offered (Dunnigan, 2015). The pre-existing waterways such as the Detroit River, Lake Erie, and Lake Michigan served as transportation lines to other settlements, colonies, and Canada, enabling the expansion and growth of trade nationwide. From Colonial Fortification to Farming Although Canadian traders and military garrisons were already withdrawn from this region, Cadillac argued in favor of establishing a settlement, i.e., a fortified outpost, on the Detroit River 23 Paul Sewick traces urban history, especially settlement patterns, using maps, historical documents, and historical markers. To share his work and research, he started the blog Detroit Urbanism (http://detroiturbanism.blogspot.com) (Sewick, 2016a and b). 24 The French word “le détroit” is translated into English “the strait.” 3.1.1.
59 (Dunnigan, 2015). He chose the high riverbank (from the Belle Isle Stretch to the Ambassador Bridge), the river’s narrowest part, as the fort’s position. According to Dunnigan, the river’s proximity influenced the development of the land into plotted farm lots (Dunnigan, 2015). Not only did Cadillac exert an influence on what later became the city of Detroit, he also influenced the ethical composition of its citizens, what Dunnigan (2015) refers to cultural assimilation. Namely, he invited Native American groups to establish their own villages under the influence of colonial officials and missionaries, while also encouraging French Canadian farmers to cultivate land in the colony. Later, he granted plots of land around the fort to French farmers. Known as “ribbon farms,” the granted farmland was free, but came with the requirement that settlers pay Cadillac an annual rent and a percentage of their crops. Ribbon farms were narrow in width – varying in size up to 200 feet, because of the guaranteed access to the Detroit River – and up to three miles long (Sewick, 2016b). Figure 3.1: Detroit Ribbon Farms in 1796 by George Henri Victor Collot. Map detail by Alex B. Hill. On the 1796 map (Figure 3.1), Georges Henri Victor Collot (1796), then a French military officer, drew Fort Détroit as a black square surrounded by unused land symbolized by trees. Adjacent to it, on the left and right shorelines of the Detroit River and Lake Erie, he drew rectangular ribbon farms adjacent to the fort. The numbers on the farm plots refer to the names of the owners, which were primarily French. Some of these names survive today as location references for plots and parcel identification numbers.
66 River, which connects the Great Lakes, namely Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie, it connected the booming regional steel and iron industries through waterways and railways, helping to expand them. This area encompassed the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia, and Illinois and was referred to alternately as the Manufacturing Belt, the Factory Belt, and the Steel Belt (Meyer, 1989). This infrastructural connection also paved the way to the establishment of a variety of product industries in the area around Detroit, which were connected to the larger infrastructural network of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan and neighboring Canada, and through freight transportation by ship towards the East Coast and by rail to the Midwest. As a river settlement, Detroit had already established industrial trade through shipping prior to industrialization. Railroad traffic did not only connect the main trading posts and harbors, it also allowed traffic and trade to spread throughout Michigan and upwards into Canada. Before the territory became a state in the 1830s, the Detroit and Pontiac Railway was founded, reaching Pontiac in 1843, followed by tracks to Chicago, Milwaukee, and other centers in the region (Detroit Historical Society, 2019d). The railway not only served as a means of transportation for manufactured goods, but most of all for human traffic as well.29 Detroit had a diverse manufacturing industry between 1860 and 1900. It did not start off with monocultural automobile production, but instead had a variety of what were referred to as “Bulk Product Industries,” such as iron, steel, salt, chemicals and wood (Hyde, 2001). From the 1870s to 1910s, Detroit manufactured large numbers of railroad freight cars and Great Lake ships. The city also produced heating and cooking stoves, cigars and tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and foundry and machine shop products (Detroit Historical Society, 2019d). As industrialization took hold, Detroit’s territorial expansion was characterized by the growth of industrial productions sites in the city as well as the need for housing for people who worked in these industries and factories.30 The Figure 3.5 documents the directions into which the city expanded between 1917 and 1921 as the Michigan Railway Lines were constructed, i.e., towards larger industrial producers located close to railroad stops and crossings, as in the case of Hamtramck and Dearborn, as well as orientated towards the water side, and the major trade trails leading outside the city to the east and west. Rail crossings and stations were especially helpful to the growth and development 29 DuringandaftertheCivilWar,DetroitbecamepartoftheUndergroundRailwayoperatedbychurchesandnongovernmental institutions. For about three decades, the city became a waystation en route to Canada. Due to this passageway, there were also opportunities and spaces for African American settlement early on before automotive manufacturing brought more African Americans from the South to live and work in Detroit. 30 In 1880, Detroit’s had a population of 116,342. In 1890, the population had almost doubled, reaching 205,876 (Hyde, 2001). 3.2.2
67 of certain areas of the city where citizens lived and worked. The area that is now Campau/ Banglatown was surrounded by three different railroad lines with major junctions (Ford Junction, Belt Line Junction, and North Detroit). Figure 3.5: Evolution of Michigan Railroads – Detroit – 1917 to 1919 by Barry Dale. Industrialization shaped Detroit’s pre-existing landscape, including its villages, ethnic neighborhoods, and more rural areas, into a working class environment. Pre-existing urban structures supported the influx of migrants and the expansion of infrastructural connections to other states and Canada by ship and rail (Martin, 1993; Zunz, 1982; Hyde, 2001) The Auto Industry It was not long before Detroit had transformed from a Midwestern commercial and industrial center producing stoves, cigars, and other items, into a predominantly monocultural industrial landscape. The expansion of the city’s railway lines not only enabled (supra-)regional freight and passenger transport, it also determined which areas of Detroit would become residential and commercial. The automobile industry made use of the pre-existing water and railways, starting with Henry Ford’s attempts in 1898 to establish automobile companies in Detroit31 and 31 After several unsuccessful attempts to establish an automobile company in Detroit, Henry Ford moved Ford Motor 3.2.2
68 the simultaneous development of car manufacturing plants by Cadillac (1902), Dodge (1915), Chrysler (1925), and GM (1908 in Flint, Michigan). Analyzing the effect of the rising automobile industry on development, Bekkering & Liu (2015) state that with its beginning (1910), many small privately owned workshops dispersed all over the city, supplying the larger factories as subcontractor. However, technological advances altered the form of industrial production and land use in Detroit. After the First World War, Henry Ford introduced Fordism to the automotive industry as both a spatial model and cost and time effective production form, enabling the mass production of automobiles in large industrial plants. Production was divided into several steps, each performed by a different worker32. The different auto parts were combined on an assembly line, allowing for faster production, but also demanding larger spaces because the process incorporated individual workspaces. As a result, the growing automotive industry triggered an industrial construction boom of large factories within the city limits, some of which were designed by German-born architect Albert Kahn (Bekkering & Liu, 2015). According to historian Elizabeth Anne Martin (1993, p. 4), 3,000 manufacturing plants, 37 automobile plants, and 250 automobile accessory plants were dispersed across the city in 1925. This spatial distribution – especially the spatial relationship between residential and industrial neighborhoods – was altered by how the larger automobile factories organized work (Hyde, 2001). Inner-city industrial manufacturing plants moved closer to where production workers had already settled or established neighborhoods were relocated. Consequently, the location and production cycles of the assembly plants and the supply industry influenced the spatial development of Detroit’s neighborhoods. At this time, people chose to live close to where they worked and Detroit became even more attractive to live in. The city’s population grew from 116,340 inhabitants in 1880 to 993,678 inhabitants in 1920 (Zunz, 1982, p. 3). The location of the former main automotive manufacturing plants and suppliers on the map in Figure 3.6 show that the industrial production sites were located next to and within pre-established neighborhoods in the center of the city. Campau/Banglatown and Hamtramck, for example, were located close to the Chrysler and Dodge plant. Company to the Detroit suburb of Dearborn in 1910. 32 Workersonanautomobileassemblylinedidnotneedextensivetraining.Mostjobscouldbeperformedbyunskilled laborers.
69 Figure 3.6: Map of Detroit Auto Industry, 1960. Map detail by Alex B. Hill. By 1924, the “Big Three” automakers (General Motors, Chrysler and Ford) were all headquartered in Detroit. During the Great Depression, Detroit´s employment landscape was characterized by layoffs and the automobile industry´s slow growth. Just a few years later, during the Second World War, the city’s automobile manufacturing sites were converted into the country’s largest production site for tanks, jeeps, and bombers, seizing the opportunity to stay in business. Car production was put on hold and Detroit’s industrial infrastructure became known as “The Arsenal of Democracy” because it produced most of the weapons supporting the European Allies at war with Germany (Sugrue, 1996). Despite the draft, the city’s industries still had to accommodate newly arrived workers as well as organize war shipments to Europe. During this time, African Americans continued to migrate
70 from the South of the United States to Detroit. About 350,000 people arrived in the city, attracted by wages that would allow them to buy homes. This second wave of “in-migration” of African Americans was fueled by economic hardships and ongoing racism in the South (Sugrue, 1996). Living in a city that dedicated its land use to the production of automobiles meant that many people who worked in the industry could soon buy cars, making it possible to reach the sprawling multitude of single-family homes in neighborhoods far from the center. The automobile industry shaped what urban historian Clemens Zimmermann (2013) calls the “Urban Gestalt”. In a Motor City like Detroit, the industry was not only interconnected to questions of urban mobility, it influenced city´s development and design of the city. Traffic increased as the population grew and the old main routes became congested with cars on a daily basis. Population growth and the demands of transporting goods from manufacturers directly outside the city accelerated the building of an inner-city highway. Figure 3.7: Detroit Commerical Traffic Survey, 1936. Courtesy of University of Wisconsin. The Commercial Traffic survey in Figure 3.7 shows how congested the streets in the different neighborhoods were in 1936. Industry-related traffic flooded neighborhoods. The area between Conant, Davison, and Caniff (today’s Campau/Banglatown neighborhood) was fenced off on all sides by commercial traffic. Comparing Figure 3.7 with Figure 3.6, it is clear that the automobile . 3.3
71 manufacturing plants did not have much space to expand, located as they were within a street grid with different neighborhoods on all sides. In 1942, one of the first inner-city roads, Davison Avenue, connecting Highland Park with Detroit, was converted to M-8, or the six-lane Davison County Road, and later renamed Davison Freeway (Detroit Historical Society, 2019f). This freeway was one of the earliest freeways built into the urban fabric of a US city. Oakland Avenue was the last exit on Davison, only 1.5 miles away from what is now Campau/Banglatown. Connected to the new Interstate (I-75) and Chrysler Highway (M-10), the Davison Freeway was extended in 1968 to Conant Street (Besster, 2022). The corner of Davison and Conant Street now represents the northwest border of Campau/Banglatown and is still a very important gateway to the city center and northern suburbs today. Detroit was favorable to the settlement of several car manufacturing plants and their supply industries in its city center thanks to its excellent railway connections and waterway access. Fordism established automobiles as a mass product worldwide. The growth of mass production within the city impacted the city as a whole. When the working class, whose labor spurred the industry, could afford single-family homes, homeownership became the dominant economic model for city life. Becoming a homeowner was a side effect of the economic boom and improved worker’s mobility, which resulted in a lasting change in the city’s land use. Initially, living and working districts located next to each other resulted from earlier settlement patterns and the location of the car factories. The city’s population grew rapidly in numbers and sprawled outwards, expanding ethnic neighborhoods within city limits and beyond thanks to the increased mobility. However, the cultural diversity (of society) in Detroit continued to grow at the same time because of migration spurred on by the pursuit of available (industrial) labor and the chances of upward mobility in the twentieth century. Single-Family Homes in a Multi-Ethnic City Migration of different ethnic groups to Detroit has taken place in various forms, whether under the umbrella of colonialization, segregation, global wars or economic failure in other regions of the world or in the US. The ethnic influence on city life, whether through foreign food cultures, traditions, or homeownership structures and community life styles, has contributed to the formation of ethnic group identities and is still visible in different neighborhoods around Detroit. According to Buckel (2014) migration is a basic structural condition of city life. In this section I show how migration as a resource (Buckel, 2014) and migrants as multiscalar participants (Çaglar & Glick Schiller, 2018) in city-making have influenced neighborhoods and housing in Detroit. In the late eighteenth century, Detroit had already become a multi-ethnic 3.3
72 city shaped by a majority of European settlers who lived within their ethnic communities and formed different neighborhoods such as Corktown, Greektown, Germantown, and Poletown. The Homestead Acts33 also benefited newly arrived migrants, allowing them to claim land for living and working. The neighborhoods were often named according to the origin of their inhabitants. Before and during industrialization, the neighborhoods differed from each other in distinct land uses such as farming, residential, manufacturing, and commercial use. These distinctions must be seen in relation to the ethnic compositions of the neighborhood communities and the extent to which the city chose to invest in developing infrastructure. This was especially true of Detroit’s East Side, whose first settlements were formed by immigrant groups, and which developed from farming into working class neighborhoods during industrialization. In this section the focus is on the settlement practices of three influential immigrant groups, the German in Norris/ North Detroit; the Polish in Hamtramck and the African American in Black Bottom / Paradise Valley. Their settlement has shaped Detroit’s east side neighborhoods before and during industrialization. It shows how their placemaking practices in regards to singlefamily housing has influenced these neighborhoods in the context of their ethnic communities. In reference to Flood & Raedelli (2016) and Zunz (1982), I consider place making an activity that draws on local cultural and social assets to build a stronger community. The German Settlement German immigrants were one westward expanding ethnic group that contributed largely to the development of eighteenth century Michigan culture. The driving forces behind German migration towards Michigan depend on where they were coming from as well as the economic and political conditions of those places, including religion, climate, crop failures, overpopulation, and land scarcity (Kilar, 2002).34 Today, Germans make up the largest ancestral group in Michigan (Kilar, 2002). Most German immigrants were probably skilled laborers, craftsmen, or farmers, but they also found work as unskilled laborers in the factories (Kilar, 2002). They resided in large communities on the city’s East Side (east of Woodward) along Gratiot Avenue around the 1880s, where they built small frame houses. To save up for or build a house, German immigrants, like all newcomers, worked with both family and the ethnic community. Homeownership led to what social historian Oliver Zunz calls a “cultural attitude” about organizing and perpetuating group identity, which was usually 33 The acts made it possible for any citizen to settle on an unsettled piece of land in the US. 34 In 1834, toll free borders between German provinces allowed larger numbers of Germans to embark on boats to AmericafrommajorportcitiessuchasHamburgandBrementoAmerica.TheywouldthenarriveinNewYorkbeforetypically makingtheirwaybyboattowardsthewestontheGreatLakes(Kilar,2002). 3.3.1.
73 organized around the neighborhood and the church (Zunz, 1982, p. 5). Most working class immigrants, including 55% of Germans, owned their own homes (Zunz, 1982, p. 5). Kilar adds that next to Saginaw, Detroit had the highest percentage of German-owned single-family houses nationwide, more than any other ethnic group (Kilar, 2002): Home ownership was a way of organizing and perpetuating group identity around the neighborhood and the church. (Kilar, 2002, p. 26) Not only was homeownership manifesting an ethnic communities’ identity in space, but also as way for them to attain security and stability (Kilar, 2002). One example of a German settlement was Norris (renamed North Detroit in 1890), which was located east of what is now Hamtramck between 6 and 7 Mile Road, Mound Road, and Van Dyk Road (Svoboda, 2008). It was founded in 1873 by prominent real estate businessman Colonel Philetus W. Norris, who bought the area in 1865. After the Civil War, as part of a federal contract, he was appointed land trustee and charged with managing the unsettled land and developing it at first with building a plank road to Detroit´s city center and later by recruiting for the railroad (Sewick, 2021). Norris, the farming town could prosper because of the Detroit-Bay City Rail Road Station villages, which Norris donated as part of a real estate deal (Scott, 2001). This important infrastructural connection attracted business such as a blacksmith and a sawmill. Norris was once known as a buzzing center of commerce and contributed to the spatial development of the entire area, including Hamtramck to the east and Highland Park to the west. The yellow area in the north of the 1894 map of Hamtramck Township (Figure 3.8) marks the location of North Detroit. The village definitely had a concentration of Germans. In Figure 3.8, German surnames such as Ortman and Waterman appear as owners of farmland and other properties. The map area also shows the fragmentation of the farmland into living quarters divided into block grids of single-family homes and industrial sites.
74 Figure 3.8: Deatil of Hamtramck Township, 1893. Courtesy of Library of Congress. In the 1920s, the German community became more geographically dispersed. Zunz (1982) considers industrialization as having undermined the possibility for upward mobility within ethnic communities as social class became more important: to him, space formerly used by selfsufficient ethnic communities was reallocated to specialized uses such as for industry (Zunz, 1982). These designated spaces – such as industrial corridors alongside living quarters and commercial areas – shaped the further development of the adjacent neighborhoods. But at the same time, the process of urbanization through the city’s growth fragmented the German ethnic community and encouraged assimilation (Kilar, 2002). Some people were able to take advantage 3.3.2.
75 of the flourishing economy and leave their original communities, escaping the industrial quarters for the sprawling suburbs or other parts of the city. This process of fragmentation can be compared to Polish and Polish American immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s and, more recently, the Bangladeshi immigrant community. The increase of social and economic capital (Bourdieu, 1984,1986) over time creates upward mobility and, consequently, immigrants begin moving to more prestigious suburban neighborhoods. The Germans moved north outside the city districts to blend in with other immigrants. This dynamic of spatial and social movement of entire communities resulted from what Zunz (1982) calls socio-spatial transformation. This caused structural changes in the landscapes of industrial and post-industrial Detroit. The Polish Settlement German farmers, the wave of immigrants arriving in the 1820s, first settled in the township of Hamtramck, just outside Detroit (Scott, 2001). Hamtramck was named after Canadian officer John Francis Hamtramck, who forced the British troops to surrender the land of Detroit. Founded in 1798 as the Township of Hamtramck, it is one of Michigan’s oldest communities. Compared to the size of much smaller contemporary Hamtramck, it initially stretched from the Detroit River to 8 Mile and from Woodward Avenue to Grosse Point. Hamtramck was originally known as Kraft and consisted primarily of farmland. The village of Hamtramck was officially founded in 1901 (Kowalski, 2010). According to historical sources, some German shopkeepers and saloon owners saw potential in the village having two crossing railroads to the south. At this time, the townships around Detroit were slowly being eaten up by annexation to the city of Detroit, however, a change to Michigan’s constitution in 1908 created the Home Rule Cities Act, preventing Hamtramck and the neighboring township Highland Park from being annexed (WDET, 2014). Wayne County was divided into 21 townships during the process of annexation (Scott, 2001, p. 7). Detroit annexed a few of these villages until the period of annexation ended in 1926: What remained of Hamtramck Township was absorbed piece by piece by the city of Detroit, which eventually completely surrounded Hamtramck, leaving it a little independent island. (Kowalski, 2010, p. 9) Described as a peaceful German American farming community in the 1900s with a population of about 500, Hamtramck soon grew into a manufacturing town for the auto industry (City of Hamtramck, 2021a). In 1910, the Dodge brothers opened their auto factory there, helping to transform the burgeoning city by replacing pastures with paved streets and necessary infrastructure 3.3.2.
82 Figure 3.12: Detroit Redlining Map Mash Up 1940 by Paul Szewczyk. The Hearne Brothers produced the map of Detroit in Figure 3.12, which was commissioned by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in 1933. One of Detroit’s larger real estate firms, it sold houses, developments, lots, and mortgages to higher income Detroiters. These Residential Security Maps prevailed and enhanced real estate values in several of Detroit’s “white” neighborhoods while devaluing other neighborhoods such as ones that were predominantly African American (Sugrue, 1996). Newly arriving migrants were unable to settle freely and move to neighborhoods in the city where they desired to live (Zunz, 1982) and federal and local urban development programs in postwar Detroit continued to discriminate against certain communities such as low-income African American residents (Thomas, 2015). The mash up map (Figure 3.12) documents how Detroit’s 3.4.
83 African American neighborhoods (Paradise Valley, West Side, and even Conant Gardens) were usually part of the higher risk red zones. Campau/Banglatown and Hamtramck were higher risk as well as lower risk zones. Ultimately, most African Americans in Detroit did not profit from the general trend in upward mobility like the “white” migrants who moved up North during industrialization. They were also prevented from moving into certain neighborhoods despite their wealth, because they were refused mortgages or did not receive homeowners insurance. Their own thriving ethnic neighborhoods, such as Paradise Valley, were destroyed by the city’s urban planning agenda. The African American settlement history in Detroit was marked by segregation, redlining, and the occupation of areas that were less attractive, because of their location or commuting distance to work. More importantly African Americans were often hindered from becoming homeowners or forming communities to become homeowners by refusing loans and mortgages or not selling to them at all. In contrast, Polish and German settlers were able to increase and expand their homeownership through their own efforts and on the basis of the cohesion of the community. These are examples of three different ethnic groups in Detroit, that contributed to the urban development in the city before and during industrialization, especially in Campau/Banglatown. There were many other ethnic groups whose settlement, placemaking practices and ways of living have influenced the shape of the city as a metropolis of single-family homes. In the postindustrial age, the inflow of new immigrants to the city has not been interrupted despite different crises, such as the shrinking of the city, the foreclosure crises, and Detroit’s bankruptcy. However, the conditions under which they have been able to settle and form communities or engage as citizens have changed constantly, depending on political, economic, racial, and cultural constraints. Single-Family Homes in a Shrinking City Detroit’s rapid and vast population growth during the time of industrialization peaked in the 1950s from a total population of 465,765 residents in 1910 to 1,849,568 million people in 1950. Afterwards, the inner-city space began to shrink to 1,511,482 residents in the 1970s (Sugrue, 1996, p. 23). The fast increase in population created dense living conditions, particularly in older neighborhoods downtown, for the newly arrived immigrant populations. The rapid growth of working-class neighborhoods allowed higher income residents to move to Detroit’s Metropolitan area to build newer and bigger homes: By the 1950s Detroit had run out of room. There were no new subdivision to develop and decline, amplified by white flight and the attraction of bigger homes on bigger lots in the suburbs, set in for the rest of the century. (Scott, 2001, p. 8) 3.4.
84 As the city industrialized, Detroit could not keep up with the speed of private land growth or develop and maintain a cohesive urban development plan for all its citizens, who desired to live in their own homes. Instead, private urban development contributed to urban expansion and led to the expansion of the city into suburban areas. Suburbanization In the 1950s, what came to be known as “white flight”40 had already decimated the Caucasian population in the city center and contributed to the growth of the suburbs (Sugrue, 1996). Particularly after the Race Riots in 1943 and 1967, white people moved out to Detroit’s suburbs in large numbers, leaving the inner-city population predominantly African American. The expansion of the city and the fact that auto manufacturers started to build their factories outside the city limits also caused suppliers and other residents to leave the city following their jobs (Heßler, 2013). People who could afford to move to where the jobs were did so, accelerating the suburbanization process and spurring shrinking as well as leaving empty houses behind. Detroit’s shrinking can be attributed to suburbanization caused by the increase of individual mobility, growing demands for certain living conditions, and new employment possibilities outside the city center (Pallagst & Wiechmann, 2005). Detroit’s deindustrialization coincided with suburbanization and the beginning of globalization.41 The manufacturing industries increased automation processes and the number of production jobs decreased. Unemployment resulted, particularly at manufacturing sites in the city center. The movement of automobile factories to the suburbs and even further away shaped what has been described as the “The City of Holes” (Bekkering & Liu, 2015, p. 32). This refers to the shape following the depopulation of the city center, leaving single-family homes, entire neighborhoods, and manufacturing buildings unoccupied and empty. The loss of industrial jobs, population decline, and the decrease in occupied housing units posed a massive challenge to Detroit (Bekkering & Thomas, 2015). Decentralization and suburbanization were trends, which provided new residential and commercial space on the periphery of the city and therefore made the suburbs even more attractive (Oswalt & Rieniets, 2006). From then on, regular incomes were often spent in the suburbs, leading to fewer commercial areas in Detroit. Land in the city stopped being used for industrial production or individual housing, and was subsequently abandoned. Furthermore, the city’s (infra)structures dramatically changed from those of a densely populated metropolitan area to a median-size US city: 40 Whiteflightrefers tothemigration of whitepeople,mostly ofEuropeanancestry, fromurbanregions and older neighborhoodsincitycenterstonewerhomesinsuburbs,whichtendedtoberaciallyhomogenous(Sugrue,1996;Heßler,2013). 41 For countries and cities involved in trading mass consumer products with other cities and countries, “the decline of moving goods” spurred global trade (Glaeser, 2011, p. 2). 3.4.1.
85 So while in 1900, it was very valuable to locate a factory in Detroit because of those waterways and because of those rail yards, [that] became largely irrelevant by the latter half of the 20th century. (Glaeser, 2011, p. 2) Detroit was not the only American city that suffered from shrinking beginning in the 1950s, economic migration movements caused shrinking processes in industrial areas across the US (Heßler, 2013). The “Manufacturing Belt”, to which Detroit belonged, turned into the “Rust Belt”42, a term that has become synonymous with Midwestern and Northeastern cities facing plant closures, widespread unemployment, and shrinking. The diagram in Figure 3.13 indicates how the affluent suburbs stood apart from the inner city through social and economic inequalities. More and more incomes, and money in general, was spent in the metropolitan region, creating disadvantages for the inner city. It also led to a specific land use form in the Detroit’s metropolitan area referred to as a “donut”. This was characterized by the growing economically independent suburbs spreading far out into the rural areas of Michigan and the extensive population shrinkage in the inner city. Figure 3.13: Direction of Money Transfers in Metropolitan Detroit, 1971, by William Bunge. 42 “Rust” because of the iron industries involved in producing manufactured goods in these regions.
86 This diagram map (Figure 3.13) showing the city’s economic decline is part of a cartographic mapping project initiated by William Bunge in 1971 as a way to collect empirical data and analyze who and what caused inequality and drove Detroit’s urban crisis and shrinking (Bunge, 1971). The so called “Detroit Geographical Expedition” has been conducted with researchers and Detroit residents, one of the first mapping projects in Detroit engaging the community and their everyday expertise – in this case, using geography for social justice and addressing racial injustice and inequality in the city.43 However, the map focuses on Money Transfers in Metropolitan Detroit. It shows how Detroit’s city center lost its tax base and all of its revenue sources, i.e., income through rentals, as taxpayers spent their money in the suburbs. Urban Reinvestment To solve unequal infrastructural and living conditions in the city’s different neighborhoods, the City of Detroit launched the Housing Act of 1949 and 1954 as part of President Truman’s domestic legislature to focus on urban land use. It provided federal money to what were called “urban renewal” projects, which included permission for urban restructuring and the targeting of blight as well as providing public housing (Thomas, 2015). The City Plan Commission then published the Detroit Master Plan in 1951. This master plan44 focused on improving and developing postindustrial Detroit. It provided areas for industrial corridors trying to keep scattered manufacturing out of residential areas (City of Detroit, 1951). In contrast to an industrial planning model where people live and work in the same space as they had done up until then, the new plan separated industrial workplaces and family homes. Thomas (2013, p. 4) who has evaluated the relationship between political and economic forces in the city, describes the redevelopment plan of the 1950s and 1960s as “growth coalition dominated land-use decisions,” which funneled redevelopment towards downtown and into the suburbs and left out other neighborhoods. In the 1970s and 1980s – the years in which the effects of the loss of Detroit’s tax base, the lack of social services, and the improvement of public infrastructures became visible in the urban fabric – the federal government made cuts to urban spending (Sugrue,1996). During that time, urban governments also started to change their policies. Detroit’s “entrepreneurial” city government increasingly mobilized local politics in support of economic development and opened local negotiating to private and semi-public actors (Meyer, 1994). Political scientist Margit Meyer 43 The Detroit Geographic Expedition’s mapping goal was to connect academic geographers and “folk geographers” (Bunge, 1971). Bunge uses this term for people who do not have formal training in geographic methods, but live in the inner city. He aimed to use geography to create maps of how things are and maps of how things ought to be, to reveal systemic splits between wealth and poverty (Morris & Voyce, 2020). 44 Thiswasbethefirstoffourmasterplans,withsubsequentplansin1973,1990,and2009(Doucet,2017).Withthe exception of the Future City Plan (Detroit Future City, 2013), none of the master plans involved the residents or the cultural needs oflocalcommunitiesintheurbanplanningprocess(Williams,2017). 3.4.2.
87 (1994, p. 317) describes this shift in policy as the introduction of “new bargaining systems” and “new forms of public-private collaboration”. She sees the influence and role of real estate development as having been redefined by the interests of the voluntary sector and community groups in respect to business interests (Meyer, 1994). Moreover, urban planning efforts to change the urban crisis were largely concentrated on downtown Detroit, neglecting a citywide approach that would include marginalized neighborhoods. Reinvestment was again restricted to the central district close to downtown, such as Cobo Hall (opened 1960)45 on the riverfront, the largest convention center in the US at the time. What was new, however, was that the city started to work with private investors to secure financing for these major construction projects. The Renaissance Center (opened in 1977)46, which General Motors made its headquarters, became a massive public-private investment project meant to revive the inner city as a commercial center and act as a sign of progress. It was followed by the idea of turning Detroit into a tourist destination for Casino Resort Hotels in the 1990s, allowing private investors to build the three casino hotel complexes downtown. Nevertheless, these larger public-private partnership projects such as General Motor’s Poletown plant and the Renaissance Center did not enlarge the city’s employment base and instead diminished city funds (Sugrue, 1996, p. 271). Downton renewal projects did not meet the expectations of the city’s dream of urban growth. One reason was that corporate actors with the potential to create jobs, such as the “Big Three” automobile companies47, only showed “a modest commitment to Detroit and the human-capital strategy,” preferring to invest in the suburbs (Orr & Stoker, 1994, p. 64). In the 2000s, there was a dramatically high exodus of educated young people out of Michigan. For this reason, state governor Jennifer Granholm launched the Cool Cities Initiative to revitalize Michigan’s urban regions through cultural and artistic projects and make them more attractive to entrepreneurs and the creative class as well as stimulate job growth and economic revitalization (Office of the Governor, 2003). The funding once again focused on the inner city. Three million dollars “using existing resources creatively” were invested throughout the entire state (Office of the Governor, 2003). Detroit’s Eastern Market received a small portion of the money. However, none of the money was invested in homes or improving neighborhood infrastructures besides downtown until bankruptcy hit the city. 45 Cobo Hall is now called Cobo Center and has been extended and renovated, and put to different uses over time. 46 TheRenaissanceCenterisstillthetallestbuildinginDowntownDetroit.Thefive-towerbuildingconsistsofaluxury hotel,shoppingmall,andofficespace.TheCenterwastheideaofautomanufacturerHenryFord.Later,in1981,GeneralMotors took it over and opened its main headquarters in two additional towers. 47 The Big Three refers to the biggest automobile manufacturers in Detroit, Chrysler, Ford, and GM, which still have their headquarters in the metro area of Detroit.
88 The suburbanization of housing in the metropolitan area led to the shrinking number of residents and commercial businesses in Detroit. What has hardly changed has been the residential housing stock in neighborhoods. Those residents who could not afford to move out of the city or wanted to stay where their community was, continued to live in single or two-family homes and maintain the houses and communities as much as their means allowed. There was no need for and hardly any investment made into new housing while shrinking occurred. However, the decay of abandoned homes and industrial infrastructures caused distressed conditions in neighborhoods and for those who stayed. This included the decline and closing of social infrastructures such as schools, medical facilities, and more. This generally contributed to a decrease in quality of life and shaped the city’s negative reputation and image as a Shrinking City among others. The empty, deteriorated, run down single-family home became an icon of decay, a poster child of ruination and economic failure next to empty warehouses and industrial sites in the inner-city (Apel, 2015, p. 3). Single Family Homes in a Foreclosed City The global financial crisis as well as the bursting of the US housing bubble led to real estate values in Detroit dropping dramatically between 2006 and 2009. A modest single-family home on Stansbury Street that sold for $88,000 in 2001, sold again in 2006 for $33,500, and after foreclosure in 2008, the bank sold it for $1,250 (Clark, 2008). The assessed value48 of residential property dropped by almost 50% (Farley, 2015). Like a viral infection, foreclosed properties affected neighboring properties and houses with decreasing values. In a housing market already on the decline due to shrinking, the risk of rapid devaluation in Detroit was higher than in other post-industrial cities. As a result, during the 2007 US recession, homeowners in the city were stuck with their subprime mortgage payments: Homeowners were upside down – they owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth – and could no longer just flip their way out of their homes if they couldn’t make the new, higher payments (Kosakowski, 2019). On the one hand, homeowners were not able to sell their houses because they were worth less than was needed to pay back the mortgage. On the other hand, they were forced to pay higher mortgage fees to keep their houses because of subprime mortgage speculation. A subprime mortgage is a loan on a house or property usually given to people with a bad or negative credit 48 Assessed value is the property’s market value and the assessment rate determined by the bank or mortgage company. A property’s market value depends on the local real estate market and what the property would sell for, and it takes into account the property’s location, size, and condition (architectural style, materials, age, and accessories). 3.5. 3.5.1.
89 history.49 The interest rate for a subprime mortgage is higher than the usual mortgage for a house, compensating the lender for accepting the riskier credit (Kopp, 2021). A mortgage loan is always dependent on the value of the house or land, which means that this scheme depended on rising housing values. Loans were often made without a market and speculators and investors started to bid against subprime mortgages. However, when the US economy slowed down, mortgage default rates increased massively. What followed were higher mortgage payments and those who couldn’t afford the mortgage any longer would go into foreclosure with their homes (Kosakowski, 2019). Foreclosure Crisis The collapse of the subprime housing market is cited as the source of Detroit’s foreclosure crisis (Alsup, 2015). During the financial crisis, unemployment was high and investment in real estate low. Consequently, residential homeowners were unable to service their mortgages50 and fell behind on their property tax payments51, leading to massive foreclosures. Detroit has the highest repossession rate in the country, i.e., homes repossessed by banks or mortgage holders (Moore & Watson, 2008). Researchers for the Motor City Mapping Survey52 (Alsup, 2015) estimate that in 2015 about 62,000 properties were headed for tax foreclosure in Detroit. In contrast, 5,090 mortgage loans were in foreclosure in 2009 following the housing crisis. 49 In 1999, the Federal National Mortgage Association made these loans in the form of more accessible mortgages despitelowcreditandsavingsrates.Thisformofloanwasintroducedduringanup-trendinghousingmarket(Kopp,2021). 50 Workingforfive-years(2011-2016)askeyaccountantforanindependentresidentialrealestatefinancingcompany (Hüttig&RompfAGinHamburg),Ilearnedthattheagreedinterestrateforamortgageisthefinanciallinchpinthatmust withstand,changessuchasashort-termrevenueshortfall.Whenincomelossoccursandinterestratesincreaseduetoastaggering form of interest (a typical case for sub-prime mortgages), it is hard for homeowners to service their mortgages in the long-term and they will not have money to improve their often cheaply acquired properties. 51 If they do not pay their property taxes for more than two years in a row, Detroit residents forfeit their home to the county treasurer. The county or other government entities will then start the process of foreclosing the home. After foreclosure, a delinquent property owner is still able to get back the foreclosed property, but is forced to compete in a public (online) county auctionwithotherpeopleandleaveadeposit(WayneCounty,2022). 52 MotorCityMappingisamappinginitiativeofthreegeodatafirmsinDetroitthatcollectdataabouteverypropertyin the city to assess their condition (Data Driven Detroit & Regrid, n.d.). 3.5.1.
90 Table: 3.0: Detroit Foreclosures in Numbers from 2002 until 2015, 2015. Courtesy of Loveland Technologies. Foreclosures in 2015 (24,994) were six times higher than in 2008 (4,100) when the crisis began (Table 3.0). As a consequence, the abundance of residential real estate has led to an overflow in residential properties going up for auction, particularly as an after effect of the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 (Gallagher, 2013). Urban geographer Joshua Akers (2017) concludes that over the last decade, one third of all residential properties were in foreclosure. According to urban researchers, the housing or so-called “foreclosure crisis” in Detroit was a long time in the making (Sugrue,1996 ; Darden & Thomas, 2013; Galster, 2012; Thomas & Bekkering, 2015). Risky subprime53 mortgage brokers encouraged homeownership among minorities and people with poorer credit scores, especially in Detroit (Mayer & Pence, 2008). At the same time, financial gatekeepers like credit rating agencies (Peck & Whiteside, 2016, p. 235) became systematic in influencing (re-)financialization and investments in Detroit. In an interview with a local newspaper, local urban geographer Robin Boyle stated that “the sub-prime mortgage industry was in full flag in Detroit” (Clark, 2008). Calling the issuing of mortgages an “industry” betrays the fact that the housing market was already speculative before the financial crisis began. The foreclosure crisis is often referred to as a housing crisis. Others link the foreclosure crisis to the neoliberal reorganization of Detroit during its Emergency Management and State of Bankruptcy in 2013 (Peck, 2012; Kirkpatrick & Bolton, 2018). This forced the city government to act like 53 Subprimemortgagesaremortgagesgivenoutbybrokerswhoworkforfinancialinstitutions.Theyaretargetedat borrowerswithless-than-perfectcreditandless-than-adequatesavings(Kosakowski,2019).Thesemortgagesaremeasuredby thevalueofthehouse,butareoftenoverratedwithregardstothehouse’sactualmarketvalue.Amajorityofsubprimemortgages have interest rates that increase over time (Zandi, 2009). If a homeowner is unable to pay the mortgage, the house is foreclosed. Subprime mortgages are also known as mortgage-backed securities. 3.5.2.
91 a business under emergency management, practicing “municipal rightsizing” (Kirkpatrick & Bolton, 2018, p. 28). The neoliberal governing of American cities, which Peck calls “austerity urbanism” (Peck, 2012), has had a huge impact on the city’s social and spatial transformations. The neoliberal narrative translates the 2008 Banking Crisis “first into a state crisis and then into an urban crisis” (Peck, 2014). The shrinking of the city and the foreclosure crisis were two contributing factors to the financial breakdown of the City of Detroit. On July 18, 2013, the City of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in US history, estimated at $18 to 20 billion. Farley (2015) blames Michigan’s system of supporting local governments, missing out on opportunities to annex suburbs to Detroit.54 Moreover, some argue that Detroit’s bankruptcy was also caused by an entrepreneurial approach to urban government in which “the routinized game of growth-machine policy” allowed new generations of indebtedness justified by systemically financialized management structures (Peck & Whiteside, 2016). Auctions and Speculation The foreclosure crisis in the city of Detroit (Sugrue, 1996; Darden & Thomas, 2013; Peck & Whiteside, 2016), the neoliberal reorganization of the city (Kirkpatrick & Bolton, 2018) paired with the national financial crisis created space for private speculators and investors to obtain bulk properties and homes, particularly residential homes through public auctions or in the foreclosure markets (Akers, 2017). Auctioning vacant residential properties and abandoned homes that have been tax-foreclosed in Detroit has become common practice. Mortgage investment banks, the State of Michigan, Wayne County, and the City of Detroit regularly auction off vacant residential properties that have not been claimed by any government entities. However, there was no coordinated process for auctioning tax foreclosed residential real estate in the city until the Detroit Land Bank was founded in 2008. Akers (2013, p. 3) thinks that the auction system of the Wayne County Auction in the early 2000s gave way to property ownership that was used by speculative investment enterprises to avoid taxes and speculate on or dump properties. Speculators resold auctioned properties at a profit and did not pay property taxes to the city or invest in the property (Dewar et al., 2014). The Wayne County Public Auction provided space for land speculation and risky investment transactions that helped contribute to the subprime mortgage market. This was caused by the lack of local regulations or regulations securing neighborhood needs, criticisms of the county’s 54 Michigan’s Home Rule Law prevented the merging and annexation of suburban neighborhoods to Detroit. According to Farley (2015, pp. 95-96), the city missed out on the tremendous population and economic growth that occurred in southeast Michigan between the 1940s and 1970s because Detroit did not annex any land after 1926. 3.5.2.
98 Moreover, in 2014, Detroit became a “Welcoming City” and launched The Detroit City Council Immigration Task Force (Global Detroit, 2022). Due to its history of immigration, the city already offers infrastructures (international cuisine, religious facilities, and cultural traditions) and hosts a variety of communities, making it easier for newly-arrived immigrants to establish themselves in the city. Former state representative Steve Tobocman (2014) published a report on the role of immigration in Detroit. He recommends supporting immigrant-inclusive initiatives and businesses to help revitalize Detroit (Tobocman, 2014). Since 2010, non-profits like Global Detroit have set up numerous initiatives and programs, including ones for immigrant entrepreneurship and neighborhood revitalization, to identify opportunities and display institutional stability in the region for immigrants. In short, the city’s excellent educational and cultural institutions make Detroit an attractive destination for global business and a global workforce. It is also attractive for people working in the fields of technology, car manufacturing, medicine, and the creative industries. Finally, it is known for being immigrant inclusive. These regional location factors not only influence where local, national, and international companies and institutions invest, but also where an educated and non-educated global workforce seeks employment and real estate opportunities. However, these regional factors are primarily attractive to newcomers at certain income levels or particular educational backgrounds. Local or regional residents who do not have access to financial or educational resources do not necessarily benefit from these resources. Public-Private Investment in Midtown and Downtown Private investment and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in particular have paved the way for large-scale revitalization projects of vacant buildings and lots in inner city Detroit over the past decade. PPPs are usually an arrangement a city or governmental body makes as a public entity together with a private investor with the common goal of providing some sort of public infrastructure from which the city can profit. An example of a top-down PPP is the construction of the Little Caesars Arena, an ice hockey arena built by the Ilitch Family in Midtown. The family received $400 million in direct taxpayer dollars to build the arena and develop a neighborhood around it with restaurants, bars, and retail and residential buildings whose revenues would increase their own profits (Perkins, 2019). . 4.1.2
99 Figure 4.0.: A home for sale near Little Caesars Arena at 2712 Cass Avenue, Detroit, 2021. Photo by Cordula Ditz. The arena was built but the surrounding area remains a wasteland of “blighted buildings, parking garages, and surface parking lots” (Perkins, 2019). The community structures in the neighborhood, now known as “The District”,61 have been affected. Figure 4.0 shows a duplex home next to the arena that has been up for sale for a long time and that the investors did not improve or include in the neighborhood revitalization plan.62 It is surrounded by commercial buildings and suffers from blight. This is an example of how PPPs can enhance the property value of private investors but effect the property of adjacent residents. In fact, it has the capacity to devalue the property of local residents who may not have the financial means to improve their building structures in that neighborhood nor the money to acquire a new house somewhere else. Another example is Dan Gilbert, who has pursued another kind of “colonial” redevelopment63 61 TheDistrictDetroitwasatfirstannouncedasaboldvisionforpublic-privateinvestmentdesignedtobringsports, entertainment, economic vitality and a new, world-class arena to the area between downtown and Midtown (The District Detroit, 2018). 62 Neither the City of Detroit nor anyone else have pressed charges to sanction the Illitch’s investment scheme of not developing the purchased and government-funded real estate as promised. 63 I refer to the investor’s redevelopment plans as “colonial” because such plans often do not allow current residents to participate in redevelopment. They do not engage in a long-term urban planning process together with the City of Detroit. Instead, they try to create cases of privatized urban development to which other urban institutions are supposed to be oriented. Theirgoalistoprofitfromrealestateappreciation,butnottoworkcollaborativelytodevelopcitiesorneighborhoodssustainably or improve the living conditions of local residents.
100 involving downtown space through what has been referred to as “real estate and technology investment” (Rafael & Irwin, 2017, p. 9). The founder of Quicken Loan and a real estate mogul, Gilbert64 began his private investments by moving the headquarters of his mortgage lending company from the suburbs to Downtown Detroit in 2010. In 2011, he founded his real estate firm Bedrock, which began buying empty office spaces, hotels, and commercial buildings, accumulating around 100 properties downtown, often with the city’s support (Rafael & Irwin, 2017). One of Gilbert’s most well-known investments is the Z, a parking garage that, along with the adjacent alley, The Belt, is decorated with 27 murals by international street and graffiti artists (Rafael & Irwin, 2017, p. 9). Today, The Belt looks public and invites pedestrians to stroll along it, as part of a commercial strip hosting restaurants, shops, and a gallery space.65 However, the beautified buildings are not public property or public commissions. They belong to the portfolio of Bedrock Detroit (Bedrock, 2021). In Downtown Detroit, Gilbert has used art to brand properties and spaces that he owns but that appear to be public.66 Not only does he use art to market his own real estate portfolio, but by supporting the arts, he has been able to draw positive attention to his downtown real estate. By creating visual (land)marks in Downtown Detroit, he has used art to develop his placement and development strategies. These projects have also provided space for artists, including members of the local graffiti scene,67 to present their work, giving local talent more exposure and connecting it to national and international artists. Many entrepreneurs have imitated Gilbert’s use of art, design, and Detroit’s cultural history, its music and architecture, not only to decorate their real estate but to spark or revive related 64 Gilbert’s commitment to invest in the city and create employment opportunities has gained him trust over the past decade (Perkins, 2017). Consequently, the City of Detroit has engaged in several PPPs with him, such as the Downtown Street CarandtheQLineunderwhosetracksGilberthasinstalledRocketFiber,ahighspeedfiberopticinternetcable.Gilberthas bought about 95% of the properties, city-land owned, along the Q Line (Rafael & Irwin, 2017, p. 9). 65 The driving force behind the transformation of the formerly “under-utilized space” is Library Street Collective, a commercialartgallery.Inanofficialstatement,LibraryStreetCollectiveclaimstocuratewhatitreferstoas“PublicArt”in “publicspace”(LibraryStreetCollective,n.d.).Thegallery’smainprojectsandincomesourcesinvolvecommissioningartists who work with building structures in Downtown Detroit, i.e., through large scale installations or murals that are owned by or tradedthroughBedrockDetroit,Gilbert’scommercialrealestatefirm.TheBeltandtheZwerecollaborativeprojectsbetween the gallery and Bedrock Detroit (Library Street Collective, 2022). 66 In2013,RockVenture,Gilbert’srealestateinvestmentfirm,provideda“visionaryplacemakingandretailplan”. Together with Downtown Detroit Partnership (DDP) and Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, they branded it “Opportunity Detroit.”Itspurposewastodevelopretailstores,apartments,andofficesalongWoodwardAvenue(Rafael&Irwin,2017,p.9), and “to encourage people to live, work, play and invest in the City of Detroit” (Quicken Loans, 2013). 67 WhileGilberthasusedmuralistsandgraffitiartiststomakehispropertiesmorevisuallyattractive,hehastriedto punish artists who have made art on his empty properties and buildings downtown without his invitation, even taking legal actions against them (Neavling, 2014).
101 business activity. A series of wealthy suburban Detroit businessmen have also, through their high concentration of land acquisition in centrally located districts, created their own “corporate fiefdom” (Perkins, 2019:1).68 It is not the City of Detroit that is primarily known for reinvesting into residential or commercial real estate in the inner city, but rather the names of the projects, visions, or ideas of private investors that can be found in information about more recent inner city urban development. Very often, these investors’ development strategies do not consider the existing residential needs or spatial conflicts in neighborhoods. They are only interested in improving a neighborhood according to the value standards of a real estate market driven by economic growth factors. Moreover, these privately-owned and revitalized spaces are private commercial investments that often develop commercial spaces or habitats for higher income classes instead of sustaining residential living structures in low-income neighborhoods or for low-income residents. Gilbert does nevertheless seem to be aware of his monocultural actions, namely that concentrating on revitalizing inner-city neighborhoods alone leaves the blighted neighborhoods untouched. In an opening statement about public-private ownership in Detroit, he addressed the fact that there is no way that this Downtown or Midtown momentum can continue or for great things to keep happening if the vast majority of Detroit’s neighborhoods continue to die (Pyati, 2014).69 Commercial and residential real estate investment and public-private improvements in the downtown area through arts and culture have a positive impact on property values in the area because these inner-city improvements both attract people to work and live there and make them appear safe and convenient in terms of everyday infrastructures. They also attract other investors to invest in real estate in the area. Residential and commercial rents and market prices in Downton Detroit have climbed (Aguilar, 2016). But has the rising price spiral of real estate value in the inner city positively influenced the residential real estate market in Campau/Banglatown? According to local resources, Detroit’s revival, spearheaded by rich and private investors like Gilbert, is “spreading beyond its downtown spine and the real estate empire” because foundations and banks have followed suit and are helping to secure financing in the city on different levels such as community engaged projects in other neighborhoods (Howes, 2019). 68 TheseincludeDanGilbert,MattyMoroun,PhilipKafka,andtheIlitchfamily,tonameonlyafew. 69 Gilbertattendedaconferencethatexploredhowthepublicandprivatesectorscanjoinforceswithphilanthropic institutionsandnonprofitorganizationstoreviveurbancoresthathavesufferedpopulationloss,disinvestment,andashrinking tax base (Pyati, 2014).
102 Urban Digital Data According to one research report on Detroit’s housing market, a healthy housing market is an important component of a healthy city (Urban Institute, 2017). The report, by the Urban Institute – a nonprofit research organization that provides data and evidence for promoting inclusive economic growth (Urban Institute, n.d.) – compiled instructions using a number of studies, including the Neighborhood Change Database and census data. By collecting and visualizing this data, the Urban Institute has been able to give advice on the best ways to optimize a healthy housing market in Detroit. Strategies include using landbank programs or lease-purchase agreements and appealing to local stakeholders and leaders. This is, however, a top-down report, done in collaboration with JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banks in the US. But it is part of a growing series of data reports and surveys that transform data, be it digital or analog, into useful tools that possibly indicate urban development and growth in the city. Over the past few decades, a series of reports focused on residential real estate. These included “The Detroit Housing Market” (Urban Institute, 2017), research studies, parcel survey analyses such as “Motor City Mapping” (Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, 2013), “Property Praxis” (Akers et al., n.d.), and “Detroit Residential Parcel Survey” (Detroit Data Collaborative, 2010). The reports were conducted by non-profit organizations, private foundations, community organizers, banks, urban researchers, and geo data services. Land parcel and location context data was also collected by Data Driven Detroit70 and LOVELAND Technologies (now known as Regrid).71 Some of these reports document the current status quo of residential shrinkage, some analyze the current housing market, and others have become guidebooks for how and where to invest in the city. These data analytic activities have contributed to better assessments of Detroit’s residential real estate market, i.e., by mapping the conditions of homes and lots through participatory mapping carried out by local residents. These all deliver data that serve as a basis for homeowners, private investors, and public and financial institutions, such as banks. For example, as the 2010 census was approaching, the City of Detroit and private foundations invested in a “Detroit Residential Parcel Survey” (Detroit Data Collaborative, 2010). Organized by Data Driven Detroit,72 the survey categorized the conditions of the city’s housing and vacant lots from good to in need of demolition. It also tried to give a citywide overview of the degree 70 DataDrivenDetroitisoneofthefirstnon-profitdatacollectionandanalysisfirmsworkingwithdigitalurbandatain Detroit. For more information see: https://datadrivendetroit.org 71 Regrid started as Loveland Technologies in Detroit and expanded into a nationwide, urban data analysis service. For more information see: https://regrid.com 72 Generating their data via on-site mapping complemented by pre-existing digital data, Data Driven Detroit has experimented with public and private data mining and contributed to building up an urban digital twin for the City of Detroit. Most of all, they have inspired and engaged local residents to participate in collecting data, i.e., for the 2010 and 2020 censuses. Because contributing or sharing data over smart phones and social media has become technologically possible, it is now feasible to involve a diverse and broader user group (from homemakers and activists to investment bankers) (Data Driven Detroit, 2022). 4.1.3.
103 of structural damage suffered by residential homes, i.e., through fire or distressed conditions. The survey categorized residential homes and adjacent lots and therefore qualified them as areas with potential or areas of loss. By mapping the vacancy rate in neighborhoods, it also delivered a coherent argument regarding the houses in need of demolition and the areas that are less secure. Another example is the 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan, initiated by local foundations and the city of Detroit (Detroit Future City, 2013). The initiative used contributions from participating communities, targeted Detroit’s overall urban development, and with the collection and discussion of local real estate data, qualified properties and land and advised on how to improve and stabilize neighborhoods with vacant houses (Detroit Future City, 2013). All of these research projects have worked with geo data systems or geo spatial mapping initiatives collecting and/or mining urban digital data for their own analyses. Whether or not they have a commercial orientation or are non-profit or one-time initiatives, they work at the intersection of digitization and urban planning while providing material and data for citizens and stakeholders to argue for or against urban planning projects (Schwegmann et al., 2021). It is argued that as a form of technology, urban digital data turns single-family housing into an institutional asset (Poleg, 2020, p. 157), a form of digital investment and a good that is manageable because it is digital and has been quantified and can therefore be traded. For example, Global Detroit and goodgood (2017), an interdisciplinary design studio,73 developed a Vision + Action Plan for Campau/Banglatown in 2016. They collected qualitative data on housing and experiences in the neighborhood through participatory observation, mapping, workshops, and other tools such as focus groups with residents. The results of the plan were made available to the public, but also became part of the Strategic Neighborhood Planning Development, a public-private partnership with the City of Detroit and other investors. I discuss the impact of the Strategic Neighborhood Plan in more detail in Chapter 4.2.4. The digitization and visualization of data based on mapping and surveys is thus a powerful tool for defining, contributing to, and influencing the development of values for residential real estate. Some of these data collection initiatives have been carried out in correspondence or in collaboration with neighborhood organizations or as part of a neighborhood initiative by local residents, though only a few have addressed community-based solutions or have integrated the collected qualitative data into their data set. On a positive note, mapping and data collection and their resulting documents have made displacement, foreclosure, speculation, and abandonment more visible (Akers, 2017, p. 4). As already shown in Chapter 3, mapping in and maps about Detroit 73 goodgood is Karen Stein, a Boston based designer, artist, and educator, and Benjamin Gaydos, a Detroit-based designer,artist,andfilmmaker,whoconsidereconomic,socialequity,andecologicalfactorsintegralpartsofthedesignprocess (goodgood, n.d.).
104 have become powerful tools politically as well as economically, determining urban development agendas and ultimately how to cluster and govern people and their neighborhoods in the city. And yet, digital data collection is more than just a quantified tool of power for delivering arguments in the context of urban development, be it for political, economic, or communal reasons. Some digital data analysis programs also implement into their data collection set qualified data, i.e., about the living quality of a location or for a certain age group. Those residents, initiatives, or commercial entities that have the resources and abilities to produce data on their own can influence data collection by collecting and manipulating their own data. The use of digital data sets in urban planning processes also shows that a city like Detroit not only relies on quantified data selected in the past, but also projects scenarios that work with data (including qualified data) to simulate the city’s future developments. The visualization of digital data, i.e., through graphs or other graphic design modes (for either qualitative or quantitative data), makes real estate data comparable and easier to interpret. Capturing digital data is also useful for qualifying real estate in Detroit, either by including social data, updated sales prices, or participatory data by homeowners. Moreover, it has become an influencing factor on the real estate market, for example by using the data to support arguments for or against neighborhood redevelopment. Regional factors such as education, cultural institutions, an openness to immigrant labor, and public-private investment all influence Detroit’s real estate market. But the above examples also show that the way real estate data is collected and presented, i.e., through collecting quantitative and qualitative digital data, delivers arguments and creates a power dynamic to increase the image of the city or stimulate its future planning. Furthermore, it indicates that a real estate market like Detroit’s, which has been characterized by shrinking and low demand among buyers due to a surplus of residential and commercial real estate, can be influenced by strengthening its non-economic values, such as educational and cultural institutions, and its urban history or reviving its inner-city infrastructures through art and culture as well as by bolstering prosperous future development by simulating which existing data and specifications are needed for a positive outcome in a specific location or neighborhood. Value-in-Use Factors of Single-Family Homes in Campau/Banglatown In this section, I analyze the value-in-use factors of single-family homes that play an important role on the residential real estate market in Campau/Banglatown and that are locally specific and may vary from neighborhood to neighborhood in Detroit. Part of the economic value of real estate, value-in-use is characterized in terms of residents, city planners, and business owners in Campau/Banglatown. Value is explained in social-systemic terms (Galster, 2019). It is defined by the users and homeowners of single-family homes and their preferences and needs (Lorenz, et al., 2018, pp. 47-48). 4.2.
105 Over the past ten years, the market value of real estate in Campau/Banglatown has grown moderately in comparison to the rapid growth of inner-city residential real estate (Census Reporter, 2020). According to the American Housing Survey, the residential market values and sales prices of residential homes built before 1939 improved in Detroit’s urban areas between 2013 and 2019 (Table 4.0). Year of Survey 2013 2015 2019 Total of Metropolitan Area Median (US Dollars) 67,000 75,000 125,000 Mean (US Dollars) x X 166,200 Metro: Central City Median (US Dollars) 32,000 60,000 70,000 Mean (US Dollars) x x 118,100 Table 4.0: Values and purchase prices, homes built in 1939 or earlier in Metro Detroit, American Housing Survey 2013,2015 and 2019. As shown in Table 4.0, the median74 market value of residential homes built before 1939 has increased in Detroit’s metropolitan area and in the inner-city district from $32,000 to $70,000. The mean, which represents the average of all sales in the city of Detroit, was $118,100 in 2019. These numbers certainly do not represent the reality of a typically distressed urban neighborhood in Detroit, but they do indicate residential real estate’s growth tendency. The numbers include the purchase prices of single-family houses with smaller lots comparable to the ones in the Campau/ Banglatown neighborhood as well as larger family dwellings in wealthier neighborhoods in the city of Detroit. Detroit’s Campau/Banglatown neighborhood has the same zip code, 48212, as the city of Hamtramck. They are located next to each other. In the census reports available online, data is often provided under the zip code and therefore placed under “Hamtramck.” A comparison of census housing data between 2010 and 2020 affirms that the median value of owner-occupied housing units in the 48212 zip code area increased from $3,628 in 2010 to $72,600 in 2020 (United States Census Bureau (2020). Overall, the median value of owner-occupied housing units in the city of Detroit is $52,700 (United States Census Bureau, 2021). The largest increase is for houses under $100,000 and between $100,000 and $200,000, which represents the price range of houses in Campau/Banglatown compared to real estate prices on platforms like Zillow or Realtor. 74 The median amount is the middle point for real estate prices, half of the houses are priced for less and half priced for more. The purchase price, sometimes referred to as the “mean” or “average,” is the sum of all sales prices of houses divided by the numbers of houses sold (The Balance Editors, 2022).
106 For example, the property value of my FILTER Detroit house has increased as well. I bought the single-family home at an auction for $3,500, but had to redo the plumbing and some electrical wiring, install a used forced air heater, build a kitchen, replace half of the windows and do some flooring. Later in 2014, I built a studio with a full bath and kitchen in the attic. According to the real estate platform Zillow, the FILTER Detroit single-family home – estimated as having 1 bath, 2 bedrooms, and not including the studio space – had an estimated value of $69,500 in 2019 and $81,500 in 2022 (Zillow, 2022). The real estate platform indicates rising sales prices for residential homes in the 48212 zip code area. According to local real estate agent Nazmul Islam,75 property prices have more than doubled over the past decade: And property, value-wise from, I would say, 2010 to 2017, is more than doubled. More than double the price. The single-family house was selling even until 2014 [for] about $32,000 to $50,000. Now these houses [are] selling [for] $82,000 to $120,000. Two-family units. Singlefamily [are] selling up to… Some of them up to $100,000. […] Which was in 2010, 2011. Even in 2012, you [could] buy between $25,000 to $30,000. (N. Islam, personal communication, October 3, 2017) Alexa Bush, the urban design director of the East Region in the City of Detroit Planning Department, explains that the Campau/Banglatown area has seen a growth in population (A. Bush, personal communication, March 15, 2019). With this recent growth, the demand for residential real estate and the neighborhood’s attractiveness have increased. Bush points out that demand is high and it is a seller’s market, because the development of new single-family homes in the area is not possible – there are hardly any empty lots for building new houses (A. Bush, personal communication, March 15, 2019). The already developed areas are densely populated due to the closely arranged residential homes. Nazmul Islam confirms that the single-family home market has become more competitive. More people [are] coming in. And more people [are] coming in because of jobs available and housing is still affordable. ( N. Islam, personal communication, October 3, 2017) The real estate agent explains that due to the relatively low cost of housing, demand has been high in Campau/Banglatown. Likewise, he indicates that there is not a large supply of this kind of low-cost housing. Both the perspective of the city planner and the real estate agent as well as the empirical data 75 Islam has been the insurance agent for FILTER Detroit’s property insurance since November 2012. My then-neighbor AlireferredmetohimwhenIwaslookingforaninsuranceagent.Hisofficeisonlyashort,twoblockwalkaway.Itwas importanttometofindaninsuranceagentwhoIcouldtalktoinpersonandwhoisfamiliarwithCampau/Banglatownasa neighborhood. 4.2.1.
107 about the rise of economic real estate value show that within a decade, Campau/Banglatown has developed from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market for residential real estate from 2010 to 2020. In the following subsections of this chapter, I show which value-in-use factors have informed the demand for real estate in this area over the past decade. Job Availability, Affordability, & Access to Everyday Infrastructures Nazmul Islam explained why Hamtramck76 and Campau/Banglatown are so attractive to live in. When asked how he describes this area to potential customers, he replied: This area [has] potential for low-skilled and skilled and semi-skilled people, jobs [are] available. Jobs and housing. Housing is still very cheap compared to anywhere in the United States. Anyway, you can rent any apartment here [for] $500 to $600. I mean, nowhere in the US I would say you find that type of housing. […] People, new immigrant people, easily find jobs in this area and they live in Hamtramck. They like to live in Hamtramck. […] And everything is convenient here. And the communication, the freeways, [its] close to the downtown and also [the] few universities and hospitals and medical centers. (N. Islam, personal communication, October 3, 2017) The affordability of this type of housing in comparison to other Detroit neighborhoods is an important location factor. Writer and Hamtramck-native Walter Wasacz, whose family background is Polish, adds that the houses built in the Hamtramck and Campau/Banglatown area are functional “not in terms of architecture. [They are] functional, well-built houses of affordability to live in” (W. Wasacz, personal communication, March 12, 2018). In addition, the real estate agent points out that the availability of jobs in the immediate vicinity for semi-skilled, skilled, and non-skilled labor makes the neighborhood attractive, especially for immigrants. According to the Detroit Future City Strategic Framework Plan, job growth has already occurred near the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood, which urban planning experts describe as an industrial and international trade area, and is expected to continue to grow in the future (Detroit Future City, 2013, p. 8). Islam also addresses the convenience of pre-existing infrastructures such as regional road access to central locations and the suburbs and the walking distance to infrastructures providing everyday care, including fresh food, grocery stores, and pharmacies. By Detroit standards and according to the Detroit Department of Transportation Map, Campau/ Banglatown is already well connected on a public transportation network. There are secondary bus routes downtown and to the neighborhoods to the east and west (City of Detroit, 2021).77 76 DuringthetimeoftheinterviewwithNazmulIslamin2017,theofficialneighborhoodnameCampau/Banglatown did not yet exist. This is why Nazmul refers to Hamtramck or Banglatown when talking about Campau/Banglatown. This also indicates that the neighborhood boundaries between Detroit (Campau/Banglatown) and Hamtramck (Hamtramck) are porous. 77 At the same time, I have observed over the years that no one I have interviewed or have been in contact with takes 4.2.1.
114 According to Global Detroit & goodgood (2017), “the community development efforts in the area have lacked the cross-cultural cohesion and common vision needed to transform the neighborhood,” which is why they produced a community plan with a joint vision, involving different stakeholders and actors in the neighborhood, such as the art initiative Power House Productions and the Bangladeshi American Public Affairs Committee.82 Through their research, they found that the neighborhood already has many strengths, stressing, however, that crosscultural cohesion between immigrant and non-immigrant residents is necessary for future community development and investment in the neighborhood (Global Detroit & goodgood, 2017). Therefore, they have advised the city to improve parks and nature, neighborhood cohesion, transportation, safety and housing and homeownership. The door-to-door survey revealed that immigrants face additional barriers, including a lack of bank accounts and different credit scores (Global Detroit, 2018). Global Detroit identified Campau/Banglatown as an “Opportunity Neighborhood”. This allows immigrant families and business owners to receive administrative support from Global Detroit, which connects them to homeownership programs.83 As a result, Global Detroit supports them by initiating programs for things such as home repair as well as foreclosure prevention (Global Detroit, 2022a). In addition, they provide possibilities through community engagement as well as funding small business opportunities (Global Detroit, 2022a). At the same time, Global Detroit pushes the narrative of a strong immigrant community while marketing and branding the neighborhood as an urban development hub with growth potential for immigrants (Global Detroit, 2018). Shortly after the publishing of the Vision + Action Plan in 2019, the city announced that Campau/Banglatown, including the East Davison Neighborhood, had been selected as one of eight “Strategic Neighborhoods”. Alexa Bush explains that the Strategic Neighborhood Fund, a public-private fund administered by the City of Detroit, was implemented to direct neighborhood investments towards specific causes. In Campau/Banglatown, for example, the Strategic Neighborhood Fund focuses on “safer streets, new park activities, and affordable housing” (A. Bush, personal communication, March 15, 2019). The focus could be different in another neighborhood. According to the plan, Detroit’s strategic goals for the neighborhood include the continuation and expansion of its existing and emerging cultural community, the strengthening of its economic and social vitality, the commercial corridors and increase of housing rentals and homeownership opportunities for current and incoming populations, and the transformation of vacant landscapes into productive, sustainable, and beautiful spaces (City of Detroit 2019a). 82 Through door-to-door canvassing, attending community events, organizing neighborhood interactions and community picnics,theyreceivedtheinputofabout350residents,whichledtowhattheinitiatorscalleda“jointvision”withinasix-month period for their Vision + Action Plan (Global Detroit & goodgood, 2017). 83 For example, Global Detroit helps immigrants for whom English is often a second language with the auction process oftheDetroitLandBankorWayneCountyauctionanditprovidesandassistswithforeclosurepreventioninformation(Global Detroit, 2022a).
115 Their intentions see the city of Detroit as not only supporting the economic vitality of the neighborhood, but its cultural and social infrastructures and ties as well. The realization of the strategic neighborhood plan, which is also referred to as an action-based, participative process,84 started in 2019 in the neighborhood (Noble, 2019). One of these is the Conant Street Scape Project, which seeks to provide basic road improvements on Conant Street by reducing the driveways of business owners and delineating street parking while at the same time making it safer to cross the street by installing crosswalks, signs, and flower beds to act as speed bumps (City of Detroit, 2022d). Another project is the improvement of Jayne Playfield and the adjacent park and recreation area, making it more attractive for recreational use by improving play areas for ball games and refurbishing the children’s playground. The Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) has become another important partner in helping to strengthen the community and revive the neighborhood by building “new opportunities” (K. Niemann, memory log, October 5, 2019). They promote and support the sale of vacant lots in the southern part of Campau/Banglatown through Community Partner Programs.85 For example, Hope Center, a mosque with a community-centered program has been able to expand its activities and properties by making use of multiple empty lots and turning them into the Sylhet urban community garden (K. Niemann, memory log, October 5, 2019). Overall, the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood has started to become part of an urban development narrative of growth and improvement. It has developed from an opportunity neighborhood that was supported largely by private initiatives and an influx of residents, such as immigrants from Bangladesh, Yemen, and other parts of the world as well as artists, to a strategic neighborhood whose infrastructural investments have often been supported through public-private partnership investments. Regardless of the carrier – DLBA, Global Detroit, or the City of Detroit – all of these actors, implement incentives that are placemaking strategies which not only support and sustain the status quo of pre-existing community-based efforts by artists and newly arrived immigrants, but also aim for the neighborhood’s potential economic growth. Therefore, the quality seal “strategic neighborhood” has become part of a value-in-use factor because it means that residents, banks, 84 To realize the first actionable projects of the Campau/Davison/Banglatown Neighborhood Framework Plan, Detroit’s Planning and Development Department (PDD), Housing and Revitalization Department (HRD), and Department of Neighborhoods (DON) collaborated with a team of resident consultants from the neighborhoods. Interboro, an independent architecture,urbandesign,andplanningfirm,helpedtoworkouttheframeworkplantogetherwiththeselectedresidentsand neighborhood groups (Interboro, 2019). 85 Duringthe“WorkingtheLand”workshopwithcommunitystakeholdersandresidentsofCampau/Banglatownin October 2019, Darry Earl, the DLBA’s Manager for Community Relations, promoted the Community Partners Program. In his presentation, he spoke to residents about ideas for using multiple empty lots at the same time while also strengthening community activities(K.Niemann,memorylog,October5,2019).
116 the City of Detroit, and private investors speculate on improvements to the neighborhood and thus its real estate. Moreover, the aforementioned factors about the high demand for real estate in Campau/Banglatown can be explained by the property’s location within an older, already established neighborhood that benefits from the already integrated public, private, and community infrastructures as well as the constant influx of immigrants and their ethnic or network community connections. The most significant difference between Campau/Banglatown and Detroit’s other immigrant neighborhoods is that it not only provides accessible living and business opportunities for newly arrived immigrants, it is also one of the few communities where different immigrant populations and cultural groups live next door to each other. Overall, homeownership in Campau/Banglatown is a value-laden practice (Bourdieu, 2005). The economic value of single-family homes in this neighborhood has not only increased because of the high demand for residential real estate in the area. The analysis above shows that residents value factors such as job availability, affordability of homes, access to everyday infrastructures, safety and security, a high homeownership rate, and recognition as a strategic neighborhood by private and public institutions. These values represent use values which make the single-family homes functionable according to the needs and wants of the neighborhood residents and users independent from the real estate market. These value-in-use factors do not always belong to an economic value system from the perspective of homeowners or investors, i.e., a sense of safety is associated with belonging to a community, which is related to social interactions (Lorenz et al., 2018, pp. 44) and what I would define as social and cultural values. The mortgage-free high ownership rate is related to the religious affiliation of a certain community of residents and belongs to a cultural value system as well as the do-it-yourself mentality of artists who buy houses and gradually develop them into living, working and community spaces. The fact that social cohesion between immigrant and non-immigrant communities is strengthened by private investors and the City of Detroit in a strategic partnership underlines how such social interactions count as values in this neighborhood. The designated title of “Strategic Neighborhood” also enhances the neighborhood’s image in comparison to other neighborhoods. Not every neighborhood is part of this support program and the title thus carries a symbolic value that can also be categorized as a sign of value (Lorenz et al., 2018, p. 47). Single-Family Homes and Social Space A more recent study of strong neighborhoods by researchers from the University of Michigan has shown that saving neighborhoods from the devaluation of residential real estate largely depends on the effectiveness of community-based efforts (Deng et. al., 2017). Independent from ethnicity 4.3
117 and social status, these communities take care of each other’s properties (lots and residential buildings) as well as public facilities. They form communities of purpose, whose actions and networks can counteract the vacancy and deterioration of single-family homes and land. The intensity of these actions can be very different, depending on the communities’ outlook, what they think they need to stabilize, or how they improve their neighborhood: from stewardship of land and community gardens to neighborhood watch groups, fencing and dry walling vacant homes or establishing housing cooperatives. These social practices are actions that relate to the social space in a neighborhood (Bourdieu, 1985). Furthermore, all these suggested actions require a sense of community (Blokland & Nast, 2014) that inspires the residents to care collectively about the social space in the neighborhood and its longevity. The long-term vacancy of houses and lots in Detroit has allowed for unregulated and unplanned re-platting, bottom-up actions by individual homeowners and neighbors who transform empty lots into living or working spaces or sites for communal activities, often including mixed uses for play, leisure, and other activities. According to Kinder (2016), who has researched DIY initiatives in Detroit’s neighborhoods, social practices in a physical space are valuable actions that inform that space. Safransky (2018, p. 500) explains that the value of vacant land is disputed by people who live on the land, care for it, and imagine different futures for it. Thus, value and social space are created by people who occupy the land. Kinder (2014) infers that the residents’ oftentimes “guerilla-style spatial interventions”, such as decorating empty houses with kids toys or furniture to make homes appear inhabited, are initiated by next door neighbors to keep their living environment safe and well-maintained. These techniques, which can also include mowing the lawn of the vacant neighboring property or reshaping domestic architecture to restrict access to empty homes by boarding up windows and doors, create communal activities among the neighbors (Kinder, 2014). Simultaneously, these techniques and social organizing, inform social capital (Putnam, 1993; Bourdieu, 1986). A research, architecture, and design group for spatial planning that uses participatory placespecific approaches, Interboro, describes one of these spatial practices as “blotting” (Armborst et. al., 2008). This occurs when local residents adopt, use, squat, or steward empty lots or homes next to their own homes. As an ongoing process, it affects large-scale land ownership as well as the density and the re-platting of city lots (Armborst et. al., 2008). Moreover, these social practices allow residents to improve their living conditions, i.e., through architectural transformations of domestic spaces, self-sustaining gardens, communal spaces for people living in the neighborhood, work spaces and more.
118 To better understand how an individual’s sense of community affects the value of real estate in an integrated neighborhood such as Campau/Banglatown, I will analyze which value factors inform or create social space. I will now look at the relationships residents have with single-family homes. Visual Maintenance and Care Compared with other Detroit neighborhoods and the city of Hamtramck as a whole, the exterior facades of residential homes in Campau/Banglatown stand out visually because of their colorful ornamental details on their front yards and porches. Colored paint is often applied to brick parts of the houses’ entrances or porches. In some cases, the houses are painted over entirely (Figure 4.2). Figure 4.2: Green painted house next to Ride It Sculpture Park, Klinger Street, Campau/Banglatown, 2018. Photo by Kerstin Niemann. .4.3.1
119 This bright green painted house with its lilac staircase stands out in stark contrast to the grey concrete of the sidewalk and the neighborhood Skate Park, Ride It Sculpture Park, to its right. Individually landscaped front yards or designed entranceways as well as creative uses of backyards as urban gardens further contribute to the neighborhoods’ visually diverse appearance. Figures 4.3: Colorful painted house entrance on Klinger Street, Campau/Banglatown, 2019. Photo by Kerstin Niemann. The visual aesthetics of the houses in this neighborhood (Figures 4.2 to 4.5) are unique and full of details. Former FILTER Detroit resident Luke Niewandomski comments: Every single house you look at has an interesting thing going on. People like to costume the ability of the architecture. This community is the opposite of a historic district. (L. Niewandomski, personal communication, August 8, 2017) Niewandomski sees a connection between the architecture of the houses and people’s initiative to decorate and maintain them despite their seemingly simple designs, using, for example, simple materials such as concrete and used carpets to decorate their front lawns and protect them from growing weeds (Figure 4.4 and Figure 4.5). The philosopher and regular visitor to the neighborhood, Vince Carducci, stresses that the DIY culture of its occupants allows history and the people in the neighborhood to be visible. The houses represent a “palimpsest of previous occupants” (V. Carducci, personal communication, March 19, 2018). Artist and resident Liza Bielby feels that the houses are colorful because they are “shitty” (L. Bielby, personal communication, August 8, 2017). She is referring to the decay effecting the 100-year-old homes whose owners may not have the financial means to fully maintain them or have access to proper information on how to rebuild or reinforce the old architectural structures and therefore paint them.86 86 Many houses in the neighborhood suffer from problems such as mold and decaying foundations, conditions caused .
120 Figure 4.4: Typical single-family home with concrete front yard and carpet in Campau/Banglatown, 2019. Photo by Kerstin Niemann. Figure 4.5: Carpet design in front yards on Klinger Street, Campau/Banglatown, 2018. Photo by Kerstin Niemann. bydilapidatedroofs,insufficientinsulation,orbrokenwindowsorwhichareattributabletothelackofinvestmentinDetroit’s plumbing infrastructure. 4.3.2.
121 For Shoshanna Utchenik, another Campau/Banglatown resident and art teacher, the colorful aesthetics suggest progress over the homes’ decayed stages: On all the houses you can see process. On all of the houses coming and going, makeshift, salvaged. If something needs to get done, then in an unaesthetic way. (S. Utschenik, personal communication, March 17, 2018) Comparing the different images of the front yards, one can see that the painted staircases and terraces are not uniform. Each house has a different color scheme that often employs bright colors or colors that stand in stark contrast with each other. This is similar to how differentlypatterned carpeting of different time periods is designed into the gardens, indicating that the visual front yard designs on the house were carried out gradually, i.e., depending on whether there was money for paint or resources such as carpet. These colors and contrasts also indicate that the visual changes to the house are meant to be visible. The visual appearance of the front yards and porches does not follow a particular pattern. They look homemade and DIY and reflect an individual homeowner’s personal style while also suggesting that someone is maintaining their house or taking care of their front yard. Caring for a space adds value to it. In this case, visual care and maintenance produces a positive image. The home appears occupied. This is similar to what Kinder (2014) refers to as spatial interventions, except that these interventions are external and visual, making the neighborhood or home appear safe and livable. DIY Culture and Neighborly Initiative To avoid break-ins, littering, squatting, and other criminal activities on their property, the artist couple Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope, who also have worked under the design group name Design 99, invented “Sculpture Security Systems” (Ragheb, 2017). They board up side alleys and broken windows and doors with decorative plywood panels that are shaped like sculptures (Figure 4.6). These sculptures (Figure 4.6 and Figure 4.7) have become part of the artists’ signature in the neighborhood. At the same time, they have become part of a series of objects in art exhibitions, which they conceptualized around objects that use found materials and other utilitarian objects to propose creative solutions in the neighborhood in gallery spaces such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Museum of Contemporary Art, 2010). 4.3.2.
122 Figure 4.6: Sculpture Security Systems in Campau/Bangaltown by Design 99. Figure 4.7: Too Much of a Good Thing, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit by Design 99. Kimberly Kinder (2014) describes the DIY attitude and measurements87 taken by Detroit citizens as a phenomenon that has become routine in many deteriorating cities. According to her, selfprovisioning techniques have emerged “as critically important response strategies helping residents reduce their vulnerability and stabilize their blocks” (Kinder, 2014, p. 1770). She argues that homeowners have begun performing these guerrilla-style spatial interventions because governments and cities have no longer been able to effectively enforce laws or help residents. As is the case elsewhere in Detroit, social control over lots and houses, even vacant ones, starte 87 These include using children’s toys on front lawns and window decorations to make a house look occupied.
123 with locals who wanted to protect the neighborhood and make it more attractive to live in. Power House Productions founders Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope started to conduct these guerilla-style spatial interventions soon after moving to Campau/Banglatown. With their art around and using single-family homes, they drew attention to the vacant houses and lots on Moran Street and adjacent streets (see also Chapter 5.3). Their sculpture security systems, which are regarded in the neighborhood as design and construction objects, are also art objects. The artists’ design and construction of sculptural objects has actively prevented empty homes in the neighborhood from being squatted or burned down, while also drawing attention in the art world to how utilitarian objects as art connect to community and neighborly initiative. Imam and community liaison Mika’il Stewart Saadiq took the initiative of forming an independent neighborhood watch group after the Masjid and its community center, which he bought and founded, was broken into several times: You know, and we rode around at night. And on the side of our cars, it would have AICC Neighborhood Watch. We even set up poles outside of school. You know, and helped kids get to school safely in the mornings and in the afternoon. So, we took the initiative. (Imam Mika’il Stewart Saadiq, personal communication, March 14, 2018) Saadiq also explains how all-inclusive a neighborhood watch group can be and how it adjusts to the needs of the community, from protecting the neighborhood during the night to bringing children safely to and from school. He understands community in Campau/Banglatown as a reciprocal collective that is organic, interactive, and always evolving (Imam Mika’il Stewart Saadiq, personal communication, March 14, 2018). Campau/Banglatown’s residents try to keep children playing outside safe, protect people walking around during the day and at night, provide measures against crime and arson, and maintain an overall feeling of neighborhood safety. Farmer Kate Daughdrill (personal communication, August 7, 2018) specifies that in this neighborhood certain infrastructures have been born out of necessity, such as urban gardening which responded to a need for certain foods that were otherwise unavailable. For example, Daughdrill used gardening to occupy vacant lots with the support of her adjacent Bengali American neighbors. On my block around Moran Street, neighbors including artists, Bangladeshi Americans, and Caucasians formed a neighborhood watch group and text message alert system. In this way, a diverse community interacts to protect the neighborhood from arson and burglary, texting when something has happened or when unusual activity or people have been seen. In Campau/Banglatown, there are different motivations that determine why and how a community forms. The neighborhood’s urban design (density of houses, curbside parking)
130 I found out that walking infrastructures such as sidewalks, alleyways, and parks –what artist Corine Vermeulen calls “pedestrian life outside” (C. Vermeulen, personal communication, August 1, 2017) – have mostly been appreciated by the residents, regardless of whether they are artists or newly arrived migrant from Bangladesh: When you are on foot, you are looking people in the eye. You are connecting in a human way with individuals. I never felt scared to do that. I felt more scared to drive with my windows rolled up then I would be walking down the same street. (K. Majewski, personal communication, October 4, 2018) Majewski considers the activity of walking and meeting people at eye level as a safety measure for moving around in the area, but also as a way to socially interact and connect. She indicates that the walking opportunities are what attract her to the neighborhood. Campau/Banglatown’s resident writer Anne Elizabeth Moore participated in regular walks with two Bengali teenage girls just before sundown on the sidewalk alongside the porches of neighborly friends. According to her observations, this has become a ritual for girls presenting themselves to male residents from their community (A.E. Moore, personal communication, August 3, 2018): Together with two Bengali teenage neighbors during what they call “evening constitution,” usually between 7-9 pm, where they walk alongside the porch of neighborly friends and sometimes it becomes a watch fly situation spying or showing off in front of potential “male” candidates. (A.E. Moore, personal communication, August 3, 2018) Here, walking down the street at a specific time of day is a ritual informed by cultural traditions and the way specific communities interact with each other. Kate Daughdrill values the alleys and cul-de-sacs that represent and form the gardens. As a local urban farmer, she explains that these “aesthetic, cozy, green walkways between the houses represent the green salad bowls between the houses” (K. Daughdrill, personal communication, August 7, 2018). For residents, walking – either out of necessity to go somewhere or to the car, for social reasons, or as a recreational activity – is an everyday activity. Walking is understood as a way to reach a destination such as the neighborhood’s corner stores or the main shopping areas on Conant Street in Campau/Banglatown and Caniff Street and Joseph Campeau Avenue in Hamtramck. People also appreciate the health benefits of walking and as a way to observe, engage, and interact with other people living in the neighborhood. Furthermore, the element of walking and moving around on sidewalks and alleyways is connected to the element of self-care and socializing and it is part of a cultural tradition and a sense of security. Walking is an everyday practice. Walking creates community, it connects residents to their neighborhood and beyond. 4.3.5.
131 Cultural Familiarity Sukanya Krishnamurthy, who came to FILTER Detroit in 2010 for a research visit together with a group of Urban Heritage PhD Students from Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, showed that the high concentration of migrant families from Bangladesh in the area can be explained due to the fact that family and community networks and culturally familiar infrastructures, such as cuisine and specific kinds of Bengali-run businesses, have drawn particular attention to this neighborhood, often via word of mouth (Krishnamurthy, 2011, p. 76): Most people who live here can trace the route they traveled from Sylhet in North Eastern Bangladesh to Astoria, Queens in New York to finally settling in Hamtramck and its neighboring areas. (Krishnamurthy, 2011, p. 75) Talking to some of FILTER’s Bangladeshi American neighbors, she found that a majority of the Bangladeshi community in Campau/Banglatown comes from the same region. In the late 1990s, Bangladeshi Americans began to move to South East Michigan, driven by cheaper costs of living, job opportunities, and word of mouth within their communities (Krishnamurthy, 2011, p. 75). Krishnamurthy describes this specific form of community building as a close-knit community, one that has developed, “becoming an enclave for people coming from similar backgrounds, encouraged by relatives who make this journey in search of a better life” (Krishnamurthy, 2011, p. 75). My former next-door neighbor of FILTER Detroit, Ali, followed this path too: moving from Astoria where he worked in a restaurant, to Campau/Banglatown, where he works for Magna, a former auto supplier for GM, while supporting his parents and sister. He is a good example of the expansion of family and space in this area. Not only has he become the father of five children since 2010, he has also increased his real estate in Campau/Banglatown by buying two other single-family houses on the same block. He has placed his parents, his sister, and other people from his community in these houses. Renting out homes to his extended family, he represents a community model that circumvents a dense arrangement of family homes by sharing them with relatives and community in a multi-generational manner that remains close to one’s own culture (see Prologue). Moreover, Ali Lapetina (Founder of Women of Banglatown) explained to me that Bangladeshi families in Banglatown prefer to live next to other family members, to share gardens and grow food and vegetables together. According to Lapetina, who has visited Bangladesh, geographic proximity is very important to families because in Bangladesh, families live on large properties 4.3.5.
132 with extended family90 (A. Lapetina, personal communication, August 1, 2018). According to her and Farhana Islam, middle-class Bangladeshi families usually have larger properties to live on in Bangladesh. As an architecture student at the University of Detroit Mercer, Farhana values the advantages of living in this part of the city, such as access to fresh produce. But Islam also points out that the architecture of the houses only serves a certain type of family, one that is not extended and multi-generational (F. Islam, personal communication, October 3, 2018). Farhana lives with her parents and siblings at 11400 Klinger Street in Hamtramck, only three blocks away from Campau/Banglatown. This area is denser because every house on the street is occupied and there are no empty lots between them. This contrasts with Abdul Motin’s living situation. Motin moved from Hamtramck to the east side of Campau/Banglatown (McDougal Street and Lawley Street). Because of the size of space at his disposal, he is able to grow and preserve almost all of the food that his family enjoys throughout the year and sells off what remains to supplement his income (Power House Productions, 2015). Motin confirms that he enjoys the amount of space that he occupies and works on as an urban farmer, maple syrup producer, and beekeeper: I do not want to move to the suburbs. I own land and I have no immediate neighbors. (A. Motin, personal communication, March 19, 2018) In our interview, he confirmed that if you need help from neighbors, they are around. He uses the close-knit community network if needed but enjoys the amount of space he has for his work and personal life. Demographic numbers have shown that this area, which had been predominately settled by Polish immigrants in the past century, has slowly become dominated by incoming Bangladeshi and Middle Eastern migrants. Today, for example, the majority city council of Hamtramck is Muslim. Banglatown is a “newcomer community” according to Imam Mika’il Stewart Saadiq (personal communication, March 14, 2018). As a former resident, community member, and politician, he sees an active community run by a productive mixture of newly arrived immigrants and long-term residents that takes initiative in managing its own affairs. The Vision and Action Plan for Banglatown describes it as a “welcoming neighborhood where people from different cultures, backgrounds, and generations can learn about one another and 90 Farhana Islam, a young architecture student at Detroit Mercy University of Bengali decent explains to me that being middle class in the US is not the same as being middle class in Bangladesh. It is a step down. In Bangladesh, families have bigger homes and servants. “Here, everything is smaller, the lifestyle is a downgrade.” (F. Islam, personal communication, October 3, 2018)
133 contribute to the quality of life in the neighborhood.” (Global Detroit & googgood, 2017). Local real estate agent Nazmul Islam identifies newly arrived immigrants from Bangladesh and Yemen as a “majority group” and Eastern Europeans and people of African decent as a “minority group” that are interested in buying real estate in the neighborhood (N. Islam, personal communication, October 3, 2017). Alexa Bush, Detroit’s urban design director of the Urban Planning and Development Department, argues “that this neighborhood already has strengths, hidden secret assets, that need to be lifted up” (Noble, 2019). To her, the “hidden assets” have to be differentiated between social, cultural, and physical assets.91 The cultural aspects include the artist community, the diverse Yemini, Bangladeshi and African American community as well as the areas and communities that are active in urban farming, growing orchards, ethnic restaurants, and more (A. Bush, personal communication, March 15, 2019). Global Detroit identifies diversity through migration as an asset stimulating economic growth in the region, i.e., by helping migrants become homeowners or micro-funding them to establish their own businesses in their neighborhoods such as restaurants, and clothing and grocery stores. Since it has traditionally been a community of newly arrived migrants that support and sustain each other, traditional food and clothing stores already existed in Campau/Banglatown without advocacy groups such as Global Detroit or government funded programs. For the City of Detroit, Campau/Banglatown represents many “of the values that a diverse, immigrant-rich community can offer” (City of Detroit, 2020). According to the liner statement of the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood website, “values” are associated with the community and the diversity which have influenced this unique neighborhood.92 Imam Mikai’l Stewart Saadiq stresses the importance of the religious infrastructures such as mosques, Koranic schools for children, and Halal food for newly arriving immigrants with a Muslim background. He has advised African American Muslims from other areas in Detroit to move to Campau/Banglatown: You know, I was telling a lot of the African American Muslims that, you know, you are looking for an area that is safe for your children, that is sensitive to your religious preferences and your diet. You know, your religious diet. You know, Halal restaurants. (Imam Mikai’l Stewart Saadiq, personal communication, March 14, 2018) 91 PhysicalassetsinCampau/BanglatownincludeJaynePlayfield,aparkwitharecreationcenteraswellasthealready existing branch of the public library. A variety of active neighborhood and community initiatives represent the social assets. 92 Overhalfofthe5,000residentshaveidentifiedasAsian,30%asAfricanAmerican,andnearly10%astwoormore raceswithamajorityspeakingalanguageotherthanEnglish(TheCityofDetroit,2020).
134 Like-minded people with similar cultural backgrounds share a strong sense of community. They care particularly about the upbringing of their children and being able to continue their traditions. During my interview walks and personal conversations with residents, ethnic food restaurants, grocery stores with fresh produce as well as corner stores for daily needs that are within walking distance are often mentioned as important value factors for living and working in the neighborhood. Saadiq refers to Campau/Banglatown as a food oasis93 with a lot of fresh produce: You can walk north, south, east or west and get a mango, avocado, Romaine lettuce, spinach, Brussels sprouts. (Imam Mikai’l Stewart Saadiq, personal communication, March 14, 2018) Fresh food is the opposite of a food desert to Saadiq who, as an African American born and raised in Detroit, can relate to the difficulties of finding fresh produce in inner city Detroit without driving to the suburbs. FILTER Detroit’s neighbor, the art teacher Shoshanna Utchenik, values the local food culture because it is a way to connect with others by selecting and eating together (S. Utchenik, personal communication, March 17, 2018): Corner stores have potential for communication. There is an opportunity for regularly bumping into each other. (L. Bielby, personal communication, August 8, 2017) Performance artist and community organizer Liza Bielby values corner stores too because they are often owner-occupied and “they are a communal resource, not necessarily for food but as knowledge of what is going on the neighborhood” (L. Bielby, personal communication, August 8, 2017). 93 Fresh food and ethnically diverse restaurants have become a unique selling point for visiting or living in this neighborhood.
135 Figure 4.13: Corner Store at the intersection of Moran and Halleck Street, Campau/Banglatown, 2018. Photo by Kerstin Niemann.. Figure 4.13 shows the corner store at the intersection of Moran and Halleck Street. It is right next to other single-family homes. Half of the ground floor space is taken up by the grocery store and the other half is residential and continues onto the second floor. The signage of the store is in Arabic. Food stores, particularly corner stores, which were originally designed to supply the neighborhood, are built at intersections. Sometimes they act as spaces for living and working, connecting the storefront with the owner’s personal living space. Residents and actors in the neighborhood consider them a lever that can set in motion community and cultural exchanges, a space that creates a sense of cross-cultural cohesion and a space of exchange in the neighborhood. Hamtramck’s mayor Karen Majewski recounts how the smell of homemade food94 and the sounds95 stand out and uniquely shape this neighborhood, describing the sense of community as a feeling of interconnectedness among a community of purpose that lives in one particular area of the city and is linked through the main senses: 94 In a traditional Bangladesh American family setting, the mother is a homemaker and cares for the family through childcare, cooking, etc. Bangladesh cuisine consists of curries or slow-cooked stews, especially dishes with oriental spices that can be smelled when passing by the houses on the sidewalks at lunch and dinner time. 95 In Campau/Banglatown and Hamtramck, the Islamic call to prayer is made through loudspeakers. Mosques are found throughouttheseneighborhoodsandarenoticeableeveryday.However,Majewskiexplainsthatduetothedensityofthehouses, onecanheartheneighborsplayingmusicorchildrengettingyelledatorplayingoutside(K.Majewski,personalinterview, October 4, 2018).
136 The overall feeling is “interconnectedness,” whether it is visual, sound, smell. That is so warm. It is so individual, but it feeds community. (K. Majewski, personal communication, October 4, 2018) The diversity of the community is also visible through public events such as the nationally known Hamtramck Music Festival or the Neighborhoods Arts Festival, both popular street festivals in the Campau/Banglatown and Hamtramck neighborhoods. These events were self-organized by local residents, as is the Bangladesh Street Festival on Conant Street in Banglatown. Their success and acknowledgement depend on the goodwill, respect, and sharing of neighborhood infrastructures and resources as a whole and as a community despite peoples’ diverse backgrounds and approaches. These festivals, the local bar culture with its live music venues, and the diversity of ethnic restaurants and grocery stores from Indian cuisine to Polish food have already been reasons for inspiring non-residents to make regular visits to Hamtramck and Campau/Banglatown. Alexa Bush refers to these structures as “cultural assets” because they are attractive for both newcomers and outsiders (A. Bush, personal communication, March 15, 2019). The newcomer communities in Campau/Banglatown constantly shape the diverse residential structures based on their daily needs, including ethnic food restaurants, religious institutions, community and cultural centers, grocery stores with fresh produce, and self-organized neighborhood initiatives such as community gardens or cultural organizations. These diverse community structures have been increasingly recognized as location factors and values because they meet the daily life requirements of the newly arrived migrants (artists and immigrants). This mix of structures of cultural as well as social lifestyles have been maintained out of necessity and due to cultural traditions, such as special food diets (Halal), ethnic restaurants, and specific forms of schooling due to religious demands (the high density of children with Muslim upbringings); the need to work in network structures (migrant-owned stores, studio spaces); the need to exchange and gather (festivals, mosques, parks, live music venues, theaterhomes, exhibition spaces) and to stay connected to the “homeland” or place of origin as expressed through gardening, sounds, and smells. Visual maintenance and upkeep, do-it-yourself culture and neighborly initiatives, population density, front yards and street parking, sidewalks and walkways, and cultural familiarity have become values for Campau/Banglatown homeowners and residents because they provide for everyday needs and they help them to maintain social and cultural customs. These infrastructures and customs inform the everyday production of social space. In Campau/Banglatown, social space is reflected in physical space (Bourdieu, 1991), as residents’ everyday practices (the use of outdoor spaces adjacent to single-family homes, front yard porches or sidewalks and alleys) and lead to exchanges and relationships between neighbors. It is also
137 associated with emotional and social constructs such as neighborhood relationships through care and protection or community building through DIY and neighborly initiatives. Easthope (2004) suggests this also generates value-added factors. Furthermore, according to Löw (2016), social space is reflected in everyday activities or repetitive actions such as mowing the lawn or using local shopping infrastructures. There are different motivations behind community formation and maintenance. The urban design of the neighborhood (density of houses, curbside parking) and the architecture of the single-family houses (front porches) create community life because residents cannot avoid each other. On the one hand, community building consists of neighborly relations that build up over time through exchanges and helping each other with everyday survival (trash removal, lawn and home maintenance). On the other hand, community is created through cultural, social, and familial traditions (community meeting places such as mosques, churches, sidewalks, community centers, etc.). Job availability, affordability, and access to everyday infrastructures, safety through a sense of security, a high homeownership rate, and the image of a strategic neighborhood represent valuein-use factors (Lorenz et. al., 2018) in Campau/Banglatown, which are part of the economic value system of the local real estate market. At the same time, they reflect parts of residents’ and the neighborhood’s social and cultural value system through social interactions, prosperity, cultural traditions, and lifestyles. Furthermore, the everyday activities of the residents, formed and influenced through the design, layout, and pre-existing infrastructures of their single-family homes, produce social space in terms of a sense of belonging resulting from care, maintenance, DIY culture, population density, walking infrastructures, and cultural familiarity. All of these values are attractive to residents with diverse backgrounds, from newcomer communities (newly arrived migrants from Bangladesh or Yemen) to academically educated artists and long-term, working class and middle-class residents (the African American or Caucasian American population). All these factors create a sense of belonging (Blokland & Nast, 2014) within the different communities. Not only do these factors affect and drive one’s own community forward, be it professional, cultural, or social, they create a sense of place and identity for each community member. This sense of belonging to a community informs the residential real estate market in this neighborhood as well. The value factors analyzed in this chapter originate in the structural and historic arrangements of houses. They are also informed by the residents’ cultural and social contributions and needs, and they produce a demand to live and work in this neighborhood. At the same time, they also shape a positive image, that of an opportunity neighborhood. These social and cultural assets represent a value-adding factor for investors and the City of Detroit. In
138 this case, the cultural, social, and image value is directly incorporated as an economic value in real estate (Lorenz et. al., 2018). Nevertheless, these kinds of value factors that play a role in the local real estate market in the Campau/Banglatown neighborhood differ from the market-specific location factors – access to cultural and educational institutions, public-private investment in Midtown and Downtown as well as urban digital data – that influence the overall value of Detroit’s real estate market. They represent the perspectives of individual homeowners who live, socialize, and work in and with their homes rather than those of bulk investors or real estate developers. 5.0. 5.1.
139 Art and Single-Family Homes in Detroit In this chapter, I discuss the role of art and placemaking in urban development and the presence of artists in urban space. I consider placemaking with art as a form of economic development and as an element of social engagement and real estate investment in the City of Detroit. First, I look at three artists, whose practices involve turning single-family homes into works of art in Detroit. Then, I focus on socially engaged art involving single-family homes in Campau/ Banglatown. In this context, I analyze how artists, as residents and single-family homeowners, live and work in Campau/Banglatown, partaking in an engaged and communal practice in which their homes expand their art practices from placemaking to homemaking. Placemaking with Art Art and artmaking in urban space are often criticized as harbingers of gentrification (Deutsche & Ryan, 1984; Herscher, 2012) and triggers of capital transformation, using cultural capital to update specific processes in urban space (Kirchberg, 1998; Holm, 2010; Zukin, 1995) or causing displacement in the name of neoliberal city politics (Holm, 2010; Peck, 2005). In the literature on urban sociology, urban studies, contemporary art, and public art, artists and their networks are often described as top-down instruments or tools for urban development (Lloyd, 2016; Zukin, 1988). Kwon (2002a, p. 2) identifies a paradigm shift in contemporary artmaking away from object-based and towards process-based public artworks. She sees artists as “placemakers” who mark locations through site-specific projects. While the “unearthing of repressed history” or the support of marginalized groups can lead places to be rediscovered, artistic appropriation for the benefit of urban identities can shift the re-hierarchization of space in times of economic reorganization (Kwon, 2002b). For Kwon, art in terms of placemaking is rather functional (2002a/b) and should be measured aesthetically by its use value. Zukin (1995) explains that art in specific locations, particularly public space, can help develop a city’s economy, which is why it is important to distinguish between the cultivation of art and the appropriation of space to promote cities as cultural commodities. According to Zukin (ibid.), the meaningful representation of artists in particular spaces is part of a symbolic economy with the power to impact other fields through community building and networks. However, Zilberstein (2019) argues that art has the potential to serve as a grassroots force in relation to urban development. As in Bourdieu’s (1985) social space theory, grassroots movements – to which artist networks often belong – can imagine “alternative cities” using artistic practices and neighborhood coalitions to communicate their goals and intentions (Zilberstein, 2019, p. 1159). All these theories share a conception of the presence of art and actions by artists in urban space. This presence is recognized as a beneficial value to these places or understood as a trigger for spatial transformation. 5.0. 5.1.
146 making art that “take[s] place in or benefit[s] the local community (Knight Foundation, 2022b). They believe art is the core of community and that it attaches people to place and each other (Knight Foundation, 2022c). Unlike Kresge Arts Detroit, the Knight Foundation empowers not only artists, but all local residents with creative ideas benefitting the community at large. It was not until 2019 that Detroit established its own cultural organization. In May 2019, Mayor Mike Duggan appointed Rochelle Riley to a newly created position, the City of Detroit’s Director of Arts and Culture (City of Detroit, 2020a). Riley has established the Office of Arts, Culture & Entrepreneurship through which she created the Detroit Art Fund, which focuses on three missions to use art and culture as catalysts for neighborhood growth, honor existing art treasures, and support them through branding and promotion as well as partnerships with artists, long-running arts programs, and residents to increase entrepreneurship (City of Detroit, 2020a). Implementing these networks and structures, the City of Detroit as well as private art foundations make use of art as part of an entrepreneurial strategy that, among other things, can be a catalyst for neighborhood growth. Art and Social Engagement I would argue that Detroit’s local art production is informed by found materials and everyday trinkets, “bringing in the refuse of life into the refuge of art” (Carducci, 2014, p. 132). Artists and other cultural creatives do not only use materials they find in the city or that reflect “the unraveling of the Fordist system” in which these materials originated (Carducci, 2014). For these artists and makers, producing art is not only a process for reflecting on or contemplating the city’s current social, political, and economic conditions. It is also a way to use the condition of the city as material and to engage actively with other actors in the city: artists as residents collaborating with other residents, municipal authorities or community members in the urban environment. In this regard, residents and artists have tended to be very grassroots and DIY-orientated, making self-provisioning a strong component where art has the capacity to create change (Kinder, 2016) and address urban problems (Kinder, 2014). One reason why artists in Detroit began to work with their immediate surroundings was the necessity to provide, create, and maintain space for their daily needs (Carducci, 2014) while also collaborating with and listening to the specific needs of communities (goodgood, 2017). Applied, everyday urbanism is a reaction to professionalized urbanism and is shaped by its audience and users in the way they claim authorship over urban space (Herscher, 2012, p. 11). Liza Bielby stresses that it is necessary to “think beyond the boundaries of the individual” as an artist by developing everyday methods and practices that support the collective well-being (Niemann et al., 2016). What Helicon Collaborative (2017, p. 11) describes as socially-engaged 5.1.2. 5.1.3.
147 art-as-ecosystem or works addressing social, political, or economic issues, could also be seen as a bottom-up social movement that redefines the goals and uses of urban space through selforganized, local arts initiatives (Zilberstein, 2019, p. 1142). In the case of Detroit, Benjamin Gaydos and Julia Yezbick describe the resonance of artists working with space and place in the city as “innovative creative practices at the intersection of social justice and creative work” (goodgood, 2017, p. 6). In their report for Creative Many, they analyzed how public and private funding structures impact the artists’ work, finding that, in Detroit, socially engaged artists often have, first, politically-engaged, concrete agendas for action or policy change, and, secondly, that these artists often work within and against the forces of neoliberal capitalism such as gentrification and widespread inequality (goodgood, 2017, pp. 111112). Art and artistic practices in Detroit in the context of neighborhoods or community work are therefore often linked to social engagement. Art and Real Estate Apart from the grassroots movements and DIY-orientated art projects, making art in Detroit has mostly not been possible without financial incentives from private foundations, sponsors, and, most of all, real estate developers. Detroit’s low property prices make this kind of arts-themed development attractive (Rich, 2019). Well-known real estate developers in Detroit who use art when placing their new developments include Dan Gilbert and the Illitch family. Gilbert has supported the city’s creative industries by offering inexpensive rentals on studio spaces, commissioning mural artists to beautify his own properties, and supporting a commercial art gallery, Library Street Collective, that has installed large-scale artworks in empty commercial warehouses and office buildings that he owns. Another of the city’s arts-themed developers is former New York fashion model Phillip Cooley, who transitioned from a background in arts education to the redevelopment of commercial and residential property in Detroit as a general contractor for O’Connor Development Group L.L.C. (Crain’s Detroit Business, 2007). After a career outside of Detroit, he wanted to invest in his hometown and became co-owner of Slows Barbecue on Michigan Avenue next to Michigan Central Station in Corktown. This thriving restaurant attracts different generations of people through its creative interior design, which uses salvaged materials in a renovated historical building looking out onto an iconic Detroit ruin, the Michigan Central Station. The restaurant’s popularity in this location (which is also a tourist site), particularly among suburbanites, led Cooley to expand it. He opened a branch downtown and in Grand Rapids. Cooley describes the act of turning empty, inexpensive real estate into thriving business destinations as a matter of inclusivity and part of giving back to the community: 5.1.3.
148 When you have the infrastructure that we have in the city and you look at the people that we have in the city — folks that design things, build things, engineer things — we have the capability to save ourselves and create our own economy. (Beatens, 2015) The infrastructure refers to Detroit’s iconic architectural buildings as well the arts and crafts of how to design and incorporate them into the narrative of a creative city. Another of Cooley’s economic growth success stories is the 33,000 square foot Ponyride building, which he bought for $100,000. Together with his wife and partner, he renovated it into a vibrant space for creatives and cultural production as well as business incubation, offering affordable workspaces along with educational and material resources. In 2019, Cooley sold the building for $3.3 million (Frank & Phino, 2019). In a lot of successful real estate projects that have undergone renovation in the name of arts, crafts, or design, the promotion of the arts is earmarked for a specific purpose. Here, art in combination with real estate and its development is linked to a growth narrative (Logan & Molotch, 1987) under the umbrella of community development. In short, arts and real estate development in Detroit have become part of the city’s urban development strategy. Moreover, placemaking through the arts is supported by public-private partnerships or private foundations as well as bottom up movements. These have become strategies for supporting artists and artmaking in neighborhoods while also engaging them with local communities (Rich, 2019). It is clear that placemaking with art in Detroit’s post-industrial conditions has evolved in different directions over the past few decades. Art has become a tool for the city’s urban and economic development: by supporting the revitalization of inner city neighborhoods like Midtown and Downtown and other areas throughout the city. Furthermore, artists have become catalysts for social engagement in and with communities, helping to increase neighborhood growth and community engagement. Private foundations such as Kresge Arts and the Knight Foundation or public national grants like the National Endowments for the Arts have also encouraged artists to engage in and with communities and neighborhoods, therefore stimulating civic participation, which attracts other artists and creatives to move to the city. In turn, this stimulates business investment and real estate development in areas of the city where profit is expected. Artmaking with Homes In this section I concentrate on artists who have made art with single-family homes in different neighborhoods around Detroit in the past three decades. The projects presented here are exemplary of numerous artworks that have taken or still take place on site in Detroit and primarily address 5.2.
149 houses as part of a neighborhood, community, cultural tradition, and form of economic activity and social space. It shows how artists with different motivations and backgrounds have used houses for their artmaking. Figure 5.0: Kyong Park, 24260 Fugitive House. Courtesy of Martina Dolesjsova. One example of this (Figure 5.0), and one that is a less grassroots and more object-orientated art piece is Kyong Park’s 24260: The Fugitive House (2001-2008). This single-family home, a typical factory worker’s house, which Park, an architect and artist, lived in for three years in Detroit, has traveled to various museums and destinations around Europe looking for a new home (Dolejsova, 2014). Park cut the house up, so that it could be moved and reassembled in different urban contexts. Its raw bone-style structure exposes its interior. As both an art and architecture piece, it has become a worldwide symbol for the consequences of “white flight” in Detroit as well as a symbol for the loss of homeownership and opportunities to live and work there. Using Howard Becker’s (1982) different categories of artists, I try to explain each of the following artists’ role in relation to the art world with which they may or may not identify as well as in relation to placemaking in Detroit. In his analysis of different art worlds, Becker105 focuses on the network of relations among artists in comparison to their career progress as artists in different Art Worlds as well as their production networks. He defines different types of artists who are distinguished by their relationship to a community of people, their traditional roots, and their proficiency in the art world, settling on four categories for how actors stand in relation to the organized art world: Integrated Professionals, who belong to the conventional art world; Mavericks, who were part of it but have chosen to continue without its support and create their own institutions; Folk Artists, who work within a well-organized community outside the art world following certain 105 Becker’s (1982) work on Art Worlds is constructed around a field of art that he describes as a network.
150 traditions; and Naïve Artists, or grassroots artists, who have no connection to the art world and whose work is made without reference to it (Becker,1982).106 Artists connected to an art world rely on the collective support of people finding creative solutions (Becker, 1982). Depending on the initiative and tasks involved in collaboration, artists can bring different abilities and networks into these relationships or establish them. In this section, I will first look at Heidelberg Project, a tourist destination known around the world, then Hamtramck Disneyland, an outsider art venue, and finally Dabls MBAD African Bead Museum, an African-centered sculptural attraction. Heidelberg Project Figure 5.1: Heidelberg Art Project, 2013. Photo by Kerstin Niemann. Detroit native Tyree Guyton could be called a Maverick Artist (Becker, 1982). Right after graduating from the College for Creative Studies, Guyton began to paint colorful dots on abandoned houses in the neighborhood where he grew up in Detroit. He started with his grandparent’s house and moved on to other vacant houses and lots that he did not own. That was in 1986. Over time, Guyton took over more abandoned houses on Heidelberg Street, painted them with colorful dots and started to attach abandoned materials to buildings and trees. He has used junk and left-over 106 Becker is a Chicago native. A large part of the actors he cites as examples in his theories for the sociology of the arts come from Chicago. Chicago and Detroit are strongly related. There is a vibrant exchange between the artist and activist scenes in both cities, which have common histories, particularly in terms of migration, deindustrialization, and geographic location. Furthermore, Becker is considered part of the Second Chicago School of Sociology, which is known for specializing in urban sociologyandethnographicfieldresearch. 5.2.1.
151 materials such as vacuum cleaners, car hoods, stuffed animals and unused office desks found in empty houses or abandoned inner-city factory buildings, schools, and other sites (Figure 5.1). His practice is informed “from the debris of the neighborhood.” His neighborhood is his material. He refers to it as the “Heidelberg Project Landscape” (Guyton, 2007), which he works on but does not live in. He has created what can be described as an outdoor museum – because residents of the city and outsiders can experience the artworks by walking down the block alongside Heidelberg Street or watch from their car window. Over its years of existence, the outdoor art project has become increasingly famous worldwide: The truth is that Heidelberg’s popularity seems to increase the farther you live from it. (Hodges, 2007, p. 50) Guyton’s art installations have created a divide between supporters and opponents. Those who love and embrace the project are often outsiders to the immediate neighborhood or tourists from out of town. Those who do not are directly affected by it, such as immediate neighbors, who have to live in and next to the collected debris and deal with daily visitors treating the installations like a public park (Hodges, 2007, pp. 52-53). With his junk installation, Guyton has drawn visual attention to mass consumer products like cars, Detroit’s landscape of deteriorating houses, and the specific neighborhood where he works. Furthermore, in terms of Detroit’s history, painting abandoned houses and occupying unused lots is a political statement. Heidelberg Project is a long-term art project that can be described as an individual act of appropriation. It did not emerge through a bottom-up process, growing in accordance with community members in the neighborhood. Over the years, in response to the critical reactions, Guyton has entered into an ongoing dialogue with locals both in the neighborhood and the entire city. As a result, the artist and his wife founded their own community organization, whose mission is to improve people’s lives through art while offering workshops and educational training in the Heidelberg Project’s neighborhood (The Heidelberg Project, n.d.). The organization views the project as an outdoor art environment. As far as Tyree Guyton’s career in the art world is concerned, he has been treated as a Maverick for a long time, with no exposure in galleries or museums locally or regionally. In the 2000s, he received recognition for his work in the form of grants, gallery exhibitions, and acquisitions by museums and private contemporary art collectors. He also received the Kresge Arts in Detroit Visual Arts Fellowship in 2009, which labelled him as an urban environmental artist (Kresge Arts in Detroit, 2009). No matter how negatively the consequences of the art installation are for the neighborhood’s residences, it remains for outsiders, almost ironically, one of Detroit’s flagship projects referencing the decline of the city’s growth narrative during its industrial heyday. The way the artist has
152 learned over time how to reference and make use of vacant lots and homes certainly has started a discourse about how single-family homes have become art objects belonging to the city’s history. Hamtramck Disneyland Figure 5.2: Hamtramck Disneyland, 2017. Photo by David Lewinski. Hamtramck Disneyland is another of Detroit’s site-specific art installations, built between two garages in the backyard of artist Dmytro Szyla’s former single-family home in Hamtramck (Figure 5.2). Soon after his retirement from General Motors in 1992, he set to work on his installation, which can only be seen from the back alley of the house: Szyla has created his own Disneyland on top of and between two garages. The installation consists primarily of kinetic structures and figures made from wood and found materials, colorfully painted bright stripes, and a backyard filled with found photographs, posters, and classic Americana imagery mixed with those of the Europe of Mr. Szylak’s past (he migrated from Ukraine in the 1950s) (Hatch Art, n.d.). The installation became a tourist attraction for other artists and people interested in outsider art, while remaining lesser known than Heidelberg and Dabls African Bead Museum. The artist constantly updated and modified the project until his death in 2015. In 2016, after residents and neighbors started a petition to save the installation, the local art initiative Hatch Art acquired the building to maintain and repair it. The initiative turned the residential home into an artist residency, inviting artists from the area or outside of Detroit to work and live next to the installation while also maintaining it. Even though Hamtramck Disneyland has been posthumously referred to as Folk Art, I would argue that Szylak fits Becker’s (1982) category 5.2.2. 5.2.3.
153 of the Naïve Artist. He was not connected to a network of artists during his lifetime and did not control how other artists identified and recognized his work, but he was collected by an influential collector of folk art (Wasacz, 2006) and recognized by local and national art students. Unlike Heidelberg Project or Dabls African Bead Museum, it is located in a dense single-family home neighborhood in Hamtramck. Dabls MBAD African Bead Museum Figure 5.3: N’kisi House. Courtesy of Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum. The Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum was founded by Olayami Dabls. The artist started his career in Detroit’s automobile industry. He never had an arts education, but a severe car accident led him to take up painting. He then became involved in Detroit’s African American History Museum as artist-in-residence and curator, a position he left in order to create his own museum as a space for the communal understanding of African American history (Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum, n.d.). Founded in 1998, the museum (Figure 5.3) is a set of eighteen outdoor installations made of iron, wood, rock, beads, and mirrors on empty lots adjacent to three townhouses, which are used as gallery spaces exhibiting African beads and Dabls’ collection of African art, as well as his own studio. The museum’s location at the intersection of Grand River Avenue and Grand Boulevard is “an area where you are least likely to expect to find art”, Dabls notes (Report, 2016) – right next 5.2.3.
154 to Interstate 96. The area is not very populated and is surrounded by empty buildings and vacant lots. The center of the outdoor museum is a retail space in a former residential building with a store front that Dabls operates himself, selling the beads and telling stories about them to curious visitors (The Kresge Foundation, 2022). Like Heidelberg Project, the African Bead Museum has grown into an iconic site for both outsiders and locals alike. The museum’s primary support, however, is from the local community. Locals identify with Dabls’ installation because it is in the tradition of African culture, providing access to the roots and traditions of continental Africa and thereby reflecting the history of most of the people living in the neighborhood. His museum is viewed as an African-centered cultural attraction using African material culture and symbols, which visitors can experience as part of the outside installation while walking through the sculpture park (Report, 2016). The neighborhood’s and the African American community’s identification with the project is a key reason why there has been no conflict about making use of the space, the residential houses, and the empty lots. Dabls can be considered a self-taught Folk Artist working in the tradition of African American culture and history. It is only in recent years that his acceptance in the contemporary art world has grown and his work has been contextualized as urban art or as part of the city’s cultural heritage. He has been invited to create murals in various neighborhoods around Detroit and participate in the Cranbrook Art Museum’s 2019 exhibition “Landlord Colors,” in which the museum was the location for part of the performance and public art series “Material Detroit” (Cranbrook Art Museum, 2019).107 These instances of turning homes and adjacent vacant lots into art show the changing roles of artists in the city and how the way they work in the city has transformed over time. In the case of Park’s Fugitive House, for instance, the process of how art is made with single-family homes exceeds the realm of the institutional art world and contributes to or raises awareness of the home both as a residential and political space that can be instrumentalized for urban agendas and economic development. With the shrinking of the city and the immediate consequence of the vacancy of entire residential neighborhoods, artists working with single-family homes or vacant lots have been contextualized as part of urban politics and development, whether they like it or not. As the above cases show, not every artist is interested in working in the fields of art and placemaking. Some, like Dmytro Szyla, have not even positioned themselves in the art world or catered to a political agenda, a 107 Furthermore,in2022,OlayamiDablswasnamedtheKresgeEminentArtistforhisstorytellingandstreetcorner vision,tellingthestoryofAfricanAmericansandAfricanAmericanroots(TheKresgeFoundation,2022). 5.3.
155 community, or a grassroots movement to solve an urban problem, i.e., through social engagement. Initially, Tyree Guyton was less interested in improving the condition of the neighborhood he was working in than responding to the cultural tradition of his residential neighbors and working with the material he found and that was provided by the place where he was working. To my eyes, the three site-specific installations – Hamtramck Disneyland, Heidelberg Project, and Dabls Mbad African Beads Museum – are works of art that have turned their locations into landmarks. They have created sightseeing destinations with and through Detroit’s materiality, its history and cultural traditions. These artists follow a very DIY approach in their use of singlefamily homes and empty lots as material as represented in the form of the physical materiality of the leftover debris of Detroit’s post-industrial landscape and the cultural history and traditions of the people that have lived and worked in these places. Mark Binelli explains that the city of Detroit allows for a “DIY positivity” (Binelli, 2012, p. 65), to turn what is left over or left behind into something positive. Indeed, the DIY attitude of Detroit’s citizens is part of a phenomenon that has become routine in deteriorating cities where public services no longer provide order and safety (Kinder, 2014). However, all three instances show that different actors – the neighborhood, a particular community, tourists, or other art initiatives and foundations – are required in order to draw attention and meaning to a place, an artwork, or an artist. Moreover, the above examples show that artmaking with homes and art that occupies land affects the everyday lives of residents and neighborhoods, while also attracting and inviting people from outside to contextualize it historically, communally, and culturally within the urban fabric of the city. Homemaking with Art in Campau/Banglatown This section deals with artists who own single-family homes and live and work in them as residents in Campau/Banglatown. In the following examples, artists may treat single-family homes and their side lots as art objects or site-specific installations, but they are also part of the everyday living and working environment of these artists in their role as neighborhood citizens. As analyzed in Chapter Four, apart from market factors such as the close proximity to jobs or safety, artists and newly arrived migrants value social and cultural factors like access to everyday infrastructures and cultural familiarity in the neighborhood. I am interested in how artists use their single-family homes. Is it as an extension or expansion of their artistic practices? And how does their engagement effect the neighborhood? And to what extent do their actions of living and working in the neighborhood as artists and residents create or establish value or can be considered as a value? 5.3.