N. Corktown - Established 1834
Rightsizing has been a buzzword in Detroit for at least a year and a half, but for all the talk so far, there’s been little focus on the actual neighborhoods of Detroit. Instead we keep hearing about the same mythical block. You know, the block that only has a single house left standing. The block the city can no longer afford to service. The block whose last resident refuses to move, so help her god.
We’ve allowed this one abstract example, grounded in no particular place, to drive the discussion, prompting supporters to call for relocation incentives and opponents to preemptively decry the return of urban renewal. But city blocks don’t exist in isolation–they exist in neighborhoods–and context makes a big difference. To get a real feel for how “rightsizing” ought to work (if it’s going to work at all) we need to look at specific neighborhoods that are overrun with open space — places like North Corktown, an actual neighborhood unique to Detroit that is putting its excess land to creative reuse.
Urban garden on Cochrane Street
On the surface, North Corktown seems like any other struggling area of Detroit. The western half of the neighborhood has lost so many residents that there are more open fields than houses. But increasingly, the overgrown grass is giving way to crops. Community gardening is less a trend here than a way of life. Urban farms dot the landscape. Brother Nature Produce and Detroit Evolution are both based here. So too is the great blog Little House on the Urban Prairie, which documents country living in the city.
On the east side of the neighborhood, a small town feel has been restored through infill housing and pocket parks. The residents there are active, organizing neighborhood patrols, fixing up abandoned property, and installing public art on empty lots. And city life is never further than a bike ride away. On Trumbull Street, the eastern boundary of the neighborhood, you can visit a Teamsters union hall, gamble at Motor City Casino, or gaze at the downtown skyline, which is only a mile away. The usual distinctions between city, town, and country have blurred together into one eclectic landscape.
Greenhouse
To be sure, the neighborhood is not a utopia. It still struggles with the familiar banes of Detroit living, including foreclosed homes, illegally dumped trash, and unmanageably tall grass at the peak of summer. But it has begun to tame its open spaces in a way that other neighborhoods in Detroit have failed to do. Furthermore, it has done so without displacing any residents, and without significant spending from the city. While North Corktown would no doubt welcome more investment, it has managed to gradually improve the quality of life through the cumulative impact of small projects and grassroots efforts, not the kind of major corporate or government-backed initiatives that would sweep existing buildings and residents aside to make way for new development.
That’s why North Corktown should be at the forefront of the “rightsizing” discussion. While relocation incentives might be the last resort for areas of Detroit that are both heavily abandoned and contaminated, they shouldn’t be the only option on the table. Instead we need to figure out how to work with what we have. Every Detroit neighborhood, no matter how devastated it may seem, has assets to manage. Brightmoor has the Rouge River, Eliza Howell Park, at least one enclave of strong housing, and dedicated community organizations. Jefferson-Chalmers has historic commercial buildings on Jefferson, proximity to shopping in the Grosse Pointes, and access to the Detroit River. These neighborhoods, too, can gradually find a way to recover, not by waiting for major developments that will never come but by limiting crime and reclaiming their open spaces.
Sculpture / Park
The key is that “rightsizing” need not connote one particular strategy. The word has been hijacked by the conspiratorially minded to connote downsizing, shrinking, or urban renewal. But what it should mean is community-based and community-driven reinvention, a la John Gallagher’s new book, Reimagining Detroit. Hopefully, this will be a focus of the next round of Detroit Works Project meetings: crafting sensible, affordable plans that will revitalize neighborhoods based on their specific needs and assets without displacing the few residents who have toughed it out over the years.
P.S. If you’re from North Corktown, I’d love to hear your perspective. Am I on to something or off base? Comment below or send me an email at cooper [at] rethinkdetroit [dot] org. If you’re not from North Corktown but want to learn more, start with the Corktown’s Residents Council and Inchernet, a new “living map” of the neighborhood. Also check out Soup at Spaulding for a taste of the activism going on. There’s also an ethnography, published in 1999, that touches on the racial history of the area.
