Planning, participation, and power in a shrinking city: The Detroit Works Project

ABSTRACT

Scholars and practitioners have argued that authentic public participation is crucial in developing strategic plans for so-called shrinking cities, not only for informing the content of the resulting plans but also for fostering public support, civic capacity, and equitable outcomes. The Detroit Works Project, launched in 2010, provided an opportunity to examine the crafting of a high-profile strategic plan for a major U.S. city challenged by decades of population loss and disinvestment. We find that the project was yet another instance of urban planning that began with an assurance that public involvement would play a central role but then failed to fulfill that promise. Transparency and accountability were compromised as a result of the privatization of public responsibilities. The resulting plan did not reflect the priorities, insights, or needs of most Detroiters. Justice was subordinated to the perceived imperative of the market within an ideological frame of neoliberal austerity.

Acknowledgments

We thank Brock Grosso and Sonja Karnovsky, along with Lily Freedberg, Hector Galvan, Andrew Gillespie, Charlotte Laffler, Kaleah Mabin, Matthew Merlo, Laura Milstead, and Matthew Pundmann, for their valuable research assistance and Margaret Dewar for her extensive comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The literature on policymaking processes, even at the local level, is massive. Space prevents us from venturing into it here. Our research project is informed most directly by Baumgartner and Jones (1993), Kingdon (1995), and Schattschneider (1960).

2. We reference the second edition of Detroit Future City. The first edition was produced in coffee-table book format that is difficult to read in electronic form, which is how most people would access it. The producers of Detroit Future City insist it is not a plan but is instead a strategic framework (Guyette, 2013). We acknowledge that it is not an official master plan. Its subtitle, however, is 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan, and it refers to itself dozens of times as a plan produced by a planning team that engaged in a planning process. Detroit Future City is a plan in the common sense of the word.

3. The Kresge and Kellogg Foundations funded the technical team. The Ford Foundation funded the civic engagement work. The Knight Foundation financed Detroit 24/7 (Pitera, 2012).

4. Dan Pitera graciously provided us with an electronic copy of the Civic Engagement Appendix.

5. DFC indicates that 88,255 people live in high vacancy areas (p. 239). That is a conservative estimate of how many Detroiters would be directly impacted by transforming neighborhoods into Innovation-Ecological or Innovation-Productive zones. According to Clement and Kanai (2015, p. 379), the U.S. Census estimated that 142,014 people lived in those neighborhoods.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregory B. Markus

Gregory B. Markus is a Professor Emeritus (Political Science) and Research Professor Emeritus (Institute for Social Research) at the University of Michigan, where he received his PhD in 1975 and remained until his retirement in 2014. He is also founding organizer of Detroit Action Commonwealth (DAC), a nonprofit organization of more than 5,000 members, mostly low-income and indigent Detroiters, that began in 2008 at a soup kitchen on the city’s east side. DAC builds individual and collective power to promote opportunity, advance justice, and challenge and change root causes of poverty. He divides his time between Michigan and Honolulu, Hawaii, where he competes as a member of an outrigger canoe paddling club.

Amy Krings

Amy Krings is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Loyola University Chicago. She earned her PhD in the Social Work and Political Science Joint Doctoral Program at the University of Michigan. The purpose of her research agenda is to develop knowledge relating to the advancement of social justice through the leadership development and civic participation of marginalized groups.