Jumping Off the Ladder

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Sherry Arnstein intended her ladder of participation as a conceptual tool to help planners redistribute power to citizens, but a key institution to include residents in decision making, the community development corporation (CDC), has proven limited. Based on a case study of participation and insurgency in Detroit’s (MI) urban planning, we argue that CDCs structurally align with the planning establishment, serving as relays for governments and developers and controlling information. These limitations inspired insurgent planners to arise from the resident Charlevoix Village Association (CVA) in Detroit and to intervene in the planning process. CVA’s insurgent activities and knowledge production have galvanized residents to engage beyond the participatory planning paradigm. CVA has demonstrated that insurgency can enable engaged residents to build the power to push for equitable development in ways that Arnstein’s ladder of participation failed to account for.

Takeaway for practice: We suggest that although CDCs have not been an effective means for redistributing power to marginalized residents, planning insurgencies can be important vehicles for achieving community control and promoting equitable development. We argue that planners should not promote CDCs at the expense of insurgent planners. Instead, planners can engage in dialogue and partnerships with insurgent planners, provide key resources and information to bolster their capabilities, and design participatory frameworks that enhance their influence.

Keywords:

• community development corporation (CDC)
• community engagement
• Detroit
• insurgent planning
• participation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to JAPA Guest Editor Mickey Lauria and three anonymous reviewers, whose feedback improved this article. Thank you to the members of Charlevoix Village Association for welcoming an ethnographer to conduct research in their community; particular thanks to Toyia Watts, Mary Golson, Xylia Hall, Gwen Moore, Fealicia Denson, Tristan Taylor, Claire Bowman, and Damien Benson for reviewing multiple drafts and providing invaluable input to ready this article for publication.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

Notes

1 Katznelson (1981) elaborates, “It is remarkably difficult to recapture the degree of uncertainty, the fears and the hopes, of this period…[which] created a mood of despair at the top of the social order that mirrored the heightened expectations of those at the bottom” (p. 4).

2 Thomson and Etienne (2017) define housing activities as “acquisition, construction, improvement, or financing thereof; housing counseling; or property management” (p. 143). These accounted for 60% to 73% of CDC activity in three cities in 2004. CDCs that did not conduct housing activities “engaged in some combination of community mobilizing or advocacy, neighborhood planning or marketing, commercial development, beautification, neighborhood public safety, youth/senior programming, or workforce development to support neighborhoods or their residents” (pp. 143–144).

3 Typically, ethnographic data are not cited in text (e.g., Tauxe, 1995). This is because a) ethnographers ensure confidentiality to participants and b) ethnography is an interpretive science based on immersive fieldwork and inductive analysis of multiple data sources condensed into narrative form. According to institutional research board protocol, individuals, organizations, and observational details were identified if participants signed a release form or could be publicly identified outside of this research. Data were anonymized if anyone’s reputation, career, or privacy could be in jeopardy. When individuals and organizations were not identified and when the data source was not specified, the ethnographic representation constitutes a composite sketch, which is based on a confidential or unspecifiable triangulation of observations, interviews, and/or documentary data. Because this study participates in an ongoing public debate, we used real names of organizations and individuals where concerns about confidentiality were negligible (such as observations in public meetings). When possible, to facilitate independent verification of descriptions we also included in text a) the setting and date of events, b) the date of personal communications, and c) documentary evidence, such as newspaper articles and CVA documents, also included in the reference list.

4 Government interviewees included: a) one anonymous interviewee from the Planning and Development Department; b) former head of the Housing and Revitalization Department, current chief of operations for Mayor Duggan, James Arthur Jemison; c) the director at Detroit City Planning Commission and Historic Designation, deputy director at Legislative Policy Division, Marcell Todd; and (d) CVA’s then–Michigan state representative, now–Michigan state senator, Stephanie Chang.

5 Three interviewees earned university degrees in planning: two in government (Marcell Todd and Arthur Jemison; see note 4) and one anonymous participant, who was both a developer and a board member of multiple CDCs.

6 An alternative participatory mechanism to community development corporations, citizens’ district councils, formed as advisory bodies for Model Neighborhoods. After Model Cities was phased out in 1974, they were funded with CDBG money. Some stronger than others, citizens’ district councils in Detroit continued to operate, especially in hardest-hit neighborhoods, as a “watchdog of development” with “review authority over development proposals made in their areas” (Silverman, 2003, 8). Citizens’ district councils were formally phased out by the emergency manager during bankruptcy (Kaffer, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Allison B. Laskey

ALLISON B. LASKEY ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in urban planning and public policy at the University of California, Irvine.

Walter Nicholls

WALTER NICHOLLS ([email protected]) is an associate professor of urban planning and public policy at the University of California, Irvine.