Early Lessons From Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

In 2016, Detroiters (MI) voted to pass the first-ever community benefits ordinance (CBO), a law that requires developers to negotiate with a council of local residents to agree on a set of community benefits. Drawing from the goals and the structure of community benefits agreements that have become popular since the 1990s, this ordinance has won Detroit communities benefits like locally sourced jobs, affordable housing, green space, and streetscape improvements. Scholars have evaluated many cases of community benefits agreements, and some authors claim that codifying community benefits agreements through policy is the next step to ensuring their political viability and stability. Using Detroit’s CBO as a case, I aim to uncover the successes and challenges of implementing the ordinance. I answer this question through a qualitative analysis of policies and interviews with residents, planners, developers, and activists (n = 45). I find that the ordinance is successful in its establishment of agreements for 10 projects where communities have secured more than 160 distinct benefits. However, just as with traditional community benefits agreements, the formalization of community benefits through planning policy is still subject to several shortcomings. These include a negotiation timeline that often favors developers and uneven access to development and policy knowledge.

Takeaway for practice

CBOs can be opportunities for inclusion in development decisions and can bring important resources to communities. However, cities should note the need to provide training to neighborhood advisory council members and allocate the resources to do so. They should also reconcile the timeline for negotiations preferred by communities with the often hurried timelines of developers.

Keywords:

• community benefits agreement
• community benefits ordinance
• community engagement
• Detroit

Research Support

I thank Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture and Planning and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding this research.

Supplemental Material

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

Notes

1 The impact area “is defined as the census tract the development is in, but can be expanded to include additional impacted residents should the need occur” (Foley, 2020).

2 In all, five of eight developers initiating projects covered under the CBO were interviewed (two developers were responsible for multiple projects).

3 There are more projects than negotiation processes because at times the city allowed several developments to be bundled into the same negotiation. The official reasons for this are unclear, but interviews with NAC members and city staff pointed to this being because of high-clout developers having the political sway to streamline the CBO process in this way. One group of bundled projects set to have benefits negotiated, Cass and York (luxury condos), Lot 1 (mixed use), and the Fisher Building (a renovation of a historic high-rise) ultimately did not complete the CBO process. The project has not progressed for reasons undisclosed even to the NAC members interviewed.

4 Although quantifying benefits in this way does not help us understand the scope or value of each benefit, because each benefit is proposed by the NAC and systematically responded to by the developer until a solution is reached, it is still a useful metric to understand the complexity and ambitions of the benefits requested and achieved under the CBO.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Berglund

LISA BERGLUND ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the Dalhousie University School of Planning.