Decline Industry: The Market Production of Detroit by Joshua Michael Akers A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Geography University of Toronto © Copyright by Joshua Michael Akers 2013 Decline Industry: The Market Production of Detroit Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Joshua Michael Akers Department of Geography University of Toronto Declining cities are active sites of capital accumulation. Spaces of decline mark a shift in accumulation strategies rather than a withdrawal of capital. These practices are extended through the deployment of law and policy that privilege private markets and embed market logics in urban governance. The production of urban decline is deepened and extended in the relationship of capital and the state through law and policy. Fundamental to these activities is a conception of private property as the driving force in creating stability and growth within urban areas. The ideological power invested and manifested in private property has driven many of the policy responses to urban decline over the past two decades. The centering of private property as the foundation of urban growth generates policy approaches that appear incapable of addressing the deepening social inequalities of urban life and the uneven development of cities in North America. ! Declining cities are frequent sites of market-based intervention, yet the outcomes of policies that have entrenched and deepened decline are attributed to the absence or withdrawal of capital rather than the active practices of accumulation. The development and deployment of laws and policies that conceptualize property as merely a stabilizing force, obscures the practices of property, and allow destructive forces of speculative and predatory investment to persist and expand. ! This work identifies shifting accumulation strategies in spaces of decline. It is a study of activity rather than absence or loss. This allows three interventions in urbanization more broadly and declining cities specifically. First, it integrates declining cities into broader discussions on urbanization and neoliberalization. Second, by exploring declining cities as active sites, the cases both unsettle and expand current understandings of disinvestment, the reach of financialization, and the sites targeted for policy development and transfer. Finally, given the current trajectory of urban austerity, the downloading of crisis to the local level, spaces of decline demonstrate possible trajectories and outcomes as austerity is an already ongoing process in these cities. It also demonstrates how these policies and practice are multi-directional and multi-scalar. ! ii Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the support, freedom and encouragement of my supervisor Jason Hackworth. You were willing to take on a student with a non-traditional academic trajectory, allow me the time to roam and reel me back in when I was losing my way. You are both a mentor and a friend. Thank you for the past five years. Thank you to my committee for your engagement with and encouragement of this project. Matt Farish, your eye for detail strengthened the manuscript and polished the work. Sarah Wakefield, your incisive questions and clever turns of phrase clarified the tensions in the work. Alan Walks, beyond your contributions and encouragement this project may not have happened without your push for me to fast-track into the PhD program. Thank you all. To my external committee members, Kevin Ward, Rachel Silvey and Susannah Bunce, what a welcome and refreshing engagement at the end of this process; thank you. Thank you to the staff in the Department of Geography who actually made this all possible, from dealing with my mundane requests to ensuring I was on track to meet all of the requirements. Jessica Finlayson, Mary-Marta Briones Bird, Marika Maslej, Andrew Malcom, Kiersty Hong, Susan Calanza and Stefanie Steele. A project of this duration, in a place you enter a stranger, is impossible without the assistance, empathy and generosity of so many people. Though presented as my work it is a collaboration possible only through the cooperation of others willing to take the time to share their stories and guide me through the byzantine bureaucracy of the state of Michigan, Wayne County and the City of Detroit. Though much of the data analyzed here is produced by, and belongs to, governmental entities, very little of this information came to me through official channels. This was not iii for a lack of effort. The acquisition of some data sets took nearly two years and only came into my possession through the desire of those with access to see it put to use. I am indebted to those that chose to share this with me and to walk me through the peculiarities and oddities in the thousands of data points provided. Thank you for making much of this project possible. It shaped this work more than you know. Thank you to all of the anonymous interviewees whose words appear in or informed this work. Gregory Parrish, Robert Linn, Kat Hartman, Erica Raleigh and everyone at Data Driven Detroit for the office space, bemusement at my flailing attempts to acquire data in ways you had already tried, the data in Chapter Four, and for a place to work in a city where “open space” is hard to find. Thank you to Tristan Taylor and the students at BAMN for your tireless resistance to the relentless dismantling of Detroit Public Schools and was a constant source of encouragement. To Khalil Ligon, Maggie DeSantos and the mothers and grandmothers organizing on the Lower East side to plan as a community, rather than for development. Thank you for teaching me about the power of place and reimagining the possible. Thank you to Robert Anderson and Gregory Holman at the City of Detroit Department of Planning and Development. The only two people in the city to consistently respond and actually deliver on their promises. I am grateful for your assistance. To Phil Cooley, you catch a lot of flack, some of it deserved. Though we don’t always agree you have been a friend and an ally helping to make this work possible. No request to small, no project too big and enjoying nearly every minute of it. Thank you. iv To Nathan Andren for allowing me to occupy his home for extended period and to Joe Krause and Matt Hynes for sharing their home as well. To Erin Kelly for capturing the absurd and sublime and trying to make like more enjoyable and a little better for knowing you. To the Pheasants for taking me in and letting me be part of the team. To Kaija Wuollett for keeping things running and making things work. To Jennifer Garza- Cuen for the art and the art of conversation. I think you will find much of what we talked about in chapter four. The past is ever present and I would be remiss not to thank a few of the people that helped me along the way at University of New Mexico, Alyosha Goldstein, Jake Kosek, Jeffrey Mitchell, and Rebecca Schreiber were generous with their time, pushed me to pursue bigger questions and provided the resources to pursue it. Jeff - thank you for the introduction to the work of Harvey and Smith and teaching me many of the methods that make this work possible. I would like to thank John Hanna and Dana Fields at the Associated Press. John for teaching me to trust my instincts and follow the story. Dana for honing my ability to ask questions, especially when they were difficult. I will never be able to thank you enough. To my parents Don and Vicki, for their love and support. You listened to me talk long enough to know that I am now a geographer and not a geologist. Thank you to the Swensen family for your support and encouragement along the way. Anika your kind words and compliments always came at the right time. And to my brother Ben, for whom the world never seems too big. Your quick smile and big hugs are always appreciated. To Katherine - I could have never imagined we would be here when I met you 14 years ago at 5351 Harrison. Thank you for making this life with me. I look forward to even more. v Introduction Decline Industry: The Market Production of Detroit!.........................................1 Chapter 1 Searching For Stability: Addressing Vacancy and Abandonment Through Urban Homesteading!....................................................................................................24 Federal Urban Homesteading! 28 HUD-FHA! 28 The Federal Response Through Urban Homesteading! 29 Michigan Urban Homesteading! 34 The Michigan Urban Homestead Act! 34 Engler and the Think Tanks! 35 Making the Bills! 39 Chapter 2 Auction: Public Act 123, Wayne County and Detroit!......................................50 The Tax Reversion Process Prior to 1999! 53 Public Act 123! 55 The Stated Intent of the Law! 61 The Auction! 63 Year 1! 63 Year 2! 64 Year 3! 64 Post-Auction! 66 The Auction as Implemented in Detroit! 66 Intent versus Outcomes! 72 Discussion! 77 vi Chapter 3 Speculation Typologies and Auction Practices!..............................................79 Typologies of Ownership and Activity! 84 Type 1: Speculation! 84 The Auction at Work! 94 Speculators! 95 The Acts of Property Speculation! 99 Speculation! 99 Title Traders! 99 The Practice and Strategies of Limited Speculators! 116 Protectionism! 118 Legalized Extortion! 124 Tax Washing! 129 REO! 132 Discussion! 134 Chapter 4 The Production of Decline: Narratives and Practice!....................................135 Narratives! 137 (Con)Textualizing the Image! 137 The Visual Record! 139 The Text and the Image! 142 Practices! 146 Ownership Patterns! 149 Corktown! 170 Michigan Central Station! 175 vii The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel and DRIC! 178 The Infrastructure of Local Disinvestment! 181 Canadian Investment in Infrastructure! 182 The Detroit-Windsor Rail Tunnel! 184 Moroun and Corktown! 188 Chapter 5 Property and the Right – Eminent Domain: Poletown, Hathcock, Kelo and Proposal 4!........................................................................................................190 Property Rights and Government Practice! 193 Eminent Domain in Detroit! 196 Proposal 4: Restricting Eminent Domain! 200 County of Wayne v.