Ground Forces: Dirt, Demolition, and the Geography of Decline in Detroit, Michigan by Michael Roman-John Koscielniak A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Urban and Regional Planning) in the University of Michigan 2020 Doctoral Committee: Assistant Professor Joshua M. Akers, Co-Chair Associate Professor Scott Campbell, Co-Chair Professor Margaret Dewar Professor Robert Fishman Professor Martin Murray "There's not another city in the country, and perhaps civilization, doing what we're doing ... blight removal at scale. Where is a better place to do this than Detroit, where scale is in our DNA? We put the world on wheels, we were the Arsenal of Democracy. Where else to teach the world how to do this and make a great city blight-free?" - Brian Farkas, Special Projects Director, Detroit Building Authority, 2018 “I am obsessed with a goal: To eliminate blight from the city of Detroit entirely by 2025.” - Michael Edward Duggan, Mayor of Detroit, 2019 M. Roman-John Koscielniak [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3338-8537 © M. Roman-John Koscielniak 2020 DEDICATION I dedicate this to the work and life of Ernest Calloway (1908-1989), a dishwasher, coal miner, highway drifter, cannabis activist, labor organizer, journalist, full-time civil rights activist, one-time Fulbright Scholar, President of the St. Louis Chapter of the NAACP, frequent local campaign director, newspaper publisher, candidate for US Congress, political kingmaker, part- time university lecturer, Assistant Professor, research director for the Teamsters, Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies at St. Louis University, and an “architect of the unfinished dream.” ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A dissertation is not an independent endeavor. What appears at first glimpse to be a sum of isolation and esoteric energy camouflages the support, counsel, and love of friends, families, and colleagues. I would not be here without the time and energy of the most important people in my life. D.A.B., thank you for your kindness and honesty over the last seven years - and the prior twenty-six. H.E.A., thank you for erupting into my life and making it possible to slow down and think about the future. N.J.K., I am lucky to have had a brother along for the journey. C.R.K., thank you for demanding that I meet my potential. J.M.K., when a task is once begun you leave it not until its done. To M.L., I know I could not have done any of this without all of your help. To the graduate school mentors and advisors along the way, I can only say I never once made this easy. To the research and writing projects started and left unfinished, do not get comfortable. To my critics and allies in urban studies and planning, I promise I have plenty of fight left. No acknowledgements could be complete without reflecting on what drove me to this field of study. I am, after all, a kid born into and shaped by the turmoil of the American Midwest. To the people of St. Louis, MO, Detroit, MI, and every Rust Belt city imagining and achieving justice for black, brown, and poor communities, I promise to do my absolute best to be an accomplice. I will never remain silent, but I will pass the mic whenever possible. Thank you. iii PREFACE Neighborhoods and municipalities just beyond my small second-floor office and front door are experiencing both the full-on biological assault of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the ruthlessness of an unequal society founded on and maintained by brutal racist difference. One emergency colliding with another, but both expressive of who, what, and where we consider valuable. When we allow leaders to declare emergencies or invoke crisis language, we also allow them to narrow our available solutions. Emergencies are a way of acting, but also a way of forgetting. It intensifies trauma while erasing the past. Forces and histories fall away as political and corporate classes bend institutions to their agendas and wills. In these moments, successes and failures cease to be useful measures for public policies. These emergencies burden us with distorted glimpses on origins and outcomes: effects become causes; causes become inaccessible. In place of tired evaluations, we should focus on what these emergencies accomplish and for whom, what the emergency allows and why, when the emergency will end and what a return to normal really means. For planning and policy, any normal structured and maintained by inequality, violence, and insecurity should never be good enough. How do we resist the urge to call something a crisis when what we are facing is a feature of incrementalism? The challenge, then, is how our disciplines and professions confront and denounce acts of brutality, systems of domination, and practices of destruction. The carnage of novel coronavirus and the viciousness of racism are not bugs in the system; both depend on practitioners, academics, and policymakers modeling patience and performing compliance because progress has become reform. Rather than use our positions to allay conflict, we must commit ourselves to participation in these struggles. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii PREFACE iv LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES x LIST OF APPENDICES xii ABSTRACT xiii Chapter 1: Introduction: From the Demolition of Detroit to Demolishing Detroit 1 Placing and Planning Demolition 15 Organization of the Dissertation 24 The History and Theory of Demolition: Review of the Literature 27 Demolition as belief-in-progress 28 Demolition as backroom-deal 29 Demolition as burial 31 Demolition as bailout 32 Demolition as bulwark 33 Demolition as banishment 34 Demolition as demolishing 36 Research Methods and Approach 37 Politicizing Grounded Theory Research 37 Building Towards Research on Demolishing and Backfilling Detroit 39 Conclusion: Demolishing in the Production of Decline 43 Chapter 2: Clearance Consensus: A (Recent) History of Demolishing the Motor City 47 Wrecking to Revitalize 48 Governing In and Through Emergency: Relevant Literature 55 v Research Methods 62 Governing Blight, Governing through Blight 62 Blight Authority: Bill Pulte and Demolishing to Make Detroit Great Again 66 Blight Emergency: Kevyn Orr and Threats to the Comeback City 70 Blight Machine: Dan Gilbert, Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, and Motor City Mapping Project 78 Blight Regime: Mayor Duggan and the Detroit Demolition Program 91 Building a Blightocracy in Detroit 98 Conclusion: Making Detroit Demolishable 104 Chapter 3: Backfilling the Blightocracy: Rentiership, Regulatory Capture, and the Dirt on Detroit 107 Demolition Production and Dirt Costs 108 Finding the Dollars in Destruction: Relevant Literature 115 Disaster Capitalism 116 Rentiership 118 Regulatory capture 121 Research Methods 123 How Backfilling Became the “Biggest Problem” 124 The Levers and Leverages for Ground Control 128 Dirt Becoming Money in Disguise 139 From Compliance to Capture 146 Conclusion: Valuation as Regulation 158 Chapter 4: Soil Horizons and Waste Frontiers: A Regional Geography of Backfilling Detroit, MI 163 Extraction and Environments: Relevant Literature 168 Research Methods 172 Recategorizing Backfill Material 173 Illusive Sources 183 Extractive Sources 191 Destructive Sources 197 Expansive Sources 201 Speculative Sources 208 Infrastructural Sources 216 New Construction Sources 222 vi Conclusion: Contaminating Soil Histories 226 Chapter 5: Backfill to the City Movement: Land, Value, and the Properties of Demolishing 232 Introduction 233 Gentrification, Austerity, and Post-Crisis Property: Relevant Literature 237 Gentrification 238 Austerity 242 Property and Land in Post-Crisis and Declining Cities 247 Research Methods 252 Deconstructing Demolishing as Value-Creator 255 Stabilizing Home Values 255 Producing Developable Land 258 Stockpiling the Backfill Supply 269 Dump: 14800 Castleton, Detroit, MI 272 Conceal: Stout Street, Detroit, MI 278 Destroy: 14411 Oakland, Highland Park, MI 281 Exploit: 19499 Derby, Detroit, MI 286 Control: 14039 Grand River, Detroit, MI 289 Enrich: Dubois Street, Detroit, MI 292 Materializing and Valuing a Land Regime of Decline 295 Conclusion: From Seesaws to Labyrinths 301 Chapter 6: Conclusion: Remapping the Atlas of Shrinking Cities and the Operations of Urban Decline 307 Demolitions, Demolishability, and Demolishing 313 The Logistical and Environmental Production of Demolition 314 Future Work on the Logistical and Environmental Production of Urban Decline 319 APPENDICES 322 Appendix A 323 Emergency Orders vii Appendix B 332 Detroit Hardest Hit Fund Strategic Plan Appendix C 336 Legislative Policy Division Report Appendix D 341 Freedom of Information Act Correspondence Appendix E 350 Detroit Building Authority Backfill Guidance Appendix F 356 MSHDA Blight Elimination Manual BIBLIOGRAPHY 359 \ viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Explanations of demolition and their limitations............................................................ 35 Table 2: Governing modes and how each addresses the politics of interventions and improvement ................................................................................................................................. 61 Table 3: HHF and city demolition dollars awarded to contractors between 1/2014 and 5/23/2014 ....................................................................................................................................................... 87 Table 4: Blightocratic framings of social problems in Detroit; how local concerns become demolishable ..............................................................................................................................