Democratizing design: possibilities for Detroit’s community benefits ordinance

ABSTRACT

The scholarship on participatory design has indicated continued struggles to develop processes that genuinely include citizen feedback in an inclusive manner. This paper explores whether Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance, that has allowed for residents to negotiate community benefits like parks, public spaces and streetscape improvements is a possible avenue for improved participatory design. This research shows that the Ordinance allowed for citizens to negotiate benefits related to the built environment, accounting for about one third of benefits won. However, there are significant barriers towards the Ordinance providing a transparent, non-elitist, and non-tokenistic environment for citizen participation in urban design.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the NAC members, developers, activists and City officials who gave their time to be interviewed for this research, and also to thank the Dalhousie Faculty of Architecture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Through the current amendment process and City Charter revision process, City Council is considering whether the threshold should be reduced to $50 million. Because the highest value projects are located in Greater Downtown, intuitively, lowering the threshold this amount seems to be an opportunity for Detroiters in outlying areas of the city to be represented through a CBO that would cover more moderately priced projects. However, a look at the costs of developments outside of Greater Downtown suggests a much steeper drop off in value; currently, there are no projects planned outside of Downtown that would meet even a $50 million threshold. A $15 million threshold, as suggested in Proposal A may encompass a few more developments outside of downtown, but the development landscape of the city is likely too polarized currently for changing the threshold to make a significant difference in how inclusive the Ordinance is.

2. In this analysis, benefits were related to urban design if they were related to the physical features of the development and/or adjacent public spaces and infrastructure. These are distinct from other types of benefits like workforce development, affordable housing, or managing construction nuisances, among many others that were prominent in agreements that do not impact the built environment directly.

3. The developer responsible for the Hudson’s Site.

4. The future of this project is currently uncertain, with talks of reinstating the NAC in order to revisit the agreement in light of major changes to the development and a shift in management.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture and Planning [NA].