Urban Technology at University of Michigan week 80
Examining district-scale developments in Detroit
Recently there have been a number of big announcements about large-scale developments in or near downtown Detroit, so today we’re going to borrow an idea from a prior issue of this newsletter and take a close look at what these plans entail and the role for urban technology therein. So many real estate development projects have ambitions for “urban innovation”—whatever that means! Let’s find out.
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What is District-Scale Development?
If you’re not a real estate wonk, do not worry. The idea of district development is simple: build many acres of new cityscape with a coordinated plan. Once you reach this size, there’s enough investment and a large enough scale of physical planning that it’s sensible to think about the infrastructure you might need to share across that district and include that in the plan too.
The idea has its origins in science and business parks. Find an undeveloped field next to a major highway, build lots of parking, throw in a modest attempt at landscaping, attract companies with competitive rents and… synergy happens!
From today’s vantage point it’s easy to laugh at, but this physical landscape worked profoundly well in the case of Silicon Valley, where cheap rents, plenty of space, and good weather gave the region’s engineers the mental room to think big (all despite the uninspiring architecture, no less). Route 128 near Boston took the same idea and extended it into a 55-mile long corridor thanks to the region’s engineering strength in hardware and devices. Since these major success stories, regions all over the world have studied these areas to try and distill their secrets to success.
Of course, capitalists were not the first people to take a bite of the large-scale development apple. Religious groups have a knack for planning remote utopias, described lovingly in Chris Jenning’s book Paradise Now. The federal government’s track record with directing district-scale development is more problematic, with many racist scars from 20th-century Urban Renewal still cutting across American cities in the form of neighborhoods of Black families and other minorities destroyed by new housing and highways. Studying this history, it is hard to get past the thought that “the bigger they come, the harder they fall,” because the history is not a bright one.
You can design a district that (hopes to) improve economic activity, and you can do the same to “improve health and safety,” which was the purported reasoning behind Urban Renewal’s clearance of neighborhoods labeled slums like Black Bottom in Detroit (spoiler alert: it was not actually a slum…) What else can drive a district?
A wider awareness of sustainability was the driver behind the BedZed in London and Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm (PDF Link), two early “eco districts” that have inspired many, many since. Projects like this take the communal green space and shared resources in a specific direction, introducing technologies like anaerobic digesters, solar fields, district heating and cooling—things that are possible at the scale of a building, but work more efficiently and cost effectively in a larger installation.
District developments happening today are some mix of all of the above. They seek to drive economic development, often include an earnest attempt to reduce the carbon footprint of the families and businesses on site, and contemporary best practice is that districts should be mixed-use rather than monofunctional. Different types of people, doing different types of things, with just the right infrastructure, and just the right level of stimulation is what The Brookings Institution refers to as an “Innovation district:”
Innovation districts constitute the ultimate mash up of entrepreneurs and educational institutions, start-ups and schools, mixed-use development and medical innovations, bike-sharing and bankable investments—all connected by transit, powered by clean energy, wired for digital technology, and fueled by caffeine.
Depending on your perspective, the lines quoted above can sound like a sensible way to think about citymaking, or it may read like a list of ingredients for gentrification. The answer, as with all things urban, is somewhere in between. This quick history is just one of the landscapes against which Detroit’s multiple district-scale developments have to be seen. It’s a hard thing to do, and even harder to do well.
Detroit Districts
Here’s what’s happening right now:
The District Detroit is a 77-acre effort centered around Little Caesars Arena, backed by the owners of Little Caesars, thus making it the world’s first pizza-powered urban district. Take that, NYC! The University of Michigan recently announced they will create a Detroit mini-campus within The District.
Michigan Central is a 30-acre development initiative anchored by the Michigan Central Train Station, the closest thing the city has to an architectural spirit animal. This is backed by Ford and includes a recently-announced partnership with Google (who already have offices in The District). Michigan Central will include various mobility testbeds, like a wireless EV charging road and the first cross-border drone delivery corridor.
The third major effort is without a name, but the Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage/Bedrock family of companies owns scores of buildings downtown and has recently celebrated the launch of a partnership with the World Economic Forum to create a Centre for Urban Transformation. They own lots of land and buildings in the city, so they certainly have the ingredients to pursue an innovation district.
Before reflecting on the inherent potential of this confluence of plans, it’s important to acknowledge the challenges ahead. Detroit is a Black city, and the money and power behind these projects is mostly white. Detroiters have seen grand urban visions and promises come and go (and leave behind scars). Among the many battles is strong regional public transit, voted down in 2016, which would connect residents with jobs and give suburbanites a chance to visit the city without bringing their cars.
Representation, Equity, Access: these are like the bottom rungs of a Maslow’s Hierarchy applied to Actually Inclusive Urban Development. Forget these needs and it doesn’t matter how cool your self-driving cars look or how much waste your anaerobic digesters remove from the landfill. A district cannot be fueled by caffeine if no one shows up!
All this being said, we are still genuinely curious about what will come of the developments described above. And because it’s still early days for all three of them, let’s brainstorm the things we’d like to see from Detroit’s up and coming districts:
Tell us why the district exists. Currently Michigan Central does this most clearly by declaring a focus on “mobility solutions that make the world better for everyone.” That’s a great start, but it speaks more directly to the companies that will be part of the neighborhood. How does a 6-year-old child identify with living or going to school in a neighborhood focused on “mobility solutions”?
Challenge to Ford: can you articulate such a clear vision for the district that children not only know it, but they are excited by it? p.s. if you need help with that, ask Tiny Town, one of our Protogrant recipients.
Tell us why the district has to be here. U-M’s Detroit Center for Innovation will focus on incubating businesses, supporting startups, and connecting the university’s awesome talent to the world, which is all fantastic! But what is the glue that will hold all of this innovation together? Will the janitor who mops the halls be proud to work in your district because they are contributing to a larger mission or, when asked what they do, will they shrug and say, “I mop floors.”
Challenge to The District: can you articulate such a clear connection to the place and community of Detroit that everyone knows why you exist, and why you cannot exist anywhere but here?
Tell us how the district will grow from seed to flower. Districts are gardens that grow and evolve over time thanks to the many contributions of the people who live, work, and play there. If that’s the case, why are they presented like works of art—complete and static? Any project of this scale is constructed over time and will take years, so district-scale developments need to acknowledge this fact, design for vibrancy on day one, and also show what that looks like among the otherwise fancy renderings depicting the completion of construction.
Challenge to all Detroit district-scale efforts: can you describe your projects as a narrative arc rather than a virtual tour? How do the beginning, middle, and end look? Where are the points of drama and opportunities for people to sway the outcomes?
Tell us how we can be part of it. The shift from the early days of the World Wide Web to today is the story of websites becoming platforms that invite user-generated content and participation. Districts can act as platforms that enable people who live and work there to do unexpected and unplanned things. The best outcomes for platform urbanism point us towards spaces and systems that evolve in lively ways, but as a friend from Chile once told me, “the one who pays for the party does not choose the music.” Districts need tolerance of events and activities that are on the fringe and empty space that’s not too carefully managed. For groups with lots of money and power, accepting the true outcomes of platform urbanism is likely difficult.
Challenge to all Detroit district-scale efforts: can you make room in your chorus for people you never expected to join? Can you invite cultural activities and genuinely support them? Can you give us reasons to sing?
Tell us what impact you’ve had. Districts almost always involve some public participation through tax breaks, other financial incentives, and/or the stretching of local codes, regulations, and laws, which are generally supported by claims of the jobs and economic growth that will follow from the investment. If that’s the case, then why not require the progenitor behind the project to do the accountability work and show their impact in real time? Want to build a new HQ in town? Saying that you will bring high-tech workers? Then employ some of that tech talent to show us your detailed projections and track actual performance of social, economic, and environmental impact against the projections, as Anthony Townsend suggests. Tie public support to demonstrated performance.
Challenge to all Detroit district-scale efforts: can you be as innovative with your accountability and communications mechanisms as you are with your physical planning?
Few of the words above describe concrete urban technology projects, and that’s not by accident. Every aspect of these ‘asks’ for greater accountability, community infrastructure, iterative development, purpose, recognition of history and communities in place, etc., imply redesigning media, interfaces, devices, places, governance structures, financing streams, and social norms. The smart cities movement failed because it treated technology like something you can buy and bolt onto existing cities without changing anything else.
As much as urban technology gets attention for gizmos like drones, autonomous vehicles, and internet-connected lamp posts, the deeper work of urban technology that needs to happen is using the technology at hand—computation, networking, materials science, proliferate data—to invent better ways to create accountability to each other, to navigate interdependence with nature, to thrive. That’s not a problem to be solved: it’s the work of city life.
Links
🗺 Wish this announcement of the world’s first wireless EV charging road would include a simple map. Add to the list above: Tell concrete stories.
🚏 Signs and Symbols in the Public Realm are one of the many things that urban technologists will redesign. Link is a growing archive of examples.
🔦 Speaking of signage, Oulu, Finland is prototyping signage projected onto snow-covered roadways to inform pedestrians and cyclists. h/t Martti Tulenheimo
💨 Boston has published a dashboard of indoor air quality sensors in public school classrooms. File under: Accountability. h/t Dr. Anne Fitzpatrick
These weeks: Admissions. Recruiting. Writing. Did I mention admissions? 🏃
Challenge to all efforts: can you provide water that is safe to drink, electricity that stays on and an #OpenInternet, that is accessible / affordable, built on a "Commons" (cooperative community owned) Broadband infrastructure? Here is an alternative community based approach to Broadband infrastructure happening in New York City. I was a member of NYC Mesh when I lived in Brooklyn for 10 years. #Decentralize #OpenInternet https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/nyregion/nyc-mesh-community-internet.html