Excluded by design: informality versus tactical urbanism in the redevelopment of Detroit neighborhoods

Abstract

Over the last half century, Detroit has been defined by economic collapse and worsening social stratification. Street vending, murals, and urban agriculture have served as means for disenfranchised communities to resist exclusion from and discrimination by the formal systems that provide services and amenities to their wealthier counterparts. In recent years, “tactical urbanism” has been promoted by urban designers appropriating informal practices as spurs to redevelopment. This paper analyzes media coverage of the simultaneous use of street vending, murals, and urban agriculture by private investors in Detroit’s redeveloping neighborhoods, and their informal adoption by marginalized Detroiters, and reveals how the appropriation of informal practices by developers and new arrivals to the city has become commonplace in reinvested areas, but is treated fundamentally differently than informal practices of long-standing residents. My analysis points to inconsistencies in the ways that informal activities, often condemned as illegal when practiced by long-standing residents, are accepted as entrepreneurial by the media and presented as necessary to attract an arriving class of young professionals. I consider how new, more affluent arrivals to the city participate in the “renaissance” of Detroit by manipulating legal frameworks that define the realms of informality and criminality.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.