Research Overview

My research focuses on American cities that have lost a large share of their peak population and employment and now face major issues with property disinvestment. These cities include most of the past manufacturing centers of the Midwest and many of those in the Northeast. Cities in the South that have lost their past industrial base have also experienced considerable decline. I am fascinated by what such cities become, and I aim to contribute to strengthening urban planning’s capacity to improve the conditions for people who live and work in them. The focus of urban planning has traditionally been to revitalize, rebuild, and redevelop disinvested areas, but such renewal is no longer possible in many areas of these cities. Therefore, urban planners need to reframe the way they work in such places.

Further, I want to know how research on such cities can change the questions we ask and the answers we discover in many areas of urban studies. Detroit is the premier example of a city that has experienced extreme decline. Now may be the time for a Detroit School of Urban Studies to indicate new areas of investigation and theoretical development based on understanding gained from cities that have experienced substantial deindustrialization and depopulation. Therefore, I work with Ph.D. students and Angela Dillard (Residential College and Department of Afroamerican and African Studies) to convene the Detroit School series, a monthly research seminar or lecture on the question of how what we learn from Detroit can advance understanding of cities (on hiatus during the pandemic).

Creating homeownership in the context of tax foreclosure

With Roshanak Mehdipanah (School of Public Health), postdoc Alexa Eisenberg, and the United Community Housing Coalition, I am evaluating the effectiveness of a pilot program in Detroit to transition renters to homeownership after their landlords allowed property to go into tax foreclosure. Such programs might offer hope for greater housing stability for low-income households and protection of properties and neighborhoods from further disinvestment. Rocket Community Fund and UM Poverty Solutions have supported this work.

With the Detroit Land Bank Authority's Buy Back Program and several student research assistants, I am studying the stability of low-income homeownership in properties that have gone through tax foreclosure and failed to sell at tax auctions. Programs like this one have been noted as possibly increasing housing stability and preserving properties that may otherwise be subject to further disinvestment. UM Poverty Solutions is funding this project.

Saving Detroit’s neighborhoods from mortgage foreclosures

With June Manning Thomas, I am completing a study of how residents and community-based organizations have worked to prevent disinvestment in Detroit’s middle-class neighborhoods. Between 2006 and 2014, more than one-third of the houses in these neighborhoods experienced mortgage foreclosures, and housing values fell more than 80 percent. Much of the research on community capacity treats connections to institutions and governmental entities outside the neighborhood as a black box. We focus on how such connections and specific neighborhood initiatives helped or hindered neighborhood recovery.

Transitioning residential vacant land to green stormwater infrastructure

As part of a team led by Joan Nassauer (Landscape Architecture Program) working with the Detroit Land Bank and the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, I am completing study of the governance of transitioning vacant land to green stormwater infrastructure. Legacy-city plans envision large amounts of obsolete residential property as used for stormwater management in the future. Scholars know how land use change occurs when strong demand for property exists. In this project, I am investigating how land use transition takes place when demand is very weak, when the market-determined highest and best use may well be a neglected vacant lot. The Erb Family Foundation and UM Water Center funded this research.

Preventing evictions

With Rob Goodspeed and legal aid attorneys Libby Benton and Robert Gillett, I am working on analyzing eviction trends across the state, showing the effects of interventions such as the pandemic-related evictions moratoriums, and making recommendations for assuring that tenants can access their rights when threatened with eviction. Although most research on eviction focuses on the people who lose their homes, evictions also may have major effects on the condition of neighborhoods and advance disinvestment in legacy cities. UM Poverty Solutions has supported this research.

Remaking very vacant neighborhoods

Scholars rarely look closely at places that are experiencing extensive disinvestment. Those who do tend to focus on the ruins of abandoned structures. Some policy makers have suggested clearing remaining residents out of such areas so that the city government can cut all services. I am looking in detail at how residents have remade two very vacant sections of Detroit. They have brought about considerable transformations despite their difficult environment. The UM Graham Sustainability Institute funded this research.