One thing that has surprised me after reading the Detroit sections of “How to Kill a City” is just how quickly gentrification occurs. Yes, it is often built on years of systemically-racist laws and regulations, and yes, it consists of constant development pushing and pulling for city “improvements,” changing a neighborhood piece by piece. But when someone’s home is bought by a developer, when they’re given one month and minimal funds to leave a building and people they may have seen as a community, it’s hard to say gentrification is not a shock to the system. One day life seems normal, and in a matter of weeks your neighborhood is unrecognizable.
While I don’t agree with everything in the book, I think it was helpful for us to learn more about Downtown Detroit and the area where our group is living. I spend a lot of time formulating ideas about Southwest Detroit from my observations at work, during my commute, and in conversation with the people who frequent my site. When we operate as a DCERP group, and when we walk, shop, and talk through the areas around us less actively than we may at our sites, the character of what Moskowitz drills to be “the 7.2” has the chance to become background information. That’s part of why reading this book has given me a new perspective on some aspects of my site, as well. The area has not been as directly hit by gentrification as others in that it doesn’t consist of buildings bought and controlled by major developers, nor does it house a large percentage of those who have lost their homes to the actions and rhetoric of these financiers carving away at the city. Still, I see hints of the unified Detroit we’ve discussed in concerns about people being pushed out of the city, as well as in the by-products of related processes such as increased industrialism which carries environmental impacts for Southwest residents in exchange for business and a sprinkling of grants.
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