The Equity Factor

What You Learn In a Year-Long Crash Course on Detroit City Planning

Challenge Detroit is a new urban revitalization program that launched in the Motor City last year. We sat down with executive director Deirdre Greene Groves and inaugural fellow Jason Zogg to talk transit, procurement and development.

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Challenge Detroit, basically a year-long crash course on city planning, is a new urban revitalization program that launched in the Motor City last year. The inaugural class of 30 fellows just wrapped up its first year in September, and the second class is currently digging in.

I hesitate to call what Challenge Detroit teaches “urban planning,” because the fellows work on everything from transportation to obesity education to entrepreneurship. Hands-on experience distinguishes it from other fellowships or graduate programs in planning or development: The fellows work on nine different challenges for a month at a time, while also working four days a week at one of the host companies Challenge partners with.

Last week I met up with Deirdre Greene Groves, Challenge’s executive director, and Jason Zogg, one of the inaugural fellows who now works for DTE Energy, at Great Lakes Coffee in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood. We talked about the city’s strengthening core, transportation equity and Zogg’s recent experiences with shifting procurement policies.

Next City: There is a lot of focus on Detroit’s core — every city needs a strong center — but is the hope that Challenge will fan out into the neighborhoods?

Deirdre Greene Groves: Two of our projects last year tackled issues specific to neighborhoods. One, which Jason can talk about, focused on the Osborn community on the Northeast Side. It’s one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the city. We worked with everything from employment opportunities to child care to arts in the community.

NC: What exactly were you working on up there?

Jason Zogg: We basically helped them make a report that they had never had before — an impact report of sorts. They could no longer rely on federal grant programs and needed to diversify their funding. But they didn’t have anything to tell people, what it is they do, what are our strengths, why should you support us. They were able to go out with that report we created for them and are now using it to try and get non-traditional funding.

NC: How difficult is it to spur any sort of economic development in those neighborhoods where there isn’t a central business district or an anchor institution like here in Midtown? And is the model from Midtown even replicable there?

Groves: I don’t think that there is a model. It has to be unique and specific to the neighborhood and the people living there. The key to everything that we do is that we don’t do it alone. We’re supporting existing organizations in a community. We never do it alone, because we do not have all the answers. People have been doing work since we got there and will continue after we leave.

NC: There is a very stark contrast between Downtown and, say, the East Side. When you work with these neighborhoods, are you pushing for more collaboration between various parts of the city and the outlying suburbs?

Zogg: I think we’re seeing a greater collaboration across the region than we ever have before, which will hopefully lead to greater equity. Like, for example, the millage that was passed to support the Detroit Institute of Arts from across the region. Those people might have moved out of the city, but they didn’t move that far. So once we start collaborating together — which we haven’t in many decades, for a variety of reasons — that, I think, will bring the equity that we’ve needed for a long time.

And it’s true what you said about no city in the history of the world has ever not grown without a strong center. So we’re trying to improve the core. But we’re not only trying to improve the core so we can build out from there. We’re trying to find where there are strong nodes in the city. You have to build the strong nodes and fill it in from there.

NC: Speaking of equity, one thing we’re constantly talking about here at Next City — in Detroit and other cities facing similar issues — is the lack of easy access to transit and how that translates directly to economic mobility. How do you connect folks in the city to livable wage jobs in the suburbs who have no means of getting there?

Zogg: If you made me choose only one topic to improve equity in Detroit, transportation would be the one. And that’s why the Regional Transit Authority finally happening is so important. It’s the first regional transit authority that Detroit has seen, ever. It is going to take a long time, but this is an important step.

NC: Jason, you stayed on with DTE when your year was up with Challenge Detroit. It’s a huge institution with a lot of purchasing power. Have you seen their procurement strategies change at all?

Zogg: We have definitely seen that. Our service territory is all out southeast Michigan, so when we say local procurement we mean all of southeast Michigan. But a slice of that procurement is going to the city of Detroit, where we’ve already spent more than $94 million this year. We’re a founding member of the Pure Michigan Business Connect Initiative, which was announced by Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011 to increase spending by major Michigan-based companies with Michigan-based suppliers.

NC: So you’ve been a big part of that shift, in addition to this government initiative?

Zogg: I’m a big part of saying, “Hey, why don’t we consider this contractor? Have you heard of this MWBE that I happen to know about from my time at Challenge Detroit?” Yes, the state and people in the city are specifically working with companies to shift their procurement policies. But there’s also an element of peer pressure. We see Dan Gilbert swoop in and do all of this investment in Detroit, very much with local contractors. So we’re saying, “he’s got contractors and engineers and planners we’ve never heard of before. Maybe we should go see what he’s doing.” How can we tap into that? And how can we build on what he’s doing?

The Equity Factor is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.

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Bill Bradley is a writer and reporter living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in Deadspin, GQ, and Vanity Fair, among others.

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Tags: public transportationeconomic developmentdetroittransit agenciesequity factor

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