Detroit in Disaster

So I'm going to be working with a professor from U of M Dearborn who is bringing his Urban Sociology students around to volunteer with NCI. The executive director has more or less given me the task of utilizing the students however I need them. Which is good in some senses because I was just a student myself last semester, and I really do have an interest in making their experience actually usefuly... instead of just having them come in on a Saturday and pick up trash.


Anyway, this professor, Dr. Draus gave me a paper he wrote about conceptualizing urban social problems in terms of disaster management. The name of that paper is "Substance Abuse and Slow Motion Disasters: The Case of Detroit." This concept of slow motion disasters is pretty new to me... thinking about disaster not in terms of an acute event but the pre-existing social conditions and societal structures which lead to the "chronic catastrophe" of poverty. And if we look at Detroit, we see the same social indicators which might constitute a "disaster."

Detroit’s disaster is entirely social in origins, and required no help from
nature to occur. It is diffuse, multi-faceted, and manifested in multiple
indicators. Detroit is a national leader in specific health conditions such as
rates of childhood asthma, blood lead levels and obesity, as well as in more
general social measures such as racial segregation, sprawl and urban-suburban
income gap, and in much-publicized indices of violence (Swanstrom, Casey, Flack
and Dreier 2004; Sui 2003; Boozer and Metzger 2006).

So then... where do the drugs come in? Apparantly a report by the DEA even attributes the "rise of the crack economy to the collapse of the city’s internal social structure, primarily the massive loss of jobs." So then we got into this whole other discussion about how we could consider Detroit in fact an incredibly resourceful and innovative city at this point. Really, no one predicted how much our industrial economy would collapse, and of course pretty much all of Detroit's economy was based on the now failing auto industry. So, out of nowhere, people in the city had to develop a new economy... and yes, the new economy may be reliant on drug activity, but it is something, and it is something that has kept the city from becoming completely abandoned.

So as a social worker... what can I do? And what do you all think about this drug economy? And can we really use disaster management approaches to address major social problems? You can drive down the street and see that Detroit is a disaster zone... but can our traditional approaches to disasters really change the social and structural situation? Tell me what you think. (Except you, Eric... because you already did :) )

Leah

The Basics

Today I drove up to U of M Flint for a summit on regional trails and greenways. It was something I more or less decided to do for fun... I don't usually work on Tuesdays. A lot of the conference focused on public parks and trails to be used for recreation, and current developments in the Flint area. I heard seminars on accessibility and ADA guidelines for trail development, the economic impact of trails and greenways, and building truly safe, walkable communities.

So one of the major projects I am working on at NCI is developing a greenway between two of the parks we built. A greenway is basically a trail built through developed urban areas and neighborhoods. So point A on the map is the All Saints Neighborhood Center Park and point B is the new Lafayette Park that was just finished in November, I believe. There are very few cross streets in the neighborhood, so if people want to get to the parks, they either have to take the long way around the streets, or cut through all these overgrown alleys filled with trash.
View Larger Map

So basically, we have been looking at Google Maps to determine which lots are vacant between those two parks. Then we dig around and try to find out who owns the lots, which more likely than not is the city of Detroit or the Michigan Land Bank Authority. Then we pretty much just fill out a form and show a development plan, and we can buy up the lots for about $500 (from the city) or even cheaper from the land bank.

This sounds incredibly boring. But its actually pretty exciting. There is certainly no shortage of vacant land in southwest Detroit... and really, anyone with a plan and a check can buy it. And they do. But here, we've established ourselves as an organization that the city is used to dealing with, and we've more than made the case to have social workers on board.

So there's the basics... bringing us all up to speed. I promise I will write about more exciting things soon.

Leah

Jumping in Head First

Oh my, Detroit.

I love Detroit. Seriously.

I'm working in southwest Detroit, just a few miles south of the bridge over to Canada. In showing some maps to my mom, we realized that many of my Italian immigrant ancestors are buried in an old cemetery just a few blocks from my internship.

I am working for Neighborhood Centers, Inc. and am doing a lot of work with the park and playground development.

I'll certainly update on specific projects and meetings soon. Mostly I wanted to just get this started. Basically, i made the right decision. It feels good to be home.