Whose Streets?

This map, part of the "Notes from the Peoples Atlas" series, was created during the US Social Forum and records the locations of abandoned buildings, community gardens, and homeless people in Detroit.

The US rust belt has become ground zero for a movement to re-imagine our cities and economies.  Exciting new initiatives around worker co-ops, public land, green jobs, urban agriculture, and alternative economic development are being started every day in cities that have long been written off as lost causes.  But Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Rochester, and Flint are also the site of growing conflict between competing visions of what the future of these cities should look like.  On one side are people pushing for a new kind of economic development that is community controlled, meets the needs of the most vulnerable residents of the city, and is environmentally sound and sustainable.  On the other side are politicians and investors pushing an agenda of privatization, gentrification, and displacement.

These conflicts bear a striking resemblance to the struggles taking place in New Orleans, a city whose destruction was quicker and more dramatic, but no more profound than what took place in the rust belt over the last four decades.  Venture capitalists, policy makers, and foundations approached New Orleans as a blank slate, a playground to try out their new ideas and test their policies: dismantling the public school system and almost entirely replacing it with charter schools; closing down public housing; and shuttering hospitals that served low income communities before the storm.

The tensions between a truly democratic and sustainable revitalization of the rust belt, and urban renewal dressed up in fancy new clothes, are explored in the recent Truth Out article "Another Detroit is Happening, But Which One do We Need?"

And a new Amnesty International report on the failure of the rebuilding process post-Katrina to safeguard the right to housing, health care, and other human rights, provides a chilling example of what rust belt organizers hope to avoid.

Community garden photo by Claire Pentacost. Both photos courtesy of AREA Chicago.