The Last House on the Block

"In the minds of many, Detroit is undergoing a renaissance. From mid-50s boom to bankruptcy bust, it is once again calling to urbanites with the promise of cheap housing and thriving culture; indeed, the New York Times even called it "the most exciting city in America." In 2017, ethnographer Sharon Cornelissen heeded this siren song and headed for Brightmoor, a neighborhood of Detroit where she might buy a house for as little as $500. What she found was... nothing. Brightmoor was so depopulated that every other property in the neighborhood was a vacant lot and every third house stood empty. Some blocks had no residents at all. But since 2006, around 35 households of White newcomers have moved into Brightmoor, planting gardens and farms on vacant lots. They related to Brightmoor's vacant spaces in very different ways than its oldtimers. Where oldtimers take pride in neatly mowed lawns and hope for a return to residential density, newcomers love the open space and see fields of tall grasses and wildflowers as bucolic. They aim to buy more empty lots to raise chickens and goats. It is a story of gentrification, but not at all in the usual sense: it is a case of failed gentrification. No real estate developers courting a cohort of like-minded White people, farm-to-table restaurants, and coffee shops have followed; property values are still abysmal. And yet, a White vision of what it means to live in a city has once again displaced the residents who have built and laid claim to the space. Nearly a decade after Cornelissen's fieldwork began, Brightmoor is even emptier than it was when she started"--