Detroit City Council Districts

I attended the Detroit City Council’s special hearing on the proposed maps for new council districts on Friday, February 3. The districts were mandated by the 2011 vote that approved a revised city charter. It has been over 80 years since Detroit has elected council members by district; this revision replaces election at-large representation. The hope is that having a new hybrid system (two council members will still be elected at large, and seven will come from districts) will increase accountability for improvements and the livability of the city.

I noted two threads among the citizens who commented at the hearing. First (and this was duly noted by the news media that covered the hearing), people are attached to their neighborhoods, and they value the connections their neighborhoods have with others that are close-by their own. They spoke about shared responsibility for parks and area-wide initiatives, for coordinating on development and crime initiatives, and so on. Virtually all of them prefer districts that will maintain these relationships, so that when neighborhood committees meet with council members everyone will “be at the table,” as one resident put it. Another speaker, who works for a community-based health program in Brightmoor, reiterated that point. Council President Charles Pugh asked where, exactly, she lived, and she responded that she lived in the Riverdale Park neighborhood, which is a very small section between Old Redford and Brightmoor. Pugh wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood, but he put it into context by clarifying that it was in the far Northwest area of the city.

Several members of the Council pointed out that setting the boundaries for the election districts wouldn’t stop the relationships that already exist, and that neighborhood boundaries don’t define the functioning of Detroit or the place of citizens within it. But, one speaker from Corktown said that there is a strong emotional tie to the neighborhoods, and that Pugh himself had proved that connection when he placed Riverdale Park in his own mental map of the city to understand how the speaker related to the rest of Detroit. Neighborhoods do matter, and the relationships between neighborhoods are just as important as the relationships people build on their own blocks.

The second thread I noticed came from several residents who spoke about the institutions and amenities within the proposed districts. Some talked about these as if hospitals, schools, shopping districts, and the like would serve them better if they were within the boundaries of their council district. This is what really prompted the response from council members about district boundaries not being walls separating neighborhoods. They warned about balkanizing the city.

I think that this interest in how amenities are distributed reveals a deeper issue: people are very concerned with fairness in the way constituents are treated, and, second, they hope that creating a City Council elected by district will empower neighborhoods that have been neglected and forgotten by city government. Development and access to the everyday necessities of life are NOT evenly spread across the city, and people are desperate for the things that wealthier or more powerful citizens take for granted and demand. What the speakers were expressing was their dream of a city that works on a neighborhood level.

I just saw a story about a city council member in Seattle who said that the aim of the city was to create neighborhoods that are “safe, green, and connected.” Green might be too specific, but if you let that term mean sustainable economically, environmentally, and politically, then that phrase perfectly describes what every speaker at the hearing on Friday wants, and what very few neighborhoods in the city have. I’m not so sure that everyone on the present council recognizes that.