A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality by Claire W. Herbert (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality by Claire W. Herbert Kelley Lemon (bio) Claire W. Herbert A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality Oakland: University of California Press, 2021 ix + 340 pages, 16 color plates, 32 black-and-white illustrations ISBN: 9780520340084, $29.95 PB ISBN: 9780520340077, $85.00 HB ISBN: 9780520974487, $29.95 EB In her book A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality, author Claire W. Herbert, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oregon, examines Detroit through the lens of occupied space to document the conditions that spur the decline of urban centers, and to understand how those conditions promote informal practices within vacant and abandoned spaces. Her study also seeks to determine who participates and who ultimately benefits (and concurrently suffers) when such practices are recognized and formalized through rules. Property informality, as Herbert defines the term, encompasses the “informal practices that arise from the transgression of laws regulating real property—land, houses, buildings” (5). A Detroit Story is organized into three parts: “Social and Spatial Context,” “Informality in Everyday Life,” and “Informal Plans and Formal Policies,” with a total of nine chapters, plus a preface, introduction, and conclusion. Herbert’s preface primes the reader and essentially addresses the questions/assumptions the reader may have about her position as a White researcher studying a primarily Black community, as she acknowledges how her presence resembled elements of gentrification—a process often characterized as young, highly educated, and resourced Whites moving into and displacing communities of color and considered an undesirable effect of neighborhood and city investments. Herbert moved to Detroit with her family, and they lived in a neighborhood called Piety Hill from 2011 to 2016. Her observations, interviews, and documentation of people illegally using property (squatting, salvaging, homesteading, demolishing) in the neighborhood would become the foundation of her research and this book. In her introduction, Herbert tells the story of a resident named Jerome, who shows her his garden in a nearby lot and describes his experiences with the site. He observed the city’s lack of response to typical maintenance and infrastructural issues and then began identifying opportunities to improve conditions for himself and his neighborhood, including cleaning and growing food on vacant lots and clearing sewer grates of trash. The vacant lots on his block were owned by the city or Bank of America, but such ownership did not deter him, he said, because “nobody minds” (2). Jerome’s story is important because it represents the underpinning of Herbert’s research questions in Detroit. How is it possible to appropriate property informally or illegally in the city without consequences? Perhaps more importantly, why are these practices often supported and encouraged by those tasked to enforce the rules? Jerome, and other residents like him, channel their energy and efforts into improving the community around them, and they are not the exception. Herbert frames the conditions that make such practices possible and shows how they allow for Jerome and many others to manage their daily living in the city. In part 1, “Social and Spatial Context,” Herbert outlines how informal practices of property thrive, particularly in areas experiencing urban decline. Chapter 1 describes what the process of urban decline looks like in Detroit and discusses how many factors beyond the collapse of the auto industry contributed to its present state. The author argues that these factors are not unique to Detroit, but are occurring and will occur in cities around the world; she references places like Rio de Janeiro and Peru to contextualize similar informal practices and demonstrate that property informality is not just relegated to the poor. Chapter 2 helps the reader understand how these precise conditions allow informal practices to proliferate. Detroiters assume informality of vacant and abandoned property with little risk, particularly with the very real opportunity to meet their immediate and future needs. Factors such as declining city tax revenues impair the enforcement of rules for informal transgressions, often forcing cities like Detroit to concentrate remaining resources in areas typically more affluent and established—a decision that could easily be construed as...