 Good afternoon. Welcome to our next session, which is called Detroit Stories. I'm Mark Schmidt. I'm the director of the political reform program here at New America. I'm just going to introduce the panelists. One of them said to me backstage, everyone really wants to hear about Detroit, and we definitely want to hear about Detroit. Moderating the panel will be LZ Granderson. LZ is a CNN contributor, a senior writer for ESPN, and a senior fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago that's run by David Axelrod. He has an incredible journalism resume. He's worked at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Grand Rapids Press, and a number of papers in Michigan and is from Detroit. To LZ's left, Laura Trudeau is the managing director of the Community Development of Community Development and Detroit Programs at the Kresge Foundation, one of those philanthropies that has led the totally unprecedented philanthropic effort to revive and renew the city of Detroit in a lot of important ways that have changed philanthropy as much as they've changed the city. To her left, Peshon Murray is the co-founder and owner of Detroit Dirt. I heard her say before that she has a passion for waste reduction. She co-founded Detroit Dirt in 2010 and has launched Sustainable Integrations, a Detroit-based 501c3, the Combat Environmental deterioration, through services on sustainable land utilization, and a bunch of other things. She said she's a natural entrepreneur, and it seems she's already launched a whole bunch of things that are going directly at the physical landscape of Detroit. So we're eager to hear all these stories and turn it over to LZ. Great, thank you. So often when people talk about Detroit now, especially over the last three years or so, they talk about the fall, then they go, oh, great things are on their way in Detroit. It's going to come up now. Before we begin that conversation, I want to talk about Detroit before all of this. To paint the picture of what the city was like before all the heartache came into it. So I would like each of you to spend a couple of minutes first talking about yourselves again and things that you're doing in the city. But then also, what do you love about Detroit? What did you love about Detroit? Want me to start? Absolutely. Well, I've been in Detroit for 61 years since 1954, which was actually the year that the population of Detroit started to turn down after growing really rapidly between 1910 and 1950. I've heard the statistic that our population grew more than any other city in the world during that period of time because we had so many jobs in this brand new industry, the automotive industry, and they were well paying jobs, Henry Ford guaranteed people a living wage even back then. And so we drew people from all over the world. And in a growing economy, a lot of times the kind of strife that might be taking place can be hidden. It doesn't show up as much as it does when things start to shrink. So when the population began to shrink in the fifties, we started to see more more discord among the various groups of people who lived in the city, more sense of injustice based on real injustice that was happening in the city. We didn't have good open housing laws. We didn't have good policies around how to kind of expand our housing stock. Detroit had a single family ethic for years. So the very physical nature of Detroit kind of prevented it from becoming really an open place. And it also retained its residents. So it wasn't like Boston where there was a lot of kind of inflow and outflow of population. So that kind of created a certain vibe in Detroit. It's always been a strong, tough, proud city that really characterizes itself as a place for survivors. And I think that's still true, LZ. I think, I think what's happened over the last few years, you can't really say that before the crisis three years ago, everything was good, because things have been really difficult for Detroit for for at least 40 years. We've seen disinvestment, we've seen job loss. It's one of the places in America that suburbanization hit the hardest. We had over about a 30 to 40 year period, we consumed land at a rate of 12 times our population growth as a region. So that was like the emptying out from the core city into these various suburban locations. And we've never been able to kind of get a regional approach to how to share resources, how to develop a transit system, or how to even cooperate on things like water. So one of the things I love about Detroit is this determination and pride of the people. My mother was born there. So I love it. I think from a family perspective. But I think there's an awful lot of people now who realize that it is a great American city, and that it would be a loss for America to have Detroit just go into an endless spiral of decline. Passion. Yeah, so I have a little bit of a different perspective, because I'm from the west side of the state. So I grew up going to Chicago and going to Detroit as a child. And I've been a resident of the city for the past 11 years. And you know, my ambitions as a child, being from a more conservative city during around 2003, Grand Rapids was really investing a lot in sustainable and getting the residents of the city to focus on sustainable practices and building for the future around sustainability. And with that, those experiences, for me, I wanted to take my day to day of dealing with waste issues and waste reduction issues and kind of looking at Detroit as being the focus of my life of sacrificing other opportunities that were presented to me at that time. I wanted to take my experiences to Detroit because growing up and going to that city and still, you know, in my 30s, seeing certain areas within the landscape that were dilapidated buildings, vacant land, the urban farming community as well as architects and designers. I even took courses in urban planning. I wanted to be a part of that momentum that didn't lose hope in the city that wanted to be a part of the revitalization and recovery for the city. So when the automotive industry in 2008, 2009 were dealing with their economic downturn, when they, well, Chrysler and GM took the bailout before didn't, the automotive industry decided that they were going to start creating standards around sustainability, how to build more efficient cars, how to reinvent the automotive industry, which meant reinventing the city. And so the timing for me, it was a blessing because I wanted to be a part of the new Detroit, so to speak. Not really looking at the people who are already there, but looking at the ones who are already there and the newcomers and how to be a bridge to bring the mindset of all of us having the spirit of wanting Detroit to survive. So when the automotive industry started creating these standards around, you know, building more efficiently and how did, you know, how do we, as a community as well as the automotive industry, take sustainability and make that our own. And for me, that was probably at that time it gave me hope as someone who was young in the city and for once I felt like, you know, there was something that I could be a part of with helping Michigan, but at the same time helping the city. And, you know, what I love about Detroit is even though a lot of folks in the African American community came from the south originally, we came up to Michigan because of opportunity. I felt like, you know, going south and having family that still own land that were tied to agriculture, but also my family worked in automotive industry, I could take my experiences and what my family had did and continue, you know, carrying that torch. And I feel like the city of Detroit, we have so much talent, so many people who are dedicated, the spirit of revitalization and power is there. And I think part of the problem is there's a lot of segregated organizations, but now we're trying to figure out how we can all come together because the world is watching us now and the world wants to see Detroit change and I think the talent and the hope is there and I love the work ethic of the people. There's so many people who never gave up and I'm happy to be a part of that group of people who still is dedicated to that city. Laura, you and I were born and raised in Detroit. We know Detroit to be one thing and it's sort of looking, I don't know if this is from me from the outside looking at, I no longer live in the city, but it looks as if it's becoming something else. Is it possible to save Detroit while saving Detroit so that the identity of the city that we knew and that so many other people know somehow stays within the fiber? I certainly hope so, LZ, and it's the subject of conversations in Detroit every single day that we don't see a fundamental shift where all we do is try to attract new residents to the city, but that we preserve the opportunity and the identity of Detroit from the people who've lived there for many, many years. And during this period of disinvestment, a lot of people were really loyal to the city and they stayed and they paid higher taxes. They sent their children to private schools as the Detroit public schools was kind of going further and further into a financial crisis and an academic crisis. They paid higher car insurance rates and that social fabric was really strong in the city. One of the things that has driven a lot of out migration of longtime residents has been the mortgage foreclosure crisis and now the tax foreclosure crisis. Our city lost 241,000 residents between probably, well, officially between 19, between 2000 and 2010, but in reality a lot of those families left in the latter half of that decade and that included 100,000 children. So we actually had half of the city's children move out of the city in a 10-year period. And that's heartbreaking. So right now the city is fundamentally different because of those changes. And trying to think about how to grow that back in an inclusive way so that the recovery that we have is inclusive of everyone is a real challenge that many of us are willing to take on. You're passionate. You and I were talking earlier today and I talked about the tax crisis that you're talking about and the eviction and there are estimated about 100,000 Detroiters right now on a path of being evicted from their homes within this year. 100,000 people gone. Most of them are African-American, poor, longtime Detroit residents. Where do those people go? Yeah, that's a great question because throughout the history of Detroit when you look at the freeways and how sprawling began to happen even with that and how the black community with the freeways being built right on top of them basically and then being forced out it's a vicious cycle that happens every 30 some 40 years and you know I certainly don't think I'm the only one with the solution but I think that you know we have to allow the leadership in those communities to sit at the table to make decisions on how the city is going to be rebuilt because if if you don't have blacks or African- American people sitting at the table to make decisions and that's city council that's on the state level that's on every everywhere with whatever decisions being made if we don't have that then we're not included in the decisions on how to rebuild the city. So the same thing is going to continue to happen if we don't help make decisions and we're suffering with leadership right now and because of you know so many things that have happened you know that. Things such as what. Well you know I think politically when you know you look at those who have had the chance to help the community didn't do what was supposed to be done then we all get stigmatized but those of us who are in the background who are trying to make decisions based upon what we did have within our reach now that new leadership is there I think we're going to be given more opportunities to help make decisions. But when you have you know. Agendas that are more selfish about you know what you know Detroit is a unique city because you know segregation is something that people don't really want to address and talk about right now and I can very well go to a meeting and it's all black people in one meeting I can go to another meeting and we're talking about how to rebuild the city and everyone's in the room is white you know what I mean and so now I think the question is you know is it grassroots is it political it's all of us coming together to make decisions and we can't leave it to the politicians as well and we can't force the grassroots efforts to be responsible it's everybody's city and I feel that you know now is the time for us to all define what Detroit should look like you know the nonprofit community I think they're doing a good job at leading as well as trying to pull different resources together and think differently about making decisions on who even gets you know grants or allocated funding for certain programs and I'm seeing a change in the public school systems I think people you know have harked on so much or focused on you know the downturn of the public school systems but I spent a lot of time with first second third fourth graders and they're testing in the top 95 percentile and their teachers are looking different I was just at one charter school and there are some Harvard grads who decided to open up the Detroit Achievement Academy so we have to change also and we have to think about the youth as well because we lost so many young people to you know five six years ago ten years ago because there was other opportunities for them around the country now we have to make way for technology and communications and other industries to come in and not focus in on the automotive industry as much because that's what part of our problem was to begin with so now it is about education changing the landscape rebuilding looking at the vacant properties I have I meet with tons of architects and designers all the time and Detroit is a dream come true for them because they can see how to rebuild and they see the prosperity and what can happen but we have to diversify the market focus in on education and start bringing these different organizations who have influence on the politicians as well as the school systems and you know in getting the automotive industry and everybody to come together you talked about everybody and I want to go back to that first two hundred fifty thousand number you mentioned earlier Laura as well as the current 100,000 that's sort of in the pipeline so you're looking at basically what would have been a third of Detroit's population at his peak exiting the city quite possibly does Detroit have to shrink in actual size in order for Detroit to be saved I've seen blueprints in which some developers had plans for green lands that was where homes where people are presently living there you know so they had already anticipated those people being gone and they're being a man-made lake in that spot does the city have to shrink to save it well I don't believe it I don't believe it will shrink it's a hundred thirty nine square miles and I think it's going to remain a hundred thirty nine square miles but there's demand for different kind of housing these days we were built out as a single family city we didn't have a downtown population if you just kind of look at how the city developed people want to live in walkable neighborhoods now there's more demand for traditional kind of urban life where you walk to the restaurant and then you can stop and buy your groceries on the way home from work you live close to where you work a lot of these trends are developing because of the environmental sustainability movement that passion is talking about Detroit can't really be a place where seventy percent of the residents of the city have to drive twenty or twenty five miles to get to their job because the jobs all moved to the outer ring of the of the region so there's just a lot of different variables that are going on right now and the goal I think would be to have people be able to choose to live where they want to live if if people live in a place that's low has a low population and they want to stay there I think the city and others are committed to helping people to stay in some of the areas where there's two houses per block you do that though with a shrinking tax resource space that's that's the challenge what there's there's some ways to do it I mean what you can do is offer people an opportunity to move to a different part of the city where you're investing in some growth in the housing market but then give people alternatives for how to live in a more sustainable way in some of the less populated areas there's there's a lot of ways to be very independent uh... could you give us some examples well one is you know a green a really green neighborhood where it's off the grid uh... you can make alternatives available for maintenance you can make alternatives available for lighting with the led lighting that we have in the city we're switching out right now all of our old gas lights that were still in the city of detroit about forty percent of them haven't been working so uh... the mayor and his team are switching them all out and putting in led lighting cheaper to maintain so there's a lot of innovation going on right now a lot of environmental solutions a lot of opportunities to do kind of uh... we've been thinking of it of it as uh... productive reuse where people can produce energy in their own neighborhood trying to get those ideas to take hold get into the water system no pun intended is really a big part of the environmental movement in detroit right now now i want to turn the page a little bit and talk about some of the investors excuse me who have been committed to quote-unquote saving detroit if you will and one in particular kind of struck me was dan gilbert who's been doing a masterful job of sort of gobbling up buildings if you will and i saw a report and he reportedly owns nine million square feet of detroit real estate right now is that a really good plan to save a city by having four or five really rich and powerful individuals gobble up so much of a city's infrastructure well i think that's not bashing dan gilbert i think that it has happened in most cities around the country that there's five or six really wealthy families who pretty much have you know either control real estate decisions being made i i think dan gilbert and others and i don't think it's just him i think some people see an opportunity if these buildings are sitting vacant and others have been in the city for fifteen twenty years and other people around the world know about these vacant properties then who's going to do something about it and i think that you know he just took charge and figured out you know what if i can get my employees at quick and loans to move into the city ten thousand fifteen thousand however many i whatever i need to do to get these people moving back into the community as well as buying buildings retrofitting them and like you were saying earlier uh... really looking at integrating sustainability on retrofitting existing and core shells looking at if they can be uh... off the grid or how do we create green rooms how do we use existing materials to rebuild the city and i think that that's something that he chose to do but i think that doors were open so for so many others but that wasn't something that they wanted to touch i think that he took charge and took leadership and said you know what i want to challenge myself as well as others and some of the buildings that you know i've lived in downtown for years and they're at thirty forty percent occupancy now it's like ninety five you know because some of his employees hospitals police force everybody challenged different industries to get people to move back into the city and i think that's what daren gilbert's focus was how do i take the wealth that i have and help help the city and i think that he's doing a great job at it but i also think he's not selfishly saying i want to own everything i think he's retrofitting and rebuilding and opening up the opportunities for other developers to come in and buy as well is that where you at all Laura? i never like to see too much concentrated i worked for a bank for a long time i always worry about concentration risk so i don't ever like to see too much of our game plan being concentrated in one person or one entity but i would really echo what passion said nobody was investing in Detroit when Dan started doing it and i worked in a building that he purchased it was the old national bank of the Detroit building twelve stories only two of them were occupied at the time that he bought it and he pumped you know five thousand employees into that building and encourage them to live in downtown living near your work living near where you work is the ultimate sustainability plan he's an investor in the light rail line that we're working on in downtown to try to create this really dense tax base for the city downtown uh... there's always been this big debate about downtown versus neighborhoods in Detroit we have to invest in both because we have to grow our tax base we can't build the city back coming out of the bankruptcy there's a plan to find one point seven billion dollars to reinvest in the city over ten years technology in the city government was thirty years old things were done on paper they they really need to invest about two hundred two hundred fifty million dollars just in technology but there's no money coming from the bankruptcy to do that it has to be from securing savings because of some of the changes that were made new tax revenue so i think sometimes that the decisions that are being made seem very practical and have to be kind of pragmatic in terms of how do you how do you keep the character of the city but also find ways to attract enough new residents to grow the income tax base i saw a new york time story reported that a third of the current residents despite all the good things that are happening still plans to leave within five years we saw in the video clip john varvados who's a fashion designer originally from detroit said in five years the world is going to be talking about detroit will the world be talking about detroit if you still have a third of its current residents plan on leaving in five years well i you know personal reality is real my reality is i'm still there and i'm educated and i believe in the city and so are everybody else that you know that i'm working with all the other entrepreneurs within other organizations i don't believe that any of us are going anywhere i see something completely different than what the median the statistics and data says i mean i do i'm a fellow at MIT and personally they're in and out of the city and so are other procedures institutions and we're on the ground running figuring out solutions and aligning the automotive industry made a huge commitment uh... there's at least two hundred it went from fifty companies who were basically evolving off of the waste stream to now like three hundred of us that are doing everything from taking reuse materials and helping to build cars to folks like me who are taking food waste and making something as simple as compost we're building local economies within detroit it's just not being told through the media but there's no way i can get a million hits off of a commercial in three days if my statement or the progress that we were doing wasn't happening in that city so data can say one thing statistics can say something else but when i give tours and when people come to the city and they hang out with me they see a different detroit hang out with this one yeah this the challenges of detroit are real and they affect people who live in neighborhoods and there's still very high crime rates uh... the infrastructure systems are old as i said the lighting has been really a problem for a lot of people in detroit but we have this new energy around new solutions that i see and i'm hopeful that within five years we'll be able to solve some of those challenges that made people respond to a survey to say they would rather move if they can and i think that what passion is describing is very real uh... i think there is still a reality for people who are isolated from opportunity in detroit who feel more of the hopelessness disproportionately and that's the challenge of all of us to try to change that reality that is a fantastic sentiment to end on. I want to thank you very much for your time thank you thank you all