DETROIT, SHRINKING CITY, SHRINKING PLANNING?

The case of Detroit has been regarded and studied, both by disciplinary and non disciplinary chronicles,as a paradigmatic example of the effects of the financial crisis on the American city as well as a unique and exceptional one. On the one side, in fact, Detroit’s crisis can represent some of the mechanisms, processes and outcomes generated by the recent economic crisis all around USA; on the other, Detroit’s exceptional situation can be read and understood only in a long term perspective, as the result of a number of different historical facts. Detroit, in this perspective, can provide space for a stream of storytelling, crossing by social, political, economical, institutional processes and, last but not least, planning practices and rationales. Exploring the case, in fact, one can also reconstruct and discuss the recent history of urban planning and urban policies approach in the USA and go deep inside a case in which some of the consolidated assumptions of planning theories and practices are evidently under question. The authors’ contribution will therefore present a first multi-focused reconstruction of the case (DETROIT-plural storytelling on a shrinking city) as a different “storytelling exercise”, dealing, among others, with unsolved social conflicts and the incomplete process of construction of local political leadership, the failures of traditional planning approaches, the problems generated by the institutional organization of local power in the USA, the spatial challenges introduced by the post-fordist organization of economy and space). The second part of the contribution (DETROIT- plural storytelling about shrinking planning) will focus more in depth, in tight connection with the first part, on the premises and results of the planning process promoted during the last few years by the Major and city government. The preparation of the planning document DETROIT FUTURE, published almost in the same days in which the city has declared bankruptcy, will be presented and discussed critically. In particular the authors will focus on the apparent paradox of a spatial planning process launched under a similar dramatic and ultimate situation, on its “expected” – and desperate- propulsive role in trying to address the above mentioned wicked problems of a conflictual political community, of a changing urban economy, of an unclear institutional status of local urban governments, and finally of a urban model result of a consolidate planning tradition. This contribution is the draft outcome of a research project that the two authors have started almost 2 years ago, and main elements are linked with the results of a study trip in Detroit in 2012 and the exploration of existing literature and press-review