Detroit’s ongoing struggles are marked by challenges faced by residents like Khalil Ligon, an urban planner dedicated to revitalizing the city despite its many difficulties. The city’s decline is evident in rampant blight, population loss, and inadequate public services. Efforts to stabilize neighborhoods, such as the Lower Eastside Action Plan (Leap) and Detroit Future City (DFC), are underway, yet there are significant challenges in balancing long-term visions with immediate needs. Residents continue to grapple with the harsh reality of living in a city where the social contract has frayed, and time is running out.
Khalil Ligon wasn’t sure if the robbers were still inside. She had just come home to find her front window shattered, with a brick lying amidst the broken glass on the floor. Ligon, an urban planner living alone on Detroit’s east side, stepped outside and called the police.
This wasn’t the first time Ligon’s home had been broken into, she shared. When Detroit police eventually arrived the following day, surveying a neighborhood marked by abandoned buildings and overgrown vegetation, they asked her a question she often asks herself: why does she still live in Detroit?
Ligon has a deep understanding of Detroit’s core issues. As the project manager for the Lower Eastside Action Plan (Leap), an ambitious initiative aimed at revitalizing vacant land in some of the city’s most distressed areas, she is well-versed in the challenges the city faces. Yet, like many in this vast metropolis, which endured the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, she also wrestles with the central dilemma facing Detroiters.
“Do I want to be a part of it, to grind it out and make Detroit livable for the next generation? I know I probably won’t see it change,” Ligon reflected. “Or do I want to go to one of these places that is already there? I want to live somewhere it’s not so difficult to achieve simple things. Everything in Detroit seems so hard.”
Ligon relies on her 12-year-old car for transportation, both for safety and because Detroit lacks adequate public transit. Poorly maintained roads add to the challenges. Following a water main break last month, nearby streets became too icy for driving, let alone walking. Like much of Detroit, her neighborhood has few grocery stores or restaurants, making access to food a logistical issue rather than just one of health or preference. Retail options are scarce: “I have to go outside of my neighborhood for everything I need.”
These daily quality-of-life challenges are common in neighborhoods like Ravendale, the front line in Detroit’s fight for survival. After decades of population decline, there is a renewed urgency to stabilize these communities. Planners and academics are introducing innovative proposals to address blight and rethink the urban landscape, while governments and outside donors are committing hundreds of millions of dollars to support these efforts. However, there is a widespread awareness that time is running out. In January, newly elected Mayor Mike Duggan urged residents to hold on for just six more months before considering leaving the city.
“They’re trying their damnedest to hold the line,” said Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the Centre for Community Progress who has extensively studied Detroit. “But the thing is, for the last 30 years or more, it has been sustained by the black middle class. Now, they’re getting out of there. They’re just leaving.”
At 36, Ligon represents the kind of resident Detroit is determined—but struggling—to retain. Born and raised in the city, she holds a master’s degree in urban planning from Wayne State University. In addition to leading Leap, Ligon speaks functional French and Mandarin and earned nearly 1,700 votes—about 16% of those cast—in last year’s Democratic primary for her city council district. Currently, she consults on green infrastructure development and holds fellowships aimed at engaging Detroiters on climate change.
Ligon graduated from Martin Luther King High School in 1996, when Detroit’s population still hovered around 1 million. At that time, the city had regained a fragile stability after the challenges of the 60s and 70s, supported by a strong Midwestern economy and a growing housing bubble. Between 1990 and 2000, Detroit saw a 17% rise in median household income, a black homeownership rate of 53%, and a slowdown in population decline. However, the city’s underlying vulnerabilities remained, often unnoticed or overlooked. When the housing market and domestic manufacturing collapsed in the 2000s, those weaknesses became starkly evident.
Ligon lives near the city’s underused public airport, close to where she grew up. She moved into her current home, a modest white-paneled bungalow with a detached garage and a small front yard, 11 years ago. At that time, all the homes on her street were occupied. However, her census tract lost nearly 48% of its population between 2000 and 2010. Today, of the eight residential lots on Ligon’s block, two are now empty fields, and three others contain abandoned homes left to decay. While she appreciates her remaining neighbors—just two on her block—most residents rent their homes and often stay for only a year or so.
“The change has been traumatic,” Ligon said. The roads don’t get snow-plowed, and the grass remains uncut. Some vacant structures on her block are unsecured, with no clear timeline for demolition. Every time Ligon leaves her house, she remains cautious, unsure of who might be inside them. Across the city, vacant homes have become shelters for drug dealers and targets for arsonists.
Across Camden Street looms the hulking, two-story shell of Macomb Elementary School, closed since 2009 and left vulnerable to urban scavengers. The mesh from the chain-link fence surrounding the property has been stolen, leaving only bare metal posts. The portable classrooms outside are covered in graffiti, and many of the building’s windows have been removed. In front of the school stands a tall sign with bold letters that read: “FOR LEASE.”
The city largely consists of inner-city suburbs, with low-density developments sprawling for miles. Since 1950, Detroit’s population has declined by 60%, including a significant loss of married, middle-class, and well-educated residents. As a result, these neighborhoods are riddled with more vacant structures and empty land than the shrinking tax base can support.
Detroit’s social contract was shattered long ago. Residents receive minimal public services from the local government, and in response, many do not fulfill their obligations. A Detroit News analysis last year revealed that nearly half of the city’s property owners don’t pay taxes. This highlights Detroit’s most significant challenge. Despite the modest revival in the downtown area, as Ligon notes: “Until you get a handle on the neighborhoods, it really doesn’t matter what happens downtown.”
Decision-makers have gradually started to recognize the challenges facing residential areas. Mayor Duggan focused his campaign on neighborhoods and has promised to speed up the demolition of up to 80,000 abandoned homes. Detroit’s charter was also amended to elect city council members from geographic districts instead of a citywide pool, a change aimed at increasing accountability to neighborhoods. Moreover, the state-appointed emergency financial manager has prioritized blight removal and improving public services.
However, big ideas and heartfelt pledges are meaningless without the funding to support them. To address the financial shortfall, private donors have stepped in to fund planning projects and renewal efforts. Detroit Future City (DFC), a multi-year initiative involving thousands of residents and backed by nonprofits, has emerged as the de facto blueprint for reshaping the city and its urban environment over the next 50 years. The Kresge Foundation alone has committed $150 million to help implement the framework.
Similar to Ligon’s Leap, which targeted a specific area of Detroit, DFC envisions a city with increased green space and more diverse housing options. The plan anticipates the population could decline to as low as 600,000—less than a third of its 1950 peak. The framework does not aim to restore Detroit to its former glory.
Residential areas and commercial activity would be concentrated in densely populated nodes across the city, aiming to deliver services more efficiently. The vacant lots left behind would be repurposed for green uses, such as urban farms, woodlands, or stormwater retention ponds. With these sparsely populated tracts surrounding scattered residential centers, the future city’s 139 square miles could resemble a suburban county more than a typical metropolis.
Planners and academics have generally praised the plan, though its success hinges on a steady flow of development funding, enhanced city services—particularly law enforcement—and improved public transportation. Additionally, Detroit’s long history of racialized forced relocation complicates efforts to persuade residents to move to more populated areas. Despite this, many in the city continue to hope for repopulation, though the likelihood remains slim.
The logistical challenge is significant. The countless vacant houses, empty lots, and absentee property owners have resulted in a tangled web of land titles, notes Brent Ryan, an associate professor of urban design at MIT. While the city has taken steps to address this by establishing a centralized Department of Neighborhoods and a citywide land bank, the current situation often prevents large-scale projects from moving forward before they even begin.
“The tremendous paradox of Detroit is that, in a city with so much vacant land, there’s almost no land available for redevelopment,” Ryan said.
The biggest challenge with grandiose proposals is the ticking clock. While there’s widespread agreement that Detroit must change, convincing residents that these changes will improve their lives—and do so immediately—is an entirely different matter.
Quincy Jones, head of the Osborn Neighborhood Alliance, is one of the skeptics. He acknowledged that plans like DFC are overwhelmingly positive but pointed out the challenge of balancing long-term visions with immediate quality-of-life improvements. “I like all the big books and big strategies. But if it’s not going to move anything, then what’s the purpose?” he remarked.
Osborn, a neighborhood of about 27,000 residents, is where Jones’s group is starting small. Last year, they received a $50,000 grant to transform a three-block area into a “hub” of neighborhood activity. The area saw a nearly 40% population decline between 2000 and 2010, according to Data Driven Detroit, with the number of families and children dropping even more sharply. Today, nearly one in three homes in the area is abandoned.
“Right now, we’re in action mode,” Jones said about his organization. “It’s time to stop planning and start taking action because people are still leaving the neighborhood. They’re saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”
The ‘Live in Osborn’ plan aims to focus existing resources to bring activity into a concentrated area. The plan centers around a community center that hosts numerous local service providers, including Jones’s organization. Across the street, there’s a public library branch and a fuel station, with a vacant lot nearby set to be paved for pop-up businesses and youth activities. A key aspect of the project is the demolition of the few abandoned homes and apartments along the three-block corridor leading to the proposed hub. Local residents, most of whom live in two-story brick houses, will have input on how the newly vacant land will be used, Jones explained.
Community members have largely supported the plan, seeking what Jones, who grew up nearby, calls the “wow effect”—any visible improvement that gives them a reason to stay just a little longer. “Sometimes, it feels like we’re battling a huge monster, and we don’t know how to chop off all its heads,” he said. “But if we focus on one part and tackle it, and that strategy works, we should keep using it.”
Perhaps Detroit needs a hero to take on its hydra of challenges. Bulldozing tens of thousands of homes might just lead to more taking their place. History suggests that demolition is the simplest solution—Detroit has already razed over 200,000 housing units since 1960—but it’s not necessarily the most effective one.
For Ligon, blight removal is only meaningful if followed by positive change. Despite establishing her life and career in Detroit, she has considered moving to cities like Portland or Seattle, where she wouldn’t have to worry about something as simple as walking to Starbucks. Yet, like many other Motor City residents, Ligon is determined to hold on.
“I feel like I have something to do here,” she said. “And I want to do it. The reason this place hasn’t gone entirely under water is that there are a whole lot of people doing whatever they can to save it.”
But Ligon doesn’t want to be on edge every time her house creaks. She’s tired of worrying about the empty home across the street with its door left ajar. She doesn’t want to feel unsafe when she steps outside.
“I’m really getting tired of the landscape I have to look at every day, of having to fight to make this world a better place for other people to live,” she said. “Who’s fighting for me?”
