RSVP #13 After The Crisis

 

The World Comes to Warren

Not so long ago, the residential housing market was one of Macomb County’s greatest strengths.  Homebuilders prospered from lucrative residential developments while home buyers watched their property values blossom into the investments that they hoped they would become.  Then the real estate crisis came crashing in.  Words like foreclosure and refinance became daily jargon used in news reports and personal conversations. 

No community was spared as property values plummeted and vacant homes began littering our once vibrant and well-established residential neighborhoods.  Some of the hardest hit areas were Macomb County’s inner-ring suburban communities.  In particular the City of Warren experienced a rush of foreclosures.  Soon city administrators were working alongside county, regional, state, and federal agencies to calculate the impact of these foreclosures, and also develop action plans and assistance programs to combat the real estate crisis.  As these policies and programs were being formulated and divided amongst the nation’s hardest hit areas, the City of Warren with the help of County Commissioner Toni Moceri (D) District 4, took a proactive approach to examining foreclosures using the skills and abilities of some of the world's most renowned architecture and urban design organizations.

In late February, Warren and Commissioner Moceri hosted a number of international and domestic architecture and urban design stakeholders for a series of presentations and animated work sessions.  Some of the major stakeholders included:

• Abitare, an Italian design publication

• The Netherlands Architecture Institute

• ARCHIS, a bi-monthly Dutch publication on architecture, city, and visual culture

• Lawrence Technological University

• Southeast Michigan Council of Governments

• Michigan Association of Realtors

• Building Industry Association of Southeast Michigan

• City of Warren Administrators and City Officials

• Macomb County Department of Planning and Economic Development

 

This exercise was focused on finding pragmatic answers on how we can move forward from this crisis, and begin to develop tangible solutions. More concretely, by making an inventory of the effects of the crisis the event sought to develop a series of intervention proposals, based on the reality of Macomb County.

The goals of the RSVP event were to:

• Develop a community-supported strategy to deal with the decline in the housing market in mature suburbs.

• Craft clear examples, aimed at the global community of architects, urbanites, policy makers, politicians, etc., as to how to approach the current real estate crisis locally.

• Fortify an ongoing exchange and relationship between local stakeholders and the international design and architecture community.

Since the event, the Netherlands Architecture Institute hosted a roundtable in Amsterdam to define alternative solutions to the real estate crisis. 

Commissioner Moceri presented at this event, and has continued work on the development of strategies, collaborations, and resource sharing platforms to assist communities in their efforts to revitalize devastated neighborhoods.  Over the next couple of months stakeholders present at the event will be interacting with one another to begin to develop actionable projects that can be implemented in Warren and throughout Macomb County. 

ARCHIS

Netherlands Architecture Institute

Arbitare

Arjen Oosterman, ARCHIS, featured in Metromode

Alexander D'Hooghe and Ole Bouman were featured in a Michigan Now radio spot: Dutch Ideas to Remake Detroit

Lucia Tozzi from Arbitare also wrote a travelogue of her experience