Land use intensification in Ann Arbor

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There's a difference between (1) land use intensification; (2) change in land use, what urban sociologists call "the reproduction of space," and (3) gentrification, that is where higher income residents replace-crowd out-displace lower income residents.

Technically all three are forms of reproduction of space, but (1) and (2) aren't gentrification necessarily.  And (2) doesn't always have to mean intensification, but in strong real estate markets that's usually what happens.

Land use intensification is the heart of the Growth Machine thesis ("The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," American Journal of Sociology, 1976).  Abstract:

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine. The relevance of growth to the interests of various social groups is examined in this context, particularly with reference to the issue of unemployment. Recent social trends in opposition to growth are described and their potential consequences evaluated.

Reproduction of space.  A couple examples of the second category have to do with changing neighborhoods from residential to commercial/multiuse when they abut more intense zones.  This does involve displacement, which is not the same thing as gentrification ("More about contested spaces--gentrification,"2004/2005/2008).  And it usually involves intensification.

One of the most obvious is the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington County, Virginia, where in association with the addition of the Orange Line heavy rail subway constructed under Wilson Boulevard, they changed the zoning from low density commercial and residential to high density mixed use -- multiunit residential and commercial.

When I first came to DC in 1987, I worked with a contractor who still lived in a single family house in the Virginia Square area, but you could tell change was coming as a lot of the property had been assembled for larger scale projects.  I never took photos, which is unfortunate.  Another good example was the small Vietnamese cluster of businesses in Clarendon.  From the Arlington County General Plan:

In the 1970's, the planning focus in Arlington shifted to the future development of the Metrorail transit corridors... 

After further public discussion, the County Board adopted major land use changes for the Richmond Metro Corridor (2/9/74) and the Rosslyn-Ballston Metro Corridor (12/7/74). All of the changes adopted between 1966 and 1975 to the legend and the transit corridors were incorporated in the 1975 Plan. The 1979 General Land Use Plan differs from the 1975 Plan in that it reflects amendments in the Rosslyn-Ballston and Richmond Metro Corridors....

Between 1979 and 1983, policy recommendations and land use changes were adopted for all of the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor Metro Station Areas.

A second is the Fruit Belt neighborhood in Buffalo.  It abuts a major medical center, the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, with 7 institutions and over 17,000 employees.

Photo by Libby March.

Because for the most part, large medical centers are ever expanding, often at the expense of abutting neighborhoods, the Fruit Belt neighborhood is in the way.  So that neighborhood is being eradicated as the expands.  Photographer Libby March documented some of these changes, but she calls it gentrification.  

While residents are being displaced, and they are poorer and people of color, it isn't gentrification.

A longer ago example is how in the 1980s the Poletown neighborhood in Detroit was sacrificed for a new at the time automobile manufacturing plant for General Motors ("In retrospect, GM's Poletown plant was a pretty terrible idea if we're being honest," Spirit of Detroit, photo gallery, Detroit Free Press).  

The thing is that Detroit had plenty of empty industrial land elsewhere in the city.  They should have directed GM to that land, rather than agree to the eradication of a still existing neighborhood.

East Poletown.  Photo: David C. Turnley, Detroit Free Press

Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, GM

Google Earth image

Ann Arbor: a case study in 21st century intensification.  I went to college in Ann Arbor, but I haven't been back for more than 20 years.  

Because of the University, the University's and non-university health systems, and spillover business development ("How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a biotech sector there"), Ann Arbor--part of the Detroit Metropolitan Area, 42 miles from Detroit, and 27 from Detroit-Wayne County International Airport--has been a "strong real estate market" as long as I can remember.

This is despite the fact that Michigan's economy has lagged significantly over the past 50 years as the nation and state have deindustrialized, gasoline costs have gone up and changed the business conditions for American-based automobile companies and how the place of Michigan-based automakers has declined relative to the rest of the automotive industry active in the US automobile sales market. 

First National Bank Building above, University Towers apartment building below.

When I went to school there, starting in the late 1970s, there were a couple of tall buildings on Main Street, primarily an old and beautiful bank building, and I think five taller buildings on or near Central Campus--the University's administration building, a couple urban renewal style apartment buildings on Maynard Street down from the Michigan Union, University Towers on South Forest Avenue where Madonna lived a year or two before I came to Ann Arbor, and the Graduate Ann Arbor hotel (then called Campus Inn) on Huron Street.

But that doesn't mean that there wasn't plenty of intensification.  The University has constantly expanded and in the process replaced low intensity uses like parking lots and nearby residential buildings with buildings like the Munger Graduate Residences (below).  In the 60s a bunch of houses near campus were torn down and replaced with larger (but still small) apartment buildings, etc.  And the hospital campus continually expanded even back then, leading to the construction of a new hospital in the mid-1980s.

Last August I wrote about a commercial land use intensification project near one of the places I used to live, a mixed residential-commercial area where buildings no taller than two stories were assembled in favor of a 4 story apartment building ("Example of whole block intensification in Ann Arbor, Michigan").  It's an almost unheard of event because of how hard it is to assemble an entire block of mostly housing that is individually owned.  (I can think of one example in DC, and this half block of residences abutted industrial zoned land two blocks from a new Metrorail station.)

After and below photos below.

Projects on South University Avenue.  Then I saw an article a couple weeks ago about how the portion of a commercial block on S. University Avenue is going to be intensified ("Construction begins on 13-story high-rise for University of Michigan students," Ann Arbor News).  Previously the face block was comprised of one and two story commercial buildings (the back side of the block is housing).  

South University Avenue, Ann Arbor

Photo: Ryan Stanton, Ann Arbor News

Similar nearby portions of the face blocks of South University Avenue have already been intensified in the past few years, but 40 years ago when I was in Ann Arbor, except for University Towers, no building in that area was taller than two stories.  (Oh, back then there was a project on one of the blocks where a few buildings were assembled and a 2-3 story building was constructed.)

This strip was where Bagel Factory, Mr. Tony's (an Italian sub shop), Brown Jug, Village Corner, Village Bell, Ulrich's Books, Steve's Lunch--a diner which also made great Korean dishes, and bars like Good Time Charley's and Rick's where I saw bands like 10,000 Maniacs and a great ska band that never made it called Streetlight Knights, and other key stores and restaurants were located, even apparel shops.  Not big tall and new buildings.

Downtown.  This week, there's another story about an intensification project Downtown, an affordable housing project ("20-story Ann Arbor development plan advances in 10-1 vote," Ann Arbor News).  So intensification is spreading away from the campus, where demand for housing the growing student population is driving intensification.  Here the issue is how to provide affordable housing in a strong real estate market where land is expensive.

Conclusion.  In the US, when it comes to land use, mostly we do what I call an "extensive use" of resources, that is using more land, commonly known as sprawl.  "Intensive use" is using what we have better, or more intensively.

The intensification of commercial strips and the conversion of parking lots to buildings is common in stronger real estate markets, usually center cities, especially in areas around transit stations, but is rare even for a city the size and type of Ann Arbor.

Visitors and artist booths in front of the Michigan Theater during the 2021 Ann Arbor Art Fair (Meredith Bruckner, Sarah Parlette, WDIV-TV, Detroit).  The Ann Arbor Art Fair is a great example of the quality of life initiatives available to residents of the city.

But Ann Arbor, which has a major always growing university with 50,000 students, almost 7,000 faculty, and 19,000 staff, major medical centers, and 120,000 residents, has the demand to spur land use intensification outside of a major center city.  

The University of Michigan is a rare university that continues to gain students even in the face of the pandemic ("U-M’s 2021 fall enrollment tops 50,000 for first time," University Record, "Enrollment Marches Downward," Inside Higher Education).

Although the apartment building project replacing residential and commercial buildings on an entire block is rare, even for big cities.  It's difficult in ordinary circumstances to be able to get many dozen individual property owners to sell out.

So Ann Arbor becomes a somewhat unique and exceptional example, a case study, in land use intensification.  

And I hate to use the words "unique" and "exceptional" when describing the phenomenon of urbanism.  Because while all places are unique, few are exceptional in that they differ significantly from the processes and conditions that undergird the development of neighborhoods, commercial districts, and cities.