Place of Vigilance or Place-to-be: Negotiating Place Through Street Life in Northwest Detroit

• In Event: 4413 - Urban Issues

Abstract

Drawing on three years of fieldwork, this article shows how residents of Brightmoor, Detroit expressed conflicting place perceptions in their street life. Brightmoor was an extremely depopulated, predominantly black neighborhood in the outskirts of Detroit. In the last decade white urban farmers had moved in next to black and white residents, buying houses from $500 and starting gardens on vacant lots. The author distinguishes the styles of vigilant and aspirational public life: sets of practices oriented towards perceptions of Brightmoor as dangerous or place-to-be, respectively. Most residents behaved defensively in public. Inured to historical violence, they were conservative to change their public life, even as reported crime rates had been steeply declining. Many of the new urban farmers, by contrast, acted in ways that other residents considered unsafe, such as by organizing a Farmers Market next to a drug dealing spot. Being new to the neighborhood, they often acted naively, only to incorporate more vigilance in their practices later. Their aspirational public life was oriented towards their ideals of Brightmoor as place-to-be. Drawing on this case study, this article theorizes street life as process of place-making, one fraught with uncertainty and marked by social inequalities.

Author

• Sharon Cornelissen, Harvard University