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2010年,底特律已成為深陷危機的美國城市代表:房市崩潰、汽車工業垮台。2000至2010年間,人口已驟減25%。許多人開始離棄這座城市,因為它已登上美國萎縮城市榜首。2010年,我亦獲得Kresge基金會及底特律市邀請,參與領導城市規劃的過程,為這座城市創造未來的共同願景。我以建築師及城市規劃師身份參與這項工作。職業生涯中,我也曾效力於其他競爭城市,例如我的家鄉芝加哥、我目前的居住地Harlem、華盛頓特區及紐澤西紐華克市。對我而言,這些城市仍存在一些尚未解決的問題,包括城市正義、公平性、包容性及參與性。
同樣地,2010年,流行設計雜誌也開始深入檢視像底特律這樣的城市,並用整期篇幅探討「修復城市」議題。我的好友Fred Bernstein邀我參與十月份《建築師》雜誌訪談,當我們看見雜誌出版後的標題時,都不禁失笑:「這位規劃師能拯救底特律嗎?」現在我的笑容有點尷尬。因為顯然,僅憑一個人,更別提不過是規劃師,就想拯救一座城市,簡直荒謬透頂。但我的笑容也是因為我認為這是希望的象徵,我們的專業可扮演協助城市從嚴重危機中復原的角色。因此今天下午我想花點時間,稍微說明修復城市的計畫及底特律的情況;我想藉由底特律居民的心聲來說明。
因此我們的計畫始於2010年9月,正值市長特別選舉結束後。消息傳出,整座城市將進行改造計畫,這為底特律居民帶來極大的焦慮和恐慌。我們計畫在像這樣的房間召開幾場社區會議,介紹計畫內容。居民紛紛從全城各處前來,包括人口穩定的社區,及開始出現大量空置現象的社區居民,當時大部分聽眾是佔城市人口82%的非裔美籍族群。因此顯然我們的議程包括問答部分。人們在麥克風前排隊提問,許多人十分堅定地走向麥克風,雙臂交叉在胸前,然後說:「我知道你們打算把我趕出自己的房子,對嗎?」
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
By 2010, Detroit had become the poster child for an American city in crisis. There was a housing collapse, an auto industry collapse, and the population had plummeted by 25 percent between 2000 and 2010, and many people were beginning to write it off, as it had topped the list of American shrinking cities. By 2010, I had also been asked by the Kresge Foundation and the city of Detroit to join them in leading a citywide planning process for the city to create a shared vision for its future. I come to this work as an architect and an urban planner, and I've spent my career working in other contested cities, like Chicago, my hometown; Harlem, which is my current home; Washington, D.C.; and Newark, New Jersey. All of these cities, to me, still had a number of unresolved issues related to urban justice, issues of equity, inclusion and access.
Now by 2010, as well, popular design magazines were also beginning to take a closer look at cities like Detroit, and devoting whole issues to "fixing the city." I was asked by a good friend, Fred Bernstein, to do an interview for the October issue of Architect magazine, and he and I kind of had a good chuckle when we saw the magazine released with the title, "Can This Planner Save Detroit?" So I'm smiling with a little bit of embarrassment right now, because obviously, it's completely absurd that a single person, let alone a planner, could save a city. But I'm also smiling because I thought it represented a sense of hopefulness that our profession could play a role in helping the city to think about how it would recover from its severe crisis. So I'd like to spend a little bit of time this afternoon and tell you a little bit about our process for fixing the city, a little bit about Detroit, and I want to do that through the voices of Detroiters.
So we began our process in September of 2010. It's just after a special mayoral election, and word has gotten out that there is going to be this citywide planning process, which brings a lot of anxiety and fears among Detroiters. We had planned to hold a number of community meetings in rooms like this to introduce the planning process, and people came out from all over the city, including areas that were stable neighborhoods, as well as areas that were beginning to see a lot of vacancy. And most of our audience was representative of the 82 percent African-American population in the city at that time. So obviously, we have a Q&A portion of our program, and people line up to mics to ask questions. Many of them step very firmly to the mic, put their hands across their chest, and go, "I know you people are trying to move me out of my house, right?"
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這個問題相當震撼,對當時的我們來說確實如此,當你聯想到某些底特律居民及許多非裔家庭的經歷時。他們居住於類似底特律的中西部城市。許多人告訴我們,他們如何在祖父母或曾祖父母打拼下擁有房子的故事。他們是160萬從南方農業區遷徙到北方工業區的移民之一,如同Jacob Lawrence畫作《大遷徙》中描繪的情形。他們前來底特律追求更美好的生活,許多人在汽車工業找到工作,例如福特汽車公司,如Diego Rivera在底特律美術館這幅壁畫中描繪的情形。勞動的成果使他們得以購屋,對許多人而言這是他們擁有的第一處房產,並與其他首次置產的非裔美籍居民組成社區。遷徙至北方的前數十年,他們擁有很棒的生活。直到1950年左右,這座城市的人口達到巔峰-180萬人,此時底特律開始經歷第二波遷徙-遷徙至郊區。1950年至2000年間,遷徙面積擴展30%,但這次遷移將非裔美籍族群留在原處。隨著家庭和企業離開城市,城中人口及就業機會日漸稀少。1950至2000及2010年期間,城市人口減少60%,目前人口約70萬。
當晚出席會議、參與座談的聽眾告訴我們,生活在人口如此稀少的城市的情形。許多人說,他們的房子是街區中僅存的少數有人居住的房子。坐在自家的門廊上,舉目可見數間被遺棄的房屋。整座城市中有8萬間空置房屋,空置房產亦隨處可見。他們開始看見這些房產附近出現非法活動,例如非法傾倒。他們意識到,由於城市人口銳減,水費、電費、瓦斯費逐漸上漲,因為財產稅收入不足以維持日常所需服務。整座城市大約有十萬處閒置街區。
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So that question is really powerful, and it was certainly powerful to us in the moment, when you connect it to the stories that some Detroiters had, and actually a lot of African-Americans' families have had that are living in Midwestern cities like Detroit. Many of them told us the stories about how they came to own their home through their grandparents or great-grandparents, who were one of 1.6 million people who migrated from the rural South to the industrial North, as depicted in this painting by Jacob Lawrence, "The Great Migration." They came to Detroit for a better way of life. Many found work in the automobile industry, the Ford Motor Company, as depicted in this mural by Diego Rivera in the Detroit Institute of Art. The fruits of their labors would afford them a home, for many the first piece of property that they would ever know, and a community with other first-time African-American home buyers. The first couple of decades of their life in the North is quite well, up until about 1950, which coincides with the city's peak population at 1.8 million people. Now it's at this time that Detroit begins to see a second kind of migration, a migration to the suburbs. Between 1950 and 2000, the region grows by 30 percent. But this time, the migration leaves African-Americans in place, as families and businesses flee the city, leaving the city pretty desolate of people as well as jobs. During that same period, between 1950 and 2000, 2010, the city loses 60 percent of its population, and today it hovers at above 700,000.
The audience members who come and talk to us that night tell us the stories of what it's like to live in a city with such depleted population. Many tell us that they're one of only a few homes on their block that are occupied, and that they can see several abandoned homes from where they sit on their porches. Citywide, there are 80,000 vacant homes. They can also see vacant property. They're beginning to see illegal activities on these properties, like illegal dumping, and they know that because the city has lost so much population, their costs for water, electricity, gas are rising, because there are not enough people to pay property taxes to help support the services that they need. Citywide, there are about 100,000 vacant parcels.
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好,簡短說明一下這個規模的概念。因為我知道這聽起來是個大數目,但我想你們得看城市地圖才能明白。這座城市的面積是139平方英里,你可將波士頓、舊金山及曼哈頓島納入它的版圖。如果我們抽出所有空置和被遺棄的房產,將它們集中在一起,面積大約是20平方英里,幾乎相當於曼哈頓島的面積,22平方英里。因此空置率相當高。
某些聽眾也分享了一些發生在社區中的正面影響:許多居民攜手合作,管理部分空置土地。他們開闢了社區花園,創造出強大的社區組織精神。但他們十分明確地告訴我們,這並不足夠。他們希望目睹社區恢復祖父母那一代前來時的榮景。
2010年起,開始出現許多關於如何處理空置土地的猜測。許多猜測認為它們將成為社區花園,或所謂的城市農業。很多人對我們說:「何不將所有閒置土地變更為農地?可藉此提供新鮮食物,也可提供底特律居民工作機會。」當我聽到這種說法時,總是想像歷經大遷徙的先民將在墳墓裡輾轉反轍。因為你可以想像,他們千辛萬苦地從南方遷徙到北方,目的在於為家人創造更美好的生活,而非目睹後人回歸農業生活型態。尤其是,他們在不曾受過高中教育、甚至基本教育的情況下來到這座城市,仍能擁有美國夢的基本元素:穩定工作及自有房產。
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Now, to quickly give you all a sense of a scale, because I know that sounds like a big number, but I don't think you quite understand until you look at the city map. So the city is 139 square miles. You can fit Boston, San Francisco, and the island of Manhattan within its footprint. So if we take all of that vacant and abandoned property and we smush it together, it looks like about 20 square miles, and that's roughly equivalent to the size of the island we're sitting on today, Manhattan, at 22 square miles. So it's a lot of vacancy.
Now some of our audience members also tell us about some of the positive things that are happening in their communities, and many of them are banding together to take control of some of the vacant lots, and they're starting community gardens, which are creating a great sense of community stewardship, but they're very, very clear to tell us that this is not enough, that they want to see their neighborhoods return to the way that their grandparents had found them.
Now there's been a lot of speculation since 2010 about what to do with the vacant property, and a lot of that speculation has been around community gardening, or what we call urban agriculture. So many people would say to us, "What if you just take all that vacant land and you could make it farmland? It can provide fresh foods, and it can put Detroiters back to work too." When I hear that story, I always imagine the folks from the Great Migration rolling over in their graves, because you can imagine that they didn't sacrifice moving from the South to the North to create a better life for their families, only to see their great-grandchildren return to an agrarian lifestyle, especially in a city where they came with little less than a high school education or even a grammar school education and were able to afford the basic elements of the American dream: steady work and a home that they owned.
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目前底特律出現第三波遷移大潮:文化企業家大舉進駐。這些人將同樣的閒置土地和被遺棄的房屋,視為新型企業創意及獲利機會。因此他們可遷入底特律、購買房產、建設成功的企業及飯店,成為社區中的成功活動家,帶來正面改變。同樣地,一些小型製造業正審慎考慮進駐這座城市。Shinola是高檔手錶與自行車製造公司,特意選擇落腳底特律,聲稱被聞名全球的底特律創新精神吸引。他們也知道,他們可接收一批仍精於製造技術的勞工。現在我們目睹服務精神在社區中萌芽,文化企業家決定遷入這座城市創立新企業,產業逐漸回歸,這都發生於我們熟知的環境中-這座由緊急處分管理人掌管,今年7月根據聯邦破產法第九章申請破產保護的城市。
因此2010年我們啟動這項計畫,2013年我們提出「底特律未來城市」計畫。這是我們的戰略計畫,引領這座城市邁向更美好、更繁榮、更永續的道路。並非遵循舊有模式,而是開發它的潛能。著眼於新型經濟成長方式、新型土地利用模式、更加穩定及稠密的社區、重新配置基礎設施及城市服務系統、提高市民領袖採取行動、實施改革的空間。對我們的工作來說,有三項重要且迫在眉睫的重點。第一,這並非相當大的城市,但經濟規模卻太小。在底特律,每100人只有27個就業機會,與丹佛、亞特蘭大、費城的情況大不相同,每100人就有35至70個就業機會。第二,居民必須接受我們不一定會依照以往方式利用所有閒置土地,也許將來亦是如此。以往的傳統居住區將不復存在,儘管城市農業產量豐厚,且成功紓解了底特律的危機,這並非唯一的解決之道。我們必須著眼於,儘管此地擁有大批閒置土地,但仍有大量年輕、富有生產力及創意的人口可為企業所用,藉此穩定仍有將近30萬居民的社區。
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Now, there's a third wave of migration happening in Detroit: a new ascendant of cultural entrepreneurs. These folks see that same vacant land and those same abandoned homes as opportunity for new, entrepreneurial ideas and profit, so much so that former models can move to Detroit, buy property, start successful businesses and restaurants, and become successful community activists in their neighborhood, bringing about very positive change. Similarly, we have small manufacturing companies making conscious decisions to relocate to the city. This company, Shinola, which is a luxury watch and bicycle company, deliberately chose to relocate to Detroit, and they quote themselves by saying they were drawn to the global brand of Detroit's innovation. And they also knew that they can tap into a workforce that was still very skilled in how to make things. Now we have community stewardship happening in neighborhoods, we have cultural entrepreneurs making decisions to move to the city and create enterprises, and we have businesses relocating, and this is all in the context of what is no secret to us all, a city that's under the control of an emergency manager, and just this July filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
So 2010, we started this process, and by 2013, we released Detroit Future City, which was our strategic plan to guide the city into a better and more prosperous and more sustainable existence -- not what it was, but what it could be, looking at new ways of economic growth, new forms of land use, more sustainable and denser neighborhoods, a reconfigured infrastructure and city service system, and a heightened capacity for civic leaders to take action and implement change. Three key imperatives were really important to our work. One was that the city itself wasn't necessarily too large, but the economy was too small. There are only 27 jobs per 100 people in Detroit, very different from a Denver or an Atlanta or a Philadelphia that are anywhere between 35 to 70 jobs per 100 people. Secondly, there had to be an acceptance that we were not going to be able to use all of this vacant land in the way that we had before and maybe for some time to come. It wasn't going to be our traditional residential neighborhoods as we had before, and urban agriculture, while a very productive and successful intervention happening in Detroit, was not the only answer, that what we had to do is look at these areas where we had significant vacancy but still had a significant number of population of what could be new, productive, innovative, and entrepreneurial uses that could stabilize those communities, where still nearly 300,000 residents lived.
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因此我們提出一種-數種-社區藍圖,稱之為生活與工作結合的社區。居民可重新利用廢棄建築,將它們改造成創新產業,同樣著重於82%的非裔美籍族群。因此他們也可從事以往或許得在居住區外進行的工作,將其發展成更繁榮的產業。他們可藉此置產,同時成為社區中的房產及企業擁有者。我們也著眼於以除了種植作物之外的方式利用土地,將其轉變成更具生產力的用途。因此舉例來說,藉由建造人工湖和蓄水池打造雨水管理系統、設立社區便利設施、娛樂設施、確實提高鄰近區域的生活水準。或者我們可藉此設立研究單位,治理土壤污染或建設發電廠。
因此「大遷徙」先民的後代子孫可成為Shinola的精密製錶工匠,就像去年廣告中的Willie H.;或建立可為Shinola這樣的公司提供服務的企業。好消息是,下一代底特律人依然擁有未來,無論對身處此地或意圖遷入者來說。
因此,Menino市長,你的好意我們心領了。他最近說:「我要將這裡夷為平地,重新開始。」底特律仍有十分重要的人群、產業、土地及真正的機會。因此底特律或許不會恢復原貌,但也不會滅亡。
謝謝。
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So we came up with one neighborhood typology -- there are several -- called a live-make neighborhood, where folks could reappropriate abandoned structures and turn them into entrepreneurial enterprises, with a specific emphasis on looking at the, again, majority 82 percent African-American population. So they, too, could take businesses that they maybe were doing out of their home and grow them to more prosperous industries and actually acquire property so they were actually property owners as well as business owners in the communities with which they resided. Then we also wanted to look at other ways of using land in addition to growing food and transforming landscape into much more productive uses, so that it could be used for storm water management, for example, by using surface lakes and retention ponds, that created neighborhood amenities, places of recreation, and actually helped to elevate adjacent property levels. Or we could use it as research plots, where we can use it to remediate contaminated soils, or we could use it to generate energy.
So the descendants of the Great Migration could either become precision watchmakers at Shinola, like Willie H., who was featured in one of their ads last year, or they can actually grow a business that would service companies like Shinola. The good news is, there is a future for the next generation of Detroiters, both those there now and those that want to come.
So no thank you, Mayor Menino, who recently was quoted as saying, "I'd blow up the place and start over." There are very important people, business and land assets in Detroit, and there are real opportunities there. So while Detroit might not be what it was, Detroit will not die.
Thank you.