I cant remember who told me this, but someone in the know told me that after the city does a residential demolition they replace the sidewalk that runs adjacent to the property. The only reason I can think of for this is to attract developers to build new homes on the land. A new sidewalk and an empty lot, a clean slate. Which as a base statement is a grave misunderstanding of what Detroit is. It’s not empty. It’s not a place that developers, wealthy transplants, and white bohemians can move into to gain access to patches of underutilized space. People have been living here the whole time, that empty lot with the new sidewalk was someone's home. Those of us who have moved here recently are being allowed to participate in a community that has been on the forefront of cultural innovation for decades in spite of being abandoned by industry and government alike.
When you walk around any given residential street in the city, you’ll likely notice a patchworked sidewalk composed of slabs of varying color as well as missing chunks, root bumps, and tall plants growing through the cracks. Most sections of concrete are stamped with the name of the company that poured the slab as well as a date. A single block often has concrete poured from a variety of dates spanning from the late 90s to 2024. Like my block, which just got new concrete a few weeks ago.
My neighbor wanted to remove the tree in front of his house because the roots had deformed the sidewalk, causing a large bump right in front of the entry way to his porch. Understandable, I would've hated to lose that tree though, especially given that the block doesn’t have too many left. Instead, we got new concrete, paid for by tax dollars funneled through some city program. In fact, it's not unlikely that my neighbor requested it, through the link to report a sidewalk section that had been uplifted by tree roots. Following that train of thought, I used said link and saw that the problem in fact was reported by my neighbor.
Truthfully, I love broken sidewalks. I love when goldenrod finds a way to mature through the cracks. I love the overgrown alleys and the dogs who sit and stare from behind chainlink fences (I’m going to get bit one of these days…) and an abandoned parking lot covered in natives and invasives alike. What can I say, perhaps I’m one of those white bohemians more than I’d like to be. But in a city with a major public transportation problem, accessibility concerns trump most others. The city needs to be navigable. So for now, fix the sidewalks I think. We can figure out how to protect the goldenrod as well.