An Interview With Taubman's Dewar On Brownfields Redevelopment

Margaret Dewar is the Emil Lorch Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.

Dewar's research is concerned with American government effectiveness in intervening in microeconomic systems to deal with economic distress such as troubled industries, declining regions, distressed cities, and poverty... Her current research focuses on ways to address the barriers to equitable redevelopment of older industrial cities.

Dewar also directs the Detroit Community Partnership Center through which University of Michigan faculty and students work with community-based organizations and city agencies on community-identified neighborhood issues.

Dewar is also faculty director of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning, whose mission is to involve faculty, students, staff, and community partners in learning together through community service and civic participation in a diverse democratic society. She and her students have worked on brownfield redevelopment with numerous organizations in Detroit and Flint.

From the interview: "With Kris Wernstedt at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, I am looking at some of these hypotheses about why CBOs are successful or not in reusing vacant, abandoned, and contaminated property. Kris is looking at the work of CBOs in Baltimore, Portland, and Denver, and I am studying their reuse of such property in Detroit, Cleveland, and Flint. Because the demand for land in my set of three cities is similar, the comparison holds the market constant and promises to reveal institutional, political, and legal factors that are important in CBOs' results."