Image from City Skip
For the last two years, I've been following the reaction to the new Campus Martius Park. Partially it was because it opened just as I started working on public spaces. Also, it was one of those projects that is a huge risk for the city to invest in when they had many other economic development issues to take care of (and were in the process of taking care of). But the hope was that a park would stimulate externalities to support other city-wide economic development efforts. Last summer, the project manager for the park showed us some of the effects of the park, whose presence strongly encouraged development on its outer boundaries (cafes, and it seems now inevitably, loft condos). This what we hoped would happen in the short-term.
Lately, there's been even more coverage about the city, since it's sprucing up for the Superbowl, and because this is Detroit, the coverage has not be entirely positive. Reports make the city sound a bit desparate. Look at "Come on in," and "Detroit Cleans Up for the Big Game." The AIA has gathered together Detroit-area architecture firms to deck out storefronts. (I like the idea.)
Anyway, I guess what I'm doing here is sticking up for the underdog -- Detroit, which has some fantastic civic leaders who have been strategizing and planning for a revitalization effort that will bring the city back to the people. I don't think this is a city-wide sentiment yet, but I like the incremental steps that are being taken. Better that as a way to see what works than huge capital projects in one fell swoop (into debt).
For more on Detroit, you should read all about it from a native Detroit-er who writes about these issues, Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space.
Good luck Detroit!
1.27.2006
Downtown Detroit
Posted by Shin-pei at 10:30 AM
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5 comments:
Since I went to school in Michigan I've been very interested in Detroit, a city that has been so overwhelming rejected and ignored by it's own metro region for decades (even with the more recent focus on ball fields and casinos).
I've always considered Detroit to be one of the unluckiest cities, having so many factors out of local control come together at once in the last century – the heavy migration of unskilled workers from the south as deindustrialization was taking hold, a bleak history of racial tension that culminated at a time when deindustrialization was hitting the city hard, an onslaught of federal mortgage policies that favored undeveloped areas over inner cities, federal subsidies for highway construction that severed neighborhoods throughout the city, a local economy centered around the wax and wanes of a constantly changing automobile industry, and on and on the list goes.
I’ve always been rooting for Detroit, hoping that it finds its niche and runs with it. It seems to be less ignored these days, and lucky for the city, urban living has remained en vogue for quite a few years now.
Nonetheless, I know a lot of people in Michigan who completely ignore the city. And although young people may move there for loft living, the city has a long way to go before they’ll stay and have their families there. I suppose this level of renewal takes time though – I’d love to see Campus Martius Park, from what I’ve read it’s very popular. I think the idea of having the park programmed all year long – with ice skating in the winter – was very smart.
And I really like the AIA initiative with the storefronts. Very cool. Here’s to hoping that Detroit makes a good, lasting impression at the Superbowl.
Thank you so much for the thoughtful comments. I spent some time on Detroitblog this morning already. The Detroit-Windsor phenomenon always fascinated me, and was heightened by the comparison in Michael Moore's Farhenheit 911.
I guess my fascination with these cities come from having grown up in a once-thriving, now waning city - Syracuse. Once, when visiting friends who are lifelong Syracusans (raised a family, started businesses, etc), they took me around town so I could see how things had changed since I was last there, for better or worse. Seeing things again for that purpose, they realized that the physical City of Syracuse had actually declined more than they thought, though there continued to be strong potential for growth - good schools, new businesses and economic development, universities, a continuing influx of educated immigrants. They blamed the leadership of the city for not doing a better job of understanding its assets, and then not coordinating with each other. Many cities will experience a series of bad luck and unfortunate circumstances. Sometimes it seems that it's how leadership react and plan from there seems to be a make or break factor.
Leadership is definitely a huge factor in Detroit's history - a friend just told me about the Poletown story:
http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=18&category=business
The magic of the silver bullet just never materializes!
My joke about Detroit is that it is exactly what the auto industry intended to have happen to cities. Since the U.S. auto industry, until recently, is based there, and was so dominant for most of the period in which cities were abandoned, it makes sense that it is the most denuded and depopulated of the traditional center cities in the United States.
Given the continued depopulation and exurban development in the region, and the continued failure of the auto industry, something that saddens me as an ex-Michigander even though I am militantly in favor of alternative means of mobility other than the personally-owned automobile, and as a citizen of the U.S. who is concerned about economic vitality and competitiveness of U.S. industry, Detroit continues to languish, and lacks the ability and probably the leadership to move forward, somewhat, in the face of all the problems.
Still, I have been amazed by the energy of the next generation, as indicated by the postings in some of the Detroit blogs that I have linked to in my own blog, and I am thankful there are some economic engines, like Compuware and the Illitch Family (warts and all) as well as the great Campus Martius project that keeps things stirred up nonetheless.
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