Detroit: Rising from Ashes

I recently took a day to tour Detroit, Michigan by bicycle -- armed with my point-and-shoot and a desire to find out if what we've heard was true.  Was Detroit a wasteland?  Was it beyond help?  Was it artistic, scrappy, rising? (UPDATE: HERE is an artistic duo that seeks to re-invent Detroit ruins) What's the feeling on the ground in the Motor City?  I biked for about 5 hours, and was only really able to get a glimpse, but what I saw was:

this picture probably sums it up best . . . next to a completely bombed out crack den of an apartment complex -- Spaulding Court (slated, I understand, for renewal itself), a newly renovated house with a great backyard and cute little fence. . . a few blocks from downtown.  This kind of defiant reclamation, a sort of guerrilla gentrification, is what is exciting and inspiring about this Detroit renaissance.   (UPDATE:  Here's that complex's kickstarter PAGE and home PAGE.)

I started in the vicinity of Wayne State University (Michigan's only urban public research University) located in the Cultural District.  Here's the University's first building, Old Main, behind some massive new de/construction project. 

 

Demolition and construction seem to be not quite as prevalent as apathy and general decay, but change is happening.  

Still near the Cultural District, I passed the Masonic Temple, which is the largest Masonic Temple in the world, and boasts some pretty sharp neo-Gothic architecture . . . some of which was fashioned with George Washington's own tools (famously a Mason himself) brought in from VA for the job.  It opened in 1926, and houses the second-largest stage in the country (in the Main Theatre), a Scottish Rite Cathedral, a Ritual Tower and about 5 million other amazing nooks and crannies.  Those Templars are sneaky.  You know, our founding fathers were predominantly NOT Christians, but WERE Masons . . . Way cooler.  More after the jump . . .

Detroit -- musings on metropolitan makeover

It's losing its symphony?  It's flirting with Hollywood.  It's burning, it's shrinking, it's artistic, it's stinking . . . what is to be expected from the next decade in Detroit?

the Spirit of Detroit

pizzicato on the heartstrings
I want so much to be that rotting giant's Jane Jacobs . . .
move myself, a garden, and the power of theater and music
out of the hall
and into the husk of fled industry,
sing folk songs on the twisted steel and
light the toppling bricks with amber-gelled hope for renaissance . . .
and teach the kids to love to listen
to move around and
cluster all the left-behinds to become
strong villages, and the in-betweens to become
fields of strong corn.
and the singing and the working meet the
hammers that forge huge windmills
sending the Spirit of Detroit back
to the Pantheon of Industry
but this time,
cloaked in green.


And now from some hastily jotted poetry, to a hastily assembled gallery after the JUMP:

Obama, the Super-project Void, and Me

See that iconic bridge there? It wasn't always there. It seems like it was, but in fact it was one of our great nation's greatest public projects -- one of many Super-projects the likes of which we rarely see now. It was not built by WalMart or Microsoft (although private investors historically chipped in). Along with umpteen railroads, canals, roads, parks and monuments, the Golden Gate Bridge was an undertaking so grand we could only realize it as a nation. A step forward of such massive length, that the states had to snap together like Voltron to take it.

Actually, the US Post Office I'm seeing out the window in front of me (the historic James Farley Building) is the product of just such government bravery. Here's a pic I just took:

Cool, right? It boasts the longest giant order Corinthian colonnade in the WORLD. Of course it now faces the craptastic Madison Square Garden (great job aces), but nevertheless, the Post Office stands as an anchor in a struggling neighborhood.

Ok, back to the Super-project Void. Louis Uchitelle writes in this ARTICLE in the NY Times,

"So what are we missing, exactly? Huge public works — or more precisely, their historic absence — didn’t cause the recession any more than their renewal would quickly draw the country out of it. But their effect on the economy is almost always noticeable if not easily measured. Some economists argue that the continual construction of new megaprojects adds a quarter of a percentage point or more, on average, to the gross domestic product over the long term. Again, cause and effect aren’t clear, but the strongest periods of economic growth in America have generally coincided with big outlays for new public works and the transformations they bring once completed.

If their absence creates a void, particularly in a recession, what can fill it? "

The article is a quick read, and it again opens debate about Obama's commitment to lifting us out of this recession with down-payments (and jobs) on similar projects. Here's

MY GREAT IDEA:

• High-speed rail lines link Detroit with Pittsburgh, Philly, and Chicago.
  
  
• The Detroit auto industry is encouraged (read: forced) to transform itself into the national center of manufacturing and R&D for wind turbine technology and photo-voltaic innovation.
  
  
• Automobile production in Detroit ceases.
  
  
• China, India, Canada, Mexico and Russia begin ordering our super-fantastic green energy products like mad.
  
  
• The idea of the Super-project is re-imagined as Detroit becomes the first Super-Urban-Project, and Obama leads us merrily into the 21st Century with Detroit the shining green flourishing city.

You listening, Mr. O?

Shrinking cities movement means farming Detroit?

THIS from newgeography is amazing. The basic idea: Farm the abandoned "urban prairie" that is the largely empty Detroit (see pic). Build a sustainable progressive web of urban villages surrounded by green belts, and be the first American city to be 100% self-sufficient in the food department!

"Detroit has achieved something unique. It has become the test case for all sorts of theories on urban decay and all sorts of promising ideas about reviving shrinking cities."

Read the whole article, it's worth it, but one of the more interesting points is that Detroit's fairly ineffective and myopic government is actually beneficial to the situation!