[wordup] Urban renewal in Detroit. Wait ... Detroit?

[Adam Shand]

This is completely awesome.  Completely and totally awesome.

Source: http://www.newgeography.com/content/001171-detroit-urban-laboratory-and-new-american-frontier

DETROIT: URBAN LABORATORY AND THE NEW AMERICAN FRONTIER
by Aaron M. Renn 11/04/2009
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The troubles of Detroit are well-publicized. Its economy is in free  
fall, people are streaming for the exits, it has the worst racial  
polarization and city-suburb divide in America, its government is  
feckless and corrupt (though I should hasten to add that new Mayor  
Bing seems like a basically good guy and we ought to give him a  
chance), and its civic boosters, even ones that are extremely  
knowledgeable, refuse to acknowledge the depth of the problems,  
instead ginning up stats and anecdotes to prove all is not so bad.

But as with Youngstown, one thing this massive failure has made  
possible is ability to come up with radical ideas for the city, and  
potentially to even implement some of them. Places like Flint and  
Youngstown might be attracting new ideas and moving forward, but it is  
big cities that inspire the big, audacious dreams. And that is  
Detroit. Its size, scale, and powerful brand image are attracting not  
just the region?s but the world?s attention. It may just be that some  
of the most important urban innovations in 21st century America end up  
coming not from Portland or New York, but places like Youngstown and,  
yes, Detroit.

Let?s refresh with this image showing the scale of the challenge in  
the city of Detroit proper:
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There are zillions of pictures to illustrate the vast emptiness in  
Detroit. Kaid Benfield at NRDC posted these:

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This phenomenon prompted someone to coin the term ?urban prairie? to  
capture the idea of vast tracts of formerly urbanized land returning  
to nature. The folks at Detroit?s best discussion site,DetroitYES,  
posted this before and after of the St. Cyril neighborhood. Before:

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After:

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A site named ?Sweet Juniper? recently had a fantastic photo of the  
spontaneous creation of ?desire line? paths across all this vacant  
land. You should click to enlarge this photo.

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One natural response is the ?shrinking cities? movement. While this  
has gotten traction in Youngstown and Flint, as well as in places like  
Germany, it is Detroit that provides the most large scale canvas on  
which to see this play out, as well as the place where some of the  
most comprehensive and radical thinking is taking place. For example,  
the American Institute of Architects produced a study that called for  
Detroit to shrink back to its urban core and a selection of urban  
villages, surrounded by greenbelts and banked land. Here?s a picture  
of their concept:

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It seems likely that this will get some form of traction from  
officialdom, as this article suggests, though implementation is likely  
to be difficult.

Detroit is also attracting dreams of large scale renewal through  
agriculture, as Mark Dowie writes in Guernica (hat tip @archizoo).


Were I an aspiring farmer in search of fertile land to buy and plow, I  
would seriously consider moving to Detroit. There is open land,  
fertile soil, ample water, willing labor, and a desperate demand for  
decent food. And there is plenty of community will behind the idea of  
turning the capital of American industry into an agrarian paradise. In  
fact, of all the cities in the world, Detroit may be best positioned  
to become the world?s first one hundred percent food self-sufficient  
city.

This isn?t just a crazy idea from some guy who lives in California. He  
documents several examples of people right now, today growing food in  
Detroit. It wouldn?t surprise me, frankly, if Detroit produces more  
food inside its borders today than any other traditional American city.

About five hundred small plots have been created by an international  
organization called Urban Farming, founded by acclaimed songwriter  
Taja Sevelle. Realizing that Detroit was the most agriculturally  
promising of the fourteen cities in five countries where Urban Farming  
now exists, Sevelle moved herself and her organization?s headquarters  
there last year. Her goal is to triple the amount of land under  
cultivation in Detroit every year. All food grown by Urban Farming is  
given free to the poor. According to Urban Farming?s Detroit manager,  
Michael Travis, that won?t change.

The fact that Urban Farming moved to Detroit is exactly the effect I?m  
talking about. To anyone with aspirations in this area, it is Detroit  
that offers the greatest opportunity to make your mark. It is the  
ultimate blank canvas. For urban agriculture and many other  
alternative urban dreams, it is Detroit, not New York City that is the  
ultimate arena in which to prove yourself.

It?s not just farmers; intellectuals and artists of various types are  
drawn to Detroit, both to study it and pursue ideas about the remaking  
of the city:

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.

?It?s unbelievable,? said Sue Mosey, president of the University  
Cultural Center Association, who has been interviewed recently by two  
separate PBS crews and an Austrian journalist writing about Detroit.

?All of us have been inundated with all of these people who somehow  
think that because we?re so bottomed out and so weak-market, that this  
is this incredible opportunity,? Mosey said.

Robin Boyle, a professor of urban planning at Wayne State University  
who has been interviewed by numerous visitors, echoed that sentiment.

?They realize that there is an interesting story to tell, that has  
real characters, but even more, they discover a place that is simply  
not like everywhere else,? he said.



Toby Barlow wrote in the New York Times about out of towners buying up  
$100 houses, moving to Detroit, and doing all sorts of interesting  
things with them:

Recently, at a dinner party, a friend mentioned that he?d never seen  
so many outsiders moving into town?Two other guests that night, a  
couple in from Chicago, had also just invested in some Detroit real  
estate. That weekend Jon and Sara Brumit bought a house for $100.
?.
A local couple, Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, started the ball  
rolling. An artist and an architect, they recently became the proud  
owners of a one-bedroom house in East Detroit for just $1,900. Buying  
it wasn?t the craziest idea. The neighborhood is almost, sort of, half- 
decent. Yes, the occasional crack addict still commutes in from the  
suburbs but a large, stable Bangladeshi community has also been moving  
in.

So what did $1,900 buy? The run-down bungalow had already been  
stripped of its appliances and wiring by the city?s voracious  
scrappers. But for Mitch that only added to its appeal, because he now  
had the opportunity to renovate it with solar heating, solar  
electricity and low-cost, high-efficiency appliances.

Buying that first house had a snowball effect. Almost immediately,  
Mitch and Gina bought two adjacent lots for even less and, with the  
help of friends and local youngsters, dug in a garden. Then they  
bought the house next door for $500, reselling it to a pair of local  
artists for a $50 profit. When they heard about the $100 place down  
the street, they called their friends Jon and Sarah.
?.


But the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100  
houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where  
anything imaginable can be accomplished. From Tyree Guyton?s  
Heidelberg Project (think of a neighborhood covered in shoes and  
stuffed animals and you?re close) to Matthew Barney?s ?Ancient  
Evenings? project (think Egyptian gods reincarnated as Ford Mustangs  
and you?re kind of close), local and international artists are already  
leveraging Detroit?s complex textures and landscapes to their own  
surreal ends.

In a way, a strange, new American dream can be found here, amid the  
crumbling, semi-majestic ruins of a half-century?s industrial decline.  
The good news is that, almost magically, dreamers are already showing  
up. Mitch and Gina have already been approached by some Germans who  
want to build a giant two-story-tall beehive. Mitch thinks he knows  
just the spot for it.


It?s what Jim Russell likes to call ?Rust Belt chic?, and Detroit has  
it in spades.

This piece also highlights the absolutely crucial advantage of  
Detroit. It?s possible to do things there. In Detroit, the incapacity  
of the government is actually an advantage in many cases. There?s not  
much chance a strong city government could really turn the place  
around, but it could stop the grass roots revival in its tracks.

Can you imagine a two-story beehive in Chicago? In many cities where  
strong city government still functions effectively, citizens are tied  
down by an array of regulations and permits that are actually enforced  
in most cases. Much of the South Side of Chicago has Detroit like  
characteristics, but the techniques of renewal in Detroit won?t work  
because they are likely against code and would be shut down the minute  
someone complained. Just as one quick example, my corner ice cream  
stand dared to put out a few chairs for patrons to sit on while  
enjoying a frozen treat on a hot day. The city cited them for not  
having a license. So they took them away and put up a ?bring your own  
chair? sign. The city then cited them for that too. You can?t do  
anything in Chicago without a Byzantine array of licenses, permits,  
and inspections.

In central Indianapolis, which is in desperate need of investment,  
where the city can?t fill the potholes in the street, etc., the minute  
a few yuppies buy houses in an area and fix them up, they immediately  
petition for a historic district, a request that has never been  
refused, ensuring that anyone who ever wants to do anything will be  
forced to run a costly and grueling gauntlet of variances, permits,  
hearings, etc. Only the most determined are willing to put up with that.

In most cities, municipal government can?t stop drug dealing and  
violence, but it can keep people with creative ideas out. Not in  
Detroit. In Detroit, if you want to do something, you just go do it.  
Maybe someone will eventually get around to shutting you down, or  
maybe not. It?s a sort of anarchy in a good way as well as a bad one.  
Perhaps that overstates the case. You can?t do anything, but it is  
certainly easier to make things happen there than in most places  
because the hand of government weighs less heavily.

What?s more, the fact that government is so weak has provoked some  
amazing reactions from the people who live there. In Chicago, every  
day there is some protest at City Hall by a group from some area of  
the city demanding something. Not in Detroit. The people in Detroit  
know that they are on their own, and if they want something done they  
have to do it themselves. Nobody from the city is coming to help them.  
And they?ve found some very creative ways to deal with the challenges  
that result. Consider this from the Dowie piece:

About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy their food at the one  
thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas  
stations in the city. There is such a dire shortage of protein in the  
city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck  
driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon  
carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from  
animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around  
the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in  
the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.

This might sound awful, and indeed it is. But it is also an  
inspiration and a testament to the human spirit and defiant self- 
reliance of the American people. I grew up in a poor rural area where,  
while hunting is primarily recreational, there are still many people  
supplementing their family diet with wild game. Many a freezer is full  
of deer meat, for example. And of course, rural residents have long  
gardened, freezing and canning the results to help get them through  
the winter. So this doesn?t sound quite so strange to me as it might  
to you. The fate of the urban poor and the rural poor are more similar  
than is often credited. And contrary to stereotypes the urban poor  
often display amazing grit and ingenuity, and perform amazing feats to  
sustain themselves, their families and communities.

As the focus on agriculture and even hunting show, in Detroit people  
are almost literally hearkening back to the formative days of the  
Midwest frontier, when pioneer settlers faced horrible conditions,  
tough odds, and often severe deprivation, but nevertheless built the  
foundation of the Midwest we know, and the culture that powered the  
industrial age. No doubt in the 19th century many of those sitting  
secure in their eastern citadels thought these homesteaders, hustlers,  
and fortune seekers crazy for leaving the comforts of civilization to  
head to places like Iowa and Chicago. But some saw the possibilities  
of what could be and heeded the call to ?Go West, young man.? We?ve  
come full circle.