However, we all know that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Our other thread is the resurrection narrative, where scrappy Detroiters are rallying around their city, and rebuilding it in the spirit of a DIY revolution.
Detroit Utopiaposted by the man of twists and turns at 4:52 AM on November 27, 2012 [6 favorites]
The third major subgenre of the popular Detroit narrative is a backlash against the pornographic excesses of the Lament and is, at best, an attempt to find a new definition of urban vitality. The Utopians are well-meaning defenders of the city’s possibilities. Locally, they are often politically active, often young, and, it should be noted, often white. This class of Detroit story chronicles Detroit’s possibilities, with a heavy emphasis on art and urban agriculture on abandoned land. It can also take the form of human-interest stories about local entrepreneurs persevering amidst the destruction. Toby Barlow’s series of New York Times articles on bicycling and one-hundred-dollar houses in the city anticipated a gentrification-fuelled Detroit Renaissance that most honest observers must admit will never come. (If Detroit is really so full of possibilities, why do so many of the possibilities so closely resemble a cut-rate version of what western Brooklyn already looks like?) Despite their differences, the common problem with many of the Lamenters and Utopians is that both see Detroit as an exception to the contemporary United States, rather than as one of its exemplary places. Detroit figures as either a nightmare image of the American Dream, where equal opportunity and abundance came to die, or as an updated version of it, where bohemians from expensive coastal cities can have the one-hundred-dollar house and community garden of their dreams.
A smaller, wealthier, liveable inner city full of life and commerce surrounded by decaying suburbs full of people living in poverty.
I'm not sure what the advantages are of changing the places that are poor, when you are not changing who is poor.there isn't really an advantage to tiny enclaves of rich people surrounded by wastelands of poverty
“If there was national schadenfreude about the failure of Detroit, regional schadenfreude was even stronger, and it hinged in large part on race,” he writes. “In that moment, I thought of certain aspects of United States foreign policy – the practice of isolating enemy states financially and then watching the leader whom we’ve likely labeled a tyrant act more and more like one as his regime begins to crumble under the pressure of the embargo. The leader and his state must fail in order to confirm the triumph of our own ideology; and if his people do not rise up against him, their suffering is, at least in part, their own fault. Here, Detroit was the rogue state, defying the bullying hegemony of a superpower that wanted to install its own hand-picked leader, making the transfer of any remaining natural resources that much smoother.”posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:04 PM on November 28, 2012 [1 favorite]
How did Detroit — the world’s fastest-growing city in 1950 — become America’s fastest-shrinking city in 2012, complete with 100,000 empty houses and a total 40 square miles of vacant lots? And what does this mean for the rest of the U.S. as manufacturing continues to move offshore? These questions are the starting point for Detropia, a beautiful and wrenching new film by seasoned filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who earned an Oscar nomination for their 2006 film Jesus Camp.posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:34 AM on December 1, 2012
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How To Bring Detroit Back From The Grave:"Dirt-cheap buildings and big dreamers: recipe for a Motor City renaissance?"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:35 AM on November 27, 2012