Motor City Madness

Because of its fine architecture and electrified streets, Detroit, MI was once called ‘Paris of the West.’ Now it is mostly known as a demoralized too-big-to-fail city of ruins with thousands of decaying houses and businesses. I’ve experienced the horrific aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and driving through downtown Detroit—and both looked very similar. Except that one was a natural disaster and the other economic. But from the ruins of the ashes (arson is a popular Detroit pastime), the Motor City fathers have a golden opportunity to reinvent their city and make it better. But will they?  The previous mayor’s administration attempted just that with a visionary document called Detroit Future City (http://detroitfuturecity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/DFC_Full_2ndEd.pdf). In it they proposed green neighborhoods with local parks and the return of large amounts of vacant land to forests and fields, known as ‘alternative use areas’. The long-term vision of these use areas was to shift it to an ‘ecologically and environmentally sustainable state’ (Detroit Future City). Detroit’s sprawling infrastructure is failing, and under this plan the non-use areas would be decommissioned to ‘diminish the cost and maintenance burden on city systems.’ This is a plan that is so sensible and forward-thinking that it’s scary. Perhaps too scary, as Mike Duggan, the newly elected Detroit mayor, has instead used his “Every Neighborhood has a Future” campaign to promise that neighborhoods will be restored (Mike Duggan Neighborhood Plan). The phrase ‘it will come back’ has been promised for over 30 years now in Detroit and its surrounding cities (see the film Roger and Me for graphic details). Duggan’s proposed solution is instead is to reconstitute the Detroit Land Bank, which will take control of the maintenance and resale of 60,000 city-seized properties. (Imagine the lawn mowing contract for that!) Duggan promises to get rid of city blight by demolishing structures and mowing lots, taking the property, and to make it ready for resale. The problems with this plan are, 1) the land bank will inherit a massive maintenance budget; 2) the city infrastructure of roads and utilities will continue to fail, and, 3) who is going to buy this property? Industry and Detroit’s tax base has left--years ago. I know this, I grew up in the Detroit area and my family still lives there—barely. I visited Detroit a few years ago and stopped the car in the middle of Conant Street in Hamtramck (once a small ethnic neighborhood of Polish immigrants), and wept. Big old crocodile tears. I wept for the strong sense of place that this area once had, a place where old ladies (babkas) would sweep their stoops and sidewalks every morning, a place where we went to the church fair for the pastries that locals made. My aunts and grandmother were PROUD of escaping a desperate and murderous Eastern Europe 100 years ago, and to come to be successful in America. Our fathers and uncles worked hard in the factories, often working two shifts to make ends meet. They were proud of their new country, their city, their house, and their children. But that pride left long ago on a one-way ticket out of town. I now saw a city in ruins and all the things that these good people had worked for dashed against the rocks. But I will admit there is a poignant beauty in those ruins, like looking into a still, dark pool. Sumacs were popping up from the once manicured front lawns, it was quiet and it no longer had the noise of the city. And I saw increasingly returning wildlife.  What I would have given to be able to grow up near the open lots and woodlands that were now emerging, instead of the concrete suburb in which I was corralled. Pheasants are now repopulating Detroit’s northeast side  (‘City lots become wildlife habitats’, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 16, 2008), Eastern cottontail rabbits are common (www.naturaldetroit.us), and bald eagles have now returned to the once polluted Detroit River (‘Detroit River showing new signs of life’, Detroit News, Apr. 8, 2010). Life is returning once again. Come on Detroit, we’re pulling for ya. You were one of our great cities of American strength and industry. And you have an opportunity to be great again—by demonstrating that a once-bloated city can downsize into smaller livable communities with a locally-based economy. But we need to see you move forward, not backward.