Detroit: A Reluctant Renaissance

Posted on June 29, 2007

“Hey dear…where shall we go on vacation?”

“Honeybun, how about Detroit?”

It is not exactly my typical project, but I am working under a grant on a Ken Burns-style documentary on how homeless people, addicts and others who slipped through the cracks, have taken back their lives. What better place to do this than Detroit, which itself is on a long slog toward a recovery.

Even though Detroit has announced that it is hopping on the tourism promotion bandwagon (as most towns do as they gasp for revenues) it will take a long, long time for it to remake itself into a magnet for travelers. Yes, it is proudly constructing a “riverwalk,” a feature that gave San Antonio, an otherwise nothing town, a nice boost. Great perhaps for locals and conventioneers stuck in a downtown hotel, but you have head out of town to find the car culture that made Detroit famous: the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn and the Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills. Of course you can see the economic devastation the rise and fall of that industry brought this once-great urban area without traveling to the burbs.

Look at the Michigan Central Railroad Station (or should I say “cover your eyes”). Imagine this Beaux-Arts palace when it opened in 1913. It was designed by the same architects who did the recently-restored Grand Central Station in New York. Some of its top floors were never occupied. A victim of the automobile’s success, it closed in 1988 after car culture destroyed rail travel. There are no plans to restore this once-grand structure, however. In private hands, it rises like a post apocalyptic monolith, the center of a moonscape of a neighborhood and a turnkey movie set for Bladerunner-like SciFi flicks. If broken window syndrome is valid, this old station, visible for miles, is its foremost symbol.

But traveling with locals through the city, I do see a few flickers of hope. Between the burned out, abandoned houses I spot the restorations of urban pioneers and signs touting a “hip urban life.” Elegant buildings on once-grand boulevards are being restored, some as low income and supportive housing. None of this can be criticized as gentrification. It is rescue, a renaissance that is happening, but ever so slowly.

Meanwhile Mensa has announced that it will hold its 2010 convention in Detroit. Maybe they’ll have a few ideas.