You don’t hear many good things about Detroit these days, actually it’s been a long time since good things were said about Detroit. We all know the problems with crime, the auto industry, the lions (it was a catch). I just read a great article on CNN about “Creative Detroiters quietly rebuild, challenge city’s bad rap” Creative Detroiters quietly rebuild, challenge city's bad rap - CNN.com
It also led me to this
I love Detroit, if you grew up there you know Michigan is one of the most beautiful places around and a hop skip and a jump to Chicago, Toronto and the east coast cities.
Most of all I would love to see Detroit become a hot spot for design, creativity and music. It has been in the past, and it’s possible for it to be in the future.
about ten years ago Michigan granted the industries associated with the “cultural creatives” the same tax status as the Big 3 and all auto support business. So if you’re any kind of designer or entertainer you get the same incentives as GM. Last weekend I saw a news report on how 41 cents on every dollar spent on making a movie in Detroit gets returned to the studio…
yea that mini-doc by palladium was really nice. growing up on the east side of the state has given detroit a sweet spot in my heart for sure.
I was more hit by how the fall of detroit and the auto manufacturing industry affected the once great smaller cities that were closer to my neck of the woods like Saginaw and Flint.
The tax incentives have brought alot of film crews to Mi for sure, especially here in grand rapids, but there has been some articles popping up that its not really healping the state as a whole… i dunno.
but yes its gotten pretty bad how the media just kind of piles on to how bad detroit is now when there is still good stuff going on. I love how in that palladium documentary it talked about the run down abandoned school that is always shown, but if you pan t the right there is a huge brand new school… pretty much shows how there is good AND bad, but only the bad is getting shown right now.
i read that CNN article the day it was published. it really stuck in my mind.
i grew up in detroit, later moved out to the suburbs. i left the city in '95 and haven’t been back since '01, i believe.
that article has made me consider moving back there, if the opportunity presented itself. it makes me wonder if i could do more of what i really wanted to in my profession, maybe have a stronger voice. it also makes me feel a little guilty…like giving up on someone or something you know so well, because i left. i am always proud to tell someone i am from detroit. having lived around a lot of the US, i believe that the people of detroit take more abuse and hardship without complaining than any other city i’ve lived. still, i also believe it has more racial and cultural tension than any other place i have lived, too. i think a detroit revival HAS to be more than a typical re-gentrification to survive and flourish. i feel a pull to go back and see what i can do.
i always remember looking at pictures my great grandparents had of the city when they immigrated there from germany early last century, they were so metropolitan and beautiful, it was hard to beileve it was the same place! in my mind, detroit (the city) is the underdog i always root for. i always have hope it will turn around and become better than it once was or least better than it has been.
[quote=“mrtwills”
Most of all I would love to see Detroit become a hot spot for design, creativity and music. It has been in the past, and it’s possible for it to be in the future.[/quote]
I am working on an article for this magazine comparing Hamtramck to Youngstown, Oh. Detroit is a very fun place today, my sister lives there (Royal Oak, but she did live downtown for a year). I like it a lot. Detroit’s empty spaces, deserted places, and loss laws make it an ideal place for artists and designers who want to be left to their craft. Also the city is a cheap date if there ever was one.
One of the problems for detroit has been it’s size. It’s so spread out it’s been hard reign things in. This is a great map showing how Boston, SF and Manhattan can fit inside detroit’s city limits. This is why there is a big effort to “shrink” the city.
your talking about “sprawl” the bane of Midwestern cities.
Detroit is also a textbook example of “white flight”.
Deep seated racism and plenty of farm land to colonize has turned the city into an atoll.
an article in Metropolis once suggested the largest collection of post WWII skyscrapers (downtown Detroit) should be allowed to fall into ruins and become a tourist attraction.
I have lived in the city since coming here from western,ny state to attend CCS in 1997. its a very interesting place, though it has its challenges, as many people will point out just at the mention of the name.
The city proper has many structural and institutional challenges, but from an art and design standpoint, it has contributed much to the greater design world. I recently heard that Detroit (metro) has a higher concentration of industrial designers than anywhere else in the country, if true, that is a pretty strong endorsement of the place from a design perspective. But there is also a lot of room for creative endevors outside the auto industry, and plenty of cheap space to do it in.
