Detroit - a New Kind of City

BuzzFeed posted an amazing article today written by a kid who decided to stick around Detroit after college and invest. Drew Philip paints a unique insider's look at America's lost city, a place that's captured our fascination for its blight, decline, and unrivalled corruption, and show's us why Detroit might not be as lost as it seems to those who criticize from their desks in New York and San Francisco, too afraid or disinterested to actually venture to Motor City.

It's a long read, well worth it, and I'll let it speak for itself. Philip shows us the ups and downs of his adopted city, and the beauty found in its grit. But perhaps the most interesting question his article posits is in the way he asks what we all ask of Detroit: What's next?

While the city is far from experiencing any sort of renaissance, the media's love affair with it has driven outpriced refugees from boomtowns around the country to explore Detroit's bargain basement real estate. Companies are even looking to Detroit for its affordable talent from nearby universities.

Drew Philip - BuzzFeed.com

But Philip describes a new city. Did New York, San Francisco, and DC actually win the war on poverty, crime, and blight, or did they trade their ills for new ones? The urban success stories in America are false beacons of aspiration. Crime has been relocated to the boroughs and suburbs, a middle class can't exist, and those who don't make six figures are relegated to places like Oakland and indentured to rent, unable to enjoy the exciting cities they chose. There comes a point in many who question, "Why am I here?" If you've been pushed to Queens you might as well live in Pittsburgh.

Detroit, a blank slate, is in the unique position to become a new kind of city, and that's what has happened amongst those who weathered its worst. While a slow creep of transplants downtown have brought their Whole Foods baggage, along with the transformative model that turned Manhattan into Disney World right down to the price tag, the most collateral of damage in Detroit has created a post apocalyptic city that looks like anything but Thunderdome. Out of lawlessness, an organic sense of civic responsibility reigns over neighborhoods that the city no longer services. Once densely packed turn of the century homes now sparsely dot the city's blocks, in their place are orchards, wheat fields, and chicken coups.

As the city contemplates the unprecedented "right sizing," an effort to abandon neighborhoods beyond downtown and shrink the city's limits, those forgotten neighborhoods are modeling a new kind of American city that's worth a second look.

Why I Bought a House in Detroit for $500

What to do with Detroit?

Gawker has a few ideas. Today Gawker posted an article, if you can call it that, with what looks like a group chat. Don't bother reading it. It's one, long inside joke that doesn't even end with a bang...like an SNL skit this side of Tina Fey.

Okay, SNL is a worn target, but so is Detroit.

"What Should Be Done About Detroit?" Well my first response to the question posed by Gawker, and seemingly everyone in the Western World was, "Well, what do Detroiters think should be done with Detroit?" Now sure, Detroit is currently undergoing the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy, so the city has willingly accepted national input.

But to use a prominent blog to pose the question and then follow that question with an internal conversation and a series of inside jokes, with no input from anyone in Detroit, is a bit disrespectful to a city that still deserves at least a shred of respect.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of self deprecation and politically incorrect humor, but the article isn't even funny to anyone not involved in the conversation. And for politically incorrect humor to be funny, it also should have a point.

This article is just a bunch of New York hipsters abusing a real city most of them have never been to, to fill HTML. Come on, Gawker isn't my favorite blog, but it's better than this turd.

Still a city

That said, the Motor City is in a dire situation, they've even considered auctioning off the city's art collection valued at $866M. Sure, that's a handsome number, but when you consider the fact that $800M builds a convention center and Detroit owes $18B, is it really worth it? Maybe. Detroit holds an art collection on par with many large American cities. While it will barely make a dent in the city's debt, why hold art that no one is visiting at the cost of pensions?

Detroit's problems are complex, and perhaps that's why Gawker pitched an inane conversation at it instead of thoughtful discussion. I'm not going to pretend to know how to fix that city, but its rebirth will unlikely be relative to Philadelphia's or any other major American city. Detroit has lost more than a million residents who aren't returning.

When Detroit does find its way, and it will, it will certainly be smaller, less globally relevant, but it will always represent what it once was. Gawkers need to remember that, despite what's become of the city, Detroit built an industry few cities can claim.

Why Philly Could Never Be the Next Detroit

I read John Featherman's Philly.com article for the same reason most people did: it had a catchy headline. But his insight seemed to be a lot of speculation.

Philly.com will run anything that gets the comments going, and saying Philadelphia could be the next Detroit did just that. It doesn't matter that it's based on very little.

He fabricates the notion that pundits are abuzz with speculation about Philadelphia's impending doom, as if this is the top story on CNN, then cites an obscure story in a weekly Republican paper.

At one point in the article I had to ask myself if Featherman had been to Detroit, either now at its worst or thirty years ago when it was pretty bad, or if he figured he could just blindly pass off this article and get people talking.

It's funny, whenever journals are looking for something to fill their HTML they rank of a bunch of cities, or publish an article like this. You'll get one camp screaming how great their city is, and another camp crying that we're about to wind up under the Thunderdome. Either way you get everyone talking about it, because we all fall for it, myself included.

Here's why John Featherman is wrong (despite the fact that he likely knows he's wrong):

First of all, Philadelphia has had a tourism industry that has thrived in one way or another for two centuries. Sure, we've had slumps, but those slumps were shared with national downtimes. We didn't see the tourist draw we see today back in the Sleazy Seventies, but neither did DC or Boston.

Detroit never saw this. I'm sure there are some tourist attractions, and there were probably more in the past, but never any that came close to rivaling Philadelphia's.

Second of all, Detroit's geographic location is unappealing and without shifting the poles of the earth, that won't change. Philadelphia's an hour from some of the most popular beaches in the country, Detroit is on a cold lake.

Philadelphia's close to DC and even closer to NYC. Detroit is somewhat close to Chicago, but their relationship doesn't trade weekend getaways the way Philadelphia does by sharing a coast with so many major American cities.

Neither of these facts are entirely reliant on our local politics. Sure, a swimmingly run City Council might attract more tourists and weekenders, but most come here knowing nothing about the city, particularly the intricacies of our tax burdens, weird liquor laws, and massive amounts of vacant properties. And most don't care.

Also, Philadelphia's aging infrastructure is part of its advantage. It's an old city, therefore central and dense. Center City has never died even in our darkest days. We weren't built around the car, so our city is compact, even many of our suburbs.

When a street or neighborhood looses a house, even in Center City, it's less noticeable than a dilapidated mansion in sprawling Brush Park. That's not to say blight doesn't hurt our cityscape, it's a real problem in Philadelphia, but it isn't as noticeable to visitors and potential property owners as it is in newer cities dotted with vacant strip malls and suburban ghost towns.

Plus, and this shouldn't even be mentioned on an architecture blog, most people are willing to put more money into a run down townhouse designed by Frank Furness than an 80's era split level.

Finally, and here's where I'll profess my true bias: Philadelphia is just better than Detroit, it always has been and always will be.

Philadelphia is America's London, our major city that laid down the political, business, and social structure of what America would become. It was, is, and always will be a microcosm of American life.

It's what kept us from collapsing like Detroit or exploding like Portland. We've never been identified with a specific industry like DC, Los Angeles, or Detroit.

This has helped us and hindered us at the same time, but more importantly it's kept us relevant. While Hollywood and the internet turned Los Angeles and Seattle into boom towns, they've all experienced the aftershocks of having nothing to fall back on.

While we've never really been a boom town, save 1776, we've never experienced a complete absence of industry like Detroit.

The economy will always wax and wane, and we might be headed down, maybe, but at worst we'll experience the 70's all over again.

But we will never be Detroit.

 

America's Most Miserable Cities

Like TLC and The History Channel, Forbes has completely given up. In what's fast becoming the Reality TV of financial publishing, they realized they can make a lot more money producing crap than actually talking about, you know, money.

Anyway, Forbes recently published a(nother) list pitting cities against cities, ranking America's Most Miserable Cities. But check this out, Philadelphia isn't on it!

Seriously, while even our home grown publications like Philadelphia Magazine and the Inquirer slum it in self loathing, Forbes doesn't think we're that miserable.

In all fairness, Forbes altered the more credible "Misery Index" from the 1960s to include subjective statistics like quality-of-life annoyances and weather.

Detroit and other Rust Belt ghost towns made the top 3, but surprisingly Chicago made #4 and New York City made #10.

If a statue this bad ass can't save Detroit, nothing can.

 

 

A Tip from...Detroit?

When L&I doesn't scramble to raze every shell for a few parking spaces, some amazing things can be done with our aging architecture. Detroit's Lucien Moore House was restored as part of an HGTV project.

Brush Park's Lucien Moore House prior to restoration.

The Lucien Moore House after restoration.

Many other Brush Park and midtown mansions have been restored by private developers and converted into condos and apartment buildings.

Philadelphia City Council Members who look after Overbrook, Mantua, and North Philadelphia's vast wasteland of decaying grandeur could learn a thing or two from a city that typically makes us look pretty good by comparison.