Detroit, Always On My Mind

It is fairly typical to see building like this on most blocks

I think I am a little bit obsessed about Detroit.  I see from my speaking notes to the Nottingham Roosevelt Travelling Scholarship annual dinner last year that I described it as a "tragic, brilliant, beautiful place full of contradictions, challenges and hope".  It is a place that really gets under the skin - see my previous posts on the place here.  I see that the backlash against the 'ruin tourism' is in full force which I've got some sympathy for - it felt quite voyeuristic looking around neighbourhoods that used to be peoples' homes.  I certainly don't like the idea of organised commercial groups charging for tours.  

The green clapboard house to the left was occupied, surrounded by abandoned and demolished homes

I thought I'd share a few articles from the last few months on Detroit and then point people to another broader piece about cities in general.  

This piece on the FT (registration, free) has been sitting in my pile of "things to read properly" for nearly six months but it's definitely worth checking out.  It's a good read and has a striking main picture to boot.  The key moment for me is this quote from a middle-aged firefighter, David McLeod, regarding his move out of the city to the surrounding counties,

"Everyone who can afford to leave has left.  The only people remaining are poor or sick or criminals"

The broad point here is right.  

But the key missing word in Mr McLeod's comment, however, is "Black".  

As this article and map shows, the divide between poor, decaying and Black Detroit and richer, successful, and White Oakland County is incredibly stark.  I talk a bit about this here but the map is a brilliant articulation of the issue.  If you're at all upwardly mobile in Detroit you "got out" years ago and moved to the more prosperous and probably safer suburbs.  Sadly this has the impact of making the city you left behind even more impoverished until it gets into the sorry state it's in today.  And even more tragically, even if you're geographically not living in a particular city you will often make calls on the city's services: roads, schools, museums, parks etc; without necessarily financially contributing to them.  This is relevant to us here in Nottingham (see what I did there?) with our phenomenally tight boundaries - I've covered this previously here.  

Talking of museums, I was incredibly pleased to see that the exhibits in the fantastic Detroit Institute of Arts may have been given a reprive.  The museum is an amazing little oasis of (free) culture and stimulation in the midst of a challenging area of the world and I'd be really sad to see this particular family silver sold off even given the dire straits the city is in.  

Hard to photograph but stunning when up close and a real tribute to Detroit's industrial heritage

I'd never seen any of Claus Oldenburg's work in person before - pretty incredible

All in all, I'd say that Mike Duggan (the new, albeit emasculated) Mayor of Detroit has his work cut out...

... but some of the hope that I think he shows for the city is really well captured in a (longform) article from the middle of last year again in the FT (registration, free).  I'll let you read it yourself but will share a couple of the key points here;

"...Whole Foods, the organic supermarket chain, opened its first-ever store within Detroit’s city limits. The occasion was marked with street parties in its midtown neighbourhood. Others, including Detroit’s impoverished black majority, may feel less excitement about the arrival of an outlet some call “Whole Pay Check” because it is so expensive"

 "Students of the “new urbanism”, such as Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, which argues that cities are the best Petri dishes for new ideas and innovation, say their revival is assisted by a generational shift in US culture as well as deeper economic trends. Florida, who now lives in Toronto, just 250 miles north of Detroit (but still a million miles in terms of its vibrancy), grew up in suburban New Jersey in a second-generation Italian-American family. Like so many other immigrants, his parents fled the claustrophobia of Newark for the freedom of the suburbs. “To them the city was a ghetto – it was stifling and crowded and dangerous,” says Florida. “But to my generation, the suburbs represent a kind of poverty of living and it is the cities, rather than the suburbs, where you can breathe freely" "

"Technology is also an ally. The big out-of-town retail centres once spelt the death knell of Main Street. But the rapid shift to online retailing is now rendering many of them obsolete. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, at least a tenth of America’s remaining 1,000 enclosed malls will shut in the next seven years, mostly because of the internet. That is why people like Gilbert put so much emphasis on “place making” – creating a spectacle out of the street life that only cities can offer. It means good food, open-air events and renovated parks. Out go the discarded needles. In come the open-air chess boards. “American cities are becoming more and more European in their sensibility,” says Florida. “It is all about lifestyle.” As the new urbanists put it (somewhat annoyingly), the US urban revival is driven by the “3Ts” – technology, tolerance and talent."

Do read the whole article - it's a great piece of writing and offers a vision for the future that I find very exciting.  

Final Thoughts on Detroit

I'm writing this in Chicago airport: I was freakishly bumped to an earlier flight (vs my rubbish experience leaving Cincinnati) so I've got a couple of hours to kill.  I thought I'd jot down my final thoughts on Detroit - it's a place of contradictions and variety and I'm sure that I barely scratched the surface.  But hopefully I'm seen a bit more than just the 'usual' downtown areas.  (I don't know when I'll get a chance to post this so some of the timings might be off!). 

 

I went downtown for the morning the other day - mainly to post some stuff home (both from where I massively overpacked but also from things I've been given or bought along the way.  Top tip to scholars doing this trip in future years is to take less stuff that you think you'll need).  I took the opportuninty to wander around the city centre area.  As per my previouspost the overwhelming impression is one of emptiness - it's clean and feels safe and has all the infrastructure (roads, buildings etc) of a much larger and busier city than it is now but there's simply no-one around!

I stumbled across one of Detroit's 'Urban Gardens' - this one was sponsored by Compuware, one of the local employers and I spoke with the people seconded from the company to staff the garden.  One of them was a long term resident and told me that 15-20 years ago it was even quieter than now - he could have laid down in the road beside us for 15 minutes and nothing would have happened - no-one would be there to either tell him to get up or in his words, "no-one would even be around to try to take my wallet". 

They also filled me in about a couple of names that have consistently come up in coversation - Matty Moroun and Phil Cooley.  The former is a local landowner (he owns Michigan Central Station and also the bridge and tunnel over to Canada - more on him later) and the latter a local businessman and self-promoter.  Both divide opinions, shall we say...  I ate dinner that night at one of Cooley's restaurants - Slows BBQ.  The food was ok, not as great as I'd been led to believe but the place was totally packed to he's obviously doing something right. 

Talking of food, and being a huge Man vs Food fan I couldn't go to Detroit without sampling the delights of a Coney Hot Dog - some info on the backstory here.  I plumped for what's supposed to be the more 'authentic' of the two rival restaurants and can confirm that it was qutie an experience - the mixture of mince, chilli, hotdog and raw onions will stay with me for quite some time...  I shied away from one of Adam's volume challenges on this ocassion - another chance will present itself I'm sure. 

I was due that afternoon back at the offices of the UFCW where their Secretary-Treasurer had promised me that he would show me the political offices of the local Democratic Party.  For a political nerd like me this was obviously very exciting, not least because I'd be able to look at lots of maps of different Congressional Districts...  The office was very much like all the Labour Party committee rooms I've been in: slightly messy, lots of junk-food, assorted literature and posters along with a hardcore of activists phone-banking and stuffing envelopes.  Probably the best part of the visit, apart from the collecting of much literature and bumper stickers (yes, I've got one for you Rory!) was when my host, Rick, took me on a short drive to some of the local neighbourhoods. 

I'd already learned that Detroit's not all decay and disorder and there are some pretty acceptable places but where Rick took me was totally unexpected.  Firstly for Nottingham readers the district of the City rejoices in the name of 'Sherwood Forest' and especially for Jane and Brian if they're reading this it is usually just know as 'Sherwood' and is one of the more desirable places to live in the City.  Some things are the same the world over, eh...

As you can see from the photo below the properties in this neighbourhood are pretty desirable - 5+ bedrooms and lots of big gardens.  Rick told me that places here would typically sell for $150,000 - and an equivalent place outside the stigma of the city's boundaries (but less than a mile away geographically) would be around $400,000!  (This compares with the place I was staying where a three bedroom Victorian semi-detached would set you back about $30,000...). 

I picked up in the campaign office an attack leaflet critisising 'Mad Moron' (sic).  Although it wasn't explained, I assume this was directed at Matt Moroun (as above).  As well as consistently delaying redevelopment proposals for the Michigan Central Station Mr Moran is also the monopoly owner of the bridge and tunnel to and from Canada and also of all the Duty Free Shopping concessions.  When I was given a sample ballot (it's 4 pages) for the upcoming November election I was surprised to see a Referendum (called a 'Proposal' here) essentially designed to make it much more difficult for an additional international crossing to be created.  When I was in the UFCW offices I got the team to explain this.  Essentially it looks like Mr Moran has used his considerable personal wealth to get onto the ballot (and hopes to pass) a proposal to protect his monopoly on the international crossing business.  The fact that the Canadian government would have paid the costs of a proposed new bridge and it would bring additional revenue and business through Detroit doesn't seem to be a factor in his thinking.  An interesting local political dynamic. 

On my last day in Detroit I planned a quick visit to the Henry Ford complex out in Dearborn.  This comprises of several museums and exhibitions but the main focus for me was the Rouge Factory Tour - a chance to go round the actual Ford factory that's currently making the F150 Truck.  The Dearborn complex is vast - a whole town dedicated to Ford and all things car related.  It used to be much bigger and was on a significant decline until the mid-naughties when the current leader of the company, Bill Ford made a bold investment to tranform the plant into a green oriented and future facing operation - investing around $2bn in the site and its future.  The actual tour of the factory was incredible - you walk along a kind of gantry where you can see the trucks being made, production line station by production line station.  Some of the workers acknowledged our presence and gave us a little wave - some others just carried on doing the same repetitive work (as part of a 4 day, 10 hours a day work-week).  There was a real pride in the quality of the work and the combination of sophisticated robots and real people was interesting to see.  I also liked the fact that at various stations the sophisticated manufacturing process was reduced to a bloke picking up a lump of plastic and banging it into place with his fist - percussive maintenance is always a winner!

My final thoughts on Detroit: what I originally read about on my pre-trip research as a concept of 'Planned Shrinkage' came up time and time again here in even the most casual of conversations with people - "the city's too big we need to downside"; "the city needs to grow its tax base we're too big"; "we can't keep the city this size".  All of the people I met were passionate and committed advocates for the City and they all knew that it made sense to shrink and try to grow back.  This wasn't at all what I expect to find so glad to have had my assumptions challenged. 

Detroit Decay

Detroit was always one of the centrepieces of my tour of America.  Right from seeing this series of photographs in the Observer a while back I was determined to make it part of my trip.  The city's reputation is pretty well known and it's not a positive one - a google search for "is Detroit..." autocompletes to "is Detroit safe".  As I talked about in my previous post, the reality is that it's a city just like any other - and one that looks like it's on the up.  In many of the neighbourhoods I've been in I've encountered great businesses and organisations that are making a positive contribution to the area - Avalon International Breads and Astro Coffee to name just a few.  

But as great as these places are (and they are great - tasty, cheap food with a warm welcome from the staff and other customers) the overwhelming impression of the surroundings and the rest of the city is of a serious amount of urban decay.  The area where my hostel is located in known as Corktown after the high numbers of Irish immigrants that settled in the area back in the day.  Despite being somewhat brutally servered in two by the arrival of the I-75 motorway it looks like at one time it would have been a packed and probably desirable residential district being about a mile and half from downtown.  

To walk around it as I did on Sunday morning wouldn't suggest that this would ever have been the case.  Block after block is just missing - fallen into such disrepair that the buildings have had to be pulled down.  And the buildings that are remaining aren't in great shape either.  But the odd thing is that it feels totally safe.  I fully expected to be have to be a bit wary but I felt as ease.  Yes, it was Sunday mornning but even so.  I guess this is because there just wasn't anyone around - it felt a little but like those scenes in a post-apocalypic films like 28 Days Later where the landscape is familiar but all the people have been wiped out.  

But then the more you look, the more its clear that although this has happened, people are slowly struggling back.  There are a number of urban gardens being well tended in the area, the grassed over areas where houses used to be are well mown and looked after and the City is using the space to act as a nursery for a number of new trees to go towards a project to 'green' Detroit.  

I also walked out towards Michigan Central Station.  Some really interesting history of it here.  It's a building that pretty well dominates the local area and it's only as you start to look closer as you approach it you realise how derelict it really is.  

A bit like Cincinnati's railway station which I briefly went to see the other week, it's an incredible piece of engineering and design which was sadly well ahead of the demand for railway travel in the US.  There is how a well organised pressure group to try to save the station and promote ideas for its reuse - I hope they're successful!  

Sunday I also went to the historic site of the production of Henry Ford's Model T - or the T-Plex as the current owners would have it.  Owned and run by volunteers it's a really impressive set of displays over two floors including some beautifully restored original cars.  I spent a couple of hours there but could easily have been even longer.  

The surrounding area ('Michigan Junction') used to be the centre of the car manufacturing industry as it was where three trainlines all intersected so was ideal for bringing in the parts and exporting the finished products - in the years around 1900 there were up to 40 car manufacturers in the area!  Of course now it's a different story and another very quiet and somewhat desolate neighbourhood.  

Detroit

After a couple of pretty idyllic days in Ann Arbor I was both looking forward to and also slightly nervous about going to Detroit proper,  From everything I'd read and from some of the conversations I've had I had developed a mental image of the City as some kind of western-Beirut.  Of course it wasn't going to be as bad as that but it's certainly a city with some real troubles.  

I headed off first thing on Saturday to the Eastern Market which is a Detroit institution.  I was interested to see that the majority of the customers there looked and sounded like they were relatively affluent suburban-ites rather than locals taking advantage of the incredible variety of (cheap) food that was available.  This kind of links to my earlier post today which talks about the concept of a Food Desert which may or may not exist in Detroit.  The food available look delicious and there were some great bargains to be had.  

After that I headed closer to the city centre and paid a visit to both the Detroit Institute of Arts and also the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.  The exhibits were ok if not hugely inspiring.  I liked a couple of bits in the DIA including some great murals of Detroit's industrial heritage which you can see some images of here.  

I then walked down Woodward Avenue into the city centre.  It was about 4 o'clock on a Saturday and part of where I was walking was the financial district, but the thing that struck me the most was the sheer emptiness of the place.  Of course there are the desolate and deserted housing blocks and the buildings that have been razed to the ground but more than that there was the fact that there were simply so few people around.  But other than that it was a pleasant enough city - I felt very safe and secure.  Feels odd that 30 or so years about the population would have been nearly double and presumably a much higher level of activity.  

Have been thinking about what else to do when I'm here - obviously the car manufacturing museums are on the list but also pondering the possibility of a trip either up to Lake Michigan or over to Canada. 

UFCW

In the UK I'm a member of USDAW - the shopworkers' union.  So when I knew that I was coming to America I asked the team there to see what contacts they could get for me in the US union movement.  They put me in touch with the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) union in Detroit, Seattle and Chicago.  I made an appointment in Detroit for 10am on the Friday on the basis that I was arriving in Detroit late afternoon on the Thursday.

What I hadn't banked on was the hilarious journey from Cincinnati to Detroit - what should have taken about 4 hours took over 12 featuring delayed then cancelled flights and my bag being delivered to a different terminal than the one I arrived in. Still, I got there in the end and was made very welcome by Janet and Jeff, my Servas hosts in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is a university town about 40 or so miles west of Detroit.  Janet in particular was a fount of knowledge about the area and things to do.  I went out for a drink with their son who is about my age and currently studying to be a lawyer at the university.  One of his friends is currently the deputy campaign manager for a candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court (we agreed that electing judges was a bit mad!).  The race has been enlivened by a campaign video made by the cast of The West Wing - you can see it here.

Tired and a bit dislocated I didn't really want to drive the 50 minutes to the UFCW Local 876 offices in Madison Heights (located north of the City).  But I'm really glad that I did - it was a fascinating morning.  I met with Rick Blocker, the Secretary-Treasurer and also Roger Robinson, President and their team and asked them for their views on the current political situation nationally and locally and what this means for their members.  They also took me out to lunch at a local restaurant which was beyond the call of duty.

A few thoughts / ideas from the discussions I thought worth capturing;

• There's more to Detroit's current economic woes than just historical racial tensions and recent economic issues.  I had assumed that the City's decline had started back in the late 60s with the racially motivated riots and been compounded by gradual white-flight and then the issues with the auto manufacturers in the 2000s had been the final straw.  What I learnt from the team at the UFCW was the role of corruption ("graft") in the intervening years.  I'd not picked up on the multiple scandals involving ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick but it looks like he's culpable to a certain extent for the trouble that Detroit finds itself in now. 
• There are huge powers available to the State Governor to appoint a 'Emergency Financial Manager' who can override any sort of negotiated agreement or contract with the Unions no matter how carefully negotiated or finely balanced to move forward to a balanced budget.  
• Another Detroit Mayor, Coleman Young, as well as being responsible for the (slightly hilarious) People Mover seems to have been a driver for the White Flight out of the city (or at least not working to prevent it) back in the 1980s. 
• We also talked a lot about the concept of a Food Desert in Detroit.  There are limited numbers of grocery stores in the City and that, coupled with a limited public transport network and a reliance on food stamps for food purchases means that the urban poor often end up eating junk food rather than nutritious sustenance.  

All-in a well-spent morning and one that has given me a useful context for my time in Detroit.  I'm planning on going back to meet the UFCW team again on Monday to see some of their work supporting Obama and fighting to protect the right of Collective Bargaining which is the subject of a ballot initiative in November - Proposition Two as outlined here. 

Managed Decline

So, I've been thinking some more about the response that cities might take to the particularly destructive exit of a large employer.  An extreme example of what can happen can be seen in Detroit which I'm hoping to visit on my trip.  I think I was first made aware of what was happening here via this incredible set of photos published last year in The Observer.  The memory of these images has stuck in my head every since but is only coming to the surface now.  Image 6 of that gallery of the Central Station just blows my mind - it's only just over a mile from the city centre yet lies almost totally in ruins.  

But until the other week I didn't know that the process of strategically withdrawing from a city or region has an actual sociological name and is studied as a phenomenon in itself: Planned Shrinkage.  

This kind of dramatic approach to managing adverse external economic events obviously has huge societal and individual impacts - one of things that I'd hope to understand more about on my trip.