Capitalism gone wrong: Detroit, MI

After years of building curiosity, I finally got to visit Detroit last weekend. It always seemed like Buffalo’s blight in a Chicago-sized infrastructure. I came back feeling like Buffalo was a cultural, fairly well-educated city with a good dining scene and most importantly…a future. These are rare feelings to experience, so I must emphasize how awful I thought the Motor City was. And it was heartbreaking to see.

Like Buffalo, we entered on a bridge from Canada, and then within a few minutes found a huge abandoned train station. Not a window remained and let me assure you this was the creepiest urban space I have ever visited. The rest of Mexicotown feeding into Corktown was the same deal. A Detroit ex-pat saw us and talked about how terrible Detroit has become and how the train station is facing demolition. He thought very highly of Buffalo which made me concerned about what I was about to see. Seldom was anyone to be found on the sidewalks but occasionally we would see homeless people huddle around gas stations or abandoned buildings next to vacant lots.

What seemed to be the CBD was empty (as expected, being a weekend) but what was not expected was the status of so many large buildings in the city. 30% of the structures downtown had to be abandoned, they were everywhere. Some even had trees growing out the roofs they’d been deserted by man for so long. What I saw in Detroit could only stem from a societal contempt and extreme fear of the city mixed in with political incompetence.

*Random fact, according to 2005 census data, the city of Detroit is approximately 80% black while the Metro region is approximately 70% white. Wow.

We got on the people mover and the rail cars were packed. I thought everyone was going to the RenCen area to see the Red Bull stunt plane competition but about 3/4ths of the riders got off at Greektown Casino. The station goes directly to the entrance of the Casino so before I knew it my ID was being checked in order to keep walking. The casino was absolutely packed while we were one of the very few people on the streets of the city a few blocks north.

We stepped outside and faced the quaint and touristy Greektown area which focuses in on a small street (hard to find in Detroit) that has many variations of Greek food and street artists, but most importantly-lots of pedestrians. Planning Win for Detroit on this casino.

While the city has faced extreme neglect, they sure put their time and effort towards the sports structures. Yes, Tiger Stadium is being demolished and Joe Louis Arena is fugly but Comerica Park has enough ornament to put you into a seizure and Ford Field looks like a huge upscale suburban office park built up to the street. The money that went into making these structures happen could most certainly be spent better on other things.

The big heartbreaker was Woodward Avenue. This seems to be “the” street of downtown Detroit. Lofts, new buildings and hope. But Woodward was as good as Main Street in downtown Buffalo. Compuware’s headquarters is an eye-popping structure at the foot of Woodward that has significant retail space all around the first floor, but its big anchor, Border’s Books is closed, its furniture for sale, and the rest of the outlets were food places geared towards the 9-5 crowd. Many of the structures down the street were still abandoned or struggled to land any retail tenants. I saw a trendy restaurant and some salons but most of the buildings still seemed vacant. Outside of interest from design and urban-oriented people, this street doesn’t seem to have much realistic hope for it in the near future. There was a small rally held by a socialist organization which was fitting because the city’s current status in combination with its history seems like it was Houston-like in its astronomical economic growth but took extreme subscription to free-market development trends aka fully embracing suburbanization, and accepting the death of urban America all while seeing America lose its price-competitiveness in the auto industry.

There are some good things we saw in Detroit. The Museum Of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) is a very-cutting edge museum, the Riverwalk is gorgeous, the stadiums are top-notch, some of the new hotels seem amazing especially the Westin Book-Cadillac but overall it is not the most idea of vacation spots.

We gave up and headed off to Windsor where we saw a spectacular view of Detroit. Sadly, this is probably the best way to view the city. Detroit was once the “Paris of America”, then it was as good as Chicago, and then it became the urban punch line of America. It is still a city of 900,000 and the 11th largest metro region in America but the city population has no purchasing power, the taxes are high, the city politicians corrupt, and the infrastructure looks post-apocalyptic. To paraphrase Bernard Henry-Levy, Its terrifying to see America let cities die like this but hopefully with the new alleged post-racial, post-oil, post-suburban world we are entering, a place like Detroit can breath new life.