[URBAN NOTE] "Schrödinger’s Detroit"

[rfmcdonald]

Misha Lepetic's worthwhile essay at 3 Quarks Daily contests the utility of different conveniently and compactly packaged narratives to describe cities, using as case in point storied Detroit.

Is Detroit alive or dead? It depends, I suppose, on your viewpoint, or what kind of attention you might be paying in the first place. In January, the New York Times previewed a brief little docu on scrap metal ‘salvagers’ in Detroit (or are they thieves? As always, this depends on your point of view). At any rate, it highlighted for me what are two emerging – and competing – narratives of Detroit. These two narratives – I’ll call them ‘ruin porn’ versus ‘our very own Berlin’ – provoke attention for two reasons. The first is the reminder that contradictory views can be maintained with equanimity within and about the same built environment. This is not so difficult to countenance, since cities do support many seemingly contradictory narratives. In fact, cities are exceptionally adept at this, and is one of the chief reasons what makes them so enjoyable. The second reason is more interesting, however, since it provides some insights into how we choose to look at cities.

Detroit’s ruin porn narrative has gotten lots of play over the years. I remember the first time I ever heard it, actually – as a punchline in the Kentucky Fried Movie, ca. 1977. Since then, as received wisdom would have it, Detroit has had plenty of time and opportunity to keep at this downward trajectory. More recently, art book browsers could enjoy a chorus line of weighty photo-essays appealing to our rubbernecking tendencies: please consider the fact that these three books were all published within the span of a year (although I have to ask, where is Robert Polidori when you really need him?).

Add to this list the Times’s featured doc-let, which is in fact a trailer for a feature-length effort called ‘Detropia’ recently shown at Sundance and soon to be premiering at the IFC Center in New York (I’m assuming that ‘detritus’+‘topia’=‘Detropia’. Got that? Ok, good). This is dystopia at its finest: when it’s not dark, everything is grey, muddy, cold and generally nicely prepped for the end of the world. When they’re not pulling down decrepit factory buildings for scrap using badly outclassed pickup trucks, these Detropians are a grumpy, hard-scrabble lot that crack wise while warming themselves by a trash fire. I don’t know about the rest of the film, but the city depicted in the trailer is a place where I wouldn’t settle for anyone less than Snake Plisskin as my tour guide cum personal security detail. In any case, all our narrative is missing is some Chinese guy in a shiny suit peeling off a few hundred yuan as payment, and we would be all set for globalization’s last act.

[. . .]

But, like the soils of Detroit, contradictions within the resurrection narrative continue to bloom. In fact, urban agriculture is just the beginning for Detroit, since, once your belly is full, it’s time to make art. Here is where conceptualizing Detroit as “our very own Berlin” passes Go and collects $200. It says something about our facile self-regard as a society that we accept (expect?) the media’s simplistic leapfrog from the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy to the top; why wait any longer to become the next TriBeCa? It occurs to me that there might be a few more steps between cultivating vegetables in your garden and cultivating artists in your gallery, but not much of that stuff in between makes for really good copy. Exhibit A here is Richard Florida dressing up accountants as members of the “creative class” to give his über-theory the play it needed.

I am, of course, being unnecessarily waggish. Jane Jacobs, whose greatest gift to us was her endless supply of common sense, wrote of the importance of old building stock as vital capital for new ideas and commerce (187ff). The fact that Detroit has plenty of supply, low density and therefore low rents makes her prescription correct at this moment, even in the eyes of contemporary critics such as Edward Glaeser (who would doubtless welcome the eventual manifestation of people like John Hantz as proof positive of progress). And certainly no one disputes that it will take Richard Scarry’s full assortment of townspeople to establish a credible revitalization of any real duration. But – and this is the interesting bit – Detroit somehow inspires people to compare it to Berlin. Why is this? After all, Berlin is flat, spread out, not dense, cheap and therefore full of artists and designers. Both Berlin and Detroit were, in their respective heydays, economic powerhouses and centers of industrial innovation. Moreover, both cities are considered epicenters of techno music. So Detroit must be our Berlin, right?

The whole essay's worth a read.