In a series of guest posts leading up to AAN's 2012 Annual Convention in Detroit, the staff of host paper Metro Times will offer insight into a city they are proud to call home.
In the weeks ahead, you'll hear about the grassroots citizens and creative entrepreneurs who are changing Detroit, get a glimpse into the city's still-vibrant music scene, and learn about downtown Detroit and other nearby areas convention attendees are likely to visit. In this first post, managing editor Brian Smith describes a city reinventing itself.
Detroit Rock City, Part 1
By Brian Smith
Sure, parts of Detroit resemble
Ten Seconds to Hell shown on a
weathered screen at an abandoned drive-in theater, you’ve seen that
in the national media. We all have. But there's more that you may not
have seen, and you've got good reason to come here to see it.
The city’s haunted beauty is salient and absolute. It's also now
pregnant with potential, change and synergy, and the creatives —
the activists, artists, musicians and entrepreneurs from all manner
of social stratum, homegrown and new arrivals — are seizing that
promise. Yes, your jaw will likely gape at square miles of ravaged
Victorian structures, abandoned deco skyscrapers and the multi-acre-
sized auto factories and civic landmarks wearingly returning to earth
(many with whole eco-systems on their rooftops, as if to hasten that
return). But you’ll be surprised at the reclamation within.
The city's new narrative is one of reinvention, creation, just
as our alternative weeklies and websites are now about reinvention
and creation — the parallels between Detroit and our industry aren't
subtle.
Detroit is about dichotomies: It's a multi-university town shaped
by its deep Southern and blue-collar roots; it's home to the spiritual
sons and daughters of the American industrial revolution, and it's
been a well-spring of musicians, artists and all manner of folks
who are fiercely loyal to — and prideful of — their roots here. But
there are too few residents to inhabit it's the city's too-many square
miles of "shrinking city" abandonment; and the fiscal and political
repercussions are battled in headlines daily.
And yet … new things are happening here. Careers can be
fostered through reuse of abandoned spaces and now-inexpensive
buildings — acres of dispossessed cityscape is fertile ground for locally grown produce, a whole neighborhood can become at a drive-thru art installation (as in the internationally renowned Heidelberg Project).
A once-vibrant, then hollowed-out downtown is on the ascent.
Major employers have moved thousands of workers to new and
renovated buildings in recent years. A leader in the turnaround,
Quicken Loans, one of
Fortune's Top 10 companies to work for,
has purchased
millions of square feet of downtown space to
house everything from venture capitalist firms to upstart designer
companies, from new retailers to a new wave of residents putting the
life into the downtown's nightlife.
It's telling stuff, reinforced by the fact the Detroit Lions, a pro football
team with the worst record in NFL
history a few years ago, became a
Super Bowl contender this year while General Motors rose from ruin
to again become the world's No. 1 automaker.
I moved here a decade ago from Phoenix, never thinking I'd
stay longer than a few years. A decade later Detroit still fascinates
me
everyday. Everyday I see something new, and often intangible.
So I ain't going anywhere. There's a ton for anyone to see — a ton of
things that my colleagues and I are anxious to share with you on this
website in the weeks to come and in person when you arrive.
Brian Smith is the managing editor of Metro Times.
