Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Detroit's Illusory Renaissance

September 9, 2009

Hope springs eternal, they say. That's certainly the case in Detroit. The city, widely regarded as the economic basket-case of North America, might have now entered a fiscal death-spiral that even a bankruptcy might not reverse. Yet The New York Times, ABC News, and others are reporting that an artist-led recovery is on its way in Motown. Lured by $100 homes, artists allegedly are returning to the city and transforming it, much like they did SoHo, New York, many years ago. But Shikha Dalmia, who has lived in or near Detroit for 21 years, ain't buying it.

In her latest Forbes column, she notes:

Real estate in Detroit is certainly cheap--but living in the city is not. That's because, thanks to a dysfunctional city bureaucracy, residents have to pay dearly--either in time or money--for every basic service, particularly for safety. Even Cope (the first artist who moved back to the city), who writes a regular blog called the Power House Report, seems to acknowledge that. In an April post, he described a burglary at the house of his neighbor John. Despite the presence of a German shepherd, Cope noted, the robbers kicked in the two back doors and made away with some irreplaceable jewelry. Cope spent a day helping his friend replace the door, but seemed dejected afterward. "Somehow the neighborhood seems less friendly this week," he wrote. "Maybe it's just the warming of the weather that brings out the rats, fires, garbage and druggists, prostitutes, weirdos or maybe it's just me."

A childless and bohemian couple might well find it rewarding to endure all of this for the sake of a city they have adopted. But for most ordinary folks with families, children and regular jobs, living with rats, fires, garbage, druggists, prostitutes and weirdos is simply too big a price to pay...

 Read the whole thing here.

Comments

|9.9.09 @ 12:07PM|#

The city, widely regraded

If only it had been levelled . . . .

kc|9.9.09 @ 12:11PM|#

I spent a very long year (1981) working in Detroit -- sad that it's gotten even worse. But even in that hellhole, free enterprise was alive and well -- neighbors, tired of the many vacant HUD-owned houses deteriorating around them, fixed them up enough to make them (barely) livable and then rented them out to others. Don't know how they got the power and heat turned on, but they did -- and when the utilities got calls from the tenants about billing or service problems, the tenants would be surprised to know that their landlord was the feds and not the nice couple living next door. The utility would rat them out, HUD would evict and the tenants would just find another empty HUD house to move into, this time not bothering to pay rent to a faux landlord.
Wonderful how all the govt programs in the ensuing almost 30 years have made it all better, eh?

Russ 2000|9.9.09 @ 12:24PM|#

Hey! My brother is a druggist, makes good money at it. It took him 6 years of college, too, along with continuing education courses.

LarryA|9.9.09 @ 12:36PM|#

So the schools suck and the crime rate is through the roof, but they're going to fix things by building new stadiums and casinos.

Pretty much explains the source of the problem.

|9.9.09 @ 1:00PM|#

LarryA, have you been asleep for the past decade?

Jimbo|9.9.09 @ 1:07PM|#

When I was in the Marines, a few buddies who were from Harlem went to Detroit with another guy from our unit. They came back with all sorts of wild stories and vowed to never return because it was way too scary for them.

I think the gist of their complaint was that yeah Harlem could be dangerous if you wandered into the wrong place, but Detroit was composed of nothing but the wrong place.

I also knew a guy who was a recruiter in Detroit who said that they would always remove the white barracks cap they wore when approaching a house because it looked too much like the caps the cops were wearing and you might get shot at.

BakedPenguin|9.9.09 @ 2:03PM|#

Sounds like a good place to start a burbclave.

|9.9.09 @ 3:01PM|#

Sounds like a good place to start a burbclave.

I would agree, but its nearly impossible to get the chainguns you'd need to properly secure the place.

ChrisO|9.10.09 @ 2:24PM|#

These Detroit "artists in residence" might find living there a little cheaper if they rediscovered the wonders of the Second Amendment.

In my experience, cheap real estate is usually that way for a very good reason.