Who Killed Detroit: Another Take

This Freep piece links to an article by David Frum, who offers yet another hypothesis as to who or what killed the city of Detroit. Beyond the obvious, race relations and "the city’s defiant rejection of education and the arts" is cited.

A city that celebrated industrial culture spurned high culture. The Detroit Institute of Arts is very nice. But it does not begin to compare to Cleveland’s museum, let alone the Art Institute of Chicago. Detroit has a symphony orchestra, but its history has been troubled and unstoried in comparison to Philadelphia’s or Cleveland’s. On the plaza in front of the Detroit municipal building is a huge bronze replica of Joe Louis’ fist and arm, as if to say: “Here is a city ruled by brawn.” Brawn counts for very little in the modern world. The earnest redevelopers who hoped to renew Detroit by razing its history instead destroyed the raw materials out of which urban renaissance has come to so so many other American downtowns. A couple of days after I returned from Detroit, I telephoned a friend who had lived and worked in the city for many years. My friend, it’s relevant to mention, is the son of an Irish cop, ardently Catholic and defiantly conservative. Why did Chicago recover and Detroit fail, I asked. What doomed the city? He thought for a moment. “Not enough gays.”

Detroit confirms the lessons taught by Jane Jacobs and Russell Kirk. Preservation is as vital to urban health as renovation. Indeed, they are inseparable. The preservation of the old incubates the new.

Not sure I fully agree. I agree somewhat. Downtowns thrive because there is culture, and arts, and music, and a reason to voyage out of the safe but boring suburbs to venture out of your safety zone. Downtowns exist if there is shopping. And sport--and Detroit has the Lions and Tigers and Wings, and once upon a time, the Pistons. They exist with fantastic restaurants, Polish food and Mexican food and Greek food and Eastern market and produce stands. They exist because there are fantastic summer festivals, and parks like Belle Isle and Boblo. They exist because of the Grand Prix and the freedom festival fireworks, when those aren't being tarnished because of videotaped beatings. They exist because people feel safe to wander, to duck into hidden diners and wander into art museums because you can walk. They exist because the music--the Motown music--is culture that is every bit as important. And yes, the DIA is fantastic, with its Diego Rivera murals and its Egyptian mummies.

They exist because after the riots, things are rebuilt. Trends are identified and captured into miniature golf courses or tasty mussels or great thrift stores or used book marts.

They exist because families of five from the 'burbs can venture side by side with city families, and not just those headed by a single mom of five with four baby-daddies.

And this:

As the white working class departed, Detroit became a black-majority city, governed by a deeply aggrieved and flagrantly corrupt political class. Political dysfunction spiraled the city into another cycle of dissolution and abandonment — and the abandonment in turn provided the politicians with fresh grievances.

There were primary elections in Detroit earlier this week, and the top candidates seem to be decent. No Monica Conyers or Kwames among them. Not teriffic candidates, or politically diverse candidates. But a far better group than in the past. No Coleman Youngs. Not "hit Eight Mile."

[I]ndustry’s demand for unskilled labor would first cease to grow, then diminish, then disappear. For many migrants, the promised land soon proved a mirage. Or maybe worse than a mirage. If the promised land did not yield the hoped-for industrial jobs, it offered something else: generous new welfare programs, the ashy false fruit of urban liberalism. The children of the parents who accepted the fruit grew into the criminals who drove first the middle class and then the working class out of the downtown and then altogether out of the city.

The worse of liberalism, not the best of liberalism (and I mean small l liberalism, not big L), thrived in Detroit. And continues to thrive. It sent away my dad and my aunt, and it sent away us. What remains are only those who can't leave.

I'm not ready to completely give up on Detroit. That's why I pick over those pieces of those who visit and ponder and question why. But the Frum piece is incomplete. Perhaps if I could, I'd come up with my own hypothesis. It would begin, and end, with the riots, and white flight, and the horrid education system, and broken families, and corrupt, racist governance. It would rise again because of its food and music and a halt to decades of deterioration. And because a younger generation was given a reason to stay, and not just more handouts. Cash for a clunker?

Our neighbor said something last night, about not needing to go abroad to serve in a Peace Corps. There are cities and neighborhoods where young, idealistic kids can go here to create renewal. I wish I had that kind of heart. Maybe someday. Instead I'll keep rooting for it.