Detroit Chases "The Young, The Entrepreneurial, and The Hip"

When Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino was released in 2008, I suggested to my wife that Detroit was ripe for an influx of cultural players. The feeling was more of an intuition than a reasoned argument. I didn't have any empirical data, think-tank white papers, or information about new, prestigious targeted funding initiatives beyond what film production companies were receiving from the state of Michigan. There was almost nothing in the national zeitgeist to lead one to conclude Detroit was anything but on a civic death watch. When federal politicians, presidential wannabes, or media talkers discussed Detroit, they often used references to the good old days (the auto empire at its apex), the worse old days (the 1968 riots), and the city's current, ominous financial situation as a cautionary tale for post-Lehman America. There was some discussion of white flight, the history of Detroit's African-American community, the automobile unions, and the disintegration of Detroit's business core. That discussion became inconvenient once Detroit became an easy icon for America's current domestic crisis.

Value investors assert that the best time to consider new investments is when the assets in question have been talked down to a low level relative to their actual worth. Detroit fit this profile quite neatly. The city was simply too politically and economically connected to national power structures. Its geographic position and well-developed transportation links gave it useful market access. And, while Michigan has unquestionably declined in economic terms, one had a sense that a bottom had been reached. The state still had a well-educated population that would now be willing to work for lower salaries than in the past. The state government was willing to provide "entrepreneurs" seed money and other financial incentives to locate in Michigan and especially Detroit.

This set the stage for Detroit to consider welcoming cultural pioneers to selected neighborhoods. The civic gambit is a simple formula invoked with almost ritualistic belief. In essence, the notion is to encourage those involved in the arts, software development, and satellite industries such as fashion, to move into distressed neighborhoods. They would form the vanguard of neighborhood transformation. Once they secure an area, presumably restaurants and other middle-class attractions would join the fun. If the formula holds (I have experienced this in New York), land values and rents increase, more prosperous people move in, and a "recovery" is duly celebrated.

With that history in mind, I read a recent, prominently played New York Times piece on Detroit's efforts with more than casual interest. The paper was pretty shameless about its positioning of the piece. It ended up in the "Fashion & Style" section. The article clearly took dead aim at the 21-35-year-old readership for which the Times lusts. The writer made the stakes clear: Detroit was after the "young, the entrepreneurial, and the hip." (So is the Times.) A caption in the lead photograph asserted "An influx of young creative types in turning Detroit into a Midwestern TriBeCa." The caption had almost no connection to what was in the photograph, except for one essential element: both subjects in the photo were young Caucasian men. There they were: the "new" Detroit.

The article made quite deliberate reference to other "cultural" cities, such as Seattle and 21st Century Berlin. The story implied Detroit would follow a similar path to cultural glory as did rainy Seattle and the German capital. Whether Detroit would succeed is another matter. I hope it does, but I don't trust naked civic boosterism from a nationally important media platform.

One indirect benefit of the Times story is that it raised my interest in the African-American singer Monica Blaire. (She is quoted in the Times article.) I explored her music and enjoyed much,though not all, of what I heard. Her music has a contemporary, soulful sound, and I like that. Ironically, Blaire's musical style connects her to Detroit's African-American musical heritage, something the "young, the entrepreneurial, and the hip" (to quote the Times piece) have little organic relation to.

The photo (top) is titled Downtown Detroit. Image credit: Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from the "Ruins of Detroit" 2010 exhibits and book of the same title.