Detroit

If you close your eyes and picture a city what would you see?

Movement and diversity - of people, cars, trucks, trains, and buses
Dichotomy of affluence and privilege against abject poverty
Flashing lights of billboards and traffic signals
Skyscrapers? Businesses? Restaurant rows
More people

What would you hear?

Voices on top of voices
A myriad of languages and dialects
The quick steps of busy people
Engines revving? Honking horns
More voices

Cities around the world are filled with all of these sights and sounds and so much more. After all, it is the movement, mobility, construction, and masses which define cities…or is it? Webster defines a city as ‘an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village’.

Where does such a definition leave the city of Detroit - a city which has been deemed dying, abandoned, shrinking, lost, segregated, and hopeless? Detroit certainly matches Webster’s definition in regards to size as the land area spans 6,657 square miles. Jerry Herron, a key note speaker for IHP Cities in the 21st Century Program, said of this complex city “Detroit's the city everybody likes to look at as a place that's dangerous, abandoned and economically no longer viable. It's the most famous failed city in the United States.”

Detroit is a city which exploded its population by 170% in just a 20 year span (1910-1930). By the mid 1950’s auto production surged through the city’s pulse. Business was booming and Ford’s $5 a day guaranteed salary had secured thousands of jobs. Soon after this peak in the late 50’s foreign and domestic competition grew and auto companies began merging with one another or closing completely. By 1958 nearly a forth of the entire city's work force was unemployed. The wrecking ball strike to the auto industry caused Detroit’s population to decrease at an astronomical rate and over one million people abandoned the city. Meanwhile the suburbs surrounding Detroit continued to increase at a steady pace.

Needless to say, a city which once had the highest rate of home ownership in the United Stated and now leads the nation in its highest foreclosure rates makes for an ideal city to kick off IHP’s Fall 2009 Cities in the 21st Century Program!

Students have entered Detroit not arrogantly presuming solutions and quick fixes but rather humbly and inquisitively absorbing the myriad of the city’s issues from various vantage points. Transportation, taxing, poverty, foreclosure, welfare, racism, abandonment, crime, and willowing pride and hope for Detroit are in part issues which students have been introduced to. Observing city life students have been astonished by the amount of unused space, empty streets, and segregation between suburbia and the downtown area.

In the midst of great complexity there are people who remain steadfast and committed to the wellbeing of Detroit. Students interacted with key people from Ford Motor Company, local housing, transportation, and urban planning organizations. The city was explored by bus, bike, feet, and even public transport (which most locals claim is nonexistent). Hundreds of people are moving to the city in order to connect with local organizations in efforts to restore economic, educational, and political justice and hope. Alas there is hope, despite vehement opposition and cynicism, in redeeming this dynamic city – a city that in actuality possesses more brazenly the reality which exists in much of America.

“Americans don't like poverty. Americans don't like things old. Americans don't like urban violence. We have all the problems everyone else has that people like to pretend exist only in Detroit.” Jerry Herron

So we go forward from Detroit taking new understanding of what makes a city a city, how issues stem deeper than what may appear on the surface, and the complexity of solutions and stakeholders wanting change for the good of individual, institution, city and/or society. We move forward gaining greater insight into our home cities. We move forward from this shrinking city of under a million to Delhi, India. We move forward as a group of learners, explorers, students, and teachers. We move forward.