Forgotten City

About Windsor, Canada from Atlantic Cities:

LIFE INSIDE THE BROKEN CITY  http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/06/how-mend-broken-city/2324/

Visited on a VERY cold spring Sunday last year, primarily to meet some East Coast friends at a casino and photograph the Windsor Chinatown, Windsor appeared in this short visit as a lovely quiet town.

Yet the vacancy and sense of abandonment was even then visible.  

EXPAT Organizations & "The Whole Story"

An expat - although from something I never really knew as I was one year old when I left - I've been following some of the expat sites that are encouraging ex-Detroiters to return and, most significantly, invest in the City.

A very active one:  DETROIT NATION - http://www.detroitnation.org/ - formed by Rachel Jacobs, part of a group of New York-based expats (formerly called 635 Mile, for the distance from Detroit) who have now developed an active program with folowers and chapters throughout the nation.

Among their programs, a job posting for work in Detroit.  Also very active on their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/DetroitNation

A new one just discovered: BORN AND RAISED IN DETROIT (BARD)  http://bornandraiseddetroit.org/

Probably more for there seems to be now more than nostalgic interest in those who are from Detroit about the state of the City.  OTH, it would be good if they all got together into just one powerful organization and with the power of many could not only contribute financially but with the power of numbers support and make effective change.



'CAN WE TELL THE WHOLE STORY?"
again, always reading the comments as well, this article by the General Manager of Detroit's NPR station, WDET is worth a look:   http://wdet.org/shows/wdetraw/episode/can-we-tell-the-whole-detroit-story/?hq_e=el&hq_m=1671315&hq_l=1&hq_v=e6609d3a02 



LAST - another magazine/blog.   Always learning more about the city from many different perspectives;  THE HOUR/DETROIT   http://www.hourdetroit.com/

About Detroit: More Videos and Such

Two more videos from Richard Florida on Detroit from Atlantic Cities:

Now the Fourth:
The Businesses That Will Lead Detroit  http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/06/businesses-will-lead-detroit/2176/

Focusing on "cheap, affordable space and innovation.  "If you want to rebuild a neighborhood, you're a lot better off starting with stuff people eat and drink. Movie theaters, fine, baseball stadiums great. But where people really want to go is to find places to eat and drink." -- Richard Florida

and the Fifth:  The Future of Detroit 

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/06/future-detroit/2237/ 

Who is Detroit attracting? the new urbanite, diverse, open to innovation.

BUT THEN the comments - I always read them, continually wanting to hear the voice of Detroit - linked me to this terrific video, great music and truly full of those voices:

Alex Gallegos' DETROIT BIKE CITY  http://vimeo.com/25805461


In Detroit last spring I visited the Earthworks Urban Farm on the Eastside, run by the Capuchin Soup Kitchen/Capuchin Freres  http://www.cskdetroit.org/EWG/ and was invited to return on that Wednesday for their weekly bike repair clinic.   A place to be: for recreation, for living lives amid and connecting to others, for skills, for both youth and others, and for the dire reason that among the problems Detroit has faced that doesn't help those there to rise: the lack of public transportation that prevents those able to find a job to get to one.

 Shane Bernardo (r), Outreach Coordinator of the The Capuchin Soup Kitchen -Earthworks Urban Farm

 

UPDATE 18 June 2012

From Model D:  http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/detroitbuscompany612.aspx?utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=The+Detroit+Bus+Company%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2s+new+old+idea&utm_content={Email_Address}&utm_campaign=Building+the+city+of+tomorrow

The Detroit Bus Company, started as a private venture by Andy Didorosi, and trying to balance the needs of those in need of transportation with an economic structure that focusus on the tour industry while also aiming to connect jobs and the suburbs to the Detroit economic plan.   "For every seat purchaed on a regular route, tour or private rental, we'll provide another Detroiter in need a free ride to work.". 

DETROIT RISING

 Courtesy of Atlantic Cities

A series of short videos/conversations, about Detroit, posted by The Atlantic Cities and Senior Editor Richard Florida.   http://www.theatlanticcities.com/special-report/detroit-rising/

Three installments so far.    An overview yet valuable as well for the comments which should be read, giving a diverse set of perceptions about the City.

1. INTRODUCTION/ THE STATE OF DETROIT  

 Courtesy of Atlantic Cities

From this installment: "
We’ve all read the story of Detroit’s downfall by now. Once a booming hub for automotive manufacturing and a center for technological innovation, the veritable Silicon Valley of its day, the city has witnessed devastating economic changes. Between 2000 and 2010, the city's population fell by 25 percent, the largest drop of any city with a population over 100,000. Even New Orleans, despite Hurricane Katrina, didn’t see a population plunge as dramatic. At the height of the recent economic crisis, Detroit’s unemployment rate was 18.2 percent.
But the other story of Detroit, the bigger one – is of its rebirth, its rising. Given the austerity of these times, this is less a story of top-down government efforts, and much more a story of the organic efforts of the entrepreneurs and artists, designers and musicians who have chosen to live in Detroit and be the stewards of its resurgence."  http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/05/how-detroit-rising/1997/

2. DETROIT'S CREATIVE POTENTIAL

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/05/detroits-creative-potential/2068/

  

Courtesy of Atlantic Cities

 3. THE FACES BEHIND DETROIT'S REBIRTH/Who's Making A Difference

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/05/detriot-rising-iii/2111/

 Courtesy of Atlantic Cities

Reading Others, Thinking about Cities

There is no doubt that one part of the raison d'etre for this blog represents for me a place where I can wander around my photographic subject, test out ideas, reserve notes electronically for me, as well as the reader. 

Do I market the blog?  Not as much as I would like but then, there is always the question of what is a blog for?  I know that my Sara Jane Boyers Aloud Blog is very much an outlet for me to ruminate over what it is I do as a photographer, as a writer.

This DETROIT: DEFINITION Blogspot and the FINDING CHINATOWN Blogspot as well are more about specific projects.   I can refer some of you to them to better explain the work.  I use them myself as I edit, formulate my direction, note information and test out ideas.  For me, a repository.  For the reader, a peek into my process.

Thus for DETROIT: DEFINITION, today's subject is cities, the past, and the future.  Two articles posted this week, one specifically about Detroit, the other about cities in general are ones to hold with material to contemplate.

The first:   "Jim's" Sweet Juniper blog article The Fauxtopias of Detroit's Suburbs   http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2012/04/fauxtopias-of-detroits-suburbs.html

The blogger writes thoughtfully and poetically about the history and social meanings of its collection: from Henry Ford's Greenfield historic park to the suburban ones encircling Detroit.  Within this: a revealing perspective of the locale and history of Detroit's Michigan Theatre, a extant (an ironic word) example of Joni Mitchell's  Big Yellow Taxi: "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot..." 

The second:  Salon's Will that Starbucks last?  Gentrification has remade some cities and left others behind. Alan Ehrenhalt tells us what changes to expect next    http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/will_that_starbucks_last/?source=newsletter




THE PRESENT: Today's News: Honing in on Detroit:

1. In the midst of  above, today the Detroit Free Press reports on a new arts project designed to re-introduce/re-invigorate metro Detroit: Detroit's first ContemporaryArt Festival to be held this Fall.  Thinking I might be  there.

Contemporary art festival will illuminate Detroit.  
From the article:  "A century ago Detroit had its own Electric Park, a lit-up amusement park at the foot of the Belle Isle Bridge.   The adventuresome spirit of that long-ago place of wonder returns to Detroit on a grand scale Oct. 5-6 with the inaugural Dlectricity, an ambitious contemporary art festival that promises to light up Midtown with some 30 works of site-specific installations of light, video projections and sound created by a mix of international, regional and local artists."

http://www.freep.com/article/20120427/ENT05/204270313/Contemporary-art-festival-will-illuminate-Detroit?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s   

2. From Karen Dybis, terrific Detroit writer: 

This spring’s April showers bring … development in Detroit? It seems that way

http://blog.thedetroithub.com/2012/04/27/april-showers-bring-development-in-detroit-it-certainly-seems-that-way/

DETROIT: DEFINTION - 1st Time Exhibited

For the very first time, two photographs from my ongoing DETROIT: DEFINITION project are up in exhibition, in a group show curated by noted art writer/curator Shana Nys Dambrot.

Details:  LOOKING GLASS at the Analog Salon, Culver City.

The opening was this past Friday night and the show runs through June.  Got some wonderful compliments and curiosity about my work and about Detroit. 

Shana's comment on the show and upon my photos:

"For LOOKING GLASS I’ve assembled a dozen photographers whose work is in various ways made in a collaboration between the imagination and the world -- to explore ways that the camera is an expressive, fantastical, imaginative and pliable medium as well as form of document that contains evidence of external reality.

Everyone knows that a painter, for example, starts with a blank canvas and piles of pigment and that whether they makes landscape, portrait, or abstract images based in whole, in part, or not at all on external phenomenon, that the thing they make is entirely created from “nothing” or, put another way, from pure “imagination” -- whereas photography by definition involves negotiating with the external world not of your making. So how does a photographer achieve the same kind of emotional depth and psychological complexity, even approaching altered states of consciousness and perception, mediated through a “machine” -- that is the question.


.....For Sara Jane Boyers, her pictures of Detroit conflate present-day documentation with personal deep-buried memory."

Innovation: DESIRE PATHS/ The 313 BLOG/ Innovation Funding.

It is a given that innovation arises from the challenge and Detroit is certainly both challenging and innovative, much of the latter coming from its youth.

Thus, the Huffington Post/Detroit reports on the "desire path" plan created by Wayne State University urban studies student, Kyle Bartell, who has observed the "social trails," of the city, where the public may cut across a vacant space to reach a destination.

Taking one of these, with the private property owner's permission, Kyle and associates has created a more formal path, along with benches, to create a space for the public.   There are more to come.

Bench installation screenshot taken from C2 (Cass & Canfield) FB page, It's description:

"C2 Park ( Cass & Canfiled) is a project currently in the planning process of converting a parcel of land into a meaningful public space. Urban parks focuses on improving parks as community and economic assets to neighborhoods." Kyle Bartell

Inspired by and investigating the Kyle Bartell story from Huffington Post has led me to another student story from Detroit: the 313 Detroit Blog of Wayne State law student, James Brady.     http://313detroitblog.blogspot.com

 also on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/#!/313DetroitBloghttps://twitter.com/#!/313DetroitBlog

Filled with terrific drawings of Detroit's noted buildings (James took his undergraduate degree in architecture) and informative links, this is one to keep up with. 

James' post on Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT     http://vimeo.com/39505582

FUNDING DETROIT INNOVATION:  From MODEL D: Creative constructive innovation depends definitely upon ideas but also their ability to get funded.  Some worthy suggestions, solution concepts and a call for feedback. 

Call for Ideas: Innovative ways to fund small-scale community projects

From Model D: "Our city is only as strong as the current pipeline of projects we nurture. If we cannot find a sustainable way to fund this future, we might be stuck propping up a past that is growing obsolete."