Detroit: The crack where the light comes in

Last week we visited friends in their hometown of Detroit. You can watch as many documentaries on Detroit as you like (i.e the BBC’s Requiem For Detroit or Detropia), but what you find and feel there is impossible to capture with words or images. But let’s give it a try:

It’s heavy, it’s beautiful, it’s a wasteland, it’s a zombieland, it has sparks of life that are so powerful they are able to light up the entire city. Detroit used to be the most aspiring city, the old American dream taking shape; Capitalism in its most confident and ugly shape, racism and segregation deteriorating the city over the course of 40 years… whites fleeing to the suburbs, seeming the only downtown businesses remaining circling around drugs and crime.

Out of the 700,000 remaining people, it feels that only 5-10,000 of them take part in the city’s social life that we are all used to now. No more than 5 restaurants, 3 bars and 3 cafes spread across the downtown, only open on certain days. Almost all people socialize and live their lives within their neighborhoods or what remains of them. Four-lane streets, no cars, abandoned and burnt houses, grassland in-between. Many neighborhoods in Detroit suffered a certain pattern: first the homes are left abandoned, then the house-strippers move in and take out anything valuable that can be turned into little money: the wood, the steel, the copper wiring. Buildings get put on fire, so the structures weaken and the steal structures are easier to dismantle. All over the abandoned industrial sites, you see little fires making their way through the system. Dismantled burnt houses are not only a tough sight, but also help criminals hide and create pockets of law free zones. Tearing down those houses and letting nature take over again, seems then as the only option left, to bring life back. In some streets, the only thing solid that remains are the heavy structures of the churches that once served these dense communities.

But life never stops. The city kept going and over the past years, more and more young people from the suburbs and around the U.S. feel a certain draw to come back. Buying houses for 500 dollars, inviting their friends to buy the abandoned house next door and slowly small communities form around formerly black neighbourhoods. Detroit has a higher murder rate than NYC, but 10 times less people. Yet strangely you feel safe, you feel real, you feel connected. You wake up in the morning in the middle of Detroit. Birds sing, you hear the grass raw in the wind. It feels like waking up in a forest. The sun rises, the kids play on the streets, teenagers try to find things to do that are meaningful and give them a sense of improving and moving forward.

Detroit is raw and fragile. It’s a big question mark. Will it be exploited by the remaining structures of the old economy and corrupt politics or brands exploiting the rough and real Detroit image with rather unsustainable concepts/motivations underlying the projects? Or will it be shaped by its own people with a little help from friends around the globe? How do we want to live in our communities? Why and how do we want to live and work? What is meaningful? What is worth living and building for?

The combination of all the romantic and strong emotional memories of the past, from the golden car age and Motown, the incomprehensible deterioration and the strong will to recover. This is what made this journey memorable to us. We will be in touch and do our part for those sparks to become brighter and confident in their steps. Maybe they will even spark things beyond.

If you feel like starting a new life and helping to rebuild an entire city, go there, you can make a big difference. Detroit needs ideas and people to work and to help the Detroiters shape the America they dream of.

We’d like you to meet:

The farmers, builders and wonderful people of the Farnsworth neighborhood
Phil and Kate’s Project: Ponyride
Larry from Cafe D’Mongos Speakeasy – teach him some German and he will offer you our German booze!
Stay with Megan in her wonderful inn: Honor and Folly
Have lunch at Mudgie’s Deli
Ride your bike around Corktown or Poletown East and visit the Eastern Market

Have a look through some of the photos we captured on our journey below.