Life in the Ruins of Detroit

Fig. 1.

Crews in 2004 prepare to shoot a scene in front of the abandoned Michigan Central Depot in Detroit for the 2005 science-fiction movie, 'The Island'. The train station stands in front of an abandoned eighteen-storey office building.

Fig. 2.

A view of weeds taking root among what were once expensive seats inside abandoned Tiger Stadium, the home of the Detroit Tigers baseball team from 1901 to 1999, when the team moved to a new stadium a mile away. Year: 2006.

Stretched out between its rivers, the city will remain for a long time. Stone and brick, concrete and asphalt, glass – time deals gently with them. Water leaves black stains, moss shows green, a little grass spring up in the cracks. (That is on the surface.) A window-pane grows loose, vibrates, breaks in a gusty wind. Lightning strikes, loosening the tiles in a cornice . . .

George R. Stewart, Earth Abides, 1949

To American sports fans, Detroit might have seemed like it was on a roll in 2006. In February the city hosted the nation's signature event, the Super Bowl, the National Football League championship game that is preceded by a week-long debauch revolving around football, corporate culture and expensive parties. The NFL awards the Super Bowl to cities several years in advance and Detroit made cleaning itself up an obsession. It ended up receiving good marks for the appearance of its central business district and the way it handled thousands of visitors.

In October Detroit was the site of a more spontaneous sporting event, the World Series, the best-of-seven-game championship of Major League Baseball. Two games of the series took place in the new 350 million-dollar ballpark that is next to the new 500 million-dollar football stadium. The Detroit Tigers ended up losing to the St Louis Cardinals, but the series, and its preceding playoff games (which also were televised nationally), once again brought praise for the city's looks, attractions and management of a big event. Journalists and broadcasters saw downtown's new residential lofts, gambling casinos, restaurants, buildings, parks, trees and fresh paint and said nice things about Detroit, which heartened local public officials and professional boosters who never stop proclaiming that 'Detroit is coming back', and 'Detroit is undergoing a resurgence', while they worry about the city's international image as a symbol of urban malaise.

I was born in Detroit, and I lived in Detroit for many years, though I now live in an adjacent suburb. I have worked in Detroit for almost all of my newspaper career. Like most of the other 4.5 million residents of the metropolitan area, I was proud of Detroit's performances in front of a national audience and pleased to see the city receive some good press for a change. But the idea that Detroit has recovered from its decades-long downward spiral does not ring true, and buying into the notion that 'Detroit is coming back' because it put on a workable Super Bowl does a disservice to people who live in Detroit, especially poor people, who mostly have failed to receive the benefits from the improvements downtown.

Is central Detroit on an upswing? No question. From the riverfront northward through the central business district and the Midtown area and Cultural Center and New Center sections, the gentrification long familiar in many major American cities has picked up steam in recent years. Rehabilitated buildings, lofts and other housing, restaurants, nightlife and institutional development are realities. There also has been new housing for low and middle-income people built in neighbourhoods across the city in the past five years.

Despite those improvements, the larger city is hurting. I see it every day, as I travel through the blocks that for much of the twentieth century were filled with stores and homes and churches and factories and now are the dilapidated and often abandoned neighbourhoods of poor and working people. In addition to the large tracts of the city that are...