Can the Creative Class Save the Motor City?
I ran across this article in last month’s Economist titled “Detroit’s Emptiness: The Art of Abandonment” . It outlines the current state of the city’s many economic afflictions – massive population loss, 28% unemployment, $300m defecit, one-third of houses abandoned, $15K median housing prices, the list continues. But within the interstitial spaces of Detroit, strange things are beginning to rise.
The whimsy of the Heidelburg Project
A collective of artists began “Object Orange,” in which they painted abandoned houses bright orange in an attempt to draw attention to commonplace blight. Artist Tyree Guyton pioneered the Heidelburg Project which turned a forgotten neighborhood into a whimsical art installation decorated with found objects – abandoned cars, liquor bottles, salvaged coins. Across from the Heidelburg Project sits a house which the Detroit Collaborative Design Centre plans to turn into an independent theater with outdoor amphitheatre seating. There are even visions of turning Michigan Central, Detroit’s main railway station, into terraced farming.
These efforts have not gone unnoticed. The article points out that these attractions draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year to streets that many would be ordinarily frightened to walk through. But can these sporadic installments and guerilla tactics really become the catalyst for economic regeneration in a city like Detroit? Can young artists, designers, musicians, activists – the “creative class” – be the main drivers of an urban renaissance? In Cities and the Creative Class, theorist Richard Florida argues that the creative class has become the principal driving force in the growth and development of cities. This has certainly proven to be the case in many cities, perhaps most recently the high-tech and artistic booms of Seattle, Austin, and even Raleigh-Durham. But in a city like Detroit, with deep roots and traditions in manufacturing, production, and proletariat ideals, will it prove resilient enough to undergo a massive paradigm shift from working -class to creative-class? More importantly, is this shift the answer to Detroit’s failing economy?
Landscape architects (that’s us!) have played a role in converting a total of 6 acres of abandoned land into urban farming in Detroit. There are 17,000 acres of abandoned land in Detroit. Will landscape architects, certainly part of the “creative class,” save Detroit? Do the math.
“Detroit’s Emptiness: The Art of Abandonment,” The Economist, Dec 2009: http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108683
Cities and the Creative Class, Richard Florida: http://books.google.com/books?id=Dl3bvtftsV0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=richard+florida&cd=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false
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Hopefully LA’s will impact significantly more than 6 acres. There are LA’s on AIA Sustainable Design Assessment Team. They released a well conceived vision for Detroit last year.
http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab080216.pdf
Also, its interesting to me how the pattern of urban revitalization parallels exactly the ecological process that reestablish disturbed landscapes. After a forest fire, for example, quick growing and highly adaptable pioneer species like grasses colonize the disturbed area. These species prepare the soil for the next wave of hardier species like pine trees. These quick growing trees reestablish a forest canopy and their falling needs decompose into rich earth that supports the emergence of slow growing hardwoods, like oaks and maples. This final mix of species becomes the stable, long lasting forest community.
In Detroit’s case, and all other collapsed neighborhoods, artists and other creative visionaries find potential in what’s left of the last city and begin to build the foundation for the next. They are the pioneer species, gutsy and adaptable, setting the stage for bigger and more enduring developments. The City is indeed alive. And thus as LA’s we must understand and embrace the social ecology at work. Our efforts are never permanent, but part of an ongoing urban succession.
Well said. The urge we have to fight is to try to design finished places, like we are prone to do. Realizing that urban decline and redevelopment is indeed a living process, any attempt by us to try to “play God” and implement our vision of some mythical ideal place is destined for failure. We instead need to concentrate on enabling positive change to take place on its own and a helping to ensure that a desirable form emerges.
This could entail helping to create some sort of structure for redevelopment to take place organically (whether it be regulatory, economic or physical), providing design and technical assistance to the pioneering residents as they seek to realize their dreams, or by helping to put in place some sort of stabilizing features (again: regulatory, economic or physical) to keep the system from becoming corrupt and producing undesirable results.
The best part of this type of collaborative, bottom-up approach to design is that it will be fun! We get to partner with the creative, pioneer-class to help build these unique and historic places instead of spending our time furthering the homogeny and lifelessness of typical corporate development. As we continue to reinvent our roles as the Landscape Architects of the future, let us please craft ourselves such a creative, exciting, and fulfilling existence.
Too bad Detroit is so damn cold…