Receive free Outlook updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Outlook news every morning.
The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago
A posse of 20-odd cyclists in Lycra whoosh down Detroit’s infamous “Cass Corridor”. Known for decades more as a destination for addicts and sex workers than for urban lofts, tapas bars and landscaped parks, this area has now been rebranded “Midtown”. Once a heart-rending symbol of just how far my mighty hometown had fallen, it has become a token of how Detroit has bounced back in the 10 years since it became the largest US city ever to declare bankruptcy.
A deal between the philanthropic community, the state of Michigan and businesses led to a 2013 debt restructuring plan that gave the city a holiday from paying certain pensions. And that allowed it to do things such as getting street lights working, trash collected and derelict properties demolished to attract businesses and residents. All that helped restore a municipal economy shattered after many factories closed, and more than half the city’s population fled, beginning in the 1950s.
Upgrading Detroit’s credit rating in April, S&P praised its financial management since 2013, saying “Detroit’s financial position and economic condition are the strongest they’ve been in decades”. Cash on hand rose from less than two days of expenditure at the end of fiscal 2013, to 202 days by the end of fiscal 2022.
“Every day I see people walking their dogs, jogging, biking, new apartments are going up, you’re seeing buildings that have been abandoned for years getting new life,” artist James Charles Morris, 39, tells me as we stroll down Cass Avenue. He moved here around 2013.
Morris doesn’t own a car — unusual, in the Motor City. What’s more, he is neither white nor 20-something — the popular cliché of those who have recently moved to Detroit for its arts, food scene and low cost of living. Morris is a middle-class African American who moved to Midtown from one of the city’s poorer black neighbourhoods, rather than following the exodus to the suburbs.
Detroit’s post-bankruptcy scorecard is impressive by many measures. Its poverty rate fell from 42.3 per cent in 2012 to 30.2 per cent in 2021, says Luke Shaefer of University of Michigan Poverty Solutions — though it remains the poorest big US city.
Unemployment has fallen from 43 per cent at the start of Covid to 16 per cent in March — but is still twice the estimated pre-pandemic rate. Detroit was harder hit by Covid than other cities, largely because its big poor population had higher infection rates. But now, critically, recovery is spreading to poorer neighbourhoods.
For decades, I’ve been visiting the area where Detroit’s 1967 riots broke out. When I was there for the 50th anniversary in 2017, I had to interview residents under trees — there wasn’t so much as a fast-food outlet on offer. But last month, city workers were planting rose bushes next to a manicured park with bright new playground equipment.
Kofi Bonner, chief executive of Bedrock, Detroit philanthropist Dan Gilbert’s property company which has been behind much of the city’s recent development, credits mayor Mike Duggan for understanding that “when you want to bring stability, you’ve got to do the little things first… like making sure the grass is mowed”.
And it’s not just the grass. I was spoilt for choice with places to sit down this year, from pristine picnic tables to The Congregation, a converted church that is now a restaurant and performance venue. Local residents Erica George and Lola Rushin have seen the area change dramatically in the past five years.
“People are buying properties and taking care of them,” George says. The average value of owner-occupied housing in the area rose between 2016 and 2021 from $94,700 to $170,300, according to Data Driven Detroit. Rushin is worried about gentrification, however. She says, “sometimes people of colour cannot afford to rent properties around here”.
And Saunteel Jenkins, CEO of The Heat and Warmth Fund, which helps with utility bills, says the number of Detroit families needing utility assistance is still going up.
How will we know when Detroit’s future is secure? “When people born here choose to stay here,” says Bonner. People like me, who came of age in the 1970s, couldn’t wait to get out. Now there is something to stick around for.
Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
