Why Detroit?

I’m moving to Detroit.

I’ve been planning to for a while, and I’ve been talking about it even longer. As with most people who've chosen to live there, I've had to field a lot of questions about why.  Inquiries come from my friends on the east coast, which you'd expect, but even more from other people in Michigan. Why would you want to leave a city that's pretty nice and works well for one that’s ugly and largely dysfunctional?  

Why am I living here??

But that's precisely the reason. Detroit is attractive because it has problems. It has a huge amount of problems. The challenges facing Detroit are probably more numerous and more deeply ingrained than those of nearly any other city in the U.S.  But its problems are, paradoxically, one of its greatest assets.

As an urban planner, I want to be somewhere where my work matters. I want to be somewhere interesting. Part of me wouldn’t mind staying in Boston, or moving to a similarly liveable and sunnier city like San Francisco.  It would be a nice life, with leafy morning runs and lattes and good sidewalks. It might also be a little boring.  Detroit, for better or worse, is definitely not boring.  And I might have a “meaningful” job, or I might volunteer a bit, but would I really be making a difference? Maybe. But working in Detroit definitely has potential to make a real difference. The city has a lot of problems, but that means a lot of interesting and worthwhile work. I might be biased because I'm from Michigan, but even if others from Michigan feel this way that means something.

It’s not just city planners who might think this, of course. As others have pointed out, many entrepreneurs and artists see it much the same way. If your job is to solve problems, wouldn’t you want to be somewhere with lots of them?

Detroit is the most problem-rich large city in North America. It is a GOLD MINE of problems.

Policy-wise, I’m not sure Detroit necessarily needs to advertise its problems. There’s probably no need for city officials or city leaders to announce an economic development strategy based on being the Worst City in America. The reality speaks for itself, and there's enough non-reality in the media to feed imaginations.

I also realize that newcomers swooping in to "save the city" can be a problem in itself. There are a lot of thorny issues surrounding the outsiders vs. residents dynamic. Those are some of the issues I want to investigate in this blog.

As planners, maybe it is time to recognize the value of being problematic. Problems are related somehow to interestingness, and interestingness must be a characteristic of the Good City.  This is what I intend to explore in this blog. Importantly, I do not intend this blog to be an advertisement calling people everywhere to come and find their life's meaning in Detroit. Instead, I hope to call attention to how the things that make Detroit a worst city might actually be elements of an emerging urban model.

Newbury St. is Boston is pretty nice.

Woodward Ave. instead? Tough choice....