The Polis Blog, a blog that focuses on urbanism, is going to take a look a Detroit in a few pieces. Here's the first part. It brings up some good points and talks about the city's reality at the same time pointing its potential.
Excerpt from
the Polis Blog:
It now symbolizes something else entirely - either the epitome of disfunction of the beacon of
new
urban possibilities. Contemporary Detroit is two things simultaneously:
a city beset by food deserts, an almost nonexistent transit system,
more than 30,000 vacant lots, high foreclosure rates and widespread
subprime abuse, a school system teetering on the edge, a city that is
90% black in a metro area that is almost 70% white; it is also the site
of numerous valiant attempts to reinvent American urbanism, either
through
urban agriculture,
music and
art,
cycling, radical politics, or the green economy.
In Detroit we see everything that is wrong and everything that could be
right in American cities - fitting for a city whose motto is Speramus
Meliora, Resurget Cineribus, Latin for We Hope for Better Things; It
Shall Rise from the Ashes.
Any
consideration of Detroit must grapple with this omnipresent knife's
edge of romantic possibilities and decidedly unromantic reality. But
there are three other factors that we must keep in mind if we are to
learn from and with Detroit, and even more so if we are to intervene.
Read the entire article
here.
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