Fresh light on detroit by Muyiwa Oki

fresh light

detroit An exAminAtion of Detroitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urbAnism; its culturAl economy AnD its rust belt.

fresh light on Detroit

An exAminAtion of Detroit’s urbAnism; its culturAl economy AnD its rust belt.

AcknowleDgement

I would like to express my gratitude to the DIA, Green Garage who helped greatly in Detroit allowing me use of their photos of Detroit to fill in the pictorial gaps. All images are copyright of the author unless otherwise credited.

October 2015 1 “Fresh Light on Detroit” excerpt from article: Swash, Rosie. “Bruce Weber’s Shinola Campaign Shines Fresh Light on Detroit.” The Guardian. Accessed February 21, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/mar/24/bruce-webers-shinola-campaign-shines-fresh-light-on-detroit. Picture reference(s): Front cover: Print Detroit Industry North Wall by Diego Rivera, copyright Detroit Institute of Art. Accessed October 9, 2015. http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/ michigan/files/styles/x_large/public/201411/20141107_dia_flickr.jpg

contents PositionAl stAtement This dissertation is a study of informal ‘start-up’ movements in a multilayered 21st Century Detroit City. The story covered in this case begins around the time of the US oil embargo in the mid 1970s, an event that largely thwarted Detroit’s then stable fiscal base. In the succeeding pages we journey through the city’s inception, examining the effects of financial turmoil which have never been fully resolved in the city. It has branded Detroit and much of its neighbouring cities with the ‘Rust belt’ label. Is Detroit doomed? The opinions of Mattie Duppler, of the Federalist magazine, is that the difficulty for Detroit is the risk-averse private sector, which is unable to invest in unstable ventures1. Is this what its residents believe? I want to find out how terrible Detroit really is. Is it in a transitive state? Some sources often speculate a net decline in population since the 2010 census, conflicting with the general declarations of Detroit - ‘is where the hipster’s at’. In this essay, I will be putting myself in its landscape to get first hand information confronting the myth. I am a African Brit of relative middle class upbringing, I’ve never fully felt involved with the discussion of socio-ethnic diversity and regeneration in urban realm, and see this as an opportunity to get the truth about a complex story. When it comes to Detroit a city of high African demographic, with stories that coincides with topical news and protest of ‘black lives matter’, I seek to understand the tactics of the black and the poor, in revitalising their city. When you say the word Detroit this is what people might imagine: ““Oh…that sucks.” “Have you ever seen anyone get shot?” “Does anyone even live in Detroit anymore?” “Wait, so you actually like it there?””2 1 Economics. “Is Detroit Doomed?” Accessed October 12, 2015. http://thefederalist. com/2014/03/12/is-detroit-doomed/ 2 “10 Things You Can Expect to Hear When You Say You’re from Detroit.” The Odyssey. Accessed October 12, 2015. http://theodysseyonline.com/butler/10-things-expect-hear-when-youre-fromdetroit/140041.

news

conclusion

core

Act i

tAll tAles from tHe Detroit mytH

A guiDe to informAl Agency tHAt enAble exPerience of tHe eVeryDAy ActiVity in Detroit, to exPloit tHeir stAtus witHin tHe city, before tHey get exPloiteD. wHile leArning from orAnge county, lA AnD sHoHo (sHoreDitcH AnD Hoxton), lonDon.

rebrAnDing tHe Detroit mytH

Page #4

Page #23

Page #39

POSITIONAL STATEMENT

//08/08/15 ARRIVING AT DETROIT CIT Y. it’s sligHtly be t ter tHAn you tHink!

//12/08/15 UNCANNY INTERPERSONAL CITY

Page #10

tHe imAge of tHe future - #24

PROLOGUE: be yonD tHe grime

tHe Post-metroPolis- #24 new economy- #26 Page #29

Page #12 INTRODUCTION TO DETROIT CITY

Page #14 C O N T E X T : mo t or t ow n/ motown Detroit

//10/08/15 DISCOVERING ALL CORNERS OF DETROIT

AllieD meDiA ProJects. ART AND THE MIND- #40

Page #42 //13/08/15 CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME VS LONDON HERE WE COME?

Eastern market Hamtramck

eAst coAst west coAst- #43

tHeming- #30

resurget cineribus. Detroit new VocAbulAry- #44

tHe green gArAge. self-orgAniseD tActics for PHysicAl cHAnge in Detroit#30 D-town fArming. An Art going beyonD tHe iDeA of fooD security- #31 sHow AnD tell- #32 Page #34

Page #46 PROJECTIONS conclusion- #46 moVe to Detroit- #46

//11/08/15 AN ENABLING CULTURE tHe streets is wAtcHing- #35

site: PeriPHeries of Down/ miDtown Detroit.

Act ii

tHe stAte of Detroit: tHe wAlkin PortrAit stuDio- #35

Page #48 bibliogrAPHy PHoto essAy

Detroit institute of Art [DiA]. forging relAtion-scAPes- # 36 tHe community- #36

fig 3. AbAnDoneD office builDing, Downtown Detroit. fig 2. View of Downton, AnD micHigAn centrAl stAtion from corktown 2001 15th st, Detroit, mi 48216

liVe/ work stuDio units At fotress stuDio 7332 oakland Ave, Detroit, mi 48211

PrologUe.

“

beyonD tHe grime

Cultural facts about the city of Detroit. The 11 reasons why you need to move to Detroit

APocAlyPse nAtionAl cHAmPions.

city witHin A city.

Much like the mutants who’ve been made stronger by the radiation, modern Detroiters are viewed as somehow being a new breed simply because they call the Detroit area home.

Detroit’s famous cluster of five interconnected skyscrapers is the city’s most conspicuous structure and is located right on the waterfront. Heralded as a city within a city, the Renaissance centre is the home to a vast quantity of businesses, shops, restaurants, a post office, a tailor, a florist, a pharmacy, a fitness centre, and movie theatre. You could literally work and live in the Renaissance centre without ever having to leave the confines of the structure, and given the general reluctance of many to brave the streets of Detroit, there are probably some that do.

trAnsPort system gets you from Point A, bAck to Point A in fiVe minutes.

fig 4. welcome center. eAstern mArket

The Detroit People mover is this big, 1960’s futuristic version of the model train that used to chug around your christmas tree when you were a child. It services 13 stops while running along a five kilometre track and gets you right back where you started from in no time.

bAnkAble film set. Detroit’s architecture may be all ruins, but they’re also bankable. The exterior of Michigan central station has been a required establishing shot for just about every film production set in Detroit, including “Four Brothers”, “Low Winter Sun”, and “Detroit 1-8-7”. Its interior was also used during the climactic scene of the movie “Transformers”.

tHey’re sPorts suPer VillAins. While teams like the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Yankees have huge fan followings outside their respective cities, no one outside of Detroit is happy when Detroit’s sports teams win. It is compounded by the fact that Detroit’s recent championship teams have been popularly viewed as ‘dirty’ (the 19891990 Pistons), Russian (the 1997-1998 Red Wings), purchased (the 2002 Red Wings).

tHe Home of blAck suPerHeroes. Detroit has the largest African-American population for any city with more than 100,000 residents. It could be the reason why it is DC Comics favourite set for telling black superhero origin stories, like that of Amazing-Man, Green Lantern (John Stewart) and Firestorm (Jason Rusch). And those who aren’t born here end up living here anyway; the television series of Marvel Comics’ famous vampire hunter, Blade, was set in the Detroit.

fig 5. eAstern mArket sHeD 3

Hot Dogs? tHey’Ve got you coVereD. The third acceptable condiment for a hot dog, behind the ketchup and mustard sauce, is all-meat chilli, and you can find hot dogs featuring these three delicious condiments best represented at the corner of Lafayette Boulevard and Michigan Avenue where American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island have been feuding for decades.

wooDwArD AVe is so crowDeD All of A suDDen. Woodward Dream Cruise, a major summer event that sprang up out of nowhere, attracts 1.5 million car enthusiasts. It showcases more than 40,000 classic cars to Detroit each year. It is not bad for an event that gave a high-end attendance estimate of 40,000 for its first year; but jammed the avenue in a perpetual gridlock, when a 250,000 crowd showed up.

Don’t sAy “soDA”. In Detroit, it’s called “pop.” Nothing will out you as an outsider faster than calling it “soda.”

Detroit PerfecteD music. It is the birthplace of: Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Martha Reeves, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, Hank Ballard, Del Shannon, Iggy Pop, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, MC5, Ted Nugent, Aaliyah, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Glenn Frey, Eminem, Kid Rock, J Dilla, The White Stripes. We thank you Detroit.

tHere is no soutH Detroit. Contrary to popular Journey Lyric, South Detroit is as fictional as Neverland. When Journeys: Steve Perry wrote the song “Don’t Stop Believin’”, he thought “South Detroit” sounded the best and was later disappointed to learn that there was no such thing. Downtown Detroit sits along the Detroit River, and crossing it puts you squarely in Canada. This hasn’t stopped the Detroit Red Wings from playing “Don’t Stop Believin’ after every home victory.”1

1 “30 Reasons You Need To Move To Detroit.” Movoto Blog. Accessed February 21, 2015. http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/move-todetroit/. Amended and paraphrased by the author.

introDUction to Detroit city

“when you have a problem, you always find a way to fix it. say someone was stuck at the bottom of a cliff and you had a rope to get them down, but the end of the rope snagged on a rock and you can’t pull it up. there’s always another way to get that person back up, and the solution is usually the person who figures out that other way.”1

1 “Protect the DIA”, Walk in portrait studio, storytelling with Oscar, Third grade student at: The James and Grace Lee Boggs School, 2014. Accessed February 10 2015. http://fws.cal.msu.edu:8080/~walke328/portrait_studio/cove2.html#

The daunting rate of Detroit’s decay presents a critical event of interest in modern culture, its new revival and dogged self belief pays tribute to the maxim that decorates the city’s seal ‘Speramus meliora; Resurget Cineribus’, which translates to ‘we hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes’. It is as applicable today as it was in 1805 when it was written following the great Detroit fire. Once a bustling major industrial city, Detroit in over three decades has offered itself as a blueprint for economic and population decline. It’s arduous recent history maps the beginning of its population shrinkage from the late 1940s and early 50s.2 The pattern emerges with the migration of the middle class from downtown Detroit to the suburbs. Following the 1970s riot, a deeper decline takes place. A mass exodus of Detroiters followed the oil to cities like Texas and Oklahoma, leaving the once labelled arsenal of democracy to become the murder capital of the USA. Today there are agencies envisioning the city’s rebirth within its urban / suburban neighbourhoods. The Detroit future city’s frame work – the anti-master plan, is a collective resource for businesses, philanthropists, community groups and city agencies alike to consult about services and resources3, because Detroit doesn’t need a master plan, it already has one. This antidote plan is a rough course that envisions public private transformations all over Detroit for the next half century.

The study focuses on a selection of organisations that generate a cultural economy within peripheries of downtown districts. In 2013, Detroit filed for bankruptcy. Later that year the emergency city manager discussed the appraisal value of the Detroit Institute of Arts’ (DIA) collection in preparation for selling off its contents to cover the city’s debts4. The ordinary person’s requirement to experience culture is a basic tenet of a healthy society, as public access to culture was the product of a social revolution. With Detroit’s 80% majority of African/ American population, 32% of which are 21 years old or under5, it therefore follows that as a member of this demographic, I seek to contribute toward a debate to advocate its emerging informal cultural economy. This is not propaganda for the minority communities. It is more a pronouncement of love for the dogged belief of the Walter Schenkel argues that the objectives and goals of urban areas and regions should be formulated in words rather than in plans, i.e. “software” is more important than “hardware”, and informality is more important than formality.6 The study aims to research and investigate these existing operators in Detroit urban suburbs, an area with acutely limited assets, to understand their simple, low-cost public offerings, and improvements within their neighbourhoods. The project can be broken down into two key acts.

There are no misunderstandings of the causes of Detroit’s decline, its reliance on a single industry, lack of an efficient transport system, racial tensions, coupled with major shortcomings in leadership imposed over the past half century spun a complex matrix that corroded the city from within.

2 Lifepix. Behind Detroit’s Notorious Ruins. Accessed November 12, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ii3r4X5Woo 3 “Imagining The Detroit Of The Future.” The Huffington Post. Accessed February 20, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/detroit-future-citydetroit-works-project_n_2436626.html

In act one, the dissertation chapters will journey through the despoiled Detroit in an analysis of approaches to development offered by informal operators like the Green garage, DIA’s Inside/out, Corrine Vermuelen’s walk in studio e.t.c. These artistic operators are important because they shine a fresh light on Detroit. Using an inductive approach, I aim to identify patterns in which these artistic operators perform spatial practice, to generate a critical understanding of why it is worth celebrating. I aim to demystify their working habit to understand their philosophy of enabling, through case study, documentary photograph and interviews. It is important as Detroit’s mismanagement of ethnic diversity is a socio-spatial concern. I intend to begin to answer the question of how to best equip these operators as they seek to achieve impact on the long-term, and withstand the perilous dangers caused by gentrification on ‘the informal’.

Act two presents the opportunity to reflect on the conditions that these agencies create, in a comparison with other cities that are further along the urbanisation curve or had an opposing trajectory in the 20th century post-industrial condition. Like Orange county, LA an economically driven district, with a structured social cohesion, what Jane Jacobs calls ‘grouped colonies’, that thrives on the lack of an obvious centre. And Shoreditch and Hoxton (ShoHo) district in London, to understand what we can learn from their shortcomings to form projections for Detroit’s future. A comparison of the European perspective, coupled with an American precedent, will give a balanced concept on how these operators can reclaim the city. Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber posit that reclaiming the city should start with reclaiming a new collective subjectivity. 7 Art posses an emotional logic, it is a portrayal of personal feelings and opinions about a subject. Its capacity to show what others are going through, leaves its reader/ users less bereft. Therefore, Detroit can use art as the subjective tool in the case of the spatial agents, to begin the reclaiming action described by Bitter and Helmut. This is a sentiment shared by Katie, a Detroit resident that “a lot of urban exploring going on, a lot of people entering into buildings, crossing boundaries, lines, breaking rules, acting out on opinions, and structure, and totally breaking the boundaries that are set up by the capitalist mentality... microcosms of community, they are really pushing right now with gentrification and structure of the city, which I’m opposed to. It is really, sort of an upheaval of young artists to be replaced with money and figures”.8

Within downtown Detroit, there is an immediate demand for these cultural economies as a consequence of an increased need for regeneration. Their spatial manifestations will results in provisional re-use of vacant sites, often privately owned buildings like disused factories. It is especially convenient as the Detroit landscape is marred with a collection of these sites. These temporary users fleet between somewhat breaking the law and producing a space and activity that brings order. There’s no set typology for this type of temporary use, instead each user/ actor seeks to examine their site and appropriate it for their use9. To date, there is much written about the plight and demise of Detroit, and the potential of informal environment mainly based on the European city. However, intrinsic differences exist between the two climates, like the role of central government. The US lack a centralised planning agenda for the economy, industry or importantly for places like Detroit’s urban policy. The local tax base bears the burden of public policy and amenities like schools, police, cultural institution e.t.c. From 1950- 2004 Detroit lost 60% of its tax base,10leaving public services in disarray. Conversely, in European countries such as the UK, the rich and the poor pool resources together to spread wealth nationally, using government mechanisms such as the National Health Service (NHS). The research is focusing on the cultural economy of informal organisations and their related facilities. It is not propaganda for the minority within communities. It is more a pronouncement of love for the dogged belief of the middle class American, of which family members are a part of. These informal post-fordist organisations harbour the potential to be sustainable, as they operate in the realms of both short and long term planning. Informal-isation like these are linked to key features of advanced capitalism.11

9 Oswalt, Philipp, Klaus Overmeyer, and Philipp Misselwitz. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: Dom Pub, 2013. 4 Walsh, David. “The Defense of Culture and the Crisis in Detroit.” Defendthedia,. Accessed September 17, 2013. http://defendthedia.org 5 USA public Census. Accessed February 15, 2014. http://www.census.gov/ easystats/# 6 Schenkel, Walter, “Governance and urban regeneration: Trade off between competitiveness and social cohesion in Zürich”, September, 2006 Lausanne, Workshop 4: Ecological Planning and Sustainable Urbanism: What projects for what housing?.

7 Bitter, Sabine and Weber, Helmut. “The Neoliberal Frontline: Urban Struggles in Post-Socialist Societies”, The Neoliberal Frontline: Urban Struggles in PostSocialist Societies, http://boo.mi2.hr/~tom/operacija_novine.pdf. p 26.

10 Doucet, Brian. “What We Really Find When We Compare Detroit and the North-East of England.” The Guardian, May 15, 2014, sec. Public Leaders Network. http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/the-northerner/2014/ may/15/compare-detroit-and-north-east-of-england.

8 “Protect the DIA”, Walk in portrait studio, storytelling with Katie, Fortress Studios, 2013. Accessed 10 February 2015.Transcripts: http://www.dia.org/portrait_ studio/cove1.html#

11 Hitz, Hansruedi, Schmid, Christian, and Wolff, Richard. “Urbanization in Zurich: Headquarter Economy and City-Belt.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12. no. 2 (1994). p 167–85.

conteXt Motor toWn/ MotoWn Detroit

cultural life generally began in the 1970s, which coincides with the degeneration of its beloved motor industry. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 shook the American auto industry into trying to reconcile high volume car production with low energy consumption. A satisfactory resolution of these issues were never fully reconciled, neither was Detroit’s economic health. Now figures the 2010 census show, the city has a population of 713,777. A 60 % drop from a peak population of over 1.8 million at the 1950 census17. The story of Detroit is a mixture of comedy and Greek tragedy – it is disturbing, surprising but, at this juncture can finally prove to be inspiring.

Eleanor: “We basically want to have a co-op, to where, you know, people are gardening, people are putting out art... I grew up here[Detroit]...I feel that my awareness of the world happened since I’ve been here rather than in a little box in the middle of nowhere. That’s the thing, we have so much space here, why wouldn’t we take all these huge lots of land and make us a selfsustaining culture where we grow our own food instead of having it brought in from everywhere else? And it’s happening, but it just needs to happen more.”12 Detroit made a name as a medium-sized manufacturing city, by 1900. Nothing was unique in its manufacturing base to explain the dramatic and meteoric changes that would occur post 1905. However, under the influence of the automobile, Detroit rose from 16th position in 1900 to 4th of America’s biggest industrial cities by 1940. As the city grew exponentially, it was quickly nicknamed motor-town. It never truly addressed the social geography and spatial arrangements to courier the middle class professionals to its growing distant suburbs i.e. from Woodward avenue and Jefferson avenue by the waterfront to metropolitan regions. The poorer newcomers were scattered from the waterfront to unorganised districts like 8-mile, the hometown of US hip-hop artist Eminem. Detroit commercial connection straddles the Canada–U.S. border in and around the Ambassador bridge. It holds roughly one-half Michigan state’s population. It is like Chicago, Americas grain center, which hold a sizable portion of Illinois state’s population, but occupies an important position in lake navigation, where St Mary’s canal, the western railroads, and Canada lines meet the lake tonnage, this location brought a surprising amount of business13. In the early 20th century, Michigan along with the rest of the USA mid-central region 12 “Protect the DIA”, Walk in portrait studio, storytelling with Elanor, Detroit resident, 2013(printed 2014). Accessed February 10 2015.Transcripts: http://fws.cal. msu.edu:8080/~walke328/portrait_studio/cove2.html# 13 Tunell, George G. “The Diversion of the Flour and Grain Traffic from the Great Lakes to the Railroads.” Journal of Political Economy 5, no. 3 (June 1, 1897): 340–75. doi:10.2307/1817751. p 340.

prospered as the mass production heartland of the country. But the region missed out on its share of the lucrative research and development business that sprung up in the mid 20th century. Loosing out on the historical fight, that is the great research and development centers grow in the west. Resulting in a lack of innovation, democratic power and humanistic spirit, as “in Michigan, development is what goes on next year’s car; research is what goes on the year afters’s model”14 Unlike Americas grain center, it occupies the most important position seven-miles below Lake St. Clair and eighteen-miles above the mouth of the Detroit river. The cash crisis 1958, proved crucial in this downward spiral. When the state couldn’t meet its bills, research and development centres wouldn’t dare consider the state for crucial new science and development research positions. Since then, a continuous battle remains between a democratic government and republican legislature, and the states fiscal structure is a hot issue. Within this era, a European architect with a magnetic modernist vision- Mies van de Rohe built a string of housing in downtown Lafayette park, amidst an ongoing urban crisis. Now it is home to the largest collection of van der Rohe- designed buildings in the world, one of many positive qualities often overlooked in the media.15 By 1970 the visible drain in the city centre is made explicit by an announcement of $750 million housing project in all white Dearborn by Henry ford II. Oil millionaires also spend their millions in housing in suburbs beyond the reach of the black and middle class16. Detroit city like most others, is evidence of that diligent capitalist development evolving over centuries of hard-work. And somewhere down the line the seemingly endless capital ceased, and so did the cumulative ambitions of the executive class. The gradual assault on Detroit’s and its public/ 14 Holli, Melvin G., ed. Detroit. Documentary History of American Cities. New York: New Viewpoints, 1976. 15 Aubert, Danielle, Lana Cavar, and Natasha Chandani, eds. Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit. New York, NY: Metropolis Books, 2012. 16 Holli, Melvin G., ed. Detroit. Documentary History of American Cities. New York: New Viewpoints, 1976.

17 http://www.census.gov/popest/data/metro/totals/2012/tables/CBSAEST2012-02.csv

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fig 6. growtH of Detroit in PictogrAms lAnD AnnexAtion source: based on pictograms on Detroitography blog

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Act i tAll tAles from tHe Detroit mytH

“

Architecture has been defined in terms of one activity, and that activity is adding to the world. A few years ago i realized the profession was as if lobotomized- it was stuck conceiving of itself only in terms of adding things and not in terms of taking away or erasing things. the same intelligence for adding ought to also deal with its debris. it’s a very depressing phenomenon that we can deal with decaying conditions in the city only by inventing weak attempts to restore them or to declare them historical. it would be much more powerful and creative to use other tactics, such as taking away something and then building something entirely new.”18

18 Heron, Katrina. “From Bauhaus to Koolhaas”. Wired Magazine. Accessed June 21, 2015. http://archive.wired.com/wired/ archive/4.07/koolhaas.html?pg=1&topic

//08/08/15 ARRIVING AT DETROIT CITY. it’s sligHtly better tHAn you tHink!19 The journey to Detroit Metro Wayne airport wasn’t particularly hassle free. The cross country flight scheduling from Chicago O’hare to and from Detroit meant that an extra day is to be spent in the so called perilous city of America’s rust belt. The best offer, was to board the 0700 hours flight on the compact 100- seat Boeing 757 plane, operating at full capacity. It still hadn’t registered that I’d be traveling to the city often maligned as dangerous, the crime capital of the USA. I slept like a little lamb. The flight is turbulence free, and as I awake to observe the clientele Detroit attracts, I come to the conclusion that the occupants aren’t dissimilar to the folks I traveled with from London to Washington Dulles. There isn’t a sense or a disproportion of a certain class, race, or creed. Some folks are traveling first class too. There’s almost an eerie silence in the cabin, as if they are all privy to a foreigners impending first visit to Detroit. Then the element of danger crosses my mind. I touch down. I am welcomed into an air-conditioned and glamorous airport emporium. I am searching around for signs saying “beware of the gangs”, or hints of squalor. I fail in my search. Detroit has returned to the municipal-bond market for the first time since the city emerged from bankruptcy20,you know. Of course this is a futile exercise, the airport is an embodied advert for the city, wait till you step outside. Traveling through the customary airport travelators and baggage claim sections, I use the complimentary Wi-fi to charter an Uber taxi. But on the outside, there is only a stark difference in temperature. It’s a hot summers day. I arrive at Hostel Detroit, Detroit’s only budget back-packing resort. It is clean and tidy with a rustic charm. My first impressions of Detroit, is its shear scale. This town wasn’t made for walking, nor are most towns in America! The roads are gigantic. I’m excited, I see a fair few trees, and epic scenery from the stolen glimpses out of the taxi cab. One thing Detroit has in abundance is acres and acres of space. Nothing or no one feels fenced in, the noise levels are low compared to the constant hustle and bustle of London streets. I notice no crane or construction work taking place. The city feels docile and a little abandoned. It’s starting to look like the many images you see of the city. I’m accustomed to the gritty pictures of the crumbling houses and factories, the many homeless people accompanied by stray animals. From the corner of the hostel, you have an unobstructed view of Michigan central station and the corporate glass towers of the motor companies downtown. If Detroit is the greatest comeback city21, it really isn’t showing it in today’s standard form. It is a city filled with yesterday’s melancholia. I spend the first few hours on the complimentary hostel Detroit’s city tour. With my new hostel buddies, we visit the nearby revitalised Corktown district. I go to bed.

19 “Detroit Slogans: Surely We Can Do Better Than ‘Detroit, America’s Greatest Comeback City”. Huffington Post Detroit. Accessed September 2015. http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/06/detroit-slogans-funny-greatest-comeback-city_n_3223577.html. Suggested campaign slogan in a slogan competition. 20 For more information about the deal http://www.marketwatch.com/story/detroit-sells-first-municipal-bonds-since-emerging-from-bankrupt cy-2015-08-19-141033025. Accessed September 2015. 21 “Detroit Slogans: Surely We Can Do Better Than ‘Detroit, America’s Greatest Comeback City”. Huffington Post Detroit. Accessed September 2015. http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/06/detroit-slogans-funny-greatest-comeback-city_n_3223577.html. Suggested campaign slogan in a slogan competition.

THE IMAGE OF THE FUTURE

“the construction of identities is fundamental to the dynamic of societies, and cultural identity is the process by which social actors build their own meaning according to cultural attributes”22 tHe Post-metroPolis The Detroit image is that of an entertained hip, diverse patronage23. The many documentaries and newspaper columns may construe it as a hard city, but there are so many people and start-up ideas, practicing exactly what they love, showing others that it’s okay to love your craft and earn a living from it. Periodically, over time, the city around them is almost simultaneously becoming unstable, basically creating a situation that no longer fits a period of expansion. According to Edward Soja, this leads to periods of experimentation, which is said of Detroit, were a testing of the transformative capabilities of the city’s grain is the new trend of development. Cases like Detroit, deconstructs and reconstructs what the western society think of as a modern metropolis. This 20th century metropolitan image has been carved and broken down and according to Soja, it is disappearing, with new forms appearing24, announcing this as the post metropolitan transition. The emerging post metropolis identity is constituted of the old form not disappearing entirely, but breaking down from its consolidated and fairly stable state. Changing into something significantly unlike what was there of old25. This is supported by Marx’s assertion that “we do not anticipate the world dogmatically, but rather wish to find the new world through criticism of the old.”26

22 Castells, Manuel. “The Relationship between Globalization and Cultural Identity in the early 21st Century”, Forum 2004 Barcelona. Accessed September, 2015 http://www.barcelona2004.org/eng/banco_del_conocimiento/documentos/ficha. cfm?IdDoc=1628 23 Cagle, Jake. “Awesome City Guide: Detroit’s Corktown Neighborhood.” Awesome Mitten. Accessed September 6, 2015. http://www.awesomemitten.com/ awesome-city-guide-corktown/ 24 Soja, Edward, “Restructuring the Industrial Capitalist City” in Mulder, Arjen, and Joke Brouwer. TransUrbanism. V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002. p 96. 25 Ibid. 26 Ollman, Bertell, Marx’s Vision of Communism. Accessed September 2015. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/vision_of_communism.php

N Fig 10. corktown’s lAnDmArks source: illustration by John kalmar. Awesome mitten blog

This is a new way to think about urbanism and beyond, most prevalently in the history of Detroit as the industrial capitalist city, where its actions of the past thirty years has proven to be the most dramatic. The outputs therefore of this new postindustrial metropolis city are consolidated by a creation of polynucleated city. The rise of the regional city. Which is evidenced in the compartmentalisation of Detroit into very legible and autonomous quarters in Corktown, Eastern market e.t.c. These districts are, at least from the outside, performing independent from one another. Allowing a liberation of ideas and settings to foster in their regions. These areas once designated as suburbia of Detroit is in the post-metropolis condition, the city regions that we celebrate.

new economy Soja argues we should celebrate this type of growth in cities — the transformation of suburbia, because the city is resilient by adopting this model. He notices this change in Orange County (OC) in west-coast USA. The OC has no obvious centre, but it possesses a large concentration of jobs, museums, and concert halls, all trademarks of a metropolis. The OC doesn’t fit into established categories of the metropolis. It is a place that was entirely suburban or rural as recent as 1960, and easily lends itself as a reference point for accelerating Detroit’s current circumstance. For instance, Corktown Detroit’s oldest neighbourhood, in small instances can be paralleled as a miniature OC. Originally established by Irish immigrants from county Cork in the 1850s. In years gone by it has been the symbolic to its nowdefunct icons: Michigan Central Station and Tiger Stadium. The landmarks later stood as emblems of the neighbourhood -- rundown, rural, forgotten. The surrounding clusters were and still are of low-density housing, loosely organised now than it was before. However, the district today stands as one of Detroit’s sought after neighbourhood27. Many of Detroit’s cultural commodities, putting it on the national cultural map are centred in Corktown, most famously Slow’s Bar-BQ. It encouraged the neighbourhood’s revitalization. This urban nuclei – Slow’s, transformed a strip of derelict storefronts on Michigan Avenue, and its national recognition and popularity has snow-balled development in the surrounding area. At present, young professionals congregate at its many recently opened local businesses, where there is a real buzz of patrons eager to welcome in the neighbourhood’s renaissance. It’s becomes difficult to distinguish as easily as we could in the past between city and suburb, we have deep seated notions of a modern metropolis as consisting of a simple central city of peak densities and stimulating heterogeneity surrounded by a relatively homogenous, low-density, commuter dominated and markedly less stimulating suburbia.28 This is the urban condition 27 Cagle, Jake. “Awesome City Guide: Detroit’s Corktown Neighborhood.” Awesome Mitten. Accessed September 6, 2015. http://www.awesomemitten.com/ awesome-city-guide-corktown/ 28 Soja, Edward, “Restructuring the Industrial Capitalist City” in Mulder,

in which Jean Baudrillard shows contempt for in his essay The Consumer Society. He comments that western society is of “total homogenization, [a] levelling of environment into a systematic attractive-repulse ‘ambience’ with its fountains and artificial vegetation evolved into a perpetual springtime”29.This situation is becoming less prevalent in Detroit’s context. One is able to spot the opposite trend. As the whole city labours with its comeback bid, the individual start-up, randomly arranged across the city, is at hand to generate a nucleus, to stage an act or a buzz that attracts income from far and near, giving birth the ‘post-metropolis’ condition. There is an internal industrial restructuring, the fundamental changes in the city are coming from within the city, as opposed to external forces such as globalisation. When we look back to the industrial periods of the 20th century, it seems clear that the industrial ‘Fordist’ or ‘Fordism’ system that led the post war economies in developed countries were flawed. As it caused massive social unrest, upheaval and protest. It created the unions, because many were left out of wealth creation. It gave specifically urban focus on protest, a need therefore arose to find a way of changing the metropolis to help stimulate the growth of a ‘new economy’ to prevent further social upheaval. It was this urban restructuring process that would drive the destabilising of the metropolis and the emergence of significantly different urban economic system, often described as post-fordist – flexible capitalism – new economy. This pattern of uneven regional development has become “so firmly established within advanced capitalist countries. In much of the same way that developments within the global economy seem to be something that the neat compartmentalisation of 1st/2nd/3rd worlds could not handle”30, says Soja. What we can deduce is both almost a “first-worlding” of the third world cities and in turn “third worlding” of the first world cities, to achieve a unifying common image for the future. Soja’s claim is backed up by Harveys statement that the new capitalist development is complex and fascinating, as it destabilises, deconstructs and restructures older urban patterns, forms and boundaries, creating something entirely fresh at a later point in time31.

Arjen, and Joke Brouwer. TransUrbanism. V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002. p 92. 29 Gane, Mike. Baudrillard’s Bestiary: Baudrillard and Culture. London. New York: Routledge, 1991. p 71. 30 Soja, Edward, “Restructuring the Industrial Capitalist City” in Mulder, Arjen, and Joke Brouwer. TransUrbanism. V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002. p 92. 31 Morris, R. J. The Journal of Modern History 60, no. 3 (September 1, 1988): 574–77. doi:10.2307/1881406. P 574.

//10/08/15 DISCOVERING ALL CORNERS OF DETROIT Eastern market

Parking

ATM

Parking Deck

Restrooms

Recycle Station

For Rent

Double Up Food Bucks

Bridgecard

Community Kitchen

Engulfed by Detroit are two smaller cities called Highland park, a small farming town and former Chrysler HQ. And Hamtramck, pronounced ham-tram-ik, another rural town that staved annexation from its fierce neighbour Detroit. Today, I attempt to organise the most inexpensive excursion by renting a bike to journey towards the north of the city, so as to obtain an intimate experience of the city. I set off to Popps packing in Hamtramck. With a mission statement as an experimental arts venue aimed at promoting dialogue and cultural exchange between the local, national and international communities32. I was eager to see some of their outputs. En-route, I travel via Detroit’s venerable Eastern market and Lafayette park to visit other maker-spaces I’ve heard of, like OmniCorp. This, another self defined ‘hacker-space’ 33,est. 2010 by Jeff Sturges, with a mandate to enhance a community skill set, creative thinking, and production capabilities. Eastern market with its increasing pace causes the client, tourist and salesman character relationships to appear indistinguishable. Here there is a sense that it is a stronghold for Detroit working food district. With closely knit stalls reminiscent of the european shopping arcade. But the maps don’t lie, its a long and arduous journey from here, north towards Hamtramck. The boulevards are flat and continue straight for miles. There are no city mechanisms, service or infrastructure to obstruct you in the quest to get to your desired destination. As you navigate past the I-94 Edsel Ford freeway, following St Aubin street from midtown, there begins to be more frequent passing of the odd cyclist or pedestrian, that always give an acknowledging gesture of a nod or muted “how’s it going”, as if to say “No car? The struggle is real brother!”, unknown to them, that this is my choice. I meander through and think, Midtown needs a little bit of Eastern market. Detroit needs more of Eastern market’s.

Hamtramck Nothing prepares you for your introduction to Hamtramck past East Edsel Ford freeway. Through St Aubin, the street that ushers you into Hamtramck territory. As a kid, I imagined that crossing between cities, would offer an immediate change of scenery similar to changing from the deserts of rural Nevada to neon lights of Las Vegas. But I later discovered that off the map things aren’t so dramatic. The space here is seemingly abundant. The scale of architecture changes slightly. There is a clear sense that no new development has been to it’s shores in a while. There are ghostly expansive avenues, mostly one directional, as the streets parallel will take you in the opposite direction. This is factory centre, with huge disused mounds of concrete. With the freight trains slowly chugging away in the background, Hamtramck goes about its business quietly. There is only the odd human to be seen for miles. There are sporadic vehicular movement within junctions, the emptiness justifies the reason every vehicular journey is only about ten minutes long. Up to northern Hamtramck, and the main boulevard of shops on either side sandwich the main road. As I continue down the road to see any resemblance of life and public space attraction. Detroit with its one hundred and thirty eight square-miles, and its neighbouring city, is ripe for massive scale sub/urban agriculture or something.

Fig 11. eAstern Comerica ParkmArket mAP guiDe & Ford Field easternmarket.com source:

32 “About Popps Packing,” 2015. http://www.poppspacking.org/about-popps/ 33 Hacker-space definition “is a community-operated workspace where people with common interests, often in computers, machining, technology, science, digital art or electronic art, can meet, socialize and collaborate.” see more at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace.

Dequindre Cut (Recreational Path)

tHeming The research identifies and categories tactics effected by citizens to re-appropriate urban space into three different thematic cultures. By categorizing them into three distinct themes, one creates a framework that offers a capacity to analyse its idiosyncratic transformative meanings and social relations. The themes, helps us understand culture, but not the kind of ‘pastness’ as in traditional social organisation, heritage or habit. But as Arjun Appadurai describes that “in culture, ideas of the future, as much as those about the past, are embedded and nurtured”34. We can understand how to create culture in other ways of doing architecture, to reduce the image of Detroit as the poverty stricken city. Why is culture a capacity? And why is it worth building and strengthening? This section gives some ideas with which to strengthen it. Definitions of culture range from ideas generally on human creativity and values to social organisation, heritage and expressions. Therefore, how does one engage in urban renewal, and create the type of culture Appadurai affirms? The dissertation posits that this can be achieved with creating a set of ideas that are outlined in the themes below. A. Through a physical intervention, that alters spaces to elicit change in a neighbourhood. To make a physical intervention – a sign post that relates closely to the centre definition of culture as a property or monument that expresses the ideals of its context. This is the work traditionally associated as the role of the architect; to make a building. But, the physical intervention is not limited to that of a building, nor is its creation limited to the architect’s remit. This dissertation, in the context of Detroit sets out to thematically identify what can be classified as generating physical spaces. B. Through working and facilitating a spatial network of people to mobilise change in their neighbourhoods. To make a network or body of people. Those who gather around to make the physical intervention work, and work well in its context. 34

Appadurai, Arjun, A capacity to aspire. University press 2004. p 19.

C. Through offering the capability and privilege to participate in the work of the imagination to adapt their neighbourhood for future change. To bring the future back into significance with a capacity to aspire35, built on Charles Taylor’s concept of “recognition” of multiculturalism36. A facet of social organisation that Detroit struggled to address in the past, which modern society urges us to consider in our daily life. In this section, one seeks to understand the idea of self organisation, local community practices and its ecological benefit. Guttari’s theory that the culture, sociality and economy, cannot be separated from ecology37, is justified by tracing the thematic connections. With each theme, the case study incorporates a style of thinking and working that starts with an initial brief and set of parameters intrinsic to life in Detroit. Their creative processes can be characterised by cycles of hypothesis ideation and prototyping – be it for an object, system, or environment. They are projects working to better their communities, becoming catalysts for social change.

tHe green gArAge self-orgAniseD tActics for PHysicAl cHAnge in Detroit A number of institutions can be categorised as intervening physically to alter their neighbourhood. In a conventional sense of a physical intervention, the rise of repurposed land, used for agriculture in an urban setting, is worth consideration for the research study. There are scores of urban farming initiatives including the D-Town farm - a fledgling community garden that have acquired two acres of land, in mid-town Detroit for growing food. But we begin with the Green Garage, an altered guise of physical intervention. It is a business incubator and “community 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Guattari, Félix. The Three Ecologies. Bloomsbury Revelations. London . New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

of people dedicated to Detroit’s sustainable future”38. In 2008, owners, Tom and Peggy Brennan purchased a former 1920s garage showroom for the model T-based vehicles. With a community of over two-hundred individuals, the Brennan’s completed a three year sustainable renovation of the garage, opening in 2011. It stands, in the words of Peggy “a start up business decelerator39 that supports a ‘co-working community” (a title chosen by green garage to reflect their populace), by lending a helping hand to businesses of all scales interested in a triple bottom line. That is businesses that cares for the health for the environment, its economics, its community.

Antonio Negri in his book Multitudes, says the “commons”, as in community space, can be a new way of thinking about capitalist production. He retorts saying production has become “common”, and therefore, creating value today is about networking subjectivities and capturing, diverting, appropriating what they do with the commons that they began”43 This is backed up with the rising stock of social networking media applications, that highlights our collective need to belong to a commune. Green Garage is a product that attempts to – based on or influenced by its personal feelings and taste, change the commons [Detroit] building block at a time.

Considering the neighbouring conditions of the garage, its different cultural policies, regional independence and lack of creative activities in urban landscapes, neighbourhood and thoroughfare, the building glistens in the National Registry of Historic Places. It is worth celebrating as it can be categorised as a spatial agent according to Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till’s Spatial Agency. It provides a template as to how one might operate not only in uncertain times, but as a matter of principle.40They prioritise value not solely on the economic market, but are concerned with ethical justice.

As agents actions is guided by an initial transformative intent, but because of the dynamics of the structural context, that intent has to been responsive and flexible to suit the commons.

The garage itself is a social space and according to Lefebvre formation, social (spatial) relation is a social product41. With this Lefebvre seizes the production of space from the clutches of specialist most notable architects + planners and places it in a much broader social context.42 Allowing for the Green Garage commune to partake in this form of spatial production. Their method of re/appropriation is two fold, 1.) in the renovation of a ragged historic garage. 2.) The production of a network of people present, residing within the renovated space who focus on the temporal aspect of the building and community. Currently, over fifty businesses are in-residence. The business incubator model helps grow surrounding neighbourhoods naturally. And as they also house an Urban Sustainability Library, the mission is to connect people to the resources they need to live more sustainably. In addition, they run supportive and active groups, that represent the notion of the ‘truth window’ for the garage. They also measure and provide data that helps to understand and tweak the building’s performance. The success of this mission has yielded exponential results, in further spatial agent missions in the form of an ongoing conversion of another building called El Moore. A 19th century apartment complex, with the target to renovate and achieve a near-zero energy for the complex, that will house yearly rental apartments in addition to nightly rental spaces. 38 “Green Garage Detroit,” n.d. http://www.greengaragedetroit.com/index. php?title=Main_Page 39 The word decelerator is used to emphasize the nature of the garage, as the antithesis to a business accelerator, where the general ideas are to make quick profits. 40 Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Abingdon, Oxon [England] ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. p 27. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

D-town fArming An Art going beyonD tHe iDeA of fooD security. The 19th century philosopher Friedrich Hegel posits that art is merely the sensuous presentation of ideas.44 The point of Art, according to Hegel is not to come up with new or strange ideas – Art for Art’s sake, but to present those good, helpful, important thoughts we already think we know, to make them stick more imaginatively in our minds. Therefore the D-town farming is art. D-Town Farm is a self determined community of urban agriculturist. They exist to tackle the unjust food system that has failed their city. It attempts to wrest the production of food from the clutches of the capitalist business, and develop in its residents mind the art of being connected to daily provisions. Ten miles south of the Eight mile road, the urban Farm (an accessory to the Detroit’s larger Community markets group, and a subsidiary of Detroit Black Community Food Security Network), aims to take control of their surrounding and their psyche. On two acres of land in which they rent for one dollar yearly for the next ten years, gives them necessary freedom from an apparent unjust food system. Their significant mission of food security rings true in a place like Detroit, where good food remains largely inaccessible by its impoverished local authority. As a consequence theres a reliance on fast food. “With its nitrates preservative meats, severely lacking in B-Vitamins”45, it can be argued to have an adverse impact on their moods, as one is “prescribed b-complexes or is a recipient of B-Vitamins injections for mood issues”46. This is an issue in urban communities with lack of mutual knowledge, were knowledge is shared and ascribed through collaborative practice. D-town farm in a simple way, that faces this issue head on. Again, one comprises D-Town farm as spatial agents, because the modes of behaviour and making set out by Awan, Schneider, and Till is said to posses spatial judgement. Evidenced in the spatial judgement and appropriation of a two acre plot. 43 Ravel, Judith and Negri, Tony. “Inventer le Commun des Hommes”, Multitudes 31. Paris: Exils, 2008. p.7 44 de Botton, Alain, The School of Life. PHILOSOPHY - Hegel. Accessed June 28, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5JGE3lhuNo 45 46 Ibid.

Coupled with a dissemination of mutual knowledge about food; with agents acting as facilitator rather than auteurs, there is a critical awareness of the fact that the behaviour of a community is a symptom of severe issue of poor nutrition. D-Town farm seeks to rectify this.

Detroit’s urban agriculture initiatives are diverse in scope and formality, and are reshaping the local food supply neighbourhood by neighbourhood, while building secure and sustainable communities.

As a farm its not a physical structure, but it operates under what Doina Petrescu defines as ‘making a rhizome’. In that the farm develop(s), sometimes initiate, then support and prop up the networks that emerge around the actions, spatial systems, processes and effects that allow both personal and collective futures, so as to seize the socio-spatial entity that arises.47 With the role and agency with which the farm provides, the networks are in constant flux. The agents role diminishing over time, while it concurrently develops the capacity to grow and reproduce the rhizome all over town. With smaller subsidiary farms, with a majority of produce sold in eastern market.

sHow AnD tell

Another proponent of the Farm is an awareness to the bigger issues of nutrition and its links with behaviour attitudes of the community, especially in children. Their system, again is a method of acting differently not only in times of need but as a matter of principle, because it can withstand external forces like food drought. The negative implications of food and its affecting power on the community can be seen in the ever present fast food market. As agents their actions were guided by an initial transformative intent48 of their immediate surrounding, but because of the dynamics of the social context, that intent has been ever more responsive and flexible. Reaching far into concepts of whole foods and its effects on cognitive function. Spatial agency describes for us what it is to be an agent “the agent is one who effects change through the empowerment of others”49. The D-Town community who works in sharing nutrition knowledge, fuels the community’s ability to control its actions, to heal itself. If you can change what goes into the body, tamper with it, you have the ability to control a group of people who are part of the food network. D-Town farm is local, the control of their food sources, enables the capacity to control and alter its state of affairs. To remain influential in the perils of change. This frees it to engage in their spatial environments in ways previously unknown or unavailable to them, opening up new freedoms and potentials as a results of initially reconfiguring a run down space. 50 As Alvin, a D-town Farmer puts it “once they [Detroit children] get their hands in that soil they’ll be less violent.”51 47 Petrescu, Doina, “gardeners of the commons” in Petrescu, Doina, and Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée. Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices within and across. [Paris]: [s.n.], 2010. 48 Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Abingdon, Oxon [England] ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. p 31 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 “Protect the DIA”, Walk in portrait studio, storytelling with Alvin, D-Town Farm, 2013 (printed 2014). Accessed February 10, 2015.Transcripts: http://www.dia. org/portrait_studio/cove2.2.html#

The climate of creativity is relatively high in Detroit, as the impoverished municipalities have taken one step back from formal arrangement and organisation of its city. Earlier it was noted that positives can be drawn from breaking the city into regions, in the overall culture and development of Detroit. It is at this juncture, were the ever present creative undercurrent can begin to organise the Detroit future city. The idea is that the poor need to claim, capture, refine and define certain ways of doing things in spaces they already control and then use these to show donors, municipalities and other activist that these “precedents” are good ones, to encourage other actors to invest further in them52. This according to Appadurai, is the politics of “show and tell”. In his essay the Capacity to Aspire, he emphasizes the need of precedent setting, in the context of the poor community in India, where an Alliance group cultivates the aspiration capacity amongst its members with ideas for urban change. It is put into practice in the production of self-produced public toilets in Mumbai, India. This generates a mutual knowledge of procuring and delivering within a public space, that which was expanded earlier, where citizens are allowed to exchange in a spirit of shared enterprise, negotiate in the creation of this public urban form – the public toilet, in the case of Mumbai, and urban agriculture in Detroit. The role of precedent setting is also important in the plight of Detroit, the neither impotent nor all powerful spatial agents could stand as negotiators of existing conditions, to potentially reform them to show and tell of their agencies to the municipalities, highlighting their importance to the district. This, according to Soja, will restrict the flagship “projects” or “project-isation” that underlies most official urban change. Thus, agents can incorporate their output into Detroit Future city planning. In this way, the projects can be supported better. With municipal networks, funding is easily accelerated, and in this cyclical process, continues the urban change revolution within districts.

Appadurai, Arjun, A capacity to aspire. University press 2004. p 19

through everyday activities.”60

tHe streets is wAtcHing56

//11/08/15 AN ENABLING CULTURE “Everyone in Detroit, has more than one hustle”, utters my tour guide. What he means by that seemingly casual remark, is that the Detroit demographic is multifaceted. This remark is bolstered by a blogpost on Awesome-Mitten, that describes the Detroit’s working class as; banker by day and DJ by night, or a painter during the week and a waitress on the weekends. Just like anywhere else, bills have to be paid. In Detroit, however, how they get paid is sometimes a different story.53 The symptom of the American meritocratic culture, is the condition were new ideas are repeatedly generated and fostered by a city that is full of people who understand one another. In America, a good rapport is maintained between neighbours, friends and strangers, as they all are potential customers, aids and conduits to a better life. A claim evidenced in Detroit, where a collective passion, positivity, and progression of its residents, starts to render the city as a sought-after food, drink, culture, destinations in Midwest USA. The blog concludes that “the success of Detroit’s revitalization can only happen block by block.”54 The maintenance of this “we-are-all-in-this-together” tradition is one way to sustain and empower its cultural identity. A basis for expressing one’s own culture is provided in Detroit through the diverse multicultural community in which everyone possesses the right to the city55. There’s a sense of equal participation in the community through the dialogue between ‘agents’, each promoting the work of the other and the surrounding neighbourhood. This section highlights the connections and their socio-spatial effects, related to the Detroit’s context, categorised in location and infrastructure, and public facilities. This will be analysed and argued by using maps, diagrams and quotes from conducted interviews as well as ‘Requiem for Detroit’ documentary as background evidence. The argument employs Doina Petrescu, Jane Jacobs, Anthony Vidler’s comments and theoretical concepts of spatial implications on the segregation/integration on the post-industrial consumer society.

If “the culture of the 20th century is the culture of congestion, what will the culture of the 21st be? The culture of dissemination, dispersal”57, says Koolhaas. Detroit is no longer subject to the 20th century culture of congestion. The culture of celebrating one’s lot in this vacuous landscape, that in Detroit, is all the rage. The shear scale of the town [Fig 12], show much of Detroit current predicament lie not only with the decline of the motor industry, but its unrelenting quest for constant expansion in the early to mid 20th Century. With the creation of the suburban condition, the declining ‘urban’ downtown epicentre became removed from normal social life. The streets now come to be a major tool for public life. The streets between the open spaces enable what Jacobs describes as “side walk life”. An element of trust is garnered in this side walk life in various customs. In some neighbourhoods people compare notes on their dogs or landlord58, in Detroit, they compare vision of next scale of urban tactical regeneration. What’s next for that street corner? The streets don’t just serve the purpose of the connecting artery and the hive for activity as in the case of NewYork, but rather they are the locations where one voyeurs into the buildings and landscape, in an envisioning of the future.

tHe stAte of Detroit: tHe wAlk-in PortrAit stuDio An Agent growing network in Detroit city The Walk-in Portrait Studio (Detroit, 2009-2014) was initially set up in a formerly foreclosed house in North Detroit, by Corine Vermeulen (photographer) and Femke Lutgerink (story collector). Stemming from a desire to introduce themselves to the Detroit residents. “We [Corine and Femke] solicited people to come in to the studio via flyers and posters, and a fair amount of courting on the streets. Over the course of five days, around 85 people had their portraits taken in exchange for a story of the neighbourhood. People could pick up their portraits, free of charge, a week after they were photographed. And its now being introduced to various locations around town, e.g. in several different schools”59

The simplicity of a photograph in exchange for a story is an important tool for self entertainment. Storytelling can also be helpful in the interest of causing people to change behaviour or to become aware of some real situations. The fact that Detroit Institute of Art (DIA), celebrated its product and commissioned to extend project, to share stories about changes within th citty, alters spatial relations. It creates a social network of self image that encourages residents to gain access to the transformative capacity of their space. The territory covered over the course of the extended commission, was a heighten connection of projects which feature in this research. Evidence to the benefits of such networks. They are: a. East side riders b. Fortress studio c. D-town farm, among a host of others. The studio project reveals uneven social conditions, in a participatory and collaborative nature that fits into the tradition of the Anarchitecture group. Similar to the tactics of atelier d’architecture autogéréé (aaa), Vermuelen has chosen instead to not act for herself, nor on the behalf of others, but act with others, by empowering (through the help of DIA) to become agents themselves and take the first step in collective responsibility – admitting, voicing and celebrating issues. A service offered like this cannot be ostensibly formalised, too many legalities belie its tactic says Jacobs, as there will be a need for formal identification, questions on ethics and rights to intellectual property, will also be associated. She illustrates her point with the common attitude of trust bestowed on local shop proprietors, who take pride in having custody of spare house keys for it neighbours houses, within an interpersonal city street. In the opinion of De Certeau, tactics survive through their mobility. The absence of power and own space is what is the strength of tactics61. The quality of these tactical devices resides in their mobility, temporality, informality which enables a type of urban resistance through techniques of “infiltration and detourment”62.

This urban practice resembles the definition of ‘urban tactics’ according to De Certeau. Practice that “promotes the reappropriation and re-invention of collective space in the city 53 Bernhard, Erin. “Detroit Hustles Harder: Hanging with the Locals.” Awesome Mitten. Accessed September 6, 2015. http://www.awesomemitten.com/ detroit-hustles-harder-hanging-with-the-locals/. 54 Rogier, Julie. “Breathing Life into Detroit: One Block at a Time.” Awesome Mitten. Accessed September 6, 2015. http://www.awesomemitten.com/ breathing-life-into-detroit-one-block-at-a-time-alger-theater/. 55 Lefebvre, Henri, Le Droit à la ville 1968. David Harvey described Right to City as follows: The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.

56 Jay-z album name “streets is watching”, Roc-a-fella records, DefJam, 1998. Definition by Urban dictionary: A term coined by the Japanese brand Swagger. It means that people are checking out what you are wearing. Also could be used as a compliment. 57 Heron, Katrina. “From Bauhaus to Koolhaas”. Wired Magazine. Accessed June 21, 2015. http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/koolhaas. html?pg=1&topic 58 Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. p 67. 59 Details can befound at: http://www.corinevermeulen.com/project/the-walkin-portrait-studio. Accessed september 2015.

60 Petrescu, Doina. Relationscapes: Mapping agencies of relational practice in architecture. Elsevier Ltd, 2012. p137. 61 Mosley, Jonathan, and Rachel Sara. The Architecture of Transgression, 2014. Accessed September 2015. http://alltitles.ebrary.com/Doc?id=10829283 62 Ibid.

Detroit institute of Art [DiA] forging relAtion-scAPes The precarious future of the DIA acts as a point into the idea to bring fresh light to Detroit. It was the emergency city manager discussed appraisal value of the DIA’s collection, in preparation for selling off its contents to cover the city’s debts, that signaled the research’s advocacy of the ordinary person’s requirement to experience culture. A basic tenet of a healthy society. The DIA, founded in 1885, has for the past century being a beacon of Detroit’s cultural economy. The Paul Cret designed beaux-Arts building and its collection of peripheral wings and extension, with over 100 galleries, recital hall, library, services laboratory, and assortment of multicultural and multinational art collection, earns it a ‘temple of Art’ label. In year 2000, the DIA established the General Motors Centre for African American Art as a curatorial department in order to broaden the museum’s collection of African American art. 2013 saw the formation of the ‘Defend the DIA’ social revolutionary group, brought together by artist Corine Vermuelen project entitled Walk in portrait studio. This small self activated project spurned an extended run by DIA for few more months. Acting as a platform for the community to voice an opinion, to gain publicity. It gave a voice to select group of self organised groups. All engaged in ecological perspective, that range from spatial, social and economic concern. 2014, saw the need to encourage a cultural capital, campaigning for the importance of art in a community. This spurred the creation of inside/out campaign, were reproduction of art work are strategically placed in various neighbourhoods. The effect it has, is that people stop to notice how pretty a building is when an otherwise peculiar object is in the way. People proclaim that they “stop and consider their location”63. Every city is shaped by invisible networks of buried infrastructure, impenetrable public policy and decision making policies that shape every thing around us, from the position of street vendor parking to how tall a building can be, to what happens when a young person gets arrested. True democracy can only happen, when people can understand the decisions that shape their lives, and have conversation about its inner workings. People most often excluded from this decisions, people of colour, low income family, immigrants and youths are often most impacted by them.

within respective communities. This work establishes a rhizommatic connection to local groups.

tHe community The now defunct Detroit future city’s frame work – the antimasterplan hasn’t cancelled the collective determination of the city. The word on everyone’s lips is how ‘Detroit is up and coming’. The side walk life and DIA’s inside/out, offer moments for networking and dialogue. In The Death And Life Of Great American Cities, Jacobs illustrates the requirement of shared assumption and support in urban city life. Over the years, no other city was as synonymous as Detroit with mass exodus from its boundaries. But people are swarming back in, and these residents are back with a purpose. The usual development master planning, produce places deliberately planned for constructive socialising. In places like Groose Pointe, the community east of Detroit’s boundary, whose name has long been synonymous with wealth and white upper middle class. There is a kind of urban-suburban divide present—more pronounced in Detroit boundary than anywhere else — this raises questions about the commons. “A metropolitan area is a single organism; municipal boundaries are mere abstractions, arbitrary lines sketched on a piece of paper. Yet in a poor city like Detroit, these distinctions can make all the difference.

Fig 12. comPAring Detroit to tHree otHer mAJor usA cities. source: university of Detroit mercy. Detroit free press

On the Grosse Pointe side of the line, which cuts through the middle of the block, stands an antiquarian bookshop that looks straight out of London, with carefully assembled displays of leather-bound classics in its windows”64. Next door in Detroit, the pavements are gap-toothed, abruptly coming to an end due to wild vegetation growth. Rundown specimens of once elegant homes and apartment buildings, stand next to vacant lots on every block. The purpose of proliferating networks created by agents like the DIA, stepping out of the walls on the Museum, to engage with the community of the streets, credits Jacobs’ opposition toward homogeneity in city suburbs forming of grouped colonies. The model where much is shared has a requirement that the residents be similar to one another in their standards, interest and backgrounds. No such requirement can be found in modern day Detroit. Although aesthetically worn, there’s an undercurrent of community spirit, which is equipped by formal and informal loitering. The formal public organisation in cities require an informal public life underlying them, mediating between them the privacy of the people of the city.

Using an art form to create a dialogue with the people most affected by these decisions, demystify the city, so that more people get a chance to get their voices heard. As far as the DIA goes, they increase their importance to the Detroit locality by bringing down the physical and emotional barriers of its building walls, by offering trips to the museum and tours around the complex, as well as their strategically place external work. Also equipping the community organisers, on future change 63 Author’s interview. Excerpt recording with Kathryn Dimond (Director, Community Relations), at Kresge court DIA. August 11, 2015.

64 Walljasper, Jay. “Detroit City limits”, On the Commons. Accessed September 2015. http://www.onthecommons.org/detroit-city-limits

Act ii rebrAnDing tHe Detroit mytH

//12/08/15 UNCANNY INTERPERSONAL CITY tActics to work on tHe imAginAtion Anthony Vidler proposes in The Architectural Uncanny, a connection between “urban memory” and the city. He offers the notion of the “uncanny” in cities. Vidler’s urban uncanny addresses the intricacies of multi-ethnicity, such is becoming the case in Detroit. He argues, as a result of ethnic and social diversity, it is hard to form a collective urban memory with which the transient population can relate66. However, the preceding examples of Detroit multi-faceted residents of varying ethnic background, show a greater affinity to each others culture and presence than, perhaps Vidler gives credit. To accept not only your own cultural memories, but also multiple memories, conflicts and beliefs sites Detroit’s populace not in a city in relation to themselves, but rather in a much stronger form of collective citizenship.

“

our work grows from a belief that the power of imagination is central to the practice of democracy, and that the work of governing must engage the dreams and visions of citizens. What can we learn by investigation? By learning how to investigate, we train ourselves to change what we see.65

Terms such as public space, community and identity, are open to new interpretations within the context of Detroit. Feeling you belong to a city doesn’t make sense any longer, but belonging to a community—one marked by shared lifestyles and a sense of actual belonging—does. This serves as the new meaning of citizenship and community in Detroit: on one hand, Detroit comprises several cross-cultural and ethnic communities; on the other, the very sense of community is reinforced by the fact that these places become their own self sufficient neighbourhoods providing the conveniences never really offered by the city. Also Jacob’s theory on social life of the city sidewalk, supports the coming together of people who do not know each other in an intimate private, social fashion, as in the setting of DIA external public engagement programme. A failure to do this will lead to confined acquaintanceships suitable for private life, allowing the city to become stultified.

- mission statement centre for urban Pedagogy (cuP)

“CUP: Urban Investigations.” Accessed October 7, 2015.http://welcometocup.org/About

Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.

architecture. What differentiates them, is that they produce and disseminate spatial knowledge in a manner that is consciously open to others”70. Add to it, a school teaching programme, outdoor museum event, all can be construed as architecture. This type of architecture played out through a multiplicity of settings, gives new opportunity for architects/ spatial designers to work with. The question remains, is it worth it? Doesn’t this slow down the redevelopment agenda? Why involve the community and equip their imagination?

AllieD meDiA ProJects Art AnD tHe minD The CUP in NewYork is a collection of individuals motivated by cultural entrepreneurship and place branding. In Detroit we have Allied Media Project. They facilitate creative place-making, that puts the work and vision of long-time residents at the heart of community planning and development, while integrating best practices of art, culture, and participatory design. A facet of their creative place-making manifest itself in the yearly media conference. Its goal is to tackle the question of how to remain relevant, and make themselves more visible? Allied Media projects (AMP) and the Annual Media Conference (AMC) cultivate media strategies for a more creative, and collaborative world. The organisation definition of media extends from pirate radio and early blogging to all forms of communication. In 2007 the conference moved from Bowling green, Ohio to Detroit, drawn by the city’s creative atmosphere, rich history of social activism, and use of alternative media solutions. Since then, the organisation has served as a compass for many community-based and grass-roots initiatives, aiding groups in strengthening their messages and amplifying their voices through strategic planning based in community feedback. All of AMP’s work, including the conference and sponsored projects, rally behind the organisations guidelines. The Network principles, which begin with listening – they state that the strongest solutions happen through process and inherently work towards solving problems67. In acknowledging this, they provide a starting point for developing strategies and building frameworks for supporting these efforts. AMP also believe in the importance of place. For the organisation and the conference, Detroit is a source of innovative, collaborative and low resource solutions.

67 “Allied Media Conference.” AMP Wireframe. Accessed October 7, 2015. https://alliedmedia.org/amc.

The Department for work has been a longstanding creative supporter of AMP. It sees the AMP as an education centre for spatial agency through making mutual knowledge in different modes and guises. An implementation of a network. To fulfil their imaginative goals, they implement a Place-Based Education (PBE) program. PBE is a research-based model that facilitates student achievement in other areas like Oakland, Boston, and New York City. The Grace Lee Boggs school employs PBE programme for low-income students in Detroit. PBE immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences, using these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum. The PBE emphasizes learning through participation in service projects for the school and local community, to form a picture of the future. Appadurai urges us to seek solutions that enable even the poorest of the poor to have the capability and privilege to participate in the work of the imagination. Appadurai attempts to remove the link between culture of place, to make it more of an aspect of praxis, of social production of space. “Culture means not that you can say you ‘ belong to this community’, moreover it should mean as he laments; ‘ I inhabit a terrain of possibilities constructed through the work of the imagination in some social context which I inhabit”.68 Spatial agency is about a different understanding of the production and dissemination of knowledge. This is architecture that follows Haraway’s advice and allow for “partial locatable critical knowledges sustaining the possibility of webs of connection called solidarity in politics and shared conversations in epistemology”69. Spatial knowledge is thereby dispersed, made available and communicated to a broader public who, simply through this knowing, are empowered to engage in the urban discourse. Awan, Schneider, and Till posit that a “fanzine, a blog, maps and technical support are as much architecture as a building is 68 Appadurai, Arjun, A capacity to aspire. University press 2004. p21. 69 Haraway, D, Simians. Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, and London, 1991.

70 Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Abingdon, Oxon [England] ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. p 27.

//13/08/15 CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME71 VS LONDON HERE WE COME? Its my last day in Detroit city, my plane leaves at 0915 am. I of course make the journey to the airport by taxi. At this hour there is no traffic to speak of. The taxi ride might take 30 minutes at midday, I imagine it’ll be a lot quicker now. I’m in luck, I get a life-time Detroit resident taxi driver, willing to share his opinions on his city.

eAst coAst west coAst Historically, there have often been stark differences in industrial cultures between the west coast versus the mid-west and east coast of the USA. The west coast is often labeled as a relaxed more innovative and technology driven sector of American society, home to silicon valley. While the East coast remains the straight laced heavy industry and financial district, that houses Wall street.72 In Detroit, change is afoot. Big money doesn’t enter these shores, but the pricing structure of living and housing arrangement, on base level looks an attractive prospect for the ‘creative’. They come mostly from Detroit’s neighbouring peripheries like Ann Arbour and Ohio, some from the west coast. Bringing with it research and cultural industries that usually grew in the west. This pattern of cross regional migration and development has previously been mapped out in various cities in the US and Europe. Places like the Shoreditch and Hoxton (ShoHo) region in London and Orange County in Los Angeles (LA). In the case of London, Shoreditch rose to prominence as an artistic centres linked to the Young British Artists (YBA) in the early 1990s. It was largely driven by the many festivals and events initiated by the late art impresario Joshua Compston73. The artists who were couriered by the East London Line from Goldsmiths in the south, were drawn by the light industrial Victorian spaces and cheap rent, that arose from the blighted neighbourhood reputation. A condition parallels Detroits’. There are acres of land, “rent’s cheap! I got my family house for £53,000, says my taxi driver. The same house is $200,000 upwards in Chicago or NewYork, it’s nice brick house”74, as he forlornly describing his Detroit predicament.

71 Lyrics to “California” in Album: The Guest by Phantom Planet. Rights to Epic record label.

72 Baudrillard, Jean. America, and translated by Chris Turner. Verso, New York, NY, 1989. p 129. 73 Wong , Joon Ian “Gentrification Without Displacement in Shoreditch”. Centre for Urban and Community blog. Accessed September, 2015. https://cucrblog. wordpress.com/2014/07/21/gentrification-without-displacement-in-shoreditch-by-joonian-wong/ accessed september 2015 74 The author’s interview with Taxi driver

However, unlike Detroit, the London model is somewhat self-destructive as it expels any idea of the ‘informal’ from its boundaries. This idea is hacked and solicited by constant flow of foreign capital, allowing London’s real estate prices [to] keep soaring.75 It means that ‘artistic buzz’ in ShoHo, is bled of its urban edge that attracted capital in the first place. This affects informal London, making it an unappealing and unaffordable place to live. The economist livability ranking have found that “despite [its] huge demand from international buyers, London is a less attractive place to live than Detroit, Cleveland, Manchester or Reykjavik”.76 Of the five counties in LA, the Orange County (OC) stands out as an unusual model for hope for Detroit. Within the past five decades, its followed an opposite trajectory to Detroit, illustrating that a socio-economic and socio-spatial restructuring is beneficial to growth. The 1960s OC was a rural town with a singular blue collar workforce on one level. Today, the regional job machine has churned most actively at two levels: employment and production in high-tech, and cultural industries from large foreign investors. The expansion [into a] ‘technopolis’.77 Detroit might not necessarily need so much capital to get the ball rolling. Capital according to Soja is seen as two-facedly choreographing the chronic interplay of time and space, history and geography78. In the OC, an even greater expansion in low-paying service and manufacturing jobs in its booming garment industry explodes its part-time and contingent work. Flexibly organising itself for changing labour demands – this is sympathetic to Detroit’s contingent hustle harder narrative. Detroit might well be on its way. This attack on capitalism is encouraged by David Harvey, who’s look on capitalism “as a phenomenon that perpetually strives, to create a social and physical landscape in its own 75 “Worse than Detroit? London One of ‘least Livable’ European Cities.” RT English. Accessed October 7, 2015. https://www.rt.com/uk/181660-liveable-londonstudy-cities/ 76 Ibid. 77 Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies. 2nd edition. Verso, 2011. 78 Ibid.

image, and requisite to its own needs at a particular point in time, only just as certainly to undermine, disrupt and even destroy that landscape at a later point in time”79. The contingent work agenda, can fuel the dual nature of Detroit’s finance and cultural economy, who aren’t deeply capital driven. While concurrently bolster their networks in higher-tech making and manufacturing industries in places like Omnicorp, Green garage and Allied Media technology Conference (AMC). The key learning point from each theme from act one, is that changes, big and small can be affected with limited resources, through collective collaborative use of ‘mutual knowledge’. This can happen even in the western world, it shows the important role it can play in future understanding of architecture and the city. If only as a message for architecture to find its soul again. Moreover, Soja opines that capital above all is never alone in shaping the historical geography of the landscape – not the only author or authority80. To categorise it at the centre of all that is good in city growth, makes it the ‘norm’. Which subsequently categorises the work of Green garage and AMC as alternative, the irritant in the shadow of the ‘norm’. Awan, Schneider, and Till, have found this centre wanting, exposed in 2008/9 global environment crisis and accompanying social division – then what right has it to define and so control, what constitutes the “margins”81. Therefore, a new brand of development is demanded if we are to avoid the roller coaster cycle of crisisinduced capital driven development. While it’s difficult to start drawing linear parallels between the OC and Corktown or ShoHo and Eastern Market, they all carry an explicit place-branding agenda, synonymous in the cultural imagination. There’s an aesthetic comparison with ShoHo and regions in Detroit. While the affluent OC buildings can stand as the benchmark for revitalisation of the grander buildings of Detroit’s glorious past. The question raised by the comparison of LA vs London, is how important is capital and capitalism to the ‘informal’? While nothing can be truly effective and truly free, the one moral lesson from the 2008/9 crash, has to be how to “regain the collective loss of our moral compass”82. The case studies and themes highlight the difference between “having more,” as opposed to “living more.” While London and LA looks to foster global economic and cultural links, that have an effect on the classification of what is first and third world, Detroit is in this image is third world. Therefore has the ability to offer tangible domestic networks, that remain in reach of its residents for the foreseeable future. 79 Harvey, David. The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization. Baltimore, Md: John Hopkins University Press, 1985. p 150. 80 Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies. 2nd edition. Verso, 2011. 81 Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Abingdon, Oxon [England] ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. p 31. 82 “Sustainable Business: Where Our Moral Compass Meets the Bottom Line.” The Huffington Post. Accessed October 7, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paulpolman/sustainable-business-wher_b_4064391.html

Alas, Detroit could forge a divergent path from LA or London. With her growing imagination, intelligence, enthusiasm and lack of money — she could attempt to set examples by developing new models beyond even her own comprehension. I wonder, in 30 years time, wouldn’t it be nice to watch Detroit getting on with her daily hustle, and the only criticism that can be attempted is to what degree did she exploit her freedom from ‘capitalism’s centre’ and chastising eyes. Did she go as far as she could? While attempting to gauge how otherwise outrageous she has been? It’s thirty minutes till boarding. I am still weary eyed from the early start and the uncompromising heat. With infrequent checks of my phone, I attempt at another run through of Spatial Agency’s: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, London here I come.

resurget cineribus. Detroit new VocAbulAry “It becomes increasingly possible to argue that the evolution of urban form (the internal spatial structure of the capitalist city) has followed the same periodical rhythm of crisis-induced formation and reformation that shapes the macro-geographical landscapes”83

The rapid role reversal of regions in many other countries, as once prosperous industrial areas decline in tandem with rapid industrialisation of formerly less developed regional peripheries. The noteworthy change has involved an intensification of pre-existing patterns of uneven regional development in many areas and consequent reinforcement of old core and periphery divisions. As in the case in London’s urban intensification, the ebb and flow of traffic seep into the periphery – place like Shoreditch, expanding economic and political power. 4. Mobility of industry and capital triggers government and state competition of units of investment that dominate planning process, to the detriment and cost of the social service and welfare.”85 One must also bear in mind that Detroit restructuring is not a mechanical or automatic process, nor are its potential results and possibilities predetermined. In its layers of manifestations, the resurrection must be seen as originating in and responding to sever and shock pre-existing social conditions and practices. The case study looked in this dissertation, articulate a specific form of urban change, that fall between recognisable reform and revolutionary transformation, between business-as-usual and something utterly different.

Soja offers to us a new vocabulary for urban restructuring. He calls it ‘Spatialisations’ – each space doing its own autonomous thing. The niche cultural produce in Detroit, in its regions, forgets about the global or national sphere, attempting to operate on its domestic goods. The contemporary period should be seen as ‘crisis-generated’ that mainly aims to restore survival of global industrial takeover in a search for super-profits and enhanced social control84, says Soja. If Detroit looks to learn from it dogged past to achieve this ‘other’ form of intensification Soja argues for a need to look past these trends. “1. Increase in centralised and concentration of capital ownership typified in corporate conglomerates combining ownership in major services such as finance, real estate, information processing, entertainment e.t.c. A trend Detroit can introspectively learn from, to rise from its urban melee. 2. Increased internationalisation of capital concentration. In reverse, Detroit domestic capital growth should play a role in local and regional economies. 3. The weakening of local controls and state regulations over an increasingly footloose and mobile capital. The preceding texts have highlighted a global industrial restructuring trend of production where labour of the firstsecond-third worlds aren’t fitting to previously defining structure. Detroit increased rate of new industry calls for new defining of core and periphery divisions. 83 84

Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies. 2nd edition. Verso, 2011. Ibid.

85 Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies. 2nd edition. Verso, 2011. Ammended and paraphrased by the author.

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PROJECTIONS conclusion

moVe to Detroit

The thematic exploration of the case studies offer us a lens in which we can look at regeneration. The exploration of the case studies have shown that architectures response to decaying condition comes in various creative guises. It has the potential to be powerful, if it can capture the imagination of the residence as well as municipalities. This exploration opens up the question of how to use space collectively to stimulate the imagination, as architecture is understood as flow of space as opposed to mere objects. The case studies highlight the impact of the social, spatial and physical connections important in a neighbourhood.

As the US nation shifts shape from industrial to post industrial, the view of Detroit for many is a metaphor for the demise in American capitalism. Few others claim the city is destined for revitalisation or renaissance, romanticizing its return to former glory. While Detroit is a place that embodies both narratives, the reality lies somewhere in-between. An undercurrent of makers, movers, and organisers are beginning to bring about change in small, medium sometimes large ways by utilising creative thinking to address the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current landscape, rendering the city as a place where design is ubiquitous.

At a social urban scale, the work and networks in D-Town farm provide a way to positively take control of decay in space. The programme on a regional scale, in the practice of AMP influence the way in which architecture can be multifaceted and engage our imaginations. The design agenda on a human scale, in the Green Garage proves that specificity in renovation is important in the restructuring of the building and the city.

Therefore, I suggest you head to Detroit, at least on a holiday and you might come away with a refreshed judgment and a renewed soul.

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One could argue that they are one step ahead, as their branding manifestoes belies a social activism agenda. Working on collaboration and low resource solutions, to engage more of its residents. This message can spell a new vision for future fresh Detroit, the brand for a new Detroit economic and cultural landscape.

Internationalised Central Business District New Industrial District Emerging outer city

Industrial Financial

Working class residential Elite residential Central city boundary Built up area boundary

BiBliogrAPhy. blog Posts

“30 Reasons You Need To Move To Detroit.” Movoto Blog. Accessed February 21, 2015. http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/move-to-detroit/. Beekmans, Jeroen. “Trend 5: Local Urban Culture Goes Global.” Pop-Up City. Accessed June 25, 2015. http://popupcity.net/trend5-local-urban-culture-goes-global/. clairelevy37. “Gentrification Without Displacement in Shoreditch by Joon Ian Wong.” Accessed September 22, 2015. https:// cucrblog.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/gentrification-without-displacement-in-shoreditch-by-joon-ian-wong/. Corine, Vermeulen. “Your Town Tomorrow,” n.d. http:// www.corinevermeulen.com/project/your-town-tomorrow-detroit-2007-2012. “Relational Practise and Time.” Philosophies. Accessed April 26, 2015. http://philosophiesresarc.net/2013/03/11/relational-practise/. Schwegmann, Gepostet von Martin. “Urbanpassion: Berlin - City without Form.” Accessed February 14, 2015. http://urbanpassion. blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/berlin-city-without-shape.html. Walsh, David. “The Defense of Culture and the Crisis in Detroit.” Defendthedia, September 17, 2013. http://defendthedia.org.

books

Aubert, Danielle, Lana Cavar, and Natasha Chandani, eds. Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit. New York, NY: Metropolis Books, 2012. Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Abingdon, Oxon [England] ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. Binelli, Mark. The Last Days of Detroit: Motor Cars, Motown and the Collapse of an Industrial Giant, 2014. Carson, David. Grit, Noise, & Revolution the Birth of Detroit Rock “N” Roll. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.a spx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=362491. Gane, Mike. Baudrillard’s Bestiary: Baudrillard and Culture. London ; New York: Routledge, 1991. Guattari, Félix. The Three Ecologies. Bloomsbury Revelations. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

Harvey, David. The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization. Baltimore, Md: John Hopkins University Press, 1985. Holli, Melvin G., ed. Detroit. Documentary History of American Cities. New York: New Viewpoints, 1976. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. LeDuff, Charlie. Detroit: An American Autopsy. New York: Penguin Press, 2013. Martelle, Scott. Detroit: A Biography. 1st ed. Chicago, Ill: Chicago Review Press, 2012. Mosley, Jonathan, and Rachel Sara. The Architecture of Transgression, 2014. http://alltitles.ebrary.com/Doc?id=10829283. Mulder, Arjen, and Joke Brouwer. TransUrbanism. V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002. Oswalt, Philipp, Klaus Overmeyer, and Philipp Misselwitz. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: Dom Pub, 2013. Palahniuk, Chuck. Invisible Monsters. London: Vintage, 2000. Petrescu, Doina, and Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée. Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices within and across. [Paris]: [s.n.], 2010. Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies. 2nd edition. Verso, 2011. Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992. Whose Urban Renaissance?: An International Comparison of Urban Regeneration. [Place of publication not identified]: Routledge, 2013. Wulff, Frederick. Detroit Past, Present and Future. Outskirts Press, 2014. http://www.bestlittlebookshop.com/book/details/9781478731788?s=gs&c=GB&gclid=CKGkm9Ho9cECFUYOwwoduIMAHw.

Documents

City of London. “The London Plan 2011: London Places,” 2011. http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/LP2011%20Chapter%202.pdf. Detroit Future City. “DETROIT FUTURE CITY 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan.” Inland Press 2001 W. Lafayette Blvd. Detroit, 2013. http://detroitfuturecity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/DFC_ExecutiveSummary_2ndEd.pdf. Detroit Neighborhood Partnership East. “LEAP Snapshot 2013.” online, 2013.

online ViDeo sources e.g. youtube

Heidelberg project. “Heidelberg Project 2012 Annaul Report,” 2012. www.heidelberg.org/file_download/12557768-cab440e2-980e-cb82a748856a Heidelberg Project 2012 Annual Report.

Detroit Jit, 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf0AsckXYUM&feature=youtube_gdata_player.

Parks, Recreation and’ Cultural Affairs Administration. “SohoCast Iron district.Historic District Designation Report.” Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1973.

Journeyman Pictures. Detroit: From Motown To Murder Town, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aUUuTBVypk. Lifepix. Behind Detroit’s Notorious Ruins, 2009. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=1ii3r4X5Woo.

Philipp Oswalt/ Translation: Tas Skorupa. “The Ephemeral Essay from the Book: Berlin_City without Form Text:” Online, n.d. Accessed February 14, 2015. Seymour, Benedict. “Shoreditch and the Creative Destruction of the Inner City.” Variant Magazine, 2004. http://www.variant.org.uk/34texts/shoreditch34.html.

films Journeyman Pictures. How the American Dream Went Wrong in Detroit. Web, Documentary, 2013. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=lEXLPpr2Rwg.

JournAl Articles

Bose, K. S., and R. H. Sarma. “Delineation of the Intimate Details of the Backbone Conformation of Pyridine Nucleotide Coenzymes in Aqueous Solution.” Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 66, no. 4 (October 27, 1975): 1173–79. Corine, Vermeulen. “Living Rooms With a View,” n.d. Hitz, H, C Schmid, and R Wolff. “Urbanization in Zurich: Headquarter Economy and City-Belt.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12, no. 2 (1994): 167–85. Landau, Royston. “A PHILOSOPHY OF ENABLING: THE WORK OF CEDRIC PRICE.” AA Files, no. No 8 (January 1985): 7. Morris, R. J. The Journal of Modern History 60, no. 3 (September 1, 1988): 574–77. doi:10.2307/1881406. Tunell, George G. “The Diversion of the Flour and Grain Traffic from the Great Lakes to the Railroads.” Journal of Political Economy 5, no. 3 (June 1, 1897): 340–75. doi:10.2307/1817751.

newsPAPer Article

Doucet, Brian, and professor of urban geography at Utrecht University. “What We Really Find When We Compare Detroit and the North-East of England.” The Guardian, May 15, 2014, sec. Public Leaders Network. http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/the-northerner/2014/may/15/compare-detroit-and-north-east-of-england.

lifepix. Behind Detroit’s Notorious Ruins. Accessed October 6, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ii3r4X5Woo. The Future First Rapping President of the United States, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq12aBZMdkM&feature=youtube_gdata_player. THE SANCTUARY, 2008. https://vimeo.com/13701617. The School of Life. PHILOSOPHY - Hegel. Accessed October 6, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5JGE3lhuNo. Tillon, Florent. Detroit Wildlife, 2008. https://vimeo. com/2371774.

webPAge

“10 Things You Can Expect to Hear When You Say You’re from Detroit.” The Odyssey. Accessed October 12, 2015. http://theodysseyonline.com/butler/10-things-expect-hearwhen-youre-from-detroit/140041. “About Popps Packing,” 2015. http://www.poppspacking.org/ about-popps/. “Allied Media Conference.” AMP Wireframe. Accessed October 7, 2015. https://alliedmedia.org/amc. Behr, Rafael. “Goodbye London: Why People Are Leaving the Capital.” The Guardian. Accessed June 30, 2015. http://www. theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/29/goodbye-londonmoving-to-brighton-house-prices. Bernhard, Erin. “Detroit Hustles Harder: Hanging with the Locals.” Awesome Mitten. Accessed October 6, 2015. http:// www.awesomemitten.com/detroit-hustles-harder-hanging-withthe-locals/. “Corine Vermeulen’s ‘Walk-In Portrait Studio’ Reveals the Faces of Detroit at the DIA.” Accessed October 6, 2015. http:// www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2014/12/5/ corine-vermeulens-walk-in-portrait-studio-reveals-the-faces-ofdetroit-at-the-dia/. “CUP: Urban Investigations.” Accessed October 7, 2015. URL here. “Death of the Hipster: Why London Decided to Move on from Beards,.” Evening Standard. Accessed September 22, 2015. http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/death-of-the-hipster-whylondon-decided-to-move-on-from-beards-beanies-and-fixiebikes-10178615.html.

Economics. “Is Detroit Doomed?” Accessed October 12, 2015. http://thefederalist.com/2014/03/12/is-detroit-doomed/. “Green Garage Detroit,” n.d. http://www.greengaragedetroit. com/index.php?title=Main_Page.

“Sustainable Business: Where Our Moral Compass Meets the Bottom Line.” The Huffington Post. Accessed October 7, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-polman/sustainable-business-wher_b_4064391.html.

Blvd. Detroit, 2013. http://detroitfuturecity.com/wp-content/ uploads/2014/02/DFC_ExecutiveSummary_2ndEd.pdf. Detroit Neighborhood Partnership East. “LEAP Snapshot 2013.” online, 2013.

“Imagining The Detroit Of The Future.” The Huffington Post. Accessed February 20, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/detroit-future-city-detroit-works-project_n_2436626.html.

Swash, Rosie. “Bruce Weber’s Shinola Campaign Shines Fresh Light on Detroit.” The Guardian. Accessed February 21, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/ mar/24/bruce-webers-shinola-campaign-shines-fresh-light-ondetroit.

Heidelberg project. “Heidelberg Project 2012 Annaul Report,” 2012. www.heidelberg.org/file_download/12557768-cab4-40e2980e-cb82a748856a Heidelberg Project 2012 Annual Report. Parks, Recreation and’ Cultural Affairs Administration. “SohoCast Iron district.Historic District Designation Report.” Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1973.

JakeCagle. “Awesome City Guide: Detroit’s Corktown Neighborhood.” Awesome Mitten. Accessed October 6, 2015. http:// www.awesomemitten.com/awesome-city-guide-corktown/. “Living With Mies.” Opinionator. Accessed February 20, 2015. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/living-withmies/. “M-1 Rail Construction Kicks off on Woodward.” Detroit Free Press. Accessed February 20, 2015. http://archive.freep.com/ article/20140728/BUSINESS06/307280129/M-1-Rail-Duggan-Penske-Woodward. “Madonna’s Mystery Visit to Detroit.” ClickOnDetroit. Accessed November 12, 2014. http://www.clickondetroit.com/ entertainment/madonnas-mystery-visit/26330596. Mallonee, Laura C. “‘It’s Still a Good City’: Detroit Residents on Their Hopes for the Future.” The Guardian. Accessed February 20, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/05/detroit-residents-on-their-hopes-for-thecitys-future. Notifications, Desktop, Profile, Settings, and Logout. “Let’s Pick Our Own Slogan For Detroit.” The Huffington Post. Accessed September 15, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2013/05/06/detroit-slogans-funny-greatest-comeback-city_n_3223577.html. “Our Space.” Practice·Space. Accessed November 12, 2014. http://practicespace.org/our-space/. “Our Story | Shinola®.” Accessed February 20, 2015. http:// www.shinola.com/our-story. Perry, Francesca. “London Is Changing: Share Your Stories of Moving House in the Capital.” The Guardian. Accessed June 30, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/12/ london-is-changing-share-stories-moving. Rogier, Julie. “Breathing Life into Detroit: One Block at a Time.” Awesome Mitten. Accessed October 6, 2015. http:// www.awesomemitten.com/breathing-life-into-detroit-one-blockat-a-time-alger-theater/. “Rust Belt Bio | Rust Belt Career.” MTV Artists. Accessed November 12, 2014. http://www.mtv.com/artists/rust-belt/ biography/.

“Watch Movie Requiem for Detroit (2010) Online Free.” SolarMovie. Accessed July 1, 2015. http://www.solarmovie.cz/watchrequiem-for-detroit-2010-online.html. Williams, Paige. “Drop Dead, Detroit!” The New Yorker, January 20, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/27/drop-dead-detroit. “Worse than Detroit? London One of ‘least Livable’ European Cities.” RT English. Accessed October 7, 2015. https://www. rt.com/uk/181660-liveable-london-study-cities/. Mosley, Jonathan, and Rachel Sara. The Architecture of Transgression, 2014. http://alltitles.ebrary.com/Doc?id=10829283. Mulder, Arjen, and Joke Brouwer. TransUrbanism. V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002. Oswalt, Philipp, Klaus Overmeyer, and Philipp Misselwitz. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: Dom Pub, 2013. Palahniuk, Chuck. Invisible Monsters. London: Vintage, 2000. Petrescu, Doina, and Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée. TransLocal-Act: Cultural Practices within and across. [Paris]: [s.n.], 2010. Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies. 2nd edition. Verso, 2011. Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992. Whose Urban Renaissance?: An International Comparison of Urban Regeneration. [Place of publication not identified]: Routledge, 2013. Wulff, Frederick. Detroit Past, Present and Future. Outskirts Press, 2014. http://www.bestlittlebookshop.com/book/ etails/9781478731788?s=gs&c=GB&gclid=CKGkm9Ho9cECFUYOwwoduIMAHw.

Documents

figUre creDits. Page 1. Page 6. page 7. Page 8/9. Page 16. Page 17. Page 18/19. Page 20/21. Page 24. Page 28. Page 37. Page 48-51. Page 56

Print Detroit Industry North Wall by Diego Rivera, copyright Detroit Institute of Art. Accessed October 9, 2015. http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/michigan/files/styles/x_large/public/201411/20141107_ dia_flickr.jpg The Author, August 2015 The Author, August 2015 The Author August 2015 The Author October 2015, Based on pictograms on Detroitography blog Detroit Future City, 2012 Detroit strategic framework plan The Author August 2015, Based on photos in common usage on the internet Michigan Department for Transport Awesome mitten blog www. easternmarket.com University of Detroit mercy. Detroit free press. Kathryn Dimond, DIA The Author August 2015