Why Moving to Detroit sounds like a good idea...

Hey - ever consider moving to Motown?

Yeah, yeah I know the murder rate is sky-high, the economy makes 1932 look warm and cozy, and the mayor just got locked up in a bizarre text-message sex scandal, but hey where else can you buy this 2000-square-foot converted warehouse/apartment for $2,500?

So hey why not head to the Motor City (or the Murder City, depending on who you ask) where life has never been cheaper, if not safer.

So writes Lloyd Alter in this article on Treehugger, arguing that an influx of creative types into the devalued city could provide the critical nucleus necessary for its longed-for regeneration. The argument is compelling. Alter is basically expanding the classic urban sociology/geography/history model of how gentrification-by-artists works and using it on the macro level to contemplate a city, rather than just a neighborhood. Vanderbilt Sociologist Richard Lloyd's fascinating Ne0-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City examined in wonderful detail how Chicago's Wicker Park was colonized by artists - who arrived because it was cheap and edgy - and then transformed in Trendiness Central. Wicker park became such a marketable place-commodity that an episode of The Real World was even filmed there. The same thing has happened in countless other places and, arguably, is happening in my own neighborhood.

So could this work on Detroit? Can an entire city be turned around by a massive influx of those who Richard Florida termed "the Creative Class"?

If such a feat were possible it would take a hell of a lot of young professionals, artists, urban pioneers, freelance designers, would-be-rock-stars, poet/waiters, DIY rehabbers, gutter punks, gritty hippies, and general counterculture-urban-space-vanguard types to pull it off. After all, we're talking macro here. If a few hundred people provided the critical mass that eventually gelled and gave Wicker Park a new place-identity, then thousands would have to decamp for Motown to pull this off.

Imagine if Stalin were in charge of this: the boldly mustachioed Bolshevik could simply round up a bunch of subversives (conveniently artists are often rather dissident) and banish them forever to Detroit. Rather than Siberian work camps in the gulag archipelago, they would face years of similarly exhausting work pouring cement, patching roofs, and scraping paint. In time they would form their own communities, and the city would acquire a totally different character. Just look at how well this program worked in Kazakhstan, which because of Soviet policies now has Central Asia's largest population of Jews - and a surprisingly functional multi-ethnic society.

But, unfortunately we live in the most capitalist democracy on earth. This means that not only can we not force large groups of people to move someplace that they hate, but also urban planning is only slightly lower down on most government agencies' priority list than, say, figuring out how to set the clock on the VCR in the conference room - which has been blinking 12:00 since 1994. (Wait does anyone else out there still have a VCR? Cassette Deck? Damn that analogy probably doesn't work anymore...) Well, you know what I mean. Urban Planning in America usually takes a back seat to whatever makes money for corporations and people who are wealthy and well-connected. This is why America is the richest country in the history of the world and has the worst public transportation of any industrialized country. We would rather have everyone working three jobs to pay for the car they need to drive to work.

For those of you enamored of the romance of the urban wilderness, check out Matt Labash's article on The Weekly Standard about life in financial-crisis-era Detroit. Labash writes really well and recounts some of the surreal horrors of life in Detroit - like how a veteran firefighter he met had his car stolen for the fourth time while attending the funeral of a fallen co-worker who died battling a blaze in an abandoned house. The house had, in fact, been set on fire before but the city is so inundated with abandoned structures and financially strapped that it can't afford to tear them down at any meaningful pace. Labash also recounts bumming around town with Detroit News reporter Charlie LeDuff, who seems to revel in the shocking horror of what he sees around him every day. LeDuff sounds like my kinda guy.

Personally I can't wait to visit.

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