Crossposted to
darksumomo The stories below are part of a planned year-long series in Time and other publications in the Time-Warner media conglomerate entitled
Assignment Detroit. More stories, including
a blog, can be found at the link.
Time:
Assignment Detroit: Why Time Inc. Is in Motown By John Huey
This summer the editors at Time Inc. did something a little out of the ordinary for us or, frankly, for anybody: we bought a house in Detroit. As houses go, it's nice enough - three stories, five bedrooms, 3½ baths with a yard and a basement. We paid $99,000, about $80,000 above the average price of a house in the city limits.
Why would we ever do such a thing? Because we believe that Detroit right now is a great American story. No city has had more influence on the country's economic and social evolution. Detroit was the birthplace of both the industrial age and the nation's middle class, and the city's rise and fall - and struggle to rise again - are a window into the challenges facing all of modern America. From urban planning to the crisis of manufacturing, from the lingering role of race and class in our society to the struggle for better health care and education, it's all happening at its most extreme in the Motor City.
Time:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1925796,00.html By Daniel Okrent
If Detroit had been savaged by a hurricane and submerged by a ravenous flood, we'd know a lot more about it. If drought and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we'd see it on the evening news every night. Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it - if natural disaster had devastated the city that was once the living proof of American prosperity, the rest of the country might take notice.
But Detroit, once our fourth largest city, now 11th and slipping rapidly, has had no such luck. Its disaster has long been a slow unwinding that seemed to remove it from the rest of the country. Even the death rattle that in the past year emanated from its signature industry brought more attention to the auto executives than to the people of the city, who had for so long been victimized by their dreadful decision-making.
By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit's treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services. The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership. The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit, the unemployment rate is 28.9%. That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent.
CNN Money:
Hunger hits Detroit's middle class By Steve Hargreaves
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- On a side street in an old industrial neighborhood, a delivery man stacks a dolly of goods outside a store. Ten feet away stands another man clad in military fatigues, combat boots and what appears to be a flak jacket. He looks straight out of Baghdad. But this isn't Iraq. It's southeast Detroit, and he's there to guard the groceries.
"No pictures, put the camera down," he yells. My companion and I, on a tour of how people in this city are using urban farms to grow their own food, speed off.
In this recession-racked town, the lack of food is a serious problem. It's a theme that comes up again and again in conversations in Detroit. There isn't a single major chain supermarket in the city, forcing residents to buy food from corner stores or discount chains or locally owned operations. Often offering less healthy, less varied, or more expensive food.
Time:
For Iraqi Refugees, a City of Hope By Bobby Ghosh / Dearborn
For Wasan Aljanaby, the journey from her native Iraq to the U.S. was long and convoluted: with her husband and young son, she fled first to Jordan, then Turkey, Argentina and Ecuador. Everywhere they went, inhospitable immigration rules prevented them from even trying to put down roots. It wasn't until they were finally granted asylum in the U.S. last year that the Aljanabys could finally unpack their lives and settle down.
The easiest part of it all was deciding where in the U.S. they would settle down. "From the beginning, our destination was Detroit," says Aljanaby.
It didn't matter that Motown was experiencing the nation's highest rates of unemployment or that Aljanaby's skills as an Arabic-English translator might be more valuable in states with concentrations of defense contractors. More important was the fact that her husband had some relatives in Dearborn. "We knew we'd get shelter, food and the chance to build our lives," says Aljanaby.
Time:
Detroit Tries to Get on a Road to Renewal By Alex Altman / Detroit
Detroit has become an icon of the failed American city, but vast swaths of it don't look like city at all. Turn your Chevy away from downtown and the postcard skyline gives way first to seedy dollar stores and then to desolation. The collapse of the Big Three automakers has accelerated Detroit's decline, but residents have been steadily fleeing since the 1950s. In that time, the population has dwindled from about 2 million to less than half that. Bustling neighborhoods have vanished, leaving behind lonely houses with crumbling porches and jack-o'-lantern windows. On these sprawling urban prairies, feral dogs and pheasants stalk streets with debris strewn like driftwood: an empty mail crate, a discarded winter jacket, a bunny-eared TV in tall grass. Asked recently about a dip in the city's murder rate, a mayoral candidate deadpanned, "I don't mean to be sarcastic, but there just isn't anyone left to kill."
Detroit's motto, coined in 1827 to memorialize a devastating fire, translates from Latin as "We hope for better things; it shall arise from the ashes." But hope is in short supply. At 13%, Detroit's unemployment rate is the worst in the country among major metropolitan areas. City hall, long racked by corruption and cronyism, became a punch line last fall amid former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's imprisonment. To make matters worse, the city is struggling to bankroll potential remedies. Its projected $300 million budget deficit recently spurred ratings agencies to downgrade its municipal bonds to junk status. (See pictures of Detroit's decline.)
And yet if Detroit is the nexus of the Rust Belt's decay, it's also a signpost for where other ailing cities may be headed--and a laboratory for the sort of radical reconstruction needed to fend off urban decline. "People know that times are bad. But we're not going to roll over and die," says George Jackson, CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. "To me, this is war. And I think we're going to win."
CNN Money:
GM's challenge - Survive and save Detroit By Alex Taylor III
DETROIT (Fortune) -- No city in America has been more entwined with the fortunes of a single industry as Detroit with autos. The nicknames "Motor City" and "Motown," coined years ago, have stuck for good reason.
Most of the industry pioneers -- names like Wayne and Hupp, Packard and Maxwell -- have long since disappeared, and foreign automakers are expanding not in Michigan but farther south. Yet Detroit remains the home of the Big Three.
In Detroit, GM is the biggest game in town. Even after Chrysler fled to a northern suburb and Ford (F, Fortune 500) retreated to its Dearborn, Mich., campus, GM doubled down on the city.
Fortune via CNN Money:
A GM factory gets a second chance By David Whitford
DETROIT (Fortune) -- Here's George McGregor, autoworker. He's 63 years old, a gregarious, barrel-chested graybeard with a gold stud in his ear and a gold cross around his neck.
This is his story. It's a particular story, all his own. It's also an American story, specifically, a Detroit story, about a time that has passed and a city that will never be the same. And it's a story about a factory -- GM's Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant -- one of only two factories still making cars in the city where carmaking was born.
CNN Money:
The Fixers: Tough love for union town By Steve Hargreaves
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- Cindy Pasky loves Detroit.
A native Detroiter, she's headquartered her 1,600 employee, $160 million-a-year multinational tech staffing agency in the city. She sits on the board of at least a half-dozen local charities. And she'd be the first to point out that the city has some of the brightest engineering minds in the world.
But she thinks Detroit's workers have a problem, and they're going to need to get over it before this city can mount a true turnaround.
CNN Money:
The Fixers: Prospecting for business in Detroit By Steve Hargreaves
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- It's Brian Holdwick's job to bring new businesses to Detroit. No easy task when nearly one out of every three Detroiters is now out of work.
Holdwick, 43, is head of business development at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, a non-profit organization that serves as the city's economic development arm.
For the last 11 years it's been his job to entice companies to set up shop in an area with high crime, high taxes, often on contaminated or derelict property.
All that boils down to this: it's usually more expensive to open a new company in Detroit than it is to open the same firm in a suburb 30 miles outside of town in a brand new industrial park.
CNN Money:
Stopping Detroit's brain drain By Steve Hargreaves
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- Three years ago, with a freshly-minted law degree, Connecticut native Tom Northrop started job hunting in Detroit.
While this seems like a normal step after law school, his prospective employers just didn't get it. Not many young, single, educated people were moving to Detroit.
They were so surprised they wanted him to put his reasoning down on paper: He was marrying a girl from the area. Perhaps it was only to ease their sense of disbelief.
CNN Money:
Detroit's jobless economy: Startups take root By Steve Hargreaves
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In Detroit, a city with rampant unemployment, big crowds in the middle of the day may mean someone is giving out freebies. But on a recent workday, over 450 people packed an auditorium downtown. They weren't looking for a hand out, sympathy or even a job application. They were looking to start their own business.
Helping them to do that was the thinking behind a recent day-long workshop, the last in a series of events this summer meant to foster innovation in the struggling city.
These would-be entrepreneurs flocked to an auditorium on Wayne State University's campus with ideas big and small.
CNN Money:
The Fixers: That entrepreneurial spirit By Steve Hargreaves
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- Tatiana Grant is young, exudes energy, has big ideas, and loves Detroit.
At 24, Grant's already self-employed at her own public relations company, having spent time working for the Detroit Pistons, a shopping mall company and the Detroit Super Bowl Host Committee before that.
In addition to her for-profit public relations work, Grant volunteers her time promoting the city through Detroit Synergy, a lose network of downtown business owners and community groups. The group meets twice a month at a downtown location as a means of promoting the businesses, and also organizes beautification projects and other events in the city. She's been on the organization's steering team since college.
"There were so many negative things in the news about this city," she says. "And then I just found this group of volunteer individuals working their tails off to see something positive going on. That's kind of what pulled me in."
CNN Money:
The Fixers: Bankrolling Detroit's turnaround By Steve Hargreaves
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Sometimes you need a little starter cash to get things going.
Mariam Noland, president of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, took that idea to a whole new level.
Nolan and her organization raised $100 million for Detroit's New Economy Initiative, which aims to diversify the area's businesses away from the automobile industry.
CNN Money:
The Fixers: Onshoring to Detroit By Steve Hargreaves
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- When it comes to creating jobs, people in Detroit need to start experimenting and exploring.
Even if the auto industry recovers, no one really thinks it will be hiring people like it once did.
Rukmal Fernando is experimenting in Detroit, and experimenting with the global economy in an unusual way.
CNN Money:
Detroit swap: Auto plants for fashion showrooms By Sheena Harrison
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- Detroit's auto industry trained generations of workers in design and manufacturing. As that business fades and its jobs disappear, city planners are hoping to redeploy the city's creative minds and craftsmen toward a new and growing field: fashion.
They may seem like wildly different industries, but cars and clothes have elements in common, Detroit fashion insiders say. The city's industrial history gives it a unique design sensibility, and its manufacturing capabilities play well to a growing demand for garments that are made in America.
"Car designers are very aware of fashion, and they understand the principles of design," says Joe Faris, a metro Detroit resident and senior designer for Schott N.Y.C. "Creative people are just creative -- it can be applied both ways."
Sports Illustrated:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/lee_jenkins/09/22/hope.in.detroit/index.html Lee Jenkins
They overlap before home games on Thursday afternoons, the thousands rushing into Comerica Park and the hundreds filing into Central United Methodist Church one block over on East Adams. The crowd streaming into the yard is drawn by a baseball team in first place, a pennant race on full blast, one final taste of summer. The group headed to the church is drawn by a free lunch. In the auditorium on the second floor of the church, the folks sit on metal folding chairs at wooden tables, wolfing down sloppy joes and talking about their neighbors, the Detroit Tigers. "You see the Twins blow that lead last night?" asks Willis Snead, who lives in a trailer park nearby. "That was great for us."
"I really think we're going to win it all this year," says Robert Montgomery, who sells beer at Tigers games. "But after that I'm moving somewhere with more jobs."
Photo Galleries
CNN Money:
Detroit's ripple effect The Big Three's cash crisis is being felt far afield, in Detroit's restaurants, retailers and service businesses.
CNN Money also has
a page full of links to videos.