The first impressions as the train crawls from Dearborn into Detroit are miles and miles and miles of auto works and more miles of rail sidings with huge trains of yellow triple-deck car transporters, then more miles of wastelands of abandoned or semi derelict boarded up, burned and graffitied houses and factories surrounded by vacant lots of grassy rubble and the occasional inhabited two-storeyed wooden house with Christmas decorations in neat yards surrounded by urban blight.
Amtrak puts all the Detroit passengers into one carriage, and as we clambered with baggage down the carriage steps to a narrow platform we were quickly hustled indoors by Security so no one was left exposed on the platform as the train roared on to Pontiac.
The taxi ride into Downtown: "$15, no meter, same for everyone" (in other words: "ripoff") was a one sided conversation about how only good people celebrated Christmas Day and Islam was all about hate while Christmas is about love and the birth of Our Lord. All this while abandoned and semi derelict high rise office and apartment buildings slid past, gradually becoming a little more "kept" as we left the freeway for Downtown. I paid the $15, no tip, and informed the driver I would be praying to Allah after checking in at the hotel and wished him a happy new year.
Christmas afternoon: I'm assured by the hotel staff that "everywhere you want to go is after turning right, NOT left, Sir" as the city centre is well patrolled by police and security but elsewhere "may not be quite so safe". I turned left to find the Greyhound station (needed in 2 days and only a short walk through an untidy Jeffrey Smart landscape) then turned right, under the downtown people mover circuit (shut for Christmas) towards and across the main square which is glossy, surrounded by restored or new office blocks and apartments, and featuring an ice skating rink and temporary seasonal eateries in tents within tight private security opposite the City Christmas tree.
Move one or two blocks away and it's bleak car parks on vacant lots or high rise car parks with murals, and vandalised pre-WWII office and apartment towers and little sense of habitation or safety. This must be the only US city without a single downtown 7Eleven outlet. The sole convenience store (two blocks north of two fairly desperate looking hamburger bars populated by street dwellers "enjoying" their "Christmas dinners" washed down by who-knows-what in brown paper bags) was a dingy affair with two rows of semi-empty shelves and the store keeper behind a dirty glass screen refusing to phone a taxi for an old lady on a walking frame. Even in the Downtown Financial District, community food gardens with scarecrows have been established on vacant lots as part of the alternative self-help economy that has developed in response to desperate times.
If you can imagine downtown Sydney or Melbourne with all of the big stores shut down and most of the other shops or services shuttered or burned, most of it too unsafe to walk alone, and with some struggling tubs of vegetable gardens in Martin Place or Bourke St, you kind of have the idea. For residents of Newcastle NSW this won't be so difficult, just take away the beaches and you're kind of in the right place.
Brief History: Detroit was built on the auto industry. The glory days of the industrial barons and full employment and civic pride were from the first half of the 20th Century, but the changes wrought on the city by the growth of autos in the 1950's accelerated the social collapse of Downtown. Detroit was the first big city in the US to be "hollowed out" by the "donut effect" as newly mobile citizens in their own cars led to businesses moving to the burgeoning new metroplex of suburbs and the first monster suburban shopping malls with acres of car parking. Streetcars from the city did not extend to the new swathes of suburbs so were shut down. Medical, dental and other services and the (mostly white) middle classes evacuated Downtown, depriving the City of its tax base. Department stores moved out and were demolished or left vacant and the need to go into the city centre, if at all, no longer existed for much of the population.
Inner suburbs were bulldozed for new Interstate freeways, forcing a further shift of the downtown population to other places. The vicious inner city race riots of the mid to late 60's hastened the decline. Building the fine black Renaissance Centre tubular black glass towers (now the world headquarters for GM and so large a development that it has its own zip code) on the shores of the Detroit River, looking across to Canada, only served to further hollow out the increasingly scary downtown as city businesses moved in to the flash new waterside address...
So the donut effect largely caused, and certainly accelerated by a newly mobile and moneyed suburban population with their shiny new Detroit manufactured cars, fell harder, faster and nastier on the city building those cars than just about anywhere else. The recent international financial crises (where the US government bailed out the car industry) and collapse in the real estate market, worked with the North American Free Trade Agreement to drive even more jobs out of "rust belt" Detroit with a further huge impact on the local population.
This is America, so the "saviour" for all this is good old private enterprise, in the first US city to seek formal bankruptcy. (The city was seriously considering selling its quite wonderful fine art collection to pay for street lighting and paving not so long ago... When the downtown poor are your remaining tax base, needs must.) Most of what follows came from a downtown walking tour with Detroit Experience Factory whose role is to publicise the rebirth of the city and to promote employment and business returning downtown. They are mighty enthusiastic...
One millionaire developer now owns about 80% of Downtown land and is working with the City to restore original Art Deco buildings as offices and lofts and to promote the return of business. (At one point in the downtown walk we stood on Woodward Ave, the main drag, and were shown in just two blocks the 3 department stores which were no longer there, and many of the other services and businesses which had once formed a shopping district. To our left was a whole block of artificial shop facades which had been put up when Detroit hosted the Super Bowl as a pretence of a shopping street, covering up vacant lots of rubble and street people. It was now covered with festive Christmas lights).
At one point in the walk, as we stood on the site of the first Capitol building, devastated apartment buildings to the north of us and beautifully restored and maintained Art Deco skyscrapers to the south, we were told: "Two years ago, I wouldn't have felt safe standing here; now I cannot afford the apartment rents". Landlords, after leaving their downtown properties to neglect and squatters and the poor, are now evicting, rebuilding, refurbishing and significantly raising the rents as Downtown is starting to become desirable again. The few struggling businesses which had remained down town are now being forced out by rising costs. And gradually, new, quality, clothing and design stores are starting to open up again.
And private enterprise is funding, with the City's support, a new Woodward Ave streetcar to link the downtown with the museum and arts district a couple of miles to the north, where the city Art Institute still does have its collection, housed in a handsome early 20th Century building. It's one of a collection of outstanding buildings in the area: cultural and medical institutions, often bearing the name "Ford" as the main benefactor. Engineers are currently in the process of digging up the old tram lines to lay the new rails: and diverted motor traffic, along with strong policing, have made the downtown a bit pedestrian friendly.
Even though the TV news was covering murders and carjackings not far from Downtown, being the only white face on the Woodward Ave buses to the gallery and museums was fine...
