Olive: What Detroit’s comeback bid means to Toronto

[Stephane Dumas]

I spotted this article from the Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/813861--olive-what-detroit-s-comeback-bid-means-to-toronto#article here an exterpt

DETROIT — The cure for regarding Detroit as a lost cause is to go and look at it. Still America's 11th-largest city, this metaphor for failed cities everywhere is finally on the mend.

There are three stately boulevards here to our one (University Avenue). Principal streets like Woodward and Michigan Avenues that I once found dangerous are safe, their abandoned storefronts and other eyesores having been replaced by well-tended lawns. The previous no-go zone between a decaying financial district and the new steel and glass silos of the Renaissance Center has at last filled in.

Detroit still has more than its share of no-go districts. But the downtown, studded with Art Deco and modern-architectural treasures, can now boast a people-watching scene as busy as King and Bay Streets. The ethnic landscape is familiar to a Torontonian, with South Asian immigrants now a big part of the mix. The new Comerica Park and Ford Field are downtown, where sports venues belong.

The city has completed the destruction of abandoned storefronts and other eyesores on Woodward and Michigan Avenues, before embarking recently on a tear-down of the first few thousand of the 80,000 or so deserted houses in the inner city.

Toronto today is Canada's principal city, a status it wrested from Montreal not that long ago. That's lesson enough, one with think, about the need for vigilance in continually raising one's game.

Yet Toronto has been on auto-pilot these past two decades, afflicted by the same complacency that began to jeopardize Detroit in the 1960s. Detroit was then America's 5th-largest city and controlled more than 80 per cent of the U.S. auto market. There seemed no compelling reason then for Detroit to prepare for a 21st-century "knowledge economy."  One not geared to workers unskilled in engineering, product design and efficient manufacturing methods on which the old Detroit economy was based.

But in a recent report on older industrial cities for the Brookings Institution and the London School of Economics, researchers Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley describe a new spirit of rebirth in Detroit.

"The city is attracting social entrepreneurs who are excited by the challenge of fundamentally remaking a city,"  the co-authors write. "Philanthropies are pouring in money and imagination — the rail system on the Woodward Corridor is partially funded by tens of millions of dollars from two major foundations, and other philanthropies are trying to develop a comprehensive educational plan."  

[Alex]

When we went there last November, abandoned structures dominated the landscape, especially outside of the central business district. The article talked about the tearing down of abandoned storefronts. What about the abandoned mid-rises just a short distance from Ford Field to the north, east, and west? What about the "Save the Depot" building to the south, where you can see daylight threw it even from a far?

[agentsteel53]

indeed, lots of decaying buildings in Detroit.  Jim L and I went there in February and it had its disaster areas!  More than any other US city I can think of offhand.

[golden eagle]

As much as I'm am optimist, there are many times that Detroit can be saved. However, I do want to see it reborn. Tell you what: if I had the cash, I'd go up and snatch up those $1 houses and fix them up.