Detroit Non-Profit To Offer Free Detroit Homes to Writers

[methodwriter85]

 

   In an attempt to bring a writer's colony to the struggling city of Detroit, they're piloting a program where writers will be offered a home in the city, free of charge, if they agree to stay there for two years. (Not being done by a government agency, so this is not political.)

   I think it's a pretty interesting idea and I hope it does wind up seeding a writer's colony there. I would totally want to go if I were a writer- I gotta admit, the idea of living in Detroit as a modern day urban pioneer seems like a pretty cool idea. I remember watching this cool video that talks about how twentysomething are moving there and buying entire buildings and such because the real estate is so cheap.

    The implosion and vanishing of Detroit (according to 2013 estimates, the population is already down to 681k from the 2010 population of 713k) is really fascinating...almost kind of romantic in a Greek hubris sort of way. The city was built on the promise of good American cars, and greased by the idea that gas would always be cheap and plentiful. When that failed, the city failed.

 

Disclaimer: Please do not talk about U.S. or Detroit politics here. Thank you.

Edited January 9, 2014 by methodwriter85

[Mann Ramblings]

I think the idea has merit, depending on the location of the home. There are a lot of scary areas in low cost areas of Detroit. The images of multiple burned out houses in a row are not just media hype. However that doesn't mean that I think the city is lost. There's a lot of work to do but anything that could revitalize the city would be a good thing. There's too much history involved to let it go.

[hh5]

Japan is already doing something similar for artist

[JamesSavik]

Call me back when it's in Florida or Texas. Detroit winters? NOOOOOOOOOOOO.

[methodwriter85]

   Florida and Texas cities are actually growing, though.

[TetRefine]

Detroit needs an entirely new industry to take root there, or else it'll just end up a permanent dump. God bless anyone who'd wanna live there....

 

On the bright side, Detroit's downtown is experiencing a renaissance of sorts and regrowth, but thats a small slice of the city. 

 

If you want to see an interesting look at how bad Detroit has become, watch Burn, a documentary about the severe decline of Detroit through the eyes of the city's firefighters. 

 

Edited January 10, 2014 by TetRefine

[Zombie]

What's happened to Detroit has probably shocked many Americans, but it's nothing new or unusual. When you look around the world it's surprising how common it is for cities to simply die. Main reasons seem to be  natural disasters, economic, social upheaval or war. Things just change. It's the pattern of human history. So if regeneration doesn't take off  the good news is "lost cities" get a new life as tourist attractions and, for Detroit, as a dystopian sci-fi movie set Future archeologists will then be sifting through the rubble looking for artifacts of Motown and those weird "automobile" thingies...
 

Edited January 10, 2014 by Zombie

[hh5]

Time for Robosapien to help build New Detroit

[TetRefine]

What's happened to Detroit has probably shocked many Americans, but it's nothing new or unusual. When you look around the world it's surprising how common it is for cities to simply die. Main reasons seem to be  natural disasters, economic, social upheaval or war. Things just change. It's the pattern of human history. So if regeneration doesn't take off  the good news is "lost cities" get a new life as tourist attractions and, for Detroit, as a dystopian sci-fi movie set Future archeologists will then be sifting through the rubble looking for artifacts of Motown and those weird "automobile" thingies...

 

 

Thats true. Urban decay has never happened on this scale and this severely in the US that I can think of. Its happened to less important, less well known cities in America, but never to a city as prominent or as once important as Detroit. To go from 1.8M in 1950 and a booming, well-paying economy to under 700k people now with no economy, no jobs, and becoming America's largest ghetto is just sad to see. Yea this stuff happens in third world or has been counties, but its hard for Americans to grasp because its the first, and many people thought it couldn't happen here. 

[methodwriter85]

Thats true. Urban decay has never happened on this scale and this severely in the US that I can think of. Its happened to less important, less well known cities in America, but never to a city as prominent or as once important as Detroit. To go from 1.8M in 1950 and a booming, well-paying economy to under 700k people now with no economy, no jobs, and becoming America's largest ghetto is just sad to see. Yea this stuff happens in third world or has been counties, but its hard for Americans to grasp because its the first, and many people thought it couldn't happen here. 

 

     Interesting point. The United States didn't have a city with a million people until the 1870's, and we don't have a long, extensive history of urban developments like Europe or Asia do. But now we've got Detroit, which has lost 1.2 million people in 63 years.

 

     And it's interesting because it doesn't even seem the bottom has been hit yet. Baltimore and St. Louis hit their rock bottom, and are stabilizing. Pittsburgh is somewhat stabilizing. Philadelphia stabilized in the 1990's, and it's even recovering a bit of their population.

 

     It's just amazing to me though that a city the size that Detroit was even in the 1990's is now approaching the population size of Washington, D.C.

[methodwriter85]

Hey, guys, I just ran across this article about a young guy who became an urban pioneer in Detroit in Detroit when he was 23...check it out:

Why I Bought A House in Detroit for $500 by Drew Philp

  I thought the article was really fascinating- somewhere between the story of, "Look, Downtown Detroit has a Whole Foods now!" and "Ruins of Detroit." I also thought it was interesting how he feels, once he became part of the fabric of the community, kind of ambivalent about "Hipster Detroit", like he's betraying the community when he shops at Whole Foods.