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Here is Part II in our 7-part series on architectural renaissance-ready American cities.  Our last entry: Buffalo, New York.

Reputations, good and bad, tend to lag reality.  Except in Detroit.  For years, Detroit was like Buffalo, which I wrote about last week; its bad reputation fit the reality on the ground, due to abandoned homes, crumbling towers, and pervasive crime.  But after decades of false starts, there is mounting evidence that a renaissance is tentatively gaining traction.

And man, have there been false starts, so many that “systemic failure,” that tired, awful phrase, most accurately sums up Detroit’s struggle to rediscover the civic swagger lost to “white flight,” freeways, economic stagnation, and everything else.  How so, systemic? Over the years, hundreds of companies - of all kinds, not just the manufacturers - fled to outlying suburbs (where employees had long since moved) or worse, overseas (where employees could not compete).

Once commerce left Detroit, it was only a matter of time before commercial properties began decaying like the thousands of crumbling homes ringing downtown.  Even when civic pride and good intentions caused business leaders to stay within city limits - for instance, to build the Renaissance Center -  Detroit still suffered.  A massive influx of new office and retail space was the last thing downtown needed - especially space confusingly organized and enclosed in cookie-cutter towers that were spatially isolated from the downtown meant to benefit from their construction.

On the governmental front, recent leaders faced with Detroit’s gutted cityscape and battered population failed to leverage their public offices in an even minimally-positive way.  If ever there was a place where citizens need visionary leadership, courageous creativity, and determined optimism, it is Detroit, where “the estimated functional illiteracy rate in the city limits hovers near 50%. The unsolved-murder rate is about 70%, and unemployment is around an astonishing 29%.“

Instead, Detroiters got folks like former Mayor (and most recently, former inmate) Kwame Kilpatrick, who didn’t trouble himself much with actual governing.  As Michael Rosenberg wrote in Sports Illustrated, Kilpatrick “seemed to treat city government as his personal ATM. His reign featured a credit-card scandal, a luxury-SUV scandal, a security-team scandal, a petty-cash-fund scandal, a nonprofit-foundation scandal, a cronyism scandal, a fire-the-whistleblowers scandal and of course a sex scandal, the last of which he covered up by lying under oath and settling a lawsuit with $8.4 million of city money.”

While that farce was playing out in city hall over the last few years, other enterprising folks decided to spark their own renaissance.  Completed over the last 15 years, some of their achievements include: (1) two new urban stadiums (Comerica Park for the Detroit Tigers and Ford Field for the Detroit Lions), (2) refurbished theaters (Fox Theatre, Gem/Century Theatre, Fillmore Detroit, Orchestra Hall, Music Hall, etc.), (2) new/revived park land (most prominently, Campus Martius Park and the partly-finished Detroit International Waterfront), and (3) reused skyscrapers (Westin Book Cadillac Hotel, Dime Building, Guardian Building, Cadillac Place, etc.).

Yes, downtown is still home to hundreds of under-used, abandoned, or dilapidated buildings (most iconic among them, Michigan Central Station).  Even so, high-profile entertainment, office, and recreational redevelopment projects are among the most powerful “sparks” for systemic, not just piece-meal, redevelopment.  As more of these projects are completed, Detroit’s inventory of late nineteenth- and early twentieth- century architecture will be more and more appealing candidates for redevelopment.

But Detroit’s architectural renaissance hinges on another, perhaps more complex, problem: how to reinvigorate the rest of Detroit.  Detroit is 140 square miles in area; downtown occupies only 10 square miles.  Although downtown and other neighborhoods have had similar problems, they have been much, much worse beyond Detroit’s urban core.

As bad as things got downtown, there were always a fair amount of workers that made use of it, particularly public-sector employees, who never had the option of moving to a suburban office park.  Downtown also had the benefit of being relatively dense, which made infrastructure maintenance and crime control that much easier.

Detroit’s outlying neighborhoods, on the other hand, boast roughly 50 square miles of vacant or abandoned properties - and while downtown must contend with aging buildings and high vacancy rates, outlying neighborhoods must also contend with “high crime, poor schools, widespread foreclosures and abandonment, unemployment, poverty, drug addiction and homelessness.”  In other words, aging architecture is just one of many problems for folks in Brush Park, Boston-Edison, and elsewhere.

And yet I can’t help but feel optimistic about these neighborhoods for a few reasons.  Number one: David Bing’s election as Kwame Kilpatrick’s replacement.  The impression one gets from the recent Sports Illustrated profile of the former NBA player is that Bing is pragmatic and incapable of forgetting that his new title gives him as much responsibility as it does power.  He has only been mayor for a short time, but he already seems like the anti-Kilpatrick and, being somewhat of a political outsider, also seems willing to ignore political pressure.

Another reason for optimism is simply a shift in mentality; years ago, the idea of shrinking the city footprint - by demolishing vacant houses and ripping out unused streets/utilities - would be viewed as an unforgivable waving of the white flag - that Detroit’s best days were over, never to return. But thanks to the efforts of a variety of local groups and entrepreneurs, residents and public officials are beginning to see the practical benefits of tearing down the worst-gone neighborhoods and tearing out old infrastructure.

Fewer abandoned homes means fewer spots for crime to fester; fewer isolated homes means reduced infrastructure maintenance costs; fewer sparsely-populated neighborhoods means more densely-populated, lively neighborhoods; fewer vacant properties means higher values and community resources for occupied properties; fewer neighborhoods means simplified mass-transit issues.

Unlike years past, Detroit will finally get some financial assistance to dosomething about all these properties too; the federal government recently awarded Michigan with $233 million to purchase thousands of abandoned/run-down properties.  Some will be torn down, others will be renovated, and even more placed in land banks, which are public entities that hold run-down properties until economic circumstances improve.

And while all that federal money is insufficient to rid Detroit of its worst properties, it should at least improve the chances of another, increasingly supported movement:  urban farming.  A few months ago, I wrote about Hantz Farms, which is aiming to reuse Detroit’s vacant neighborhoods and empty lots as farm land - and not just community farms, but commercial farms that supply local jobs and produce local food.

No one expects Detroit to change quickly.  But at least the progress made in its urban core suggests that the time will soon come when re-development will radiate outward to the neighborhoods that need it most.  It doesn’t hurt that Detroit’s historic preservation contingent is flexing its muscles - or that its creative class recognizes the transformative potential of small projects - or that there are plenty of residents determined to preserve their neighborhoods for the future - or that there are entrepreneurs (and supporters) who fully intend to succeed in Detroit.

If you are curious about Detroit’s progress, definitely check out Time’sDetroit Blog, which is part of the magazine’s Assignment Detroit project.  Model D is another excellent blog documenting local entrepreneurship, redevelopment, and civic involvement in Detroit’s renaissance.

Related Posts: (1) Seven cities primed for an architectural renaissance - Buffalo, (2) Silverdome auction not exactly a positive development for Pontiac, Detroit, Lions, etc., (3) First step to city revitalization: tear it down, and (4) Second step to city revitalization: farm it.

Images courtesy of (1) durbanator, (2) ifmuth and (3) Bing Maps.