Week 3 Blog

I feel as if I’ve learned a lot about Detroit in a short period of time. Sure, we’ve only been here for 3 weeks, but from reading How To Kill a City, going out with peers, and talking with the CEO of the Historical Society, I’ve gotten a sense of a city which is both very proud but also suffering from problems typical of most U.S cities. Just riding a bike down to the riverwalk, I saw us go from houses and old warehouses in poor shape to freshly built condos which probably rented out for well above what is reasonable for their size. On the way back, we went through downtown, a bustling area, but we also biked through poorly maintained infrastructure and neglected neighborhoods.

At lunch with the CEO today, I asked about why Fort Wayne is in such disrepair. The gist of it is that the city maintains the fort, and doesn’t have the money to preserve it. Apparently, there have been suggestions about turning the fort over to the State, or even the National Park Service, but there’s an anxiety around “losing” the fort, much like what happened with Belle Isle. What struck me about this was how proud the city must be to have this view; even though the fort would still be here, likely in better condition, turning it over to an authority outside of Detroit would be like the city losing some of the last autonomy it perceives itself to have. In a way, this seems to be one of those positive views we’ve talked about having rather than a negative one. Yes, the city has seen hardship, but look at how the community wants to hold on to this old fort, representing in some way the city itself, because it is also one of the last symbols of Detroit which remains with the city.

Part of the reason the fort is in such disrepair is because the pandemic shut down the Historical Society. The group runs most of the museums in the city, and without the ability to even be open, they lost a lot of the aim and purpose to continue some projects from pre-COVID. One project I talked with the CEO about was trying to be involved in a pool of money taken from property taxes and given to other community nonprofits in the Wayne County and Oakland County areas. The society is hoping to get this measure on the ballot for next year, which would allow for them to stop focusing funding on keeping the bills paid and instead focus it on creating grand projects. With this pool of tax money, only a small amount per property each year, they would be funded in perpetuity.