Week 7!

In my blog post this week, I want to focus on an article I read a few days ago about Detroit by the New York Times. (The article is here https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/us/detroit-bankruptcy-anniversary.html). I do want to start off by pointing out that the article does try to frame Detroit in a positive light, highlighting the work of individuals in the city and how some of the issues it has faced (due to bankruptcy) in the past has improved. However, the article leaves me quite frustrated, especially towards the middle, as it explains how Detroit has “improved” and changed since its bankruptcy mainly through the example of the “excess funds” it now has.

Mitch Smith, the author of the article, first quotes Mayor Mike Duggan, who says “And we don’t want to celebrate those things [streetlights going on]. Here, we want to celebrate the new park, the new riverfront.” He follows by describing how “Indeed, parks in the city have flourished since the bankruptcy, when about half of them were shut down. The waterfront on the Detroit River, once an unwelcoming mass of concrete, now features scenic walkways and fishing spots shared by residents and tourists.” How can we use the scenery and number of tourist destinations of a city as a metric for how successful a city is? To his credit, Smith later acknowledge this, including interviewing a member of the City Council from Southwest Detroit who explains her preference for function rather than aesthetic aspects of the city and the potential problems of the code enforcement that the government has levied. But Smith quickly shifts back to describing how Detroit’s government has already used its money to expand the area it’s helping, ultimately concluding that Detroit has now (in his words) “turned a corner.”

Honestly, I did not expect myself to become more and more annoyed (at this article) in the process of writing this blog post and analyzing this article in more depth. While Smith emphasizes the problems Detroit faces, such as population decline, pervasive blight, and bankruptcies among businesses, he frames it as a matter that has been mostly resolved, even describing how Detroit now has extra funds that it can use on making the city prettier. The article seems to fail to understand why the population decline occurred and spends at most one paragraph glossing over the possibility that business development in Detroit could possibly push out legacy Detroiters. To be clear, it’s not to say that we shouldn’t focus on Detroit’s positive assets or highlight the beautiful riverfront – it’s that his metric for success seem to end at the amount of money available in the government coffers and the presence of bougie buildings. (Also, particularly untrue when the very area I work in Detroit still very much deals with pervasive issues of blight).

There are so many ways to frame Detroit coming together after the bankruptcy through highlighting the work and success that activists, residents, and nonprofits have achieved, and not a single bit was in this article. Most of all, it irks me that every single direct quote in this article is from a government official or developer. (The rest of the quotes are from city workers and businesses). It is surprising that he did not talk to at least one local resident (and not someone involved in the government or in the growing businesses) about the changes in the city when he decided to write an article about Detroit

I will finish this (perhaps too harsh) blog post by reflecting on this quote from the article: “Looking back, Mr. Carrington said the bankruptcy was a reset button for the city — one that caused real pain for many people but that also gave Detroit a chance to refine its identity.” But what does it mean to “redefine” identity, whose identity is erased in this process, and who gets to speak for the “people”?