1.
26 The Christian Science Monitor | july 25, 2011
RETROIT
FOCUS
Story By Mark Guarino / Staff Writer
Photos By Melanie Stetson Freeman / Staff Photographer
Detroit
F
or Dewayne Hurling, the American dream
can only happen in Detroit.
Three years ago, the tow-truck driver pur-
chased a vacant six-bedroom, 1928 mansion
in the city’s historical Boston-Edison neigh-
borhood, where Henry Ford once lived. He bought it
for less than $200,000, and for Mr. Hurling, life is good:
Each of his six children has their own spacious bedroom,
the grand staircase features custom-made woodwork il-
lumined by a handcrafted chandelier, the third floor is
an elaborate home theater, and the carriage
house is now his immaculately detailed
“man cave” that allows him to spend down
time with his dog.
Raking leaves on his front lawn with his
children, Hurling says his new neighbor-
hood reminds him of the well-kept, close-
knit Detroit neighborhood he grew up in, and
which he says now has deteriorated so badly
that “it looks like Beirut,” pocked with empty lots
and damaged by crime. Like-minded young parents
who are rediscovering stately manors that need families
to bring them back to life are slowly gentrifying his new
neighborhood, where he feels he finally has a safe home
for his children.
“I’ll never move out of this city [because] there’s still
neighborhoods like this,” he says.
To outsiders, Detroit remains the stereotype of urban
America gone wrong. Over the past half century, an exo-
dus of manufacturing jobs, racial unrest, institutional-
ized corruption, inadequate schools, and government
teetering on bankruptcy have racked the city.
But today, the city is at a tipping point: The 2010
Census shows Detroit’s population at 713,777, about a
25 percent drop over the past decade, and half what it
was in the 1950s. The shrinking tax base looks ominous:
A $200 million municipal budget deficit is projected to
balloon to $1.2 billion by 2015 unless the city council
agrees to deep job and service cuts.
“This is our moment,” says Mayor Dave Bing, a one-
time point guard for the Detroit Pistons who, before
entering politics, built a successful steel company sup-
plying the automotive industry. “We’re not going to be
at 2 million population again,” he admits, noting that ex-
plosive growth in population is not so much his priority
as is being “as good as what you can be with what you’ve
got.”
And what Detroit has, in spades, is land – and a vi-
brant core of residents, new as well as die-hards, who
see opportunity in the ruins.
Large swaths of this city look like a ghost town.
Blight, resulting from abandoned homes and shuttered
factories, is everywhere. Dead zones detach rather than
connect neighborhoods from each other, creating a
patchwork that the city says makes it too expensive to
service. So the mayor has an idea: Draw residents out
of marginally populated areas through direct and indi-
rect incentives into a close-knit population core. By raz-
ing and repurposing what is left behind, the city might
reduce its geographic size and save money by not
having to service such far-flung neighborhoods.
Such a grand scheme is controversial. But those
looking on the bright side see possibilities. For
starters, Detroit’s population is not necessarily in
a complete free fall. Downtown Detroit appears
to be a growing magnet for the college-educated,
under-35 set, which has grown noticeably in the
past decade. And white flight seems to be on pause:
While Detroit’s white population dropped 44 per-
cent overall in the past decade, according to the US
Census Bureau, recent year-to-year population data
show upticks. Detroit’s white population increased
8 percent in 2008 and 13 percent in 2009, the first
such increases in nearly six decades. And vibrant
neighborhoods such as Hurling’s are experiencing
double-digit population growth.
Much of the progress is homemade,
by residents themselves who are ac-
tively taking part in improving their
neighborhoods.
“You can see the chipping away
at the negative mind-set that ex-
isted,” says Geoff Gowman, who,
as a Detroit native, has the long
view of the city’s trajectory. He
has spent the past 30 years pro-
tecting – and renovating – a faded
Art Deco movie theater as a focal
point for his East Side neighborhood
and credits the new mayor’s “class and
integrity” for creating “a whole different
ballgame” in Detroit.
NEW VISION, OLD BATTLES
But the political cost of reimagining Detroit is sig-
nificant, especially with the city already on the brink of
bankruptcy and no clear solution agreed upon.
What to cut and for how much has Mr. Bing at odds
The Christian Science Monitor | july 25, 2011 27
WITH A NEW MAYOR’S BOLD PLAN
TO RAZE THOUSANDS OF BUILDINGS
AND RELOCATE RESIDENTS, CAN
DETROIT SAVE ITSELF? URBAN
PIONEERS WHO SEE OPPORtUNiTIES
IN THE ASHES SAY, ‘YES.’
Continues on page 28
‘I’ll never
move out of this
city [because] there’s
still neighborhoods
like this.’
– Dewayne Hurling, a Detroit
tow-truck driver who bought
a mansion for his family for
under $200,000
It’s all in how you view it: Detroit’s skyline (right) is seen through a
sculpture on the riverfront. After the collapse of the auto industry, the
city has become a symbol of urban failure. But people like mansion-
owner Dewayne Hurling (above) see big opportunity here.
RETOOLING THE MOTOR CITY

2.
28 The Christian Science Monitor | july 25, 2011 The Christian Science Monitor | july 25, 2011 29
with the city council as well as Detroit’s entrenched
labor unions – and there’s no end to the finger-
pointing about who’s to blame for the city’s finan-
cial turmoil and who bears the most responsibility
for making things right.
Some see Detroit’s failures as the nation’s bur-
den, considering how much the city’s automotive
past helped generate prosperity elsewhere. In April,
City Councilwoman JoAnne Watson called for a
$1 billion federal bailout, saying Detroit was “worth
at least as much as General Motors or Chrysler or
the Wall Street bankers.”
Bing wants the city’s 48 unions to concede to
job and benefit cuts, threatening that if the city
does not gain control of its finances it may lose
the right to determine them. Michigan’s governor
has the power to dispatch an emergency financial
manager who is enabled to hire and fire employees,
void union contracts, and make changes without
the approval of the mayor or city council. There
are vivid precedents: This year, Gov. Rick Snyder
(R) appointed a manager to take over the towns
of Pontiac, Ecorse, and Benton Harbor as well as
Detroit’s public school system.
“It’s more than a threat,” Bing says of the state
takeover. Last year the city paid $191 million in
health care to union employees and retirees and
$200 million in pension payouts, both of which Bing
says are “unsustainable.”
Unions balk when Bing brings up the possibil-
ity of a state takeover, saying they’ve made conces-
sions in the past and that the city’s budget shortfall
is not their responsibility. “My attitude is, I’d rather
have a fight with an outsider imposed on us from
outside Detroit rather than being nickel-and-dimed”
by the city, says Michael Mulholland, the secretary-
treasurer of American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 207.
No matter how the
budget issues are re-
solved, the census figures
are forcing city leaders
to realize that something
must be done to address
the stark imbalance of its
footprint versus its cur-
rent density. Detroit was
designed to accommodate
2.5 million people, three
times its population today.
As for sheer land size, Manhattan, San Francisco,
and Boston all could fit comfortably within the 139
square miles inside its borders.
Yet in those dense urban areas where extra land
can be an asset, in Detroit it represents a liability.
Bing believes that the city’s rebirth is only pos-
sible if residents choose to live closer together in
neighborhoods central to downtown.
‘BRUTAL TRUTH’: COZY IS LESS COSTLY
The central controversy in an act of such social
engineering is the sense of coercion or even racial
prejudice, because many of the marginal neighbor-
hoods that would be eliminated are black. But con-
vincing residents that denser neighborhoods are
better relies on this financial certainty: If you live
in a thinly populated neighborhood, your trash will
pile up for two weeks instead of one before being
collected, your streets will be low on the list for re-
pair, and emergency response calls will take longer
than in more dense neighborhoods where police
and fire stations are around the corner.
Bing created the Detroit Works Project to puzzle
through a long-term plan that will eliminate blight,
consolidate city services, and create incentives
for residents to move closer to downtown. Similar
urban renewal endeavors have helped turn around
the ailing economies of Youngstown, Ohio, and
Saginaw, Mich. But Detroit is the largest city in
the United States to contemplate such a dramatic
restructuring.
Through a series of public meetings that started
last fall, Bing and other city officials have stressed
that no final decisions have been made. But in inter-
views, Bing makes it clear that “I have to be brutally
honest....” Whatever the outcome, he says, there are
“a lot of hard decisions that need to be made. We’ve
got limited resources yet we’ve got demands from
our citizens for services like never before, and we
can’t afford to do it.”
Besides committing to demolishing more than
10,000 blighted homes through 2013, the Detroit
Works Project is tasked with prioritizing city ser-
vices according to the population of the area, pro-
posing new uses for dead zones, such as creating
urban forests or farms, and completing a light rail
project that will connect neighborhoods.
The final plan is not expected until 2012, after
being pushed back several times this year. And the
delay in direction has allowed public misperception
and suspicion to incubate.
Some longtime residents like
Carl Allison, a former corpo-
rate fundraiser who now oper-
ates his own handcrafted candle
company, are nervous about the
possibility that residents may be
pressured to relocate to shore up
city resources. “To me, it almost
seems like we’re giving up. I
would like to take creative minds
and build the city back up rather
than shrink it. It seems like it’s
the wrong message,” Mr. Allison
says.
Unions are especially upset,
saying that the city should be
seeking federal aid to invest in
depressed areas of the city in-
stead of encouraging a cutback
in services, which would mean job and benefit
losses.
Mr. Mulholland of AFSCME Local 207, which
represents about 900 city workers in Detroit, calls
the Detroit Works Project proposals “nonsensical”
and “racist” because he says the majority of people
who would be invited to move are black. “The prob-
lem is [the city doesn’t] fear us anymore and they
can do anything they want,” he says.
Even with the backlash, starting the conver-
sation on what to do with Detroit’s landmass is
worth the risk, says Paul Fontaine, an instructor at
the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of
Architecture and Urban Planning in nearby Ann
Arbor. Because Detroit lost so many people during
the past decade, it has no other choice but to ex-
periment, he says: “I can’t think of any city in North
America that lost more than 200,000 people in one
decade. I think that statistic alone places Detroit
in its own category of challenges [and] makes the
scope of the Detroit Works Project so large and so
important because so many eyes are on it.”
WHAT’S GOIN’ON? REBRANDING
Detroit pride is palpable here and for good rea-
son: Entrepreneurial innovation is Detroit’s true
legacy. From these streets came the workers who
were the underpinnings of the US as an economic
and military superpower – turning out not just
automobiles but World War II bombers. And they
also brought entirely new trends to world culture:
Think Berry Gordy, who invented the massive stu-
dio sound of Motown right in his living room, and
rapper Eminem and guitarist Jack White.
“You really have the freedom to do what you
want here. If you want to change something about
the city, you can,” says Stephen Nawara, a musi-
cian and founder of Beehive Recording Co., an
independent record label that specializes in devel-
oping local talent online.
A new influx of artists to Detroit has created
“the most fertile art community in America,” says
Mr. Nawara, who operates his studio out of a rented
turn-of-the-century mansion in Woodbridge, near
downtown. He says he wants to help reestablish
Detroit’s identity as a world-class music incubator,
just like it was during the heyday of Motown.
“I see such strength here. The automotive in-
dustry left everyone jobless. So the attitude now is
‘let’s do something we can do on our own.’ And I
think music and art is a part of that,” he says.
Entrepreneurs can be found popping up in
pockets throughout Detroit due to affordable rent,
ample space, and a growing community of hungry
young business and creative types who see the
city’s downturn as an opportunity to take risks they
couldn’t afford in other large metropolitan areas.
For it to succeed, Detroit needs to rebrand itself
as a place that nurtures creativity, says Eric Ryan,
a native who relocated to San Francisco several
years ago to launch Method Products, a start-up
company that specializes in boutique cleaning
products. Speaking to a conference on entrepre-
neurship held in Detroit in March, Mr. Ryan said
he believes Detroit is now at a point where it can
feed off its unique energy as an underdog to spark
invention.
“Weird changes the world, and Detroit could see
a little more of weird in terms of creative ideas,”
he said.
Entrepreneurship is generating growth in some
neighborhoods close to downtown. In Nawara’s
Woodbridge, the total population grew 13 percent
Detroit
D
ealing with dramatic population loss
means one fundamental challenge: What
to do with all the abandoned buildings?
There are 100,718 vacant addresses in Detroit,
which represents about 10,950 acres, or 12 per-
cent of the city.
“There’s blight all over the place,” says Detroit
Mayor Dave Bing. “The first thing we have to do
is clean it up.”
In 2010 Mr. Bing announced he wanted to
demolish 10,000 vacant and deteriorated homes
by the end of his term in December 2013, an un-
precedented goal for a major city. So far, 3,000
have been razed since last year, and the city ex-
pects the same number will fall by the end of this
year. To get the job done, the city secured $20
million in federal funds from the US Department
of Housing and Urban Development.
Bing had an unofficial “blight summit” with
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu in February
2011. The Ford and Kresge foundations funded
the meeting to get the mayors brainstorm-
ing about a problem their cities both face,
for two very different reasons. While New
Orleans has also suffered a gradual pop-
ulation decline in recent decades, hurri-
cane Katrina accelerated the exodus in
2005. US Census data show New Orleans’
population dropped to 343,829 in 2010, a
29 percent loss in 10 years. Detroit is at
713,777, a 25 percent dip since 2000, and
less than half its population in the 1950s.
Like Bing, Mr. Landrieu wants 10,000
dilapidated homes razed by the end of
his term in 2013, which represents about
a fourth of the 43,000 addresses in that
category.
Both mayors are stepping up enforce-
ment and inspections to bring absentee
owners to court if they don’t get their proper-
ties into compliance. Landrieu plans to launch
“code enforcement sweeps” of properties lo-
cated within five blocks of schools and high-
traffic commercial districts. Bing wants the city
to have the first rights to acquire tax-delinquent
properties at no cost before speculators have the
chance.
Speculators who take advantage of low real
estate prices in Detroit by buying properties for
cheap at sheriff auctions and then failing to pay
blight fines are a significant problem. A Detroit
News investigation earlier this year found that
10 private landowners, the majority of whom live
outside the city, own more than 5,000 city parcels
each. Most of the properties are vacant.
Detroit’s foreclosure crisis is expected to
worsen the problem. About 12,000 parcels were
auctioned due to foreclosure in September 2010,
a 44 percent increase from the same time the
previous year. If homes continue to be foreclosed
upon at a similar rate, the Detroit Works Project
estimates that 60,000 parcels of land in Detroit
will go to auction in the next five years.
– Mark Guarino
Aradicalplan:
razingthedead
v Continued from page 26
Continues on next page Continues on next page
Blight fight: Artist EricTroffkin (top) checks out new low-
cost studio space in Detroit’s vacant Russell Industrial Center,
formerly home to auto-industry suppliers.The educated,
under-35 set is growing in the city center, reclaiming blighted
space.Two abandoned houses (above) are typical of Detroit’s
thousands of blighted properties.
FOCUS
Detroit’s population is half
what it was in its 1950s heyday.
Pedestrians (left) cross the
street behind City Hall where
Mayor Dave Bing (below) is
developing plans to try to
increase city center density and
raze blighted buildings in far-
flung corners of the troubled
city.
‘This is
our moment....
We’re not going to be at
2 million population again.
We’ll be lucky in my lifetime if we
ever got back to a million.
So I’m not so interested in just
growing the population
because you got to be as good
as what you can be with what
you’ve got.’
– Detroit Mayor Dave Bing

3.
FOCUS
The Christian Science Monitor | july 25, 2011 31
in 2009 compared with that in 2000. Similarly, the
population of Near East Riverfront, where Kelli
Kavanaugh opened a bicycle shop in 2008, grew 13
percent during the same period.
Ms. Kavanaugh says she and her business part-
ner chose to open Wheelhouse Detroit along the
Detroit River because they saw more busi-
nesses thriving in the area where ample green
space was attracting people interested in rec-
reational activities. One sign she was right: In
2007, 600 people signed up for the first year of
the Tour de Troit, the city’s largest annual bike
ride. By 2010, participation tallied 3,200.
Still, she and her partner are holding onto
their full-time jobs until they’re certain the
business is here to stay.
“Owning a business in Detroit is something
you have to really want to do,” she says. One
advantage, she says, is “the strong sense of
community” among the people who choose to
sink roots in the city. “People
here are willing to go
the extra mile for
someone with an
initiative that
they are sup-
portive of. In
some ways,
there’s a
little bit of a
small-town
feel, which is
really nice,”
she says.
Evidence of
that small-town
environment is the
escalation of urban farms
in Detroit that are repurposing empty lots.
There are 875 urban farms and community gar-
dens operating throughout the city, a network of
which is providing affordable, pesticide-free food
at neighborhood farmers’ markets, restaurants and
retail outlets, according to Detroit Works Project
data. Green growth is everywhere – from small to-
mato plantings in a patch of a corner lot on a resi-
dential street to large orchard tracts planned by
John Hantz, a local businessman who plans to build
“the world’s largest urban farm” in Detroit.
His for-profit venture, Hantz Farms, is negotiat-
ing with the city to buy 120 acres of unused land.
Mr. Hantz is pitching the farm to the city as a tour-
ist destination, beautification project, and a local
economic generator that would employ more than
200.
Detroit’s official 27 percent unemployment
(some place it as high as 50 percent), miles of empty
land, and nearby tech resources (Michigan State
University’s College of Agriculture and Natural
Resources) make the city perfect for an unprec-
edented experiment in urban agriculture, says
Michael Score, president of Hantz Farms: “Most
cities don’t have that combination of resources,” he
says.
Most of the existing local greening projects in
Detroit look like Spirit Farm in the North Corktown
neighborhood, run by Kate Devlin, a longtime com-
munity organizer who saw raising food and tending
chickens as a response to the blighted homes in her
neighborhood, located 10 minutes from downtown,
that were attracting squatting crack users.
“I was tired of looking at places I loved looking
unbelievably ugly. [The garden] is a response to
that ugliness, of trying to create a little bit of beauty
and a place that’s soft and peaceful,” Ms. Devlin
says.
Three years ago, with the blessing of her congre-
gation, Devlin broke ground on the lot behind her
Episcopal church with nothing but some gardening
tools and volunteers. Today, the farm consists of a
chicken coop; solar-powered greenhouse; an or-
chard of plum, peach, and apple trees; and a turkey
that was rescued on the city’s West Side and serves
as the farm’s unofficial mascot.
Besides spoiling the neighborhood for drug deal-
ers, the farm contributes 25 percent of its produce
to 165 needy families. Another 25 percent goes to
volunteers, and 50 percent is sold at farmers’ mar-
kets to help pay for maintenance costs.
CAN LAND TRUMP CREDIBILITY?
Detroit can’t just be the Motor City anymore,
says Mayor Bing. The automotive industry can no
longer be the sole focus for growth, he says, noting
that health care and technology sectors are already
on the rise. An example: Wayne State University’s
medical school, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and
the Henry Ford Health System, all in Midtown, col-
lectively employ tens of thousands of people and
are credited with helping stabilize the surrounding
neighborhoods. The city says growth among the
three employers will attract an additional 15,000
people to the area by 2015.
“Detroit probably has more engineering and
technology capability than almost anywhere in the
world because of the auto industry and the research
schools here ... we can use both as a vehicle for
growth,” Bing says.
The city’s weak financial situation means it can’t
rely on more than just nominal tax incentives to at-
tract companies considering a move to Detroit. But
Bing says his trump card is something no other city
can so generously provide: land. According to the
Detroit Works Project, a little more than 12 percent
of Detroit, or 10,950 acres, is vacant land. Twenty
percent of the commercial and industrial land in the
city is vacant. .
The city controls 50 percent of the unoccupied
land and Bing considers this “a huge asset.” To busi-
nesses considering a move to Detroit, he says, “You
come up with a great idea and some kind of plan,
and there’s something to talk about. It’s a white
sheet of paper right now.”
But Detroit’s past is some heavy baggage.
Decades of political corruption have stalled prog-
ress, and everyone – from city residents to state
lawmakers – looks at promises from city hall with a
high degree of distrust.
“People have grown very cynical of government
in Detroit and that will make [recovery plans] prob-
ably more difficult,” says Mr. Fontaine, with the
University of Michigan.
The situation worsened in recent years with the
many scandals taking place under former Mayor
Kwame Kilpatrick, who faces trial in 2012 on federal
charges alleging he used his authority to generate
millions of dollars in kickbacks from contractors,
nonprofit donors, and others. Mr. Kilpatrick is cur-
rently in prison for a parole violation related to two
obstruction of justice felonies that put him in prison
in 2008 in the middle of his term.
Bing says he realized upon taking office that a
major part of his job would be convincing people
he was a reformer. He started his term by announc-
ing he’d donate his $176,176 annual salary to the
Detroit Police Department to hire more officers.
“This administration came in on transparency,
on openness, on telling the truth. So, based on what
it was and what it is, it’s a 180-degree difference,”
he says. “But still there’s fear.”
Besides cynicism over city government, Bing’s
plan to possibly offer residents the choice to move
to thriving neighborhoods faces a second challenge:
It’s been tried before. In 1994, the city announced it
would buy out 500 property owners living near the
city airport in order to build a safety buffer. Less
than half the owners never received offers and
the project is in limbo, says the city, because of a
shrinking Federal Aviation Administration budget.
Neighborhood advocates complain that property
owners were offered less than what their parcels
were worth and that, by dragging its feet, the city
has accelerated the area’s decline.
Mark Demorest, any attorney who represented
a dozen property owners in the airport case, says
the city has a spotty legacy for dealing with urban
renewal.
“I don’t think the city should embark on [the
Detroit Works Project] unless they know how to pay
for it. If you start on a project and let it languish, or
abandon it in the middle, it’s probably worse than
starting it in the first place,” he says.
Despite Detroit’s troubled history, some resi-
dents insist that abandonment is not a solution.
Many here remain entrenched because they be-
lieve that after hitting bottom with Kilpatrick and
the auto industry failures, there simply is nowhere
for the city to go but up.
“People always cry about Detroit, but some of
the suburbs have the same problems. What’s the
difference?” asks the happy homeowner Dewayne
Hurling. “Change takes time. I’m patient.” r
A humbled industrial giant: Detroit is now counting on its
historic creativity and small-scale initiatives to pump new life
into the city. Businessman Stephen Nawara (top) founded
Beehive Recording Co. in his basement.The Heidelberg Project
(center) uses everyday discarded objects to create colorful
inspiration in one Detroit neighborhood. Urban gardener
Kate Devlin (bottom) runs Spirit Farm in an empty lot beside a
church in the North Corktown neighborhood. Such gardens are
ubiquitous because there is so much open land available.
General Motors headquarters remains in the heart of
downtown Detroit, but the troubled city is searching for
something beyond the auto industry to rely on.
Continues on next page
v Continued from previous page
‘To me, it almost
seems like we’re
giving up. I would like
to take creative minds
and build the city back up
rather than shrink it.
It seems like it’s the
wrong message.’
– Carl Allison, owner of a
Detroit candle company