Can the Creative Class and Artists “Save” Detroit?

There’s a reason a big metropolis, named Detroit, sprung up on the eastern side of Michigan.

It was a good location near water and other resources.

And it created millions of jobs during its heyday.

Everyone is calling Detroit “dead.”

Without a doubt, the problems of the automakers are having a profound effect on the entire Detroit-metro region, which has been in decline for decades.

Let’s face it, if you graduate from college, you aren’t exactly thinking, “I can’t wait to move to Detroit and start my new life.”

And that’s key to the success of a city. According to Richard Florida, the author of the book Rise of the Creative Class, among others, the success in luring the creative class can mean life or death for a city.

Detroit has to figure out a way to move beyond automobiles.

From the Lawrence Ulrich in the New York Times in January 2009:

In 1927, The New York Times called Detroiters “the most prosperous slice of average humanity that now exists or has ever existed.” If Detroit ever again deserves such lofty accolades, it won’t be for screwing cars together. Whether the Big Three survive or not, Detroiters must know it’s time to punch out. Fewer of the next generation will walk through factory doors to take their place alongside fathers, brothers and friends.

Now this sounds like heresy. But the sooner the city gets used to the idea, the brighter its prospects. For Detroit to have a future, it has to imagine what the future might look like without cars.

Can Artists “Save” Detroit?

As Detroit’s housing market craters and houses are literally selling for only $500, an interesting phenomena is sprouting up.

Apparently artists are seeing the cheap housing as an opportunity to move in.

Can Detroit lure the creative class through a regentrification of some of its neighborhoods? And how many artists would it take?

From NPR:

But Mitch Cope and his wife, Gina, are trying to change things — one house at a time.

The Copes, who bought a home on Detroit’s north side four years ago, have been recruiting artists from around the world to buy the foreclosed houses in the neighborhood and rebuild.

Neighbor Greg Profota, who has lived in the neighborhood all his life, has his doubts. His family and friends moved out years ago — and now he wants out, too. Still, Profota admires Cope’s gumption.

“Well, I gotta give him credit because he’s on a new frontier, and the neighborhood is so worn down, it’s gonna take a miracle to bring it back,” he says.

Profota’s house has been broken into three times, his garage six times. Same goes for pretty much every house on his block.

“You gotta have an alarm system on your houses, a dog and a gun, because the neighborhood is terrible,” he says. “I got all three.”

Cope admits that the Power House has already been broken into several times and that he has been threatened. But he has still managed to convince about a dozen working artists to move into the neighborhood. They’re from all over — the Netherlands, Germany, Brooklyn.

Jon Brumit is an artist in Chicago whose work has been featured in The New York Times and on the Today Show and NPR. He and his wife just bought a house in Cope’s neighborhood for $100. That’s right: an entire house for the price of dinner at a nice restaurant for a family of four. Sure, the place needs a ton of work and it[’s not that safe, but Brumit says it’s worth it just to help bring back the neighborhood.

The Copes are getting a lot of media attention for their plan to bring in artists to the neighborhood. You have to give them kudos for trying.

The bigger question is- how will Detroit lure the artists, writers, web designers, advertising executives, consultants and others needed to really have a vital, growing city?

Or should Detroit be allowed to, simply, die?

There is no rule that a city must live for forever. Just ask the thousands of small towns on the great plains that are being abandoned year by year.