The Joe Louis Fist monument in downtown Detroit. It’s a symbol of defiance and resistance in the face of adversity. Source: gettyimages.com
Sometimes, watching television offers fleeting, but definitive, glimpses into perceptions of a place. It could be done through montage scenes of street level hustle-and-bustle in Manhattan, something that virtually every show set in New York features, or cars stuck in gridlocked freeway traffic in southern California. One can think of other memes that quickly show general perceptions of a place: sandy beaches fronting skyscrapers in Miami; cable cars traversing the hills in San Francisco.
Detroit’s no different. I’ve kept mental tabs on how Detroit’s been depicted in the media over the last few decades, and it’s enlightening. In the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000’s, it was common to show images of assembly lines with workers moving big auto parts around, and then feature neighborhoods of neat but small single-family homes on small lots. About 10-15 years ago, it was cool to show off Detroit’s vacant land or abandoned buildings, especially factories. Sometimes this was done with views of the downtown Detroit skyline in the background to show stark contrasts, or sometimes the images just focused solely on the blighted ruins.
Recently, I’m finding Detroit depicted in new ways. While watching the Detroit Lions play the Minnesota Vikings Sunday, I noticed more shots being shown of Detroit’s skyline, especially highlighting the construction of the 70-story, 1.5 million square-foot Hudson's Detroit mixed-use development. I saw scenes of Detroit’s Riverwalk in use, ice skaters at Campus Martius Park, the Spirit of Detroit statue, or the Joe Louis fist sculpture. Detroit is now being depicted with a nod toward normalcy, as its achievements are highlighted. Detroit is also being depicted with a nod to its resilience – something that only an embodiment of the city’s spiritual essence, and a 24-foot tall, 4-ton bronze sculpture of a fist, can convey.
In short, two things are becoming clearer to me: 1) Detroit is beginning to get positive perceptions nationally, and that its revitalization is being viewed as real and lasting; and 2) that Detroit is finally shedding the fallen city stigma it acquired in recent decades, and is now being viewed the way other places are – a place with people, a place with amenities, a place with value.
This may not seem like a significant shift to you. Yes, it is a subtle change in perception. But this did not happen overnight. For most of my life Detroiters have been trying, in vain, to pump out positive messages about the Motor City. Now, the messages are resonating, and are being reflected in the public sphere.
The importance of narratives
I think cities succeed – or fail – in large part because of the narratives that define them. We create positive narratives for successful cities, and the positivity breeds more success. We create negative narratives for failing cities, and negativity accelerates the failure. There are a number of cities that have undergone narrative shifts from positive, to negative, to positive again. For example, I’d argue New York City’s narrative arc hit bottom in the late 1970’s, when the near-bankrupt city was denied a federal bailout by President Gerald Ford, violent crime was at its all-time peak, and a heat wave blackout in July 1977 that contributed to a sense of lawlessness in the city. New York was able to change its narrative fairly quickly; within a decade of the blackout, New York, and Manhattan in particular, became known for being the preferred location for a new demographic – yuppies. The emergence of that demographic was at the heart New York’s revitalization.
Detroit’s shifting narratives
To understand what the new narrative shift means for Detroit, I think it’s instructive to look at how the narrative arc ebbed and flowed over the last 70 years.
1945 – 1967: the tension narrative. Following WWII, Detroit gets right back into auto production. Lots of attention is given to strengthening the economy. Little attention is given to rising racial and inequality tensions in the city. In fact, it’s probably fair to say political and business leaders ignored the tensions, assuming that a booming economy would make them go away.
1967 – 1974: the crisis narrative. The 1967 riots, the 1970's Detroit Police STRESS (Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) undercover unit, the rise of foreign auto competition, the Supreme Court case that put the entire Detroit metropolitan area at the center of a battle over school desegregation with Milliken v. Bradley, the tensions behind the 1973 mayoral election – all of them rocked the city.
1974 – 1994: the shunning narrative. Detroit spends 20 years in the wilderness. Detroiters, particularly Black Detroiters, begin to believe in the city again. However, few outside of the city, suburbanites and outsiders, do. The city-suburb relationship, and the city-state relationship, are at their worst. Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who ruled over metro Detroit’s second-largest and most affluent county from 1992 until his death in 2019, personified suburban feelings toward Detroit. A quote from his Drop Dead, Detroit! In the New Yorker in 2014 characterizes the region’s policy toward the city:
“I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said, ‘What we’re going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn.”
Nice.
What Detroit’s witnessing now is the fruits of efforts begun over the last 30 years. The city had to endure the extended shunning it received from the suburbs, state government, and national media outlets before it could transition to revitalization. Once it emerged from the shunning, things started happening.
1994 – 2013: Comeback narrative, part 1: the inner work. Detroit begins to take the steps needed to reorganize its leadership, business community, and priorities. New mayor Dennis Archer succeeds Coleman Young, after Young’s 20 years in office. There are green shoots, positives are taking place in the city. But much of this is unseen to the general public because of 1) the foreclosure crisis, and 2) the corruption of the Kilpatrick administration.
2013 - present: Comeback narrative, part 2: the outer work. The 2013 municipal bankruptcy was the culmination of the inner work, and the most significant evidence to the public of the city’s commitment to the outer work. It allowed suburbanites and outsiders to see the value and progress of inside work efforts. More progress comes to the city.
Here’s an observation. Detroit’s 1967-1974 narrative arc is eerily similar to that of Los Angeles in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, with one big caveat. Los Angeles’ narrative probably hit rock bottom in the early and mid-1990’s. The city’s riots in the aftermath of the Rodney King police beating acquittal, and the depth and scope of the LAPD’s Rampart corruption scandal, is very similar to what happened in Detroit during its crisis period 30 years earlier. Somehow (and LA experts would be better than me to discuss this), Los Angeles was able to go through an accelerated inner work/outer work phase that helped in changing the narrative. From my perspective, Los Angeles didn’t spend two decades being neglected by the federal government, its state legislature, its suburbs, or its business community. I’m guessing that LA’s leaders went about the quiet business of reorganizing its social infrastructure, and it paid off. Sure, LA’s not perfect. But it had a leadership class that was determined to keep the city thriving.
It took 20 years for Detroit’s leaders to come to the same conclusion. That’s the difference.
Fascinating article as usual! Its great to read of Detroit's continued resilience in the face of such hardship and should be an inspiration to many.
I'm not a professional urban planner or historian by any means but as a native Californian who has spent time around the Golden state and who is deeply familiar with it's uneque history (as I have long studied it) I have an idea LA took a very different path after it's initial crises narrative set in durring the 1990’s. Here's my take. For one thing, simply the difference in timing itself (early 1990’s vs late 60's early 70's) of the two city's initial crises periods is an important difference. But aside from timing, I suspect that the reasons that Los Angeles (as apposed to Detroit) didn't continue to decline (although it has declined some recently since the Pandemic though it's too early to tell if this will continue), as well as that LA's public media lnarrative began improving after the mid 1990’s, is largely attributable to 3 main factors:
1) One is that the most important industry (Hollywood, and entertainment more broadly) never really left the LA unlike auto manufacturing and Detroit.
2)the hilly topography of Los Angeles as well as less uniformity of housing stock and better distinguished neighborhoods (which you have in the past described the lack of as one important factor in Detroit's decline) led to a much greater tendency towards preservation of upscale enclaves within LA over time even durring periods when the city as a whole was rapidly hesding downhill.
3) a basic cultural commitment by a certain portion of well off California residents (unlike in Michigan) to urban living as well as to visiting by suburbanites as one crucial part (though only one part) of California's basic appeal, and in turn to it's major cities. This was true to an extent in not only California but the West Coast as a whole (and I suspect cities like NYC or Boston as well) even durring the period of widespread urban decline that occured in California from the 1960’s into the 1990’s. The historic mass white middle class (and a portion of the wealthy) did largely leave Los Angeles from the 1970's through the early 2000's for the suburbs and beyond (many left California altogather) but others with resources (in part) took their place to some extent throughout that period, so there wasn't just a vacuum left behind by their departure.
And I think that 3rd reason is especially crucial, for ultimately, the large west coast counterculture and subsequent bohemian waves (even before urban professional living became such a big thing) as well as the larger immigrant population on the west coast meant that there was always a large, reasonably well educated and/or well off population commited to California's historic coastal cities (and to the city of Sacramento). This was true in a way that just was not the case in much of the Midwest (and in some parts of the Northeast and and Deep South as well) for a long time untill fairly recently. Indeed, the lack of a similer strong urban cultural commitment or narrative can be seen in the terrible poverty and decay in some inland California cities such as San Bernardino, Stockton, Fresno, etc. or even some of Los Angeles own older blue collar suburbs for that matter.
My wife and I spent last Labor Day weekend in Detroit as tourists. I hadn't been since the early 1990s -- downtown has been utterly transformed since then. We had a fantastic time. We didn't know about the annual jazz festival; we had other plans. But the jazz fest only made the time we spent there better. We'd go back.