Elsewhere on the web

As I've mentioned before, I'm currently abroad in Santiago, Chile, and I won't be back until December. With that in mind, I wanted to recommend two other blogs to read in the meantime.

• First, The Incorrigible City, which is a lot like this blog except that it also has nice photos and a sense of humor -- both traits worth imitating.
  

• Second, Detroit Blog, which remains the best blog about Detroit. His secret to success? He actually talks to people and the stories he uncovers are fascinating.
  

So much for that skyscraper

The Cadillac Centre, announced with much fanfare in January, seems to have died a quiet death. The plug has also been pulled on the @Water Lofts, a luxury condo project announced in March 2006. The collapse of the housing market and the ensuing credit crunch are hitting Detroit, hard.

Public art manifesto

I should have linked to it two weeks ago, but the Metro Times has a must-read article calling for more real, radical public art in Detroit. Jenenne Whitfield, the executive director of the Heidelberg Project, has the best quote:

"Attracting cool to the city — that notion is so tired. I'm so sick of that class of people who need to be massaged to live here. We give far too much credit to those folks. This city has never understood who we are or what we have here. We need to wake up the neighborhoods, shake the city up," says Whitfield."

How the Rust Belt trumps NYC

New York Magazine has an article about why some are quitting New York City for Buffalo. The writing is insufferable -- pompous, meandering, NYC navel gazing -- but the article finally gets to a great point:

This, ironically, has always been the siren song of New York City: the chance to turn yourself into someone new, to live the life you’ve always imagined. But what a city like Buffalo offers is a very different promise of what could be. It offers the chance to live on the cheap and start a nonprofit organization, or rent an abandoned church for $1,000 a month, or finish your album without having to hold down two temp jobs at the same time, or simply have more space and a better view and enough money left over each month to buy yourself a painting once in awhile. A city like Buffalo reminds you that, beyond New York, there are still frontiers.

New York is not a frontier, but Buffalo is, and so is Detroit. In most respects the Rust Belt cities are no match for NYC, the consummate global city, but what they do have is cheap space, open land, fiercely loyal communities, and an unparalleled opportunity to build your dreams.

Housing market hits bottom

An abandoned home in Saginaw sells for $1.75 on eBay.

DPS enrollment shrinks to World War I levels

The Detroit News:

The preliminary tally showed enrollment dropped to about 88,000 this fall -- far below the 104,501 students counted last fall. It could constitute the largest one-year enrollment drop in the district's history.

If true, the News says "the drop could cost it about $52.6 million in state aid" and DPS will surely lose its first-class district status unless the state rewrites the rules.

Boston Edison, new lofts

The Wall Street Journal has a page one article on the Boston Edison neighborhood and its very active and laudable effort to fight foreclosures.

Also in today's news, Made in Detroit Inc. announced plans to build super-luxury lofts at the former Detroit Creamery building near Motor City Casino.

On second thought

My initial reaction was sheer relief, but given the damage done to the city and the region (not to mention Kilpatrick and his family), there's little to celebrate yet besides the simple act of moving on. The truth is, Kilpatrick should have resigned months and months ago, and no one -- not the city, not Kilpatrick -- received any benefit from this long-drawn-out drama. But Detroit, as its motto testifies, is a city destined to rise from its ashes, and I hope the end of the scandal leads directly to reform.

Our long local nightmare is over

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's tenure as mayor of Detroit is over. Commence dancing in the streets.

According to the Free Press, "The deal calls for Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice by committing perjury, agreeing to serve four months in jail, pay up to $1 million in restitution, and serve five years' probation. He also agreed not to run for office during that five-year span."

Hallelujah

The Free Press reports: Kwame Kilpatrick expected to plead guilty at 9 a.m. Thursday.

Good riddance. Now we can wonder, as Daniel Howes does, who the next mayor might be. We may also take hope that "75 percent say the city charter should be amended to elect council members by district." Long needed reform may finally be on its way.

If not Dublin, then Denver?

Recent articles have looked to Pittsburgh and Dublin to show how Detroit can revitalize itself. Now Model D points to a new comparison with Denver. Its most useful lesson: the need for regionalism. I hope L. Brooks Patterson gets the message.

No more quoting Crain's

As of this week, Crain's Detroit will be charging for online access. Do they know this is a failed business model? The only paper to have had any success charging for online subscriptions is the Wall Street Journal, but even they've changed their minds, gradually switching to an ad-based model. I'm betting Crain's, too, will come around eventually. They don't really have a choice.

Dublin, Detroit, and taxes

In April, the Free Press pointed to Pittsburgh for lessons on how the city of Detroit could revitalize itself. This week, Ellen Creager looks farther afield to Dublin. In a nutshell, Dublin went from bust to boom by slashing corporate taxes and investing its E.U. subsidies in education. Unfortunately, as the author repeatedly acknowledges, those lessons mean little for Detroit beyond the obvious (businesses like low taxes, and a better-educated workforce is, well, better) because the parallels between the cities are so few.

If there's a real lesson to be drawn, it's that Detroit needs to overhaul its tax system, which is currently caught in an unforgiving loop. As more residents leave, revenues decline, leaving fewer people left to pay for city services. To balance the budget, the city makes further cuts to services and is forced to raise fees, sending yet more residents fleeing, and forcing another round of belt-tightening and/or tax-raising.

This is obviously unsustainable. At some point, the city must find a way to lower its taxes -- especially the much-hated city income tax -- but it can't do so without an alternative source of revenue to compensate for what will initially be a serious drop in revenue. For now the city and county seem to hope that new tax incentive programs, like Land Bank T.U.R.B.O., will be sufficient to jumpstart new development.

The Detroit Promise?

According to Crain's, a business leader has begun fund raising to provide scholarships to the graduates of Detroit Public Schools. The goal is to duplicate the much-lauded Kalamazoo Promise, "a pledge by a group of anonymous donors to pay up to 100 percent of tuition at any of Michigan's state colleges or universities for graduates of Kalamazoo high schools." I sincerely hope the Detroit College Promise succeeds.

Detroit as summer getaway

An arts blog from San Francisco has a refreshing take on Detroit: the ideal city for a summer home. At once urban and rural, the city's desolate east side offers dirt-cheap historic homes amidst urban prairie. The author is proud to have purchased a three-bedroom vacation home on the Detroit River for "less than a new Cadillac Escalade."

Hat tip: Model D.

Spotlight on Detroit development

Crain's Detroit published its third annual Living and investing in the D supplement, which highlights the major developments of the past year: the growth of urban gardening, new plans for mass transit, and so on. I especially enjoyed the short essays by Detroit professionals (here and here) about why they choose to live in Detroit and what their dreams are for the city's future.

Please, please, please resign

Please, Kwame. Do it for Detroit if not your own dignity.

If I were in Detroit ...

I would go on the urban garden tour this Wednesday. Hosted by the Detroit Agricultural Network, the tour spotlights the hundreds of gardens tranforming the city. (And for what it's worth, I'd also catch Werner Herzog's new film showing at the DFT.)

P.S. The Free Press has an article on some of the young people moving to Detroit. Not too much depth there, but it's good to be reminded that the city keeps attracting idealists even in the roughest of times.