Detroit has become the most visibly distressed symbol of our hard economic times. In his new book, “Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis,†Mark Binelli traces the long history of racial and financial struggles there, documents the current crisis, and investigates the many ways - innovative, desperate and otherwise - that residents are trying to turn things around. In a recent e-mail interview, Mr. Binelli discussed the rise of urban agriculture in Detroit, apportioning blame for the city's problems and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:
You grew up outside of Detroit. When did you leave it?
I moved away in 1993, when I was 22, though my parents and brother remain in the area, so I've never let much time lapse between visits.
What inspired you to go back and write about it? And how long did you live there while you reported the book?
I always thought I would write a novel about Detroit one day. But when the economy collapsed in 2008 and I saw Detroit becoming the poster city of (and all-purpose metaphor for) recession-era America, I started thinking about nonfiction - partly, I think, because the stories coming out of Detroit tended to be so tediously one-note. Detroit isn't just a tragic city of ruins; it's a deeply weird place, filled with the sorts of characters you'd have found in Joseph Mitchell's New York a century earlier. I moved back in 2009 and stayed until early 2012.
Is the story of U.S. manufacturing the clearest reason for Detroit's decline, the same way it caused the city's prosperity in the early part of the 20th century?
I'd say it's up there, but the abandonment of the city began long before the collapse of U.S. manufacturing. And that abandonment had far more to do with race. An American city as important as Detroit would have never been essentially discarded if it had been 85% white instead of 85% black.
Do you see any way for the city's firm racial segregation to change?
That's actually one reason for cautious optimism I express in the book: that historic segregation is slowly changing. The most recent census found Detroit's population had plunged nearly 25% in the 10 years since the last census, from just under a million to just over 700,000. Everyone r ead this as one more nail in Detroit's coffin, and of course, the numbers were bad news for the city. But many of the black residents leaving Detroit ended up in the surrounding suburbs, which had been more or less entirely white when I was growing up. Likewise, Detroit's white population rose for the first time in 60 years. One would hope that such increased diversity, however tentative, could lead to more regional cooperation, which both the city and the suburbs (also hurting in this recession) sorely need.
Coleman Young and Kwame Kilpatrick, two former mayors of Detroit, have taken a lot of criticism for the city's problems. How much of the blame would you place on a broken political system?
Young's successes and failures are debatable; Kilpatri ck's failures are well-documented and worthy of condemnation. And there's certainly been a general level of political dysfunction over the years that has not been helpful to Detroit. That said, I think it's also been wildly overstated, and there's sometimes a tinge (occasionally a generous dollop) of racism inherent in the critiques. Detroit's main problem is that it has no tax base, and so can't provide basic city services to its remaining residents - who, quite sensibly, continue to leave the city in droves, further eroding the tax base. You could make Mike Bloomberg the mayor of Detroit tomorrow and he wouldn't be able to change that math. Unless he started writing personal checks.
Corine Vermeulen Urban agriculture has sprouted on some of the city's abandoned land, but you write that it isn't a practical way forward for most people. I got the sense that the positive things Detroit is now best known for - farming, art collectives - are closer to hobbies than real solutions. Do you agree with that?
“Hobbies†is a bit harsh, but yes, some of the positive Detroit stories that have gotten the most ink are more attractive metaphorically - gardens blooming from the wreckage of post-industrial America! - than practically. Detroit is not going to return to an agrarian economy, and conceptual art projects and artisanal coffee shops won't really dent the entrenched problems facing much of the city's population: crime, failing schools, chronic unemployment. Still, positive activity of any sort in Detroit can only be a good thing, and I think many of these projects embody the bottom-up, DIY energy that will be a crucial part of Detroit's next chapter.
You spent time with artists, politicians, volunteer firemen and others around the city. How would you rate the overall mood of the residents? Do they have the underlying optimism you express at times in the book?
You'll find a pretty broad spectrum of moods across the city. There are boosters who won't hear a bad word about Detroit; there are lifelong residents who would leave in a heartbeat if they could swing it. In a recent poll in the Detroit News, 40% of the respondents said they hoped to move out of the city within the next five years, citing crime as the main reason. Part of this divide is the result of a decades-long problem in Detroit: the overwhelming bulk of t he resources are poured into core areas like downtown and Midtown, while many of the outlying neighborhoods continue go to seed.
The city had success for a while drawing Hollywood productions to town via tax breaks. Why did that stop?
The Times just ran a great piece on the failure of a massive movie studio built in Pontiac, a troubled city about 30 miles north of Detroit proper. The article focused on the potential shadiness of certain of the investors, but I think somewhat underplayed why things really went south: Michigan's new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, ended the tax credit policy when he was elected in 2011, because he thought the state should make itself generally attractive to business (as opposed to picking favorites). Part of me agrees with him: that sort of racing to the bottom that states are forced to enga ge in, just to lure huge corporations, is repugnant. On the other hand, the studios do claim film shoots provide subsidiary economic benefits (catering, hotel rooms, etc.), so long-term the investment might have proved worthwhile.
You write extensively about “ruin porn†- photographs of the area's crumbling and abandoned structures. Does this trend of taking aesthetic pleasure from Detroit's troubles offend you as a native of the place?
I'm not offended by photographers like, say, Andrew Moore, even though he's not from Detroit and spent very little time in the city â€" technically his work is stunning, and when you see some of these buildings up close, or s neak inside, there is a majesty and an aesthetic validity. I also sympathize with the point of view of people who have lived among these ruins for years, sometimes decades, and would happily see them all bulldozed tomorrow. I just hope a balance can be struck. Some of the industrial history, especially, is worthy of preservation, and could become tourist attractions - as opposed to, say, strip malls or stadium parking lots.
