Finding lasting consensus on what a new Detroit should be — economically, geographically, demographically and culturally — after bankruptcy is complicated, writes Monica Davey in the New York Times today.
Davey, the paper's expert on Detroit, writes that "solving one of the city’s biggest quandaries — how to reshape a city that was built for nearly two million people so that it suits fewer than half of that — remains highly controversial, particularly for families still living in the homes left on otherwise empty blocks."
For all the misery, Detroit’s bankruptcy gives an American city a rare chance to reshape itself from top to bottom.
"But reinventing a city so devastated is hardly a sure thing, and the questions about how to proceed loom as large as the answers:
"Should its areas of nearly vacant blocks be transformed into urban farms, parks and even ponds made from storm water?
"Could its old automobile manufacturing economy be shifted into one centering on technology, bioscience and international trade?
"Should Detroit, which lost a million residents over the last 60 years, pin its sharpest hopes on luring more young people here, playing on an influx of artists and entrepreneurs?
"Should the city take down its enormous ruins, like Michigan Central Station, that have devolved into bleak tourist attractions or restore some of these buildings and market them, perhaps as museums or tributes to a proud industrial past?"
The Detroit Future City project, also known as Detroit Works.
Popular Mechanics re-imagined Detroit in an article last year.
