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We just read that 18 visual artists received a boost in the form of $450,000 in grant money from the Michigan-based Kresge Foundation. As the Detroit Free Press reported, “Advocates say the fellowships could have a galvanizing effect on the local arts scene — boosting public perception of an overlooked community, inspiring artists to create more ambitious work and offering them an incentive to remain here rather than leave for New York or elsewhere.” Plus, next year the grants will recognize non-visual artists.
Does this spell a mass exodus from Brooklyn, the current unofficial borough-of-choice for struggling artists, toward a land free of gentrification and trust-funders? Let’s take a look at the evidence.
- Last summer New York magazine suggested that Buffalo might eclipse Williamsburg as an epicenter for all things hipster. We don’t have population statistics on hand or anything, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Meaning that maybe it’s time to give Detroit a shot. As of December, the average price of a home there was $18,513.
- In a recent video conversation with the New York Times, author and Detroit native Jeffrey Eugenides (and a frequent pick for our Big Brother Book Club!) mentioned that returning to his hometown fills him with Ruinenwert, which is German for “the pleasure of ruins.” The pleasure of ruins is hard to come by in rapidly developing Brooklyn, which is why some artists might find inspiration in Detroit’s “beautiful, horrible decline.”
- Back in May Ron English told us that he was involved with a campaign to buy houses in Detroit. “They’re like super cheap — like $4,000 a piece. The idea is to create an artists neighborhood and artists housing. He’s having all of us pop surrealists donate art to help raise money for this project. A lot of people have said, what kind of person is going to want to live in a neighborhood where the drug dealers are armed and it’s very dangerous? People don’t understand that artists… All they want is space and time.”
What do you think: Is Detroit the next Bushwick?
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20 Responses
If I'm not tied to my job in the NYC area, I'd move to Detroit to take my wonderland in the ruins too. I think Detroit will become popular to those who are either already established or those who just don't care about earning money to lead a stable life.
But for those of us who work a normal job so that we can devote our free time and money to the arts… it won't happen until there are actually jobs in Detroit.
It's difficult. Areas like Brooklyn always had the necessities nearby. Detroit doesn't. You may have to drive 20 to 30 minutes to get groceries. It takes a very specific and hardy individual to want what Detroit offers…and doesn't offer.
"New ideas need old buildings" as Jane Jacobs said, and Detroit has both in spades. The combination of a rich hands-on mechanical past, a strong underground music scene, two respected design universities, nearly infinite cheap warehouse studio space, and a well of untapped ingenuity and frustration is a powerful combo.
@motorless well, your mileage may vary. You need to be hardy to succeed in Detroit, just as you'd better be hardy if you want to succeed in art, business, sports, or anything else. That said, I think it takes a bit of vision or a bit of madness to see Detroit as the creative and technical incubator it is and can be.
As Paul Graham said, "wild animals [look] beautiful because [they've adapted to] hard lives."
Stories like this seem to be all I hear about Detroit: http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=news/na...
I think it's still too dangerous to be a good place to live.
Anyone considering relocation here should suit up with body armor and rose-colored glasses and come for a visit. Hurry before the lovey winter sets in. There is no place like Detroit in the wintertime. Regarding the affordable home/studio opportunities here, they are cheap for a reason. Good luck on your decision. As for me, I am leaving this place. Last one out turn out the lights.
Brooklyn is/was a haven for artists because it was cheap & in close proximity to the commercial art world, not just because it was cheap.
Detroit already is — and has been for decades — one of the world's premier artists' havens.
I'm from Detroit and I live in Brooklyn. Same goes for a huge number of my talented Detroit friends. There's a reason for that. Several, actually.
Detroit is a great place to make solitary art. It's also a great place to get practice space if you're a band. In fact, the only people worth a damn who are 18-40 and live in Detroit are artists — and the bravest among them are entrepreneurs.
If you want to get a house for next to nothing, move to Detroit. Lots of people are doing it right now. Just get ready for "rebuilding Detroit" to take over as your life's work.
Buffalo's a lot safer and friendlier (and just as cheap)… and it still hasn't 'boomed' in any way for a very very long time.
Yeah, good luck with that. One winter in Detroit and any hipster foolish enough to try it will be back in Bushwick before you can say LES spillover.
Wake up, people. Most of Detroit needs bulldozing and what's left will become a small, provincial midwestern town.
I will never cease to be surprised by the amount of hatred and spite people have for Detroit. Particularly as most of these people have never done anything more than passed through the city. I'm originally from Virginia, came to U of M to get my Masters, and have fallen in love with the city. So much so that I'm limiting my job search to the area.
Yes, Detroit has its problems. But the arts can play an integral role in addressing those. And the community embraces those who come to the city with this kind of vision – providing support in ways you won't find anywhere else.
There are places to buy food in Detroit, albeit not enough. The HoneyBee Market in Mexicantown is an amazing place to shop, and Eastern Market has a spectacular selection. No, it's not as easy to get around as a New York or Chicago, but with some planning and ingenuity, you'll be just fine. There is an extensive bus system, and private investors have spearheaded bringing lightrail to the city, which may arrive as early as 2010.
If you're looking for a posh lifestyle where things are made easy, Detroit is not for you. But if you want to be a part of something bigger, helping to redefine a city that so much of the nation has given up on, Detroit should be one of your top considerations.
Ferndale is right outside Detroit – 10 min in fact – where you can buy grocieries, etc. There are many suburns right outside Detroit that are that close. You don't have to drive 20 to 30 min for necessities unless you want to.
When I last went to Detroit in December, I saw the opportunity in the ruins. But, it will never be the next Williamsburg. Why, you have to drive, drive, drive to do anything in the D. Brooklyn, & all of NYC is a public transportation lover's paradise. The elevated train in Detroit only makes a baby loop around the convention areas along the river. That's NOT where the $4000 homes are, trust me.
I love the city, at least the idea of it, and in a perfect world where I was not already unemployed and hard strapped for income (let alone getting off of unemployment…I'd say YES to moving there. And it's true, I just don't see Brooklyn trustfunders parading around in tight jeans and fixed gear Bianchis when it's -15 degrees for 20 days straight.
To Tammie, yes the Bee is cool. But, it's one store. There's a market like that out here in LA on every block. We have problems out here too, but I wouldn't trade it for the world…even if we aren't the hipster capitol of the world.
At best, Detroit will be the Midwest's Portland…a cool, cool town to get a cup of coffee or PBR, but not to have a job. That is, if you're not already living off of that family wealth. Being a working artist, I don't have an extra $4000 to buy the house, an extra $50,000 to fix it up, and another $20,000 to live off of and pay the bills for the 1st year of existence in Detroit which, God bless it…just doesn't have any sort of support network or familiar security for me.
Detroiters, both lifers and recent arrivals, sincerely love their city, for some very good reasons: it's quintessentially American, both in its history and its ethos, which prides hard work, entrepreneurship and optimism; much of what remains of it is architecturally stunning; it can claim the invention of three, perhaps four major genres of pop music; and its residents, despite withstanding decades of economic hardship and inhumanly cold winters, are terribly warm and friendly people, in a tough, earthy Midwestern sort of way.
That said, most of them won't admit publicly that the city has gigantic, potentially insurmountable problems. It has the highest crime rate of any urban area in the country, with a police force that the majority of residents have given up on. The unemployment rate — which counts only people looking for work, not those who are underemployed or have given up on finding a job — is over 24%. No one knows how many blighted buildings Detroit has — certainly tens of thousands — but enough that no one can make a trustworthy survey. A staggering amount of the downtown, the supposed centerpiece of the city's revitalization, is abandoned. The local government, despite having a number of good people — big ups, Kym Worthy — is at best feckless, at worst corrupt. And it hasn't seen the full fallout of the auto industry's collapse yet.
Detroit, considered from a distance, indeed appears to have the makings of a perfect artists' sanctum. Upon visiting it, however, the qualities of the city conducive to a creative effloresce — cheap housing, liberal politics, a superabundance of poetic urban decay and poignant physical metaphor — quickly recede in value when weighed against the misery of spending time in the civic equivalent of a failing restaurant. Which isn't to say you can't build a happy life there: as the above poster testifies, people have and do. But its difficult to see why one would choose Detroit over a number of other safer, more prosperous places, save for a peculiar love.
Funny, I just moved from Bushwick to Detroit last month. It was more than ambition and opportunity that brought me here… it was love at first sight (and my first visits were in the winter). I have to say, I'm much more at home here than I ever was in New York. I moved to NYC because I had nothing better to do after graduating college. The process from decision to moving day took less than two months. I moved to the D because there's nowhere I'd rather be (and I had plenty of time to decide this… it took nearly two years of effort to get out here). My point is, you have to want it and work for it… not the kinda place you move to on a whim.
Sure, I see potential here, lots of space and time… and overall support for the arts. But you won't see the kind of gentrification enjoyed by the likes of Brooklyn and Austin until a political and economic upheaval takes place. There's a lot of corruption keeping this city down. Houses are cheap, sure, but if you want to start a business, expect your start-up costs to be twice that of any other city… why? Extortion. The people here are great… the politicians, not so much. But there is hope here, a vision shared by many Detroiters… how appropriate that the city's motto translates to, "We hope for better days; It shall rise from the ashes." (written in 1805) That is the lure.
aiyaiyai. First of all, I live here, right by the Ambassador Bridge, and I have absolutely never made it to Ferndale in 10 minutes, that's crazy talk. This is a large metropolis and cars are necessary to get by here.
There's a lot of myth-debunking involved in this aspect of Detroit. It is arguable that smaller grants spread widely throughout the Detroit art community would provide much more stimulus (and by Detroit I mean the city, not the suburbs which were also eligible). Creating an elite group can be just as demoralizing as no support at all.
Likewise, there are no jobs here, very little freelance work. What is cheap rent when you have no income? To live in a decent neighborhood, without risk of your plumbing and wiring be ripped out, costs much more than the figures thrown around in catchy articles. Often a $1000 house is barely a husk of a domicile and come with past due taxes and water bills that are incredibly difficult to dispute.
I wouldn't mind if more people moved here, especially friends in other cities. The more community here the better, no doubt. Detroit is a great place to be if you have opportunities to travel and have established yourself somewhat within a broader national/intl. art community. It's fantastic for getting work done because there is not much else to do. People here are great at DIY. If you have some income space is abundant, however rents are only "cheap" here relative to NYC/LA/SF. Montreal has comparable rents and is a much more vibrant city.
As far as evading regulations/guerilla style actions, the lack of population and policing here is great. It is not square one and I see the younger folks here generally feeling very frustrated with the lack of opportunities. It is a great place to leave for awhile, get to know the world of possibilities, then come back and try to make an impact. I encourage people who have mainly lived here to move and get inspired by other places, reminding them that they can always come back.
sorry for the eyeful, I think about this stuff a lot=)
Eugenedes said Ruinenlust, not Ruinenwart.
And Detroit is not "the next" anything. It is and always has been Detroit. A place for music and art inhabited by people that would never use any kind of phrasing like "the next…" and would probably rather finish burining to the ground than be compared to Brooklyn. But come on over – we are really friendly.
Ferndale is 12 miles from Detroit, so it is not, in fact 10 minutes away except in a helipcopter.
I live in Ferndale, it is nine miles from downtown Detroit, it's 1 mile to the city line from my house
Papa Hobo
Paul Simon
Mm——
Its carbon and monoxide
The ole Detroit perfume
It hangs on the highways
In the morning
And it lays you down by noon
Oh papa hobo
You can see that I’m dressed like a schoolboy
But I feel like a clown
It’s a natural reaction I learned
In this basketball town
Sweep up
I been sweeping up the tips I’ve made
I’m living on Gatorade
Planning my getaway
Detroit, Detroit
Got a hell of a hockey team
Got a left-handed way
Of making a man sign up on that
Automotive dream, oh yeah, oh yeah
Oh, papa papa hobo
Could you slip me a ride?
Well, it’s just after breakfast
I’m in the road
And the weatherman lied,
Oo——-, ah—–, oo——-
Detroit once vied with New York as the most important town in America. Alas, that dream went away as racial animus, and the success of the union worker led to its own demise. The workers kids all became college grads and left – and bought foreign cars to boot.
The Republicans urged on the demise of the Auto companies (and the unions) and got a two-fer , slaughtering their political foes as well as increasing profits for their business friends (by lowering labor rates).
The working man's paradise ground down and was abandoned. Detroit , with it's world class art institute as well as Gilded Age and Neo-Classical architecture, is reminiscent of the old European cities, only mostly abandoned.
The history is sad, but the fix is almost impossible. Detroit today is about 85 to 90% black, and the people there are illiterate to the tune of 50% and have almost no family structure in the typical middle class sense (two parents). With and 80% out of wedlock birthrate, by the time these kids drop out and become criminals, the cycle is ready to repeat. Keep in mind the dropout rate is 60 to 70% and of the dropouts, 75% end up in prison. So not only is Detroit a failed state, they are taking the state of Michigan down too, with out of control social and prison costs. Crime is the main problem and it drives the poverty –Detroit is the poorest city in America. All of the figures I quote have been published by the local paper, the Detroit Free Press.
Many of these poor kids are the descendents of the ‘great migration’, hard working blacks who came from the south to work in the auto factories and escape Jim Crow. A large black middle class exists in the area, but the city is mainly the very poor and very uneducated. It is sad to hear the likes of Newt Gingrich bemoan Detroit as an example of “failed liberalism”, when those poor and uneducated residents all came from the South, where they were getting lynched , beaten and denied even basic human kindness.
One of the biggest problem is these people have grown up with stories of the white devil, ready to come and hurt them. They continually get exploited by cynical black politicians , and the beat goes on. It is hard to say how to break the cycle, but 100,000 artist might just do the trick. If enough new voters show up, perhaps things might change. Detroit arguably has the worst race relations in North America. That is saying a lot!
So, please move here, but be prepared for a Kafka like place. We have an embarrassment of riches, “good bones”, easy traffic and an international border.
Sadly, there is so much crime, corruption and murder that it truly has to be considered a failed state.
As much as I love the place, I have not been to a worse city in North America. I wish it wasn’t true, since I grew up here, but I have not seen a similar sized city that is such a failure, in all of North America.