In The News

Art-world darlings like Chido Johnson and Matthew Barney are just two of the creators giving rise to the continued comparisons between Berlin and Detroit. W Magazine's five-page spread goes beyond the big names to capture the industry of art -- from the hunt for buildings to the scene's connectivity -- now rivaling the automobile as this city's signature export.

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"It’s all about reinvention now," said Oren Goldenberg, the film’s director. Like many artists here, he returned to the city from the suburbs in 2007. With him was Sterling Toles, the composer building the film’s sound track from a mixture of angry rap and more delicate sounds. "I think of Detroit as illumination training school," he said, pointing to a bumper sticker in the room that read f**k cool cities. "It was so dark. Here, you become the light."

Read it here.

Hotels that banked on Detroit's future as a travel destination are reaping their just rewards.

Based on increases in occupancy rates over the next 12 months, the website travelclick.com predicts the city and surrounding areas will experience a 2 percent increase in travel to the city in 2012.

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Finally, Conran says, the Detroit area is seeing "significant" year-over-year gains in business travel thanks to the recovering auto industry."We can't underestimate the fact that the health of the auto industry has improved dramatically," Conran says.

Let's not forget that worldwide media acclaim of Detroit as a paradise for an off-the-beaten-path vacation.

More here.

In a widely-circulated article from Yahoo! Sports on the Detroit Lions' improbable start, Kid Rock and Ford Field's new reputation as a stadium to fear around the NFL, we found a few thoughts on urban land use and downtown space that fit pretty well here.

Author Dan Wetzel contends that there's more for opposing teams to fear when visiting Detroit than the defensive line. Ford Field bucks the nationwide trend of cocooning stadiums -- that is, placing them far from city life and downtown chaos. The stadium's defiant location creates a crowd boiling over with enthusiasm before streaming through its doors -- and the crowd factor, no doubt, that contributed to the Bears' nine false starts against the Lions during Monday night's game. Wetzel's logic? Smart planning and cooperation between the Lions and city officials have re-defined the notion of the home field advantage in sports. And visiting teams should beware.

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It brought a hot team and the first Monday night game in a decade. So the people were everywhere, drinking in parking garages and cooking on dirty sidewalks and even tapping kegs right by the police headquarters. They wouldn’t have it any other way. It produced a throng of fans who would later bring the soul of the city inside and rain it right down on the Bears.

Read more here.

Juxtaposing the imagination of Power House Productions and architect Catie Newell's adaptive reuse of abandoned homes in Detroit with the bureaucratic mechanism of the Detroit Works Project, it's clear that the city could take a page from our local artists' imagination. Metropolis wonders why the Detroit Works Project is focusing on shrinking, not saving blighted structures across the city. This writer's idea? Rename the whole thing the Detroit Dreams Project. That's quite an idea.

Catie Newell teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, but her built work -- if that’s what you can call it -- is mainly in Detroit. "Anything that's new construction, particularly in this urban landscape, looks entirely out of place here," she said to me. "Maybe that's where the offensive part comes in." She was saying that new construction -- in Detroit, where so many old buildings stand empty -- was not only a bad idea but an offensive one. This, from an architect?

Dig in here.

While art and commerce can be uneasy bedfellows (how to put a price on creativity; and whether it should be judged in those terms), a new study from the Center for Creative Community Development at Williams College proves one Detroit attraction satisfies both spheres.

Tyree Guyton's Heidelberg Project is more than an indoor-outdoor art exhibition -- it's a serious revenue-builder for the city. The study found that the project attracts $3.4 million in economic activity to Wayne County every year. That's partly because 70 percent of the more than 50,000 visitors who make their way to Heidelberg Street every year are from outside the county. Guyton's vision has also created 40 jobs in the region.

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"The Detroit and wider Detroit region faces a wide array of challenges," Sheppard said. "I don't think it's correct to say that art and cultural organizations and projects alone can completely turn around the economy of Detroit ... but I think arts and culture projects like the HP are (part of that)."

Connect the dots here.

In Kansas, a battle between Governor Sam Brownback and the National Endowment for the Arts has resulted in the NEA pulling all arts funding for the state, according to Grist. In Detroit, partnerships between major institutions and artistic-minded entrepreneurs have launched partnerships like the FAB lab, which offers metalworkers, mixed-media artists, woodworkers and digital fabricators the (often expensive) tools and space needed to practice their craft. Which seems like a growth strategy?

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"Detroit has always been a place where things have been made," says Alex Feldman, one of the project's creators, who works on economic development strategies with the company U3 Ventures. "That tradition is still alive here. But it's starting to shift in a small way to a more (artistic) culture of manufacturing and creation."

Tap into the scene here.

Detroit blew past the Windy City -- and most of America's top urban centers -- in Forbes Magazine's rankings of the cities with the happiest young professionals. By the way, noted a Forbes representative, were it not for the factor of job security, we'd be in the top five.

Model D launched over five years ago with the belief that this city, despite its flaws, offered a quality of life to be envied across the nation. More than high-tech jobs and cheap cost of living, we offer something better -- an inclusive and diverse community willing to open its arms to all who make the journey. So, congrats Detroit. We did this one together.

The list is available at Forbes (alas, there's no text) so click here to read more.

The arts can do more than just enrich our daily lives -- they can also serve as the catalyst for urban economic development. That's why a new national initiative called ArtPlace will invest $11.5 million in 25 cities across the country. And, make no mistake, Detroit is on this pilot program's radar -- the D received more funds than any other city (well, besides New York).

Notably, Midtown Detroit Inc. received a $900,000 grant to advance the development of the Sugar Hill Arts District, creating a bridge between the Detroit Medical Center and Midtown's Woodward Ave corridor. Midtown Detroit Inc. will use the funds to purchase an abandoned church in the district, which will be renovated into a performing arts space. MOCAD and Tech Town also received grants.

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If ArtPlace seeks to jump-start struggling neighborhoods, Sugar Hill looks like the ideal poster child, since its two blocks were largely abandoned, apart from the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art. In the past year, Midtown Detroit has renovated a derelict apartment building at the district's heart, and is about to launch new construction.

Find out more here.

Most every city newspaper has taken a crack at the "Detroit travelogue" this year -- a Lonely Planet-esque tour though the city, combining the D's often mercurial history with present rebuilding efforts. In Detroit, writes the Irish Times, we're successfully re-inventing 200 years of history into a tour for every traveler -- be it the Motown music-seeker, the Underground Railroad tracer or the merry Prohibition buster. Rather than dwell on ancient memories, IT also lauds Detroit's thriving downtown as a cosmopolitan attraction all its own.

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Take a trip up to the restaurant on the roof of the Detroit Marriott hotel, officially the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the western hemisphere, and have a drink. It’s pretty jaw-dropping, on a par with my favourite, the rooftop restaurant in the San Francisco Hilton. Back on the streets – as they say in the cop shows – head to Midtown and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which, despite its prosaic name, houses one of the finest art collections in the US. Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry cycle of 27 fresco panels – gifted by another Ford, this time Edsel – is considered the best work of his career.

Keep traveling here.

As the nation's founding father of public parks, Frederick Olmsted is most celebrated for his East Coast creations, like New York's Central Park and Prospect Park. Canny locals know his imaginative green thumb extended to the Midwest, including our own most famous city green space, Belle Isle.

While Belle Isle's appearance has strayed from Olmsted's original intent, his sinuous, weaving canals tracing through the island park are virtually untouched.

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I took a boat tour of the canals, accompanied by Keith Flournoy, Belle Isle's ever-resourceful park manager. (We were in a small, motorized launch, but you could get pretty much the same experience by renting a paddleboat.) We glided past weeping willows and under a series of wonderfully varied footbridges. "This is how Olmsted meant this park to be seen," Mr. Flournoy said.

Find out about Olmsted's other Mid-American works here.

TEDxDetroit bills itself as an idea-generating conference from innovators, doers and thinkers in the Metro Detroit region. Last week's annual conference, held at the Max M. Fisher Center, had it all -- comedy, musings on physics, tap-dancing, human drama and great ideas. Detroiter Matt Dibble told us that the Detroit of tomorrow is almost here today; En Garde Detroit's Bobby Smith uses fencing to help save city kids; Veronika Scott's art project became an in-demand coat that saves lives; Randal Charlton spoke of the failures and tragedies that dogged him before he was appointed head of Tech Town. All these stories and more available online -- click here to find out what you missed.

What can a shared meal of soup teach us about brand loyalty and market growth? Plenty. At Detroit SOUP, a monthly shared dinner where participants pay $5 to hear new ideas from the community before voting funds to the crowd favorite, democracy and community concern are the buzzwords. A new article from Fast Company calls SOUP an example for companies, not just concerned citizens; noting the co-creativity spawned by having the right guests to dinner, so to speak, is the future of crowdsourcing.

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Back in Michigan, Detroit SOUP co-founder Kate Daughdrill is putting these principles into practice: "We're figuring out how to engage civically, how to be engaged citizens," she explains. "We've been excited to create this practical experience in democracy. Brands that embrace this mindset will experience deeper engagement, richer collaboration on innovation opportunities and the gratification of shared value creation.
Sample the article here.

There's plenty good going on in Detroit right now, summarized in a recent article from the Washington Times. Whole Foods, the Live Midtown housing incentives and recent population growth in young professionals, well-covered, all receive their due. What's new is an interview with Nate Forbes, managing partner of Troy's Somerset Collection, which has opened the CityLoft retail venture in the downtown Woodward corridor. Forbes touts both the city's public-private partnerships and current leaders for creating an atmosphere that supports new businesses and entrepreneurs.

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"Of course Detroit has a lot of geography — it's a large city. There's no telling how long it will take, but you have to start off in small chunks. You have a lot of businesses moving to the area that will spawn other investments — hotels, retail, restaurants. It's one block at a time, but when you go down there now, you feel a renewed energy."

More to read here.

Call this year's Live Midtown incentive program a roaring success -- after just eight months, roughly $1 million put up by three anchor institutions (Wayne State, the DMC and Henry Ford Health System) is committed, and new applications are on hold.

A transformation of Capitol Park, a historic neighborhood located on the near west side of Woodward in downtown, could begin by 2011's end.

The City of Detroit is asking for "high-quality, transformative" proposals to renovate three vacant commercial buildings along Griswold. RFP information is available on the DEGC website; proposals are due Oct. 14.

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The city has already remade the streetscape of the small wedge-shaped public park at the center of Capitol Park, so named because it was the site of Michigan's first state capitol building. That work included the relocation of the burial site and monument to Michigan's first governor, Stevens T. Mason, from one portion of the park to another.

More available here.