Detroit: The new hipster mecca

[HiPointDem]

If you were to visit the Detroit Institute of Arts, home to Diego Rivera’s magnificent murals depicting scenes at the Ford Motor Company in the early nineteen-thirties, and then take a stroll through the surrounding streets, you might be surprised at what you would find: coffee shops frequented by young hipsters; old warehouses being converted to lofts; bike racks; houses undergoing renovation; a new Whole Foods supermarket. After decades of white flight, black flight, and urban decay, Detroit is being spoken of, in some circles, as “the new Portland,” or “the new Brooklyn.”

This gentrification extends only to a relatively small area, but it is worth keeping in mind when reading about the city’s bankruptcy filing—by far the biggest municipal-bankruptcy case in U.S. history. Detroit, as everyone knows, has a lot of problems. Great swaths of the city have been left to crumble, or return to pasture. There are some sixty thousand parcels of vacant land and seventy thousand empty buildings, including the majestic Michigan Central Station, a cousin to Grand Central. Detroit’s seven hundred thousand inhabitants—more than eighty per cent of whom are African-American—are plagued by crime and deprived of many basic services. Nearly forty per cent live in poverty...

Contrary to what some commentators have been arguing, however, Detroit’s troubles can’t be traced simply to bloated payrolls and intransigent public-sector unions: decades of deindustrialization are the main culprit. The population peaked in 1950, at 1.85 million. Since then, as the auto industry declined, and almost all the city’s white residents moved to the suburbs, the population has dropped by about sixty per cent. The city’s payroll has fallen even faster. In 1951, Detroit employed nearly thirty thousand people. Today, it employs about ten thousand five hundred people, and their salaries and their benefits are hardly extravagant. Since 2010, through furloughs and other measures, the city has cut its employees’ wages by close to twenty per cent. The average municipal pension is nineteen thousand dollars a year.

As the city spiralled down, real-estate prices collapsed, decimating the property-tax base. The Great Recession of 2008 was the final blow. Today, the median price of a house in Detroit is less than ten thousand dollars, and the taxable value of the entire city is less than eight billion dollars. Like many other cities, Detroit is also facing sharply rising costs for providing its employees with health care, which it has been funding by issuing more debt. The city’s outstanding liabilities currently amount to eighteen billion dollars. The bankruptcy proceeding, by reducing the city’s heavy debt burden, could eventually play a constructive role in a broader rebuilding effort. Meanwhile, under the direction of Judge Rhodes, all the city’s stakeholders—including the bondholders and the pension funds—will be forced to take more financial hits, and some of the city’s assets, such as the zoo and the hockey arena, could be sold off. But shouldn’t one of America’s iconic cities be rebuilt, rather than picked apart? If so, it is going to require the leadership, and the financial support, of the federal government.

Earlier this month, in the Times, Steven Rattner, who was the Obama Administration’s point man on the auto bailout, noted that people living in Detroit are no more responsible for their woes than are people who live in parts of the country devastated by Hurricane Sandy, areas that were awarded tens of billions of dollars in federal aid. A formal bailout is unlikely. Congress was persuaded to rescue the banking system because of the threat of the crisis spreading to other parts of the economy. Detroit, unlike Citigroup and the Bank of America, has not been deemed too big to fail. Still, the Administration can do more than just shrug and say, as it did last week, that “this is an issue that has to be resolved between Michigan and Detroit and the creditors.” That stance amounts to ceding the initiative to Governor Snyder and his conservative supporters, some of whom see the bankruptcy as a template for showdowns with public-sector unions across the country.

Last week, the President, in laying out his economic agenda, talked about the need to repair the country’s infrastructure. Where better to start than in Detroit? By the standards of the banking and auto bailouts, the sums involved are small: the banks received seven hundred billion dollars; the auto companies eighty billion. Already, there are hopeful signs. The auto industry has turned a profit and repaid much of the federal monies. And hipsters and artisans aren’t the only ones moving in: firms such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield; Quicken Loans, an online-mortgage lender; GalaxE.Solutions, a tech firm; and the insurance company Title Source have also recently arrived. Americans of all ages are increasingly eager to live in urban environments: a smaller, rebuilt Detroit could eventually thrive. “I speak of new cities and new people,” Obama said last week, quoting Carl Sandburg. Here’s an opportunity to turn words into deeds. ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/08/05/130805taco_talk_cassidy

[Gravitycollapse]

1. Gentrification. Let's push out all of the poor minorities and replace them with white 20 somethings.

Living off their parents.

Nothing solves the solution of a poor community faster than simply making the poor disappear.

[CreekDog]

2. don't assume they are living off their parents

else they wouldn't need to go somewhere cheap like Detroit.

[HiPointDem]

4. a lot of them are living off their trust funds, though. as you can verify by researching some of

the names you find associated with the new detroit artsy community.

[Gravitycollapse]

5. Gentrification is trust fund baby hipsters taking over a community...

20 to 30 year old, well off white people, often college students.

They push out the poor so they can set up their coffee shops, studio apartments and bar scenes. I've seen it before. It's a white wash.

[susanna]

3. Do you live in Detroit? n/t

[Gravitycollapse]

6. Nope. Why?

[susanna]

8. Your concern rings quite shallow. n/t

[Gravitycollapse]

9. My concern is with the tried and true method of displacing the poor and white washing...

the community. That's what happens with gentrification.

You think this will help those who actually need help?

[ErikJ]

11. The burbs will be better for them dude. Give it up.

Besides. Detroit has vast open spaces now. Room for PLENTY of hipsters, gays and blacks to coexist. NOBODY is forcing anybody out now OK?

[Gravitycollapse]

13. Haven't you already suffered enough in these discussions? With your beacon of hope...

Seattle, one of the least diverse metropolitan areas in the entire United States.

[ErikJ]

14. Lots of blacks in Renton area. Lots. And the Sound area around Tacoma is almost half black.

[HiPointDem]

16. oh, statistics-i-pulled-out-my-rear man is back.

renton, wa: 10.6% black
tacoma, wa: 12.2% black

The main story from the census findings is the continued gentrification of Seattle, with displacement of minorities and the less affluent out of the center of the city, especially to south King County and Pierce County. The city core is becoming whiter, while the edges and suburbs, north and east as well as south, are becoming far more diverse.

The black share of the population, which did grow substantially in the decade, shows the main concentration to be from the very south end of Seattle, south to Tukwila, a smaller area in south Tacoma, with belts over 10 percent black covering much of central and south Seattle, south King County and much of Tacoma and Lakewood. Unlike the 1960s through 1980s, there is no tract over half black.

http://crosscut.com/2011/04/29/seattle/20804/Seattle-is-shedding-diversity-states-minority-popu/

Tacoma Metro:

[HiPointDem]

25. he claims to live in portland.

[trumad]

38. Wow!

You can't be serious? Who gives a fuck what kind of person is moving back into Detroit.

What---you'd rather it just rot.

[HiPointDem]

41. detroit has a higher population density than portland oregon. it's not rotting for lack of people.

[trumad]

43. It's rotting because there's no tax base.

This is good not bad....

[susanna]

60. If I was incorrect in my assumption, I apologize.

I just find it amazing how many people know exactly what's happening here and how it should be done. I do not think that we have the luxury of using a politically correct litmus test for potential residents. For the record, I'm not happy with some of what's happening here re: obvious gentrification, but I'm also logical. Until there is a tax base to speak of in this city, we don't have a chance at all.

If the younger trust fund types take their money and go once they have kids (I have seen this happen), then you will have made a point. The ones who stay, however? I will personally tell them "thanks for believing in Detroit." Because if they stay, they will have become my neighbors. You will just be a random voice I chatted with once on a message board.

Peace.

[Gravitycollapse]

65. The issue is displacing the poor, not with them possibly leaving in the future.

They will leave, by the way. Once they grow out of the downtown scene, they'll marry, have kids and move to the suburbs. A few might stay, but the rest will leave. They don't give a shit about the community, even if they want to make it seem otherwise.

And after all of this is done, the poor will still be displaced.

[HiPointDem]

17. if he doesn't live there his concern rings shallow? how's that? (and how do you 'ring shallow'

anyway? i think you mean 'ring hollow'.)

[WCGreen]

10. There was nothing there...

No one is kicking anyone out. Gentrification more than likely, will happen after the Hipsters remake the community. Then these hipster/urban pioneers, will be forced out as young professionals move in to be closer Downtown.

[Gravitycollapse]

12. What do you mean nothing was there? Was there literally no people at all in these areas?

Or was there simply poor people who know one cared about?

[ErikJ]

15. Wow are you ignorant. There are 1000's of acres of open fields in Detoit now dummy.

Detroits population has decreased from 2 million to 700,000 in 20 years! Its EMPTY!

[HiPointDem]

19. yeah, it's across the street from empty wayne state university. acres and acres of emptiness.

[HiPointDem]

21. Portland Oregon: 145 m2, 600K people. Detroit: 149 m2, 700K people.

when was it that detroit had 2 million people?

1930 1,568,662
1940 1,623,452
1950 1,849,568
1960 1,670,144
1970 1,514,063
1980 1,203,368
1990 1,027,974
2000 951,270
2010 713,777

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit

who's ignorant, who's a dummy?

PORTLAND IS EMPTY!!! All you yuppies better move to a central location before they turn off the power!!!!!!

[Travis_0004]

29. 1.85 million. Close enough.

His point still stands. With over 1 million people who left the city, there is plenty of open space.

[HiPointDem]

34. you'd better read his 'point' again.

"Detroits population has decreased from 2 million to 700,000 in 20 years!"

1. Never was 2 million.
2. High point was 1950 = 60 years ago, not 20.
3. It still has higher population density than portland oregon, the city of the poster erik, who claims portland is just great. i guess portland has plenty of open space too -- so what?

[HiPointDem]

18. there was nothing there in the neighborhood of the detroit arts institute? what? it's right across

the street from wayne state university for god's sake.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=detroit+institute+of+arts&ie=UTF-8&hl=en

[WCGreen]

50. Isn't that a natural place for the "Hipster" to settle in....

[HiPointDem]

52. yes. and there was something there. many things, actually.

[WCGreen]

55. I still don't get why you are angry, or rather against, that some outsiders decided

to move into Detroit and try to inject some energy into a city that really is in troubled.

[HiPointDem]

56. I am not against outsiders moving into detroit. i am not even against hipsters moving to detroit.

what i am against is the deliberately false account of the decline & current revitalization of detroit; and as for hipsters, the false account = that this is some spontaneous movement of artists in search of cheap rents, and that hipsters in & of themselves are a force of revitalization.

i'm against pushing pawns over a chessboard for profit. i'm against pushing decay around the country, and the globe, for profit.

[WCGreen]

57. All I can say is here in Cleveland, 980k in 1950 to about 350k now...

Has been able to revitalize several area's surround the downtown public square.

It took 30 years for Ohio City, the area just to the west of Downtown, to finally hit the point where homesteaders and artists and young professionals as well as section 8 housing has mingled together and created a vibrant urban neighborhood.

There are at least 6 other areas in Cleveland that have been thriving.

If I was younger, I would be down there now. In fact when Mrs. WCGreen and I took our vows in 1988, we shopped around in the Treemount Area looking to embrace the urban experience. But my health started to fail and we nixed that plan and moved into a suburban neighborhood. It's serene, delightful but full of republicans.

It takes time. Several neighborhoods were on the verge of breaking out and something seemed to suck out the energy just as it was getting momentum.

[HiPointDem]

58. There are no fewer poor people. What you are describing as revitalization is just a shifting around

of populations. There's a lot of money to be made in shifting populations around.

[susanna]

62. That's already somewhat happening (young professionals downtown).

There is a higher per capita income in Midtown these days, in contrast with the city as a whole. Some of those fancy new loft buildings are prohibitively expensive.

[ellie]

44. I would move back to Detroit

in a heartbeat if my husband could find a job there. I would buy one of those houses and live in the city. I am not a trust fund baby and I am not 20. I am nearly 50.

[HiPointDem]

53. i imagine there are lots of people who would move to detroit if they could find jobs. but since

jobs are scarce, it's trust fund hipsters who get to buy those cheap houses on the leading edge of the next boom.

[ErikJ]

7. Good luck with that. They better be self-sufficient because

no elelctricity and no water sucks. I'd get the hell out of dodge before brutal winter strikes.

[HiPointDem]

20. right. they're going to turn off the electricity in the neighborhoods surrounding michigan's 3rd-

largest university.

said the person who called other posters 'ignorant'.

[quaker bill]

22. I love this thread

only here could a batch of hipsters moving to a severely depressed area be seen as some sort of threat.

[HiPointDem]

23. I love straw men.

[loli phabay]

24. its a kind of a weird thread in some ways, but entertaining non the less

[RKP5637]

26. I got hooked reading it ... when very young, I remember well my father

traveling to Detroit for business when it was booming. I recall being amazed at the postcards of hotels where he stayed and my amazement of the city. It seems it should have gone on and on and just gotten better ... so it does a weird twist in my head as to how Detroit has changed sooo much in my lifetime. It's all kind of weird to me and often I wonder how many other cities are on their way to being similar.

[quaker bill]

31. A great many are somewhat there

not as dramatically as Detriot.

Some were there and have largely emerged from the other side. Asheville NC for instance has gone from declined post industrial to a modest hipster mecca over the last 20 years.

Charleston SC has done much the same over the last 30 years, but it has now gone well past the hipster mecca stage to nearly fully gentrified.

St. Petersburg FL is just working on starting the process. It is not so much post industrial, but pretty poor, but the studios, galleries, coffee shops and brew pubs are going in...

[Eleanors38]

47. The hipsters arrive in Austin everytime the econ. hits the fan...

Only here, the jobs are scarce, the pay is Crap™ (fortunately, many jobs are part-time so you don't have as much time to suffer the indignity), the occupancy rates are 95% - 97%, the rents are grotesque, traffic sucks beyond belief, and condo construction would make Miami blush. On the other hand, prop. taxes are very high.

And they keep coming at well over a thousand a week.

Frankly, I see Detroit as a frontier. If I was young with the little savings I have now, I might give Detroit a try.

(hear-tell frontier towns had quite a bar scene, and a lot of artists hanging around, too.)

[quaker bill]

49. I have been looking at St. Pete

I can pull together most of the cash to buy a home on the outward leading edge of the gentrification where there are a lot of partially redone foreclosures. Sort of the "newer roof, new kitchen, - needs TLC to complete" variety...

I have a small art business now and a (real) pension coming soon.

[Eleanors38]

54. Land, houses are still cheap. Though I know little of it,

There is something of a "scene" in St. Pete, perhaps drawn by the Dali museum. Very dense population, the T.B. Rays, improved restaurants (since I was a kid). But gone are the boarding houses with horseshoe drives, no a.c. -- and the Gulf for a backyard. Old Florida.

My brother last yr. bought a 3-2 CB in good shape for -$240k in St. Augustine Beach, a block from A1A and the Atlantic. Amost excellent student-run FM out of Flagler College. Beautiful, delightfully corrosive beach life.

[quaker bill]

59. Detroit is too cold

and Asheville has gotten too pricey. St. Pete is working on building an Asheville "scene". They even brought folks down from Asheville to consult. They are doing tax subsidy deals for artists to buy empty warehouses and set up studios... Instead of that sort of deal for corps.

I like Asheville better, but the difference is between having a mortgage payment and not having one. I can live really well on my pension, and social security, if I have a paid off house. I can get there in St. Pete and be just blocks from the "scene". Around Asheville it would be more like a 40 minute commute from the "scene" pretty much out in the sticks. The sticks around Asheville are environmentally pretty, but very southern conservative.

[RKP5637]

27. This >>> "decades of deindustrialization are the main culprit." As with much of

the US ... to me, what has happened to detroit is the same template as for many cities and towns in the US. When I go back to the small town where I grew up, for example, the same thing has happened, "deindustrialization." ... off-shored from the US, now a handful of researchers are where huge plants once stood employing thousands of people in all types of jobs. Now, there are mostly torn down buildings. ... and low paying retail jobs in that area. What was once a prosperous area is now pretty much depressed. ... not unlike much of the US IMO.

[loli phabay]

30. cities change, demographically, industry etc etc. once the slide starts people leave

Speeding the slide up. Not sure what the op wants to do with detroit but it cant go back. You cant force people to live there, to relocate business there. So you deal with the facts on the ground. Not sure what the problem here is with some people wanting to actually move there and be hipsters at least its people moving in to areas that are dieing.

[RKP5637]

35. Yeah, I see it as a good thing. ... it's a spark to maybe get the city moving again. The

entire topology of the US is changing IMO ... where it's all headed I have no idea, but to me a spark of interest in a city that really bit bad times is a good thing.

[HiPointDem]

36. the city *is* moving, and it's not because of hipsters. hipsters do jack. they are a symptom,

not a prime mover.

hipsters appear in the wake of money. contrary to media reports, there is lots of new money in detroit.

[susanna]

63. This is true. The well-connected players are beginning to circle the feed trough.

It is obvious.

As a general rule, I do not lump the hipsters into that category. The vast majority of the new residents i have met are incredibly idealistic and energetic. I have to say it does my 40-something heart good to see that kind of engagement after a lot of years without it.

I am the first to admit that this is anecdotal evidence, but that is all I have.

Peace.

[kentuck]

28. Where better to start than with Detroit?

I agree.

[justiceischeap]

32. I seem to recall young "hipsters" flocking to depressed areas

Last edited Wed Jul 31, 2013, 08:00 AM - Edit history (1)

throughout history... except at the times they did so, they had different names: hippies, beat generation... It has long been these artists/hipsters/hippies have helped revive areas that are dying.

Then, after these kids move into the areas, breath some life back into them, the "man" comes along and fucks it all up by buying up property, driving up the costs of real estate, so no one but the well-off can afford to live there. It isn't the damn "hipsters" fault...

[RKP5637]

37. I've seen this pattern so many times. Some of the cool coastal towns I used to

go to and live in are now sooo damn expensive none can live there but the 1%. And the coolness of them is gone, small shops, etc. now replaced with walls of condos and often big chain stores, for example, lining the coast. And, IMO, they are gross and ugly, so are many of the people living there IMO.

[HiPointDem]

42. no. they didn't move to depressed 'areas,' they moved to low-rent neighborhoods in otherwise

wealthy cities.

you always find hipsters in proximity to rich people.

and that's why the hipsters are in detroit; the big money is moving in simultaneously, and many of those hipsters are the children of wealth with an inside track on planning.

[susanna]

64. Well, if you put it that way, I see your point a little better.

Makes more sense to me now. I can definitely see an element of that.

I have to admit, most of the hipsters I know are not the children of the wealthy. The ones I know are mostly urban farming folks, culinary biz types (cooks, restaurateurs, etc.), and other small business owners.

I have never been a part of the hipster super-artsy community, so it is more than possible that my perspective is skewed towards those I think are just more unconventional and wanting to bring something new to the city.

Interesting thoughts you have shared in this thread, HiPointDem. I definitely learned a lot. Thank you.

Peace.

[HiPointDem]

66. lots of them are just ordinary people. but an 'arts scene' is always made by the wealthy.

without the wealthy, it's just some schlubs. nobody hears about it, nobody cares, and everyone thinks they're weirdos that need to get jobs.

[LisaLynne]

33. I was struck by this:

Contrary to what some commentators have been arguing, however, Detroit’s troubles can’t be traced simply to bloated payrolls and intransigent public-sector unions: decades of deindustrialization are the main culprit.

Who the F, even the idiot teabaggers, could doubt that the collapse of industry in Detroit, which arguably built that city, is to blame? Oh, I suppose they think the industry collapsed because people were paid a fair wage. Ok, I just explained ignorant idiocy to myself. Go, me.

[MrScorpio]

39. Real estate is super cheap here...

That gives any budding young hipster a fighting chance to develop their own personal hipster space at a discount, so their can nurture their goatees, wear their short brimmed fedoras at the requisite tilt and marvel over how well they can nurse their lattes and chain smoke.

[Nunliebekinder]

40. Apparently living in a set of ruins appeals to hipsters, somehow.

[marmar]

46. As a Detroiter, I take umbrage. The city is more than a "set of ruins".

[Lizzie Poppet]

45. As Portland breathes a sigh of relief...

[YoungDemCA]

48. K&R

[Taitertots]

51. The easiest policy to save Detroit is a law that....

Lets people who live next to long term abandoned houses take ownership if they demolish it and extend their fence around the land. If an abandoned property is next to two houses, an auction would determine who gets it. 30 day grace period to keep the property if the original owner appears after notifying the city that you want the property.


Living in the suburbs of Detroit: If my neighbor's house looked like some of the houses I've seen in Detroit, I'd raze it to the ground myself. I'd just document the condition of the house and fight it out in court if the owner complained.