The decline of the American City, particularly those for whom manufacturing was the primary economic driver, is long-standing topic of study and debate—a casualty of the most recent economic crisis or of more long-term political, social, and economic decisions and impasses. An expedition party from the Pulitzer ventured to Detroit recently, visions of Gordon Matta-Clark dancing in our heads and curiosity about how the arts were surviving in what is inadequately-described-as a challenging urban environment.

The flight to Detroit already spoke volumes, as we encountered what is becoming increasingly rare in this economy—a relatively empty flight. A friendly seatmate and Detroit suburb native shared with me the story of what industry still exists within Detroit, namely the military industrial complex that enables Windsor (part of Detroit’s metropolitan area) to continue to thrive. He also shared with me what would be the first of many glimmers and even rays of hope about the state of the arts—that he, a dedicated military contractor with very little arts interest otherwise, was a frequent and ardent visitor for the Detroit Institute of the Arts. We were greeted in Detroit by a sparkling new terminal, complete with indoor fountain, tram, and light and sound installation, and fairly easily found our way to Midtown Detroit, roughly equivalent to Grand Center in St. Louis.

I’d like to take a moment here to describe the urban landscape of Detroit. As a native southerner, I’m used to large, unused swaths of land in various states of occupancy, wilderness, and everything in between. Detroit, however, was a new experience. We learned later that Detroit was planned as a city that could accommodate 4-5 million, and not surprisingly, given Ford and his legacy, the streets are wide (some not as wide as they once were) and encourage driving over walking. Woodward, the avenue that is home to many establishments now, including the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, is wide enough and integral to the Wayne State-Arts district that it reminds me of an asphalt Mississippi River. Beautiful housing stock, homes dating from the turn of the 20th Century that have been lovingly restored for various purposes, are mixed in with empty lots and sibling structures who weren’t lucky enough yet to have new life. The absence of structures some destroyed and some that never came to existence can be attributed to the anticipated growth never being fulfilled. At its peak, Detroit (the City, not Detroit Metropolitan Area) reached a height in the 2-millions and since the mid-Twentieth Century has declined to just under 1 million now. I should note, too, that the fewer than 1 million people in the city plus those living in the surrounding counties are an incredibly diverse public, representing a variety of religions and ethnicities (including the largest Muslim population outside of the Middle East).

What this absence of people means to the city certainly has economic implications but it also impacts the state of the arts, which I’ll share with you in my next post.