I am 30 years old, a fan of top-shelf cocktails and Chuck Taylors, and a Detroit resident. I like live music, and I tend to know about new art galleries before the rest of my friends. Could I be a hipster? Maybe. I’m not quite sure.
In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) set out to evaluate mortgage lending risk in American cities. The resulting maps codified and legitimized the racism of the day ...
Of all the fathers and sons I know, I’m fairly certain my dad and I are the only ones who would spend part of a hot spring Wednesday afternoon peering into a sewer grate. However, this is not just any sewer grate.
Across Michigan, restaurants with storied histories and cherished addresses are relocating from urban centers to suburban strip malls with remarkable success, providing a regional twist on a national debate ...
Philip Levine’s father came to the United States from Russia, traveling across the ocean all by himself at age eleven. He grew up in New York City with two older sisters and their families. His path to Detroit was an extraordinary one ...
Northland Center is the oldest suburban shopping mall in the Detroit region, and will likely close soon. Located in the inner-ring suburb of Southfield, north of Detroit, in a field in the southernmost part of its county.
Do you ever think -- "gee I should move to Detroit to pursue my art/tech start-up/raise a family because I hear it is so cheap and hip -- but I don't want to be all white or coastal privilege-y about it?"
These profiles tell the story of Rust Belt refugees who are happy with their lives but sometimes can’t help thinking they’ve lost something they’ll never get back by joining the Michigan and Ohio diasporas.
Marilyn Rodgers could do just about anything with her Saturday off, but instead she chooses to vacuum a train terminal. The executive director of Buffalo’s Central Terminal Restoration Corporation (CTRC), a nonprofit that’s rehabilitating the city’s vacant train station, goes up and down yards of original Terrazzo flooring, sucking up dirt with an industrial-strength cleaner. “I have to clean my house,” she jokes of the 523,000 square foot space where she frequently visits.
Conventional wisdom holds that the larger the population of a city, the more successful the place must be. If the population’s growing, that city must be doing something right. If it’s withering, it must be in decline.
Dan Gilbert is buying up huge chunks of Detroit. The city needs investors. But can it afford to be exclusive with just one billionaire?
They say Detroit is coming back but as Bob Dylan put it, you can’t come back all the way. Cal is gone for good.