{"id":12014,"date":"2014-11-03T19:29:16","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T19:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/challengedetroit.org\/blog\/alissasevrioukova\/?p=10"},"modified":"2014-11-03T19:29:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T19:29:16","slug":"october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/october\/","title":{"rendered":"Dress For The Job You Want"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou can do whatever you want here. This city\u2019s a free for all.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“No one will\u00a0tell you NO. No one’s going to stop you.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

These are just a few of the\u00a0comments I heard about Detroit while\u00a0I considered moving here, and continue to hear\u00a0now that I\u2019m living here, both from outsiders and those\u00a0from the city.<\/p>\n

And on the one hand, that’s not really a bad thing. In fact, the lack\u00a0of rules, boundaries, or enforcement can be a good thing, allowing people to try, fail, learn, and move forward\u00a0without the fear of being (unfairly?) punished. So many\u00a0successful projects wouldn’t have gotten off the ground in Detroit if\u00a0people asked for permission, tried to go through the proper channels<\/p>\n

But as I spend more time here,\u00a0I see more and more of the detrimental side of this mentality. With this mindset comes a lack of respect\u00a0for the city, the institutions that are trying to get back up on their feet, the\u00a0people who are struggling every day to improve quality of life here.<\/p>\n

Running a red light (at night OR worse, in broad daylight) because you know there isn’t a police officer to stop you, leaving your trash behind because the nearest trash can is a few blocks away, or\u00a0cutting\u00a0corners during the inspection process because it takes too long … I\u00a0say that\u00a0though the short term benefits of such actions are obvious and hard to ignore, the long-term lasting\u00a0impact and perceptions that such\u00a0actions bring about\u00a0are detrimental to the rebuilding of the city, to the ability of residents, visitors, investors\u00a0to take the city seriously.<\/p>\n

I say that it’s especially detrimental when those of us living in this city are the ones\u00a0doing such things. Not that it isn’t frustrating\u00a0seeing someone from outside the city pop in for a few hours, make a mess\u00a0and talk some trash about Detroit, and turn right back around to head home. It absolutely is. But I think it’s so much more disappointing and destructive when those of us who live here do that instead. How can we expect those from outside Detroit\u00a0to respect it when those of us who’ve committed to\u00a0the city\u00a0can’t even\u00a0do it ourselves?<\/p>\n

I don’t mean to sit here and preach …\u00a0I’ve definitely been guilty of (a few of?)\u00a0such\u00a0missteps\u00a0in the past (and may even\u00a0commit a few more in the future), but now that this is on my mind, I can’t but pause\u00a0and think about the message I will be sending with my actions if I follow through. More often than not, I stop myself.<\/p>\n

So … I urge you to do the same, in only just to pause and think. Because just like you should dress for the job you want and not the job you have, we should treat Detroit as the city we want it to be, the city it could be, and\u00a0not the city it is!<\/p>\n

\"Dress<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou can do whatever you want here. This city\u2019s a free for all.” “No one will\u00a0tell you NO. No one’s going to stop you.” These are just a few of the\u00a0comments I heard about Detroit while\u00a0I considered moving here, and continue to hear\u00a0now that I\u2019m living here, both from outsiders and those\u00a0from the city. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[370],"tags":[369,371,372,63,373,257],"class_list":["post-12014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-be-better","tag-batman","tag-be-better-2","tag-city","tag-detroit","tag-development","tag-gentrification"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}