Having spent seven months in Detroit now, I feel like I\u2019ve thoroughly thrown and committed myself to this city. But with that, comes somewhat of a disconnection from the rest of the world. I\u2019ve gotten relatively comfortable here, used to the city and the way of life, which can be good, but there should always be room for reflection.<\/p>\n
In the last month, I had a chance to get away and spend time in two major cities: New York and Toronto. Having spent almost two weeks in NYC over the Christmas holiday break, catching up with old friends and showing new ones around the city, I came back energized but also exhausted, unable to immediately reflect on my visit. And it wasn\u2019t until I took a quick trip to Toronto that I was able to start putting my thougths and perspectives together, which in the process, has allowed me to reconsider some of my attitudes on the Detroit.<\/p>\n
Conversations in Detroit around development and the gentrification that comes along with it are a daily occurrence. Most of the time, I\u2019ve sided with those who criticize the rapid new development that\u2019s pushed out communities<\/a> who\u2019ve been rooted for years and decades longer than the new people moving in. (And yes, I am acutely aware of the fact that my presence here is part of this gentrification. But as someone just recently said at a community event, \u201cto be a Detroiter, you need to give back, not just live here.\u201d And as long as I have that attitude, and stay conscious of my presence and connected to the broader community, I feel more comfortable being here.)<\/p>\n But what I didn\u2019t give as much consideration to before, or perhaps dismissed too quickly, and what I become more conscious of on these two visits, is that in order to have a thriving city, one that allows for diversity, amenities, and public and social services to develop is people<\/strong>. Development is critical to creating density, high concentrations of people who will bring in money through taxes and local spending, demand for improved services like roads, public transit, and public safety, and attract other people and businesses that will, hopefully, improve the quality of life for everyone in the city.<\/p>\n That being said, I\u2019m not sold on it entirely, not should I be. The rapid development that Toronto\u2019s experiencing, particularly with in high-rise condominium towers, has led to the highest population growth in decades but is creating massive divides within the city.<\/a> New York City has experiences significant development across a number of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens neighborhoods, which have raised more concern than praise<\/a>. And again, early Detroit development has begun to raise the same concerns<\/a>. And so, given this new perspective, I\u2019m not as critical of development in concept, but in practice, I still think it has a long way to go to reach a point where it benefits all city residents equitably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having spent seven months in Detroit now, I feel like I\u2019ve thoroughly thrown and committed myself to this city. But with that, comes somewhat of a disconnection from the rest of the world. I\u2019ve gotten relatively comfortable here, used to the city and the way of life, which can be good, but there should always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[413,63,373,414,257,415,351,416,417,418,419,420],"class_list":["post-12015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brooklyn","tag-detroit","tag-development","tag-equity","tag-gentrification","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-poverty","tag-queens","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12015","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=12015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}