The New York Times published an interesting and popular article last Friday called The Post-Post-Apocalyptic Detroit. It of course talks all about the efforts of billionaire Dan Gilbert, but it also talks about the initiatives of many small and local entrepreneurs who are doing their part to help revive the city – while at the same time making a profit.
One thing that I found interesting about the article is the extent to which the private sector has taken over the responsibilities of the public sector. With only 35,000 of the city’s 88,000 streetlights actually working, the city simply doesn’t have the money to pay its bills. When I visited the city last fall, I was told that the city couldn’t even afford batteries for its parking meters.
So the private sector has stepped up.
In downtown, Dan Gilbert pays for his own security force to patrol the area 24 hours a day both on the ground and through 300 surveillance cameras. And in the Jefferson East corridor, John Stroh III – of the Stroh Brewery Company – is paying for 3,500 hours of private security in order to help transform the area into a walkable retail strip.
It’s a model that relies on the funding and vision of rich people to catalyze change. And it strikes me as a quintessentially American way of going about it. In Canada, I’m not so sure it would be approached in quite the same way, which I think is both good and bad. I think in Canada there would be more government involvement.
If the rich people are there and willing to step up (like they are right now in Detroit), then I would assume the capital would be deployed more efficiently and that change would happen more quickly. But if the rich people aren’t willing to step up, then nothing happens and the place declines.
That might be an oversimplification, but I think there are differences.
To end, I’m going to leave you with this Bloomberg video about Steve Case’s (former AOL founder) “Rise of the Rest” road trip to Detroit. If you can’t see the video below, click here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RUG0H4VThM?rel=0]
I’m reading a great book right now called Tech and the City. I’m only 31% of the way through it (according to my Kindle app), but already it’s been an interesting read. It’s about the making and rise of New York City as a technology and startup hub – which, is fairly recent phenomenon. There aren’t too many cases where New York plays second or third city, but tech is one of those instances. Silicon Valley dominates.
The book talks about the deliberate efforts that were made, by the Bloomberg administration as well by many others, to diversify New York’s economy away from financial services and towards technology, startups, and entrepreneurship. It gives you all the backstory about the rise of Silicon Alley in the 90s, its subsequent crash in the dot com era, and all the players involved. And yes the reference to Sex and the City is both on purpose and explicit throughout the book.
But at a time where cities all around the world are trying to replicate the success of Silicon Valley, the takeaways from this book are perhaps universally applicable. It certainly got me wondering if, here in Toronto, we’re doing enough to prepare our city to dominate in the 21st century.
Image: Stephen Wilkes
Last week I was reading the blog of James S. Russell, who used to be the architecture critic for Bloomberg News. He’s no longer the architecture critic, because Bloomberg got rid of his column:
My column, along with almost all cultural coverage, was eliminated at Bloomberg late last year in favor of a yet-to-be completed revamping that focuses on luxury and lifestyle.
Obviously, the decision saddens me personally, but it’s also a regrettably powerful signal that culture doesn’t matter in our society and economy.
As someone who spent a great deal of time studying art, architecture and design, his post really resonated with me. This is a depressing thought. It may be hard to measure the ROI of the arts, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a return.
Ironically, Bloomberg–the former mayor of New York–understood this:
As Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, the company’s founder, championed arts as valuable to the vibrancy of the city and as a powerful force for economic development. The city has seen unprecedented growth in arts facilities, thanks both to his administration’s efforts and his personal philanthropy. His post-mayoral activities are intended to nurture cities as fields of wealth creation by helping them become cauldrons of innovation, which he recognizes is entwined with vibrant cultural and lifestyle trends.
That sounds about right.