HuffPost: Black-Owned Businesses Are Quietly Powering Detroit's Resurgence, But No One's Talking About It

Today we're going to again visit the great American city of Detroit, Michigan. Apparently there's a story no one really discusses and apparently it doesn't only involve young white entrepreneurs:

The largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history has also stirred up interest in success stories. Though no one person will fix Detroit, some people have received well-deserved attention for their work to improve the city. A New York Times article last month highlighted hot spots in the Corktown neighborhood, and a story in the same paper earlier this year heralded small businesses.

But something's missing from those pieces, and from many other articles that examine the city's resurgence: black Detroiters, who make up 83 percent of the population.

Stories that claim entrepreneurs are building, revitalizing and even saving Detroit focus primarily on white professionals, often younger and new transplants to the city, a trend that's palpable and frustrating for locals. When journalists and readers criticized the Times for leaving blacks out of its Corktown story, the paper's public editor addressed the lack of diversity in a follow-up, and the writer said she regretted not including a black-owned business. (A more recent Times story takes a wider-ranging view.)

It's not difficult to find a black business owner to speak with, though. There are more than 32,000 in the city, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2007. Many, particularly those who have kept their businesses going on shoestring budgets, feel excluded from conversations about Detroit's revival and overlooked when it comes to getting access to funds and resources.

"I think, for the most part, black-owned businesses are not getting a piece of the pie," bookstore owner Janet Jones told The Huffington Post. "What about people who have been doing the hard work of living and working and having business in Detroit for the last 20 years?"

What do you think?

Curbed Chicago: How and Why Chicagoans Decided Our Flag Kicks Ass

Via Annalee flickr

The municipal flag of Chicago is an enduring symbol. The Mayor wears a lapel pin version of it and in addition many local websites and local t-shirt makers uses elements of this flag in their designs. For example consider the header for my other blog, The Sixth Ward. I would dare say no other US city comes close to Chicago although some have even more simpler design elements. Recently Curbed Chicago addresses why Chicago's flag is so popular.

Lee Bey took pictures in Detroit

Photo by Lee Bey

Blogger and architecture "geek" Lee Bey takes a brief trip to Detroit and takes pictures of the architecture of that Great American city:

I was in Detroit last weekend participating in Art X Detroit, a five-day festival of art, music, dance and discussion.

Fortunately, I squeezed-in a Saturday morning photo stroll of the city's downtown, taking stock of the wealth of buildings that remain despite Detroit's well-recorded decades of decay, demolition and disinvestment. The city has a fine collection of vintage downtown architecture, much of which can hold its own against any Chicago or New York has to offer. And while many sit vacant, scores are being reused, bringing life and vitality to the city's core. The above six-story building, completed in 1891, is a former conservatory of music and is among the first generation of tall buildings on Woodward Avenue. And it's still impressive after 120 years.

You should go there and see the other building he took pics of in Detroit. Some of these buildings are impressive. Hopefully something to rebuild a city around.

The pic about from Lee Bey is of a former conservatory building on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Well actually is coincidental that the pic I posted here is exactly what Bey was talking about in that quote I provided.

VIDEO - Detroit: City on the Move (1965)

[VIDEO] Today we're going to take another trip to Detroit, Michigan. Just that well we're going backwards in time to 1965 when the Mayor was Jerome Cavanaugh who you see in the first few minutes of this video. It makes you wonder what happened between the 1960s to today where Detroit is seen as a declining city. Look no further than that link provided earlier to Mayor Cavanaugh's wiki profile. Duration is over 18 minutes.

Via Electronic Village!


BTW, I would to refer to this post at Urbanophile:

Gen-X and the Millennials have a much more optimistic and positive views of urban areas than baby boomers and previous generations. I think this results from the rupture that those earlier generations experienced when our urban cores declined. If you read a newspaper interview of someone in that age bracket, you always here the stories about the wonderful things they did in the city when they were younger. It was the land of good factory jobs, the downtown department store where their mothers took them in white gloves for tea, of the tidy neighborhoods, the long standing institutions and rituals – now all lost, virtually all of it. Unsurprisingly, this has turned a lot of people bitter. Many people saw everything they held dear in their communities destroyed, and they were powerless to stop it. These people are never going to be able to enter the Promised Land. 

For people about my age or younger, it’s a very different story. None of us knew any of those things. Our experience is totally different. We’ve basically never known a city that wasn’t lost. Gen-X, which Jim Russell views as the heartland of Rust Belt Chic, is a generation defined by alienation, so the alienated urban core suits our temperament perfectly. The Millennials of course have a very different attitude towards cities.

I don’t see any signs of the older generations getting through the grieving process and moving on. This makes me think that for us to fully embrace a true urban policy, even in city government itself, it is going to take generational turnover. The baby boomers are already starting to age, but they’ll be with us a lot longer. Alas, they have historically been the most suburban generation, and not shy about imposing their values, so I suspect we’ll be dealing with that legacy for a while. Still, as time goes on, we’ll have more and more people seeing the city with fresh eyes, and only knowing it when there’s reason for hope and optimism. That by itself will be a building force for change and new directions over time, until the true changing of the guard arrives.

Well let's not misunderstand here that the Village and Urbanophile are read by different audiences and Village is read mostly by a Black audience. I can only assume who reads the Urbanophile, but I'm certain there will be agreement or disagreement over the point Aaron Renn @ Urbanophile is attempting to convey.