Detroit Matters!

By Terry A. Burton

The Truth Contributor

During the summer and early fall months of 2014 I periodically visited my friend Sarah’s urban permaculture garden homestead (a greenhouse, pet chickens and a few neighborhood garden plots) located on the east side of Detroit, near Grosse Pointe.

I would stop by to do volunteer work on her urban garden project, later named “Thrift D Gardens” after camping trips with friends in Michigan or while I was in Detroit for art and music festivals. By the end of January of 2015, I was persuaded to do marketing consultation and research for another “urban farm” operation named Jones Produce & Co., also located on the east side.

During those winter months we took turns feeding the wood burning stove in the basement of her old house; luckily my room was right next to the chimney area so I stayed extra warm at night.

I spent a good portion of my time that winter traveling around the city of Detroit for my new “urban farmer” client, fighting heavy snow because some neighborhoods are often left unplowed for days – one of the less desirable realities of living in Detroit.

I went to all kinds of meetings, conferences or anything related to “Urban Farming”, “Local Food” or “Urban Ag”. In the midst of that entire hubbub, I meant a variety of people doing a myriad of interesting activities.

One of the experiences I enjoyed the most was attending the New Work, New Culture symposium. This event was hosted by the Grace Lee Boggs Center and sponsored by numerous nonprofit organizations in the Detroit area. The aim of this multi-day event was to provide a forum to discuss the nature of work, economics and local culture in Detroit. “Urban Farming,” “Art,” “Capitalism” and the “Tale of Two Detroit’s” were among many of the hot topics I chatted with people about.

From the conversations in this forum, I started pondering many ideas, mostly revolving around the following “Rhetorical and Conceptual Spaces“:

The First Concept Space, Detroit is a big place and spread out, around 138 square miles. It is said to be enough land area to fit the borough of Manhattan and the entire city areas of San Francisco and Boston. Detroit is a city with a large infrastructure to support and not enough people to support it with income and taxes which causes much strain on a city government that is fighting to overcome many unique fiscal challenges. This economic situation has led to the abandonment of over 100,000 buildings and houses in Detroit. Some estimates I researched on the internet say that roughly one in three houses are in foreclosure. 

The Second Concept Space, Detroit is predominately African American according to U.S. Census data, comprising 83 percent of the current population of just under 700,000. In 1950, the total population of Detroit was around 1.8 million and 84 percent white. If you Google the population of “Metro Detroit” or “Metro Detroit Region“ (which covers parts of Macomb, Oakland and Wayne County) you will find numbers of over 3.7 to 5 million people with different demographic features. In other words, it is whiter in the suburban areas, hence the term “white flight.” 

The Third Concept Space, according to U.S. Census data, around 40 percent of people in Detroit live at or below “poverty.” 

The Fourth Concept Space, for local urban farmers to become an industry, Detroit needs to work on developing a plan to increase the scale (planting more acres) and scope (developing locally grown value added products and farm to table restaurant menus) from agricultural production.

The Fifth Concept Space, art and cultural production is a more effective economic development tool when linked to a more comprehensive approach in developing Detroit neighborhoods. A city that was built or expanded to accommodate almost two million people has been in population decline for decades (since the 50s), with most people moving out of the city limits to the suburbs or elsewhere. Add to that a poor or slightly inadequate public transportation system, racism, housing foreclosures, poverty, crime, low wage work, a school system in turmoil and there is a recipe for socio-economic tension but also an opportunity to do something different.

One hot spot is the “Woodward Corridor” area which includes some sections of the more desirable real estate in Detroit like “Boston-Edison,” “Midtown,” “The North End,” “Corktown,” “Woodbridge,” “New Center” and the “Eastern Market Area.”

The “Woodard Corridor” is home to many of the cultural institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. This is also the area of Wayne State University, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Tigers Stadium. But there is one problem with this picture; some of the other neighborhoods are often side notes to the development in downtown or the near downtown areas of Detroit and thought of by some groups as forgotten pieces of the economic and community development puzzle.

Terry A. Burton

I was made acutely aware of this while participating in the Slow Roll with new friends I made in Detroit. The Slow Roll is Michigan’s largest weekly bike ride that takes place in the spring, summer and fall months every Monday. It seems as if everybody loves to ride bikes in Detroit. It was reported in local and national news that one ride attracted 2-3,000 people (which I participated in).

During those rides and talking to people I discovered Detroit has many hidden and not so hidden gems like the Algers Theater, Grosse Pointe Village, the old Black Bottom neighborhood area, Brightmoor, Belle Isle State Park, Roma Café, Harper Woods, East English Village, Indian Village, the Jefferson Chalmers area, Mexicantown, Pewabic Pottery, Cadieux Café (a great place for feather bowling) and Greektown.

One of my favorite places not on that list of hidden and not so hidden gems is Hamtramck. I was given an inside look into the dynamics of Hamtramck or this “city within the city of Detroit” by one of its residents Bill Meyer, a famous Detroit jazz musician, community activist and film buff.

Hamtramck was historically a Polish enclave but now many Arab, Yemini, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people in addition to African Americans have taken up residence there. It is widely reported by local and national news outlets that Hamtramck just became the first U.S. town or city with a “majority Muslim city council.”

This has stirred the cultural melting pot of Detroit in many interesting ways but I think it is one of the places to be if you are visiting or want to live in Detroit. It is a tight knit community with many shops and full of life with a very diverse population where as many as 30 languages are spoken.

As the old saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention” and here are some opportunities I see from my experiences in Detroit:

   1) There are approximately 32,000 African-American owned businesses in Detroit   according to U.S. Census data. So that means over 60 percent of the 50,000 plus        businesses in Detroit are owned by African Americans. This sometimes overlooked statistic is well above the national numbers for African American business ownership. I think this is an opportunity to build on and an integral part of the economics of Detroit. 

2) Use Data Collection to your advantage. There are organizations like Data Driven   Detroit (D3), www.datadrivendetroit.org, collecting a wealth of open sourced information along with other data projects produced by Loveland Technologies, www.makeloveland.com. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said, “Information is the currency of Democracy.”

            3) The nature of work is changing and local economies are changing. Access to the “means of production, education and information” is more important than a “job of production”. Organization like the Center for Community Based Enterprise (C2BE), www.c2be.org, Incite Focus, www.incite-focus.org, Detroit Future City, www.detroitfuturecity.com or The Build Institute, www.buildinstute.org are helping to address this notion and producing results by helping entrepreneurs, artists, students, makers, engineers, community organizers and teachers with educational, vocational and economic programs designed to address Detroit’s changing economic landscape.

            4) The city has a large amount of vacant land that could be used for urban farming operations, anywhere between 25-40 square miles depending what or who you Google. The only caveat to that parlay is to study the data concerning this subject and come up with a more concerted plan for helping people who want to become “urban farmers’ to acquire contiguous plots of farm land, farming education, small business training, equipment and the facilities needed for reaching economies of scale. Some of the biggest expenses killing most small urban farm operations are farm labor, access to land, access to capital and marketing services.

            I think all of this could be addressed to greater success if more people worked together to achieve greater agricultural production numbers for market ready crops, value added products and Detroit grown farm to table restaurant menus. Also, organizing to share equipment expenses and established trade circles to save on everyday living expenses like food, clothing, water and shelter would help too. Common sense tells me that aggregating food production through a network of city wide agricultural cooperatives or community supported agricultural models might be a good idea to help with the everyday costs associated with farming smaller scale operations. If agricultural cooperatives help rural farms, why not “urban farmers”?

            5) Detroit is a great place to make art and develop studio space. It also has a vibrant local arts scene. I have seen some great “street art” or “urban contemporary” art around the city. It seems like there is always something going on in Detroit and my artist friends there are always busy doing this or that creative project. There are many art spaces, murals, potential art spaces (there are many abandoned buildings in Detroit) and artist lofts throughout the city.

Terry A .Burton is a Toledo native and man of many trades: visual culturalist, painter, photographer, experimental filmmaker, poet, graphic designer, musician, producer and marketing consultant. He currently divides his time between his Toledo studio space and working with Detroit @ City Repair in addition to Thrift D Gardens L3C (Detroit, Michigan). www.terryaburton.com  

Copyright © 2015 by [The Sojourner's Truth]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 08/16/18 14:12:39 -0700.

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