  E_hemingway Member Username: E_hemingway Post Number: 1625 Registered: 11-2004 |
Keith Dusenberry of Real Detroit has written a couple of stories from Berlin profiling some ideas that are working there that he says could work here. They're worth talking about at least. I like the second the best. There are definitely enough lines of old storefronts around here (ahem, downtown, ahem) where this idea could be pulled off. Seems plausible. How To Build A Better Brooklyn... What Detroit Can Learn From Berlin http://www.realdetroitweekly.c om/article_3946.shtml A Modest Proposal What Detroit Can Learn From Berlin Part 2 http://www.realdetroitweekly.c om/article_3970.shtml | ||
Mozeewink Member Username: Mozeewink Post Number: 37 Registered: 03-2008 |
I like the idea of unleashing creative people on a blighted part of the city. It was probably cheap, initially, as well. However, I wonder if the mindset of cooperation between property owners/management and artists/designers, etc. could exist here...I don't know...seems too progressive....too European for us...(sarcasm) | ||
Gistok Member Username: Gistok Post Number: 6546 Registered: 08-2004 |
Sadly Berlin is one of the few German large cities I have yet to visit. But I do know that the gritty part of Berlin is formerly communist East Berlin. There not much has changed in the last 50 years since the rebuilding of that part of town in an un-pleasing "Gulag Moderne" style. So when talking about Berlin as gritty, one is hardly talking about Unter Den Linden... the grandest boulevard in Berlin (which terminates at the famous Brandeburg Gate), or the Kurfürstendam, West Berlin's famous main street (before unification), or the Leipziger Platz (plaza) where $5 billion was spent on new German company HQ buildings. Comparing Berlin to Brooklyn is rather silly. Even though (like London) much new construction has replaced WWII damage, it has some of the greatest cultural attractions in Europe. There's even talk of rebuilding the Town Palace (Residenz) of the German Emperor's and Kings of Prussia. It survived WWII relatively unscathed, only to be torn down by the Russians in 1950... and replaced by Alexanderplatz, a Soviet style plaza with 40 story office building. The German government wants to rebuild it from scratch (all the interior embellishments were salvaged), but the former East German's are protesting the razing of the biggest monument to the commmunist past of East Berlin. | ||
Barnesfoto Member Username: Barnesfoto Post Number: 4887 Registered: 10-2003 |
Real Detroit: it's neither. | ||
Gnome Member Username: Gnome Post Number: 931 Registered: 08-2007 |
Tearing down Alexanderplatz seems like a real poor choice for one's resources, but Germans are big on symbolic acts. During the Cold War, the folks in Berlin were paid to live there, so there developed a very nihilistic culture of young creative types. Not many families, but a lot of aspiring artistic types that didn't object to the idea that they were actually 90 miles inside East Germany and were surrounded by a Wall, guard towers, anti-tank pits, mine-fields and razor wire. Berlin, East Berlin, are complex cities that never would have existed without massive Federal monies. Massive. The entire ethos of Berlin operates in alternative universe than Detroit or America. One there will be no massive Federal program. There will be little programs here and there. Little housing projects, little Grants, little this, little that. These are just droplets of water to a parched man. No cavalry is coming. If Real Detroit wants to show us places that have overcome their histories, I suggest they bring us a piece on Kigali, Rwanda or Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Detroit has a serious public safety problem. It has a culture that turns a blind eye to crime. The house down the street that had its bricks stolen, the scrappers who pulled out air condo units from the roof of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, a mayor that pillages the city coffers and our fair citizens don't seem to care. "Don't snitch" is our motto and until that changes, nothing else will. Berlin, sure an art colony would work, a creative culture of free-thinkers who embrace each other in a free and open society. but few people will join the colony without some semblance of security. That means walls, gates, cameras and foot patrols. sounds creative to me | ||
Mwilbert Member Username: Mwilbert Post Number: 143 Registered: 11-2007 |
One of the purposes of getting a lot of people to move into a particular area is to change the culture of that area. It doesn't matter so much if people in a different part of the city don't snitch if your neighbors do. If Detroit wanted to promote the rapid population of an area, there are lots of things it could do in principle. 1) property tax abatements (they already do this, obviously) 2) Income tax credits for new residents 3) Police presence (mini-stations?, beats?) 4) Neighborhood/charter school If you could basically create a neighborhood all at once, you could overcome many problems. Of course that would be difficult, but I am not sure it is impossible. On the other hand, I also have no reason to think the city administration would even be in favor of such a thing happening. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 2869 Registered: 04-2006 |
Detroit needs 1) a centralized business district and 2) a transit system. Until this materializes all other points are moot. | ||
Detx Member Username: Detx Post Number: 122 Registered: 07-2007 |
One of the reasons Berlin rebuilt itself so quickly after WWII and the Cold War is the fact that, for the most part, Berlin is filled with Germans. This camaraderie of a shared culture, beyond anything else, was the biggest factor in its rebirth. Conversely, we don’t have that shared culture in Detroit. Which is why it has rotted for so long. About two years ago I meant a 23-year-old girl from Livonia. Took her to the Magic Stick downtown. It was the first time she had been to DETROIT since she was seven years old. And what had her parents brought her there for then? A Tigers’ game, of course. We sat outside on the patio that night, and she was obviously uncomfortable and fearful the whole time. The question is, how do we create a shared culture in Detroit and the region? The task is daunting, especially considering how multicultural, uneducated, and economically uneven we are. I don’t know, but I know one thing for certain, that people’s attitudes are so much more welcoming when there are visible signs of progress. | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 252 Registered: 04-2007 |
I really like Brooklyn, at least the parts I've visited. The first time I drove down Coney Island Blvd. I told my wife that it reminded me so much of Michigan Avenue when it was still filled with active businesses. Brooklyn and other boroughs were given up for dead by many people just 20 years ago, and look at the city now. They are diverse and densely populated, and even areas like Gowanus are beginning to repopulate. Green efforts have made the Gowanus canal much cleaner, to the point that small boats are using it, I hear. We need to take an idea or two from New York and, yes, Berlin, and come up with ideas of our own. Greening, transit, taxes, crime abatement, programs to encourage entrepreneurs, getting kids through school, encouraging more diversity-- we have to do it all. |
