Detroit: Two tales of one city

It’s the best of times for downtown Detroit and Midtown — at least the best in a few decades. It’s the worst of times for much of the rest of the city, which offers an apocalyptic vision of abandoned buildings, weeds, trash, crumbling streets, failing schools, broken streetlights and an unresponsive police and EMS.
Yet, the view within City Hall is more horrific than any of the unsettling photographs shared worldwide via the Internet of Detroit’s burned-out homes, decaying factories and a former train station that has become a chilling symbol of urban collapse.

The events of the past week shed light on a city government that is so incompetent, so dysfunctional, that suburbanites are left slack-jawed. The state’s financial review team — and the Detroit media — have found numerous instances in which the city has engaged in fiscal negligence and has failed to collect taxes and court fees to such an extent that a level of public anarchy was exposed.
At the same time, the portrayal of Detroit by the national media has evolved from so-called “ruin porn” — countless grim photos of places like the old Packard Plant and the former Train Depot — to a portrayal of the nation’s Comeback City. With their focus entirely on downtown and Midtown, journalists and researchers and professors and some in business and entertainment circles are pulling for a Detroit renaissance.
Eminem and Kid Rock have certainly played a prominent role. The same city that has 72,000 vacant buildings is the inspiration for a glitzy casino, The D, on the Las Vegas strip.
Forbes, highlighting the new high-tech jobs and the influx of young, college-educated workers, has referred to Michigan and Detroit in particular as the “Silicon Mitten.”
Other national publications and a research group have legitimately hailed the revival of downtown and Midtown as an inspirational story of urban renewal initiated by artists and entrepreneurs and sympathetic businessmen, not by way of the wrecking ball.

Meanwhile, the Motor City will suffer another black eye within days if and when a jury finds former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father and his BFF guilty of running a Mafia-style City Hall.

Of course, corruption is only part of the story.

At the city’s District Court, only 7 percent of the fines and fees imposed by the judges are collected. In the neighborhoods, only half of residents pay their property taxes in full — leading to a loss of nearly $250 million a year.
On some city blocks, only one homeowner pays up. In many cases, the scofflaw property owner — often a real estate speculator — defiantly refuses to pay the taxman. They know that the Wayne County Treasurer’s Office failed to foreclose on 40,000 Detroit homes last year that were delinquent on their taxes.
In many cases, they also know that their tax assessments are incredibly off base, sometimes resulting in the city Assessing Department — a rat’s nest of cronyism and mismanagement — placing values on residences that are 10 times, or even 18 times higher than the true value.
To understand how these incredible transgressions could take place, simply look at the state’s financial report — some city departments do not even know how many employees they have.

Obviously, none of this nonsense would be tolerated in Macomb County.
Still, the snickering, cynical suburbanites who believe the city reached the point of no return decades ago should be reminded that the businesses and top-notch professionals across the globe that we want to woo know only of Detroit, not Warren or Troy or Sterling Heights. We’re all wrapped up in the name Metro Detroit.
It may be an island of vibrancy, but it should also be noted that downtown and Midtown offer luxurious, refurbished apartment towers with no vacancies, two stadiums and an arena, Cobo Center, top-rated restaurants, Greektown, the DIA, the Fox and other top-flight concert venues. Mark Hackel and L. Brooks Patterson know they cannot compete with that lineup, which attracts 10.5 million visitors a year.

As for the rest of the city, it’s time to start from scratch. Literally, from the ground up. We’ve seen in recent weeks how quickly and cleanly a section of the city can be razed when the private sector gets involved. And we’ve seen, with the Belle Isle fiasco, that the City Council is no more than an unsettling mix of those clinging to power and those with affable inabilities.
In turn, Mayor Dave Bing, an honorable man who has had little success following through on his plans for the city, would be wise to avoid municipal bankruptcy at all costs. It would take a decade for Motown to overcome that stigma.
Civic leaders hope that Gov. Snyder will quickly bring in an emergency manager — if he can eventually find someone who will take the job. There’s a whole lot of cleanup needed.

Yet, the city’s ultimate salvation may lie in the intriguing plan for the greening of Detroit.
Consolidating the shrinking population into successfully functioning clusters of neighborhoods and turning much of the city’s ruins into ponds, pathways, parks, gardens, orchards and urban farms may sound like a utopian dream to some. But it could represent the most dramatic urban transformation in world history.

Perhaps the project could gain the support of universities and foundations and conservation groups and urban planners from across the globe. Perhaps the saviors of Detroit — Dan Gilbert, Mike Ilitch and Pete Karmanos — could inspire someone like billionaire Warren Buffett to contribute.
One criticism of this blueprint is that it presents too much of a patchwork across the city, which is larger geographically than most American urban areas. Why not create Detroit’s own version of Central Park along the area north of Jefferson from Alter Road to East Grand Boulevard?
Provide incentives for the construction of high rises along that section of Jefferson. Imagine the majestic views from those buildings of a magnificent park and a rejuvenated Belle Isle and the Detroit River.

The result could be a city unique to the world, known for its gardens and greenery. Which would be a huge step up from being an urban wasteland known for its rusted ruins.