And so a nation collectively meanders toward another Super Bowl Sunday, and the articles about how the host city is gearing up appear, each proclaiming how much revenue and revelry the biggest event in sports will bring forth. This year, it's Detroit's turn. One of the city's bright new stars, Ford Field, will serve as the gleaming backdrop as hundreds of thousands come to party and spend money, and then leave town, very likely never to return again, unless, say, the Tigers make it to the World Series (which is almost the same as "never").

I did not grow up in Detroit proper. Very few people of my generation did (at least by choice). The year before I was born, Detroit was engulfed in race riots (and flames), along with Watts, Newark and other urban ghettos. White flight followed shortly thereafter, taking my parents (and nearly everybody else who could afford it) to the green, lake-laden suburbs to the North. Oakland County become the promised land, free of urban unrest and loaded with shopping malls. Yet we retained a connection to the city, visiting to attend museums, parades, civic functions, theatrical events and special family dinners. To the best of their ability, my newly suburbanized parents tried to maintain some sense of the city.

For this reason, I have always felt a strong sense of civic pride, and I consider myself a Detroiter, above all else. I may have spent the past 13 years in New York City, but I am not a New Yorker. And I never will be. Detroit will always be in my blood, and I make every effort I can to defend it (even as I am aware that my suburban upbringing and my current living situation makes me something of hypocrite).

Which is why it's disheartening to see all the hype being lauded in light of the Super Bowl. To me, this year's Super Bowl illustrates a bigger problem with urban planning that has developed over the past decade. Namely, the misguided belief that the best way to revitalize a city is to build casinos and sports arenas.

Detroit has done this, and it has failed. Certainly these shiny new diversions provide jobs, bring in tourist dollars and expose the city to people who might not otherwise visit. But these people come to select destinations, then they leave, to go back to their homes, someplace else.

The only way to build a city is to create a new community out of the ruins. Young families with children need to live there, work there, pay taxes there, care about what happens there. The state's major businesses need to be headquarted there (they no longer are, for the most part). This, sadly, may never happen en masse in Detroit again, because it takes too much effort. It requires the dismantling of not just a corrupt city government and an inept bureaucracy but also the collective consciousness of several generations of Detroit-area residents raised to live in fear of Motown.

The Super Bowl will come and go, and when the party ends, Detroit will once again be the butt of a joke that began appearing on local bumper stickers in the ealry 1980s: Will the last one to leave please turn off the lights?

Permalink | Comments (1)