Detroit City Is the Place to Be (46 page)

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Authors: Mark Binelli

Tags: #General, #History, #Political Science, #Social Science, #Sociology, #United States, #Public Policy, #State & Local, #Urban, #Midwest (IA; IL; IN; KS; MI; MN; MO; ND; NE; OH; SD; WI), #City Planning & Urban Development, #Architecture, #Urban & Land Use Planning

BOOK: Detroit City Is the Place to Be

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2
. Europeans—particularly from Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands—love a ruined American city. Every Detroiter I know who has ever photographed an abandoned building and possesses any kind of Web presence has been contacted by strangers from Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Paris, or Berlin, asking about the best way to sneak into the old train station or offering to pay for a local tour.

3
. Sure enough, by the following summer, much of the section of roof we stood upon had collapsed entirely.

4
. David Kahn, in
The Code Breakers
, writes of the incredibly still-in-use “Alberti cipher” being one of the first polyalphabetic codes.

5
. In a city weak enough to be routinely pushed around by wealthy power players, Moroun has managed the impressive feat of reigning, undisputed, as the most reviled member of the local oligarchy. A reclusive octogenarian billionaire, Moroun also owns the nearby Ambassador Bridge, which spans the Detroit River to connect the city with Windsor, Ontario, thereby controlling an unbelievably lucrative international border crossing. A quarter of the annual $400 billion in trade between the U.S. and Canada travels across this single bridge. Moroun is estimated to earn $60 million annually in tolls alone, and he has spent the past decade stymying efforts by the U.S. and Canada to build a second, jointly owned public bridge two miles down the river, necessary in part because the Ambassador Bridge is over seventy-five years old and sorely in need of refurbishment, and in part because of the outrageousness of the fact that a single private individual owns the busiest international border crossing in North America. Moroun’s counterproposal—that he will build
his own
second bridge, right next to the current bridge—has been given a cold reception by everyone but the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate, this despite the Canadian government’s offer to pay up front for the broke state of Michigan’s share of a second bridge. In the meantime, Moroun has gobbled up properties in both Detroit and Windsor, near the sites of both proposed bridges, most of which are maintained as lovingly as Michigan Central. The son of a Lebanese gas station owner who eventually bought a small trucking company, Moroun took over the family business in the seventies and has been widely despised ever since. An article about him in
Forbes
was titled “The Troll Under the Bridge.” (Moroun is also very short.)

6
. The term originated with Albert Speer, whose
Die Ruinenwerttheorie
(“Theory of Ruin Value”) proposed an architecture worthy of the thousand-year Reich—in other words, buildings that would eventually make cool-looking ruins.

Conclusion

1
. Much of the symbolism of the Matthew Barney performance hinged on Egyptian notions of death and resurrection, perfectly suited (thematically speaking) for a city like Detroit. But later, I found myself dwelling on the Houdini Belle Isle Bridge stunt, so inspirational to the piece. It had been Houdini’s first-ever bridge jump, and in subsequent retellings of the day’s events, he’d embellished the story, claiming the Detroit River had frozen, forcing him to plunge through a hole cut into the ice, and that after unshackling himself from the handcuffs, he’d been swept downstream by the current and spent eight minutes floundering in the frigid river while he searched for the lost opening, snatching breaths from the ribbon of air between the surface of the water and the underside of the ice.

In
Houdini
, the 1953 biopic starring Tony Curtis as the escape artist, the stunned crowd eventually begins to disperse, assuming the Handcuff King is dead; meanwhile, hidden from the spectators, we see Houdini paddling frantically along the bottom of the ice, his face a sputtering periscope. Not necessarily the metaphor I’d have consciously chosen to represent the struggles of Detroit. But I couldn’t seem to shake it.

Curtis’s lips, in the movie, come so close to the jagged underbelly of the ice, it looks as if he’s preparing to kiss some hallowed ground where a miracle had once occurred.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Adamo, John, Jr.

Adler, William

African Americans

emergency manager and

lack of mobility

leadership and

manufacturing jobs and

middle-class

northern migration of

radicalism and

riots and

ruins and

schools and

techno

upward mobility and

vacant land and

voting and

white flight to suburbs and

white return to city and

Young as first black mayor and

Agyeman, Jaramogi Abebe (Albert Cleage Jr.)

Alberti, Leon Battista

Ali, Muhammad

All About Detroit
(Farmer)

Allen, James

Allen, Matt

Allen Park (suburb)

Ambassador Bridge

“American Acropolis”

American Institute of Architects

American League Championship Series

American Motors

American Odyssey
(Conot)

American Revolution, The
(Boggs)

Ancient Evenings
(Mailer)

Andrews, Asenath

Angel’s Night

Archer, Dennis

Arc of Justice
(Boyle)

Assignment Detroit blog

Associated Press (AP)

Atkins, Juan

Auburn Hills (suburb)

“Autobahn” (Kraftwerk hit)

Autoextremist
website

auto industry

assembly line

bailout of

electric and hybrid autos and

fuel efficiency and

union concessions and job losses

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