Midtown : Buzz

Know This! took a tour through Detroit, catching up with 71 Pop's Margarita Barry, Detroitbigfdeal's Tunde Wey and Bureau of Urban Living owner Claire Nelson along the way. The host says they're hearing a lot of new concepts in the city, "because people are really innovating, people are really connecting and they're bringing a lot of creative ideas to revitalize the city." Hear, hear.

Check the video out here.

TEDxDetroit bills itself as an idea-generating conference from innovators, doers and thinkers in the Metro Detroit region. Last week's annual conference, held at the Max M. Fisher Center, had it all -- comedy, musings on physics, tap-dancing, human drama and great ideas. Detroiter Matt Dibble told us that the Detroit of tomorrow is almost here today; En Garde Detroit's Bobby Smith uses fencing to help save city kids; Veronika Scott's art project became an in-demand coat that saves lives; Randal Charlton spoke of the failures and tragedies that dogged him before he was appointed head of Tech Town. All these stories and more available online -- click here to find out what you missed.

A new film on the role of cities in modern living will make a stop in Detroit on its global tour of premieres.

Gary Hustwit's new documentary, Urbanized, received rave reviews (and several spontaneous bursts of applause) during its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The flick features a shot of Detroit, as seen from the People Mover, in the trailer -- and it's coming to Detroit Oct. 11 for a showing at the Detroit Film Theatre at the DIA (buy your tickets here).

Excerpt:

Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? Unlike many other fields of design, cities aren’t created by any one specialist or expert. There are many contributors to urban change, including ordinary citizens who can have a great impact improving the cities in which they live. By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects around the world, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.

Peep the trailer here.

Most every city newspaper has taken a crack at the "Detroit travelogue" this year -- a Lonely Planet-esque tour though the city, combining the D's often mercurial history with present rebuilding efforts. In Detroit, writes the Irish Times, we're successfully re-inventing 200 years of history into a tour for every traveler -- be it the Motown music-seeker, the Underground Railroad tracer or the merry Prohibition buster. Rather than dwell on ancient memories, IT also lauds Detroit's thriving downtown as a cosmopolitan attraction all its own.

Excerpt:

Take a trip up to the restaurant on the roof of the Detroit Marriott hotel, officially the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the western hemisphere, and have a drink. It’s pretty jaw-dropping, on a par with my favourite, the rooftop restaurant in the San Francisco Hilton. Back on the streets – as they say in the cop shows – head to Midtown and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which, despite its prosaic name, houses one of the finest art collections in the US. Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry cycle of 27 fresco panels – gifted by another Ford, this time Edsel – is considered the best work of his career.

Keep traveling here.

It's quite the contradiction that Detroit, a city of more than 700,000 residents, is often photographed as if it were totally empty. That's what inspired Nancy Barr to curate Detroit Revealed: Photographs, 2000-2010, which opens Oct. 16 at the DIA. Enough of the abandoned buildings -- Detroit Revealed draws on a mix of home-based and out-of-town photogs to document life in the city; workers in the Ford Rouge Plant, children and immigrant gardens.

Excerpt:

Great photography is not only about good technique; it's also about access to people and places that are unique to a particular community. I would welcome more work that takes into consideration the diversity of our city, its people and the culture, by photographers from all types of backgrounds. Their perspectives would (and will) enrich Detroit's photographic legacy and identity.

Slide show and more available here.

The arts can do more than just enrich our daily lives -- they can also serve as the catalyst for urban economic development. That's why a new national initiative called ArtPlace will invest $11.5 million in 25 cities across the country. And, make no mistake, Detroit is on this pilot program's radar -- the D received more funds than any other city (well, besides New York).

Notably, Midtown Detroit Inc. received a $900,000 grant to advance the development of the Sugar Hill Arts District, creating a bridge between the Detroit Medical Center and Midtown's Woodward Ave corridor. Midtown Detroit Inc. will use the funds to purchase an abandoned church in the district, which will be renovated into a performing arts space. MOCAD and Tech Town also received grants.

Excerpt:

If ArtPlace seeks to jump-start struggling neighborhoods, Sugar Hill looks like the ideal poster child, since its two blocks were largely abandoned, apart from the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art. In the past year, Midtown Detroit has renovated a derelict apartment building at the district's heart, and is about to launch new construction.

Find out more here.

Claire Nelson is more than just the owner of Midtown's Bureau of Urban Living (and a helpful friend of Model D) -- call her Midtown's quintessential good neighbor. Co-founder of the Open City forum on small business entrepreneurship, she's headed more projects than we could count, and it's rare to find a Midtown biz owner who hasn't benefited from her counsel.

Click here to read the Detroit Unspun blog's revealing chat with Nelson, who came to Detroit with a background in urban planning. As she says, opening a business in Detroit isn't exactly DIY -- it's DIO (do it ourselves). That passion for creating community in lieu of competition might be Nelson's greatest gift to Midtown.

Excerpt:

"Over the last four years, we’ve seen dozens of Open City participants open their doors -- Wheelhouse Detroit, Supino Pizzeria, Curl Up & Dye, Leopold’s Books, City Bird, Good People Popcorn, City Living Detroit, 71 POP -- with more on the way. Even better, all of these businesses have paid it forward, helping mentor and support other new businesses around them. A lot of people talk about the DIY spirit in Detroit, but I think it’s really more "DIO" -- ourselves, plural, together."

Get the spirit here.

Local catalysts, entrepreneurs and thinkers -- TEDxDetroit is looking for you.

The date's been confirmed for this annual conference on positive ideas and creativity, in which speakers are allotted just a few minutes to share their story. It's all going down Wednesday, Sept. 28, in Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center.

Applications are required to attend, and a $26 donation provides admission and lunch.

Find out more here -- and click here to watch our favorite moment from TEDxDetroit 2010, a performance by the late-departed David Blair.

Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes owner Torya Blanchard was brutally honest when she was asked how to find start-up capital at a White House event celebrating young entrepreneurs this week -- cash in your 401(k).

Blanchard, along with ePrize founder Josh Linkner, represented Detroit at the White House's Champions of Change panel discussion last week. And true to those who know her, she was characteristically blunt about the realities of small business entrepreneurship.

Excerpt:

Her eyes wide open advocacy is indispensable if entrepreneurship is expected to boost Detroit's fortunes long-term. Otherwise, we'll end up with a bunch of disillusioned Pilates instructors ready to hang it up after six months. Whatever else, Torya Blanchard will be doing her thing long after fair weather boosters move on to the next fun thing to save Detroit. Ideally, when that new shiny silver bullet captures our collective attention like the squirrels we are, she won't be the last entrepreneur standing.

Read more here.

There's plenty good going on in Detroit right now, summarized in a recent article from the Washington Times. Whole Foods, the Live Midtown housing incentives and recent population growth in young professionals, well-covered, all receive their due. What's new is an interview with Nate Forbes, managing partner of Troy's Somerset Collection, which has opened the CityLoft retail venture in the downtown Woodward corridor. Forbes touts both the city's public-private partnerships and current leaders for creating an atmosphere that supports new businesses and entrepreneurs.

Excerpt:

"Of course Detroit has a lot of geography — it's a large city. There's no telling how long it will take, but you have to start off in small chunks. You have a lot of businesses moving to the area that will spawn other investments — hotels, retail, restaurants. It's one block at a time, but when you go down there now, you feel a renewed energy."

More to read here.

Call this year's Live Midtown incentive program a roaring success -- after just eight months, roughly $1 million put up by three anchor institutions (Wayne State, the DMC and Henry Ford Health System) is committed, and new applications are on hold.

The fifth Detroit Restaurant Week will return from Friday, Sept. 23 to Sunday, Oct. 2, for the fall edition of the city's popular dining promotion, which offers restaurant-goers a prix fixe three-course meal for only $28. 

The Discovery Channel's new miniseries, Detroit in Overdrive, appearing on Planet Green, digs in deep. While familiar faces like Motor City Denim's Joe Faris and Kid Rock get their due, this vid searches out the "tangible faces behind those big buildings" for the three-part special, which originally aired Aug. 4. That means Maria's Comida, the Sphinx Organization and CCS student and designer Veronika Scott are among the long list of the city's community members and do-gooders sharing the spotlight with Detroit's superstars. We like it.

Excerpt:

The Russell Industrial center functions as a community space for artists, craftspeople, and small businesses. Edith Floyd stands up for what she believes in by building an urban garden where abandoned houses once stood. Last, Kristyn Koth and Malik Muqaribu feed Detroiters in their 1956 Airstream, the Pink Flamingo, bringing fresh organic food to Detroiters in a unique mobile food truck, spearheading a local food movement.

Find out more about Detroit in Overdrive here.

Long before "ruin porn" became a fashionable hobby, artists like our own Scott Hocking risked life and limb (not to mention, arrest) to explore broken-down and abandoned buildings, which became the subjects for his documentary photography and site-specific installations.

Hocking, a 2011 Kresge Award Winner, reveals much in this interview with Sarah Margolis-Pineo, herself a curator at the Cranbrook Art Museum. It's a look within the eye of the artist -- touching on everything from Hocking's passion for abandoned buildings, to his place in Detroit's rich history of D.I.Y creators.

Excerpt:

Everybody, myself included, who has been making artwork in the city hasn't had resources to do anything but making with what you have. Sometimes you're living in squalor and trying to scrape by… The Cass Corridor people got a lot of notoriety, but shit, there were artists in the 1980s living inside the Broderick Tower and Fort Wayne, and had studios in random skyscrapers that were virtually vacant because no one could afford to do anything in there. These artists may have not gotten the same attention, but that lineage is all the same--trying to use the spaces that have been neglected because creative people see potential there.

Read the interview here.

We're still trying to track down the origin of the Detroit-Brooklyn comparison. Perhaps it was Patti Smith's urging for punk kids to live the true rock & roll lifestyle, or a recent NYT article comparing Detroit's nightlife and entrepreneurs to that of a burgeoning Brooklyn. While the analogy's gained steam outside our borders, this new essay posits a new sort of regrowth in Detroit -- one based as much on building community as building cool.

Excerpt:

And while this most recent wave of media attention is refreshing considering the post-apocalyptic alternative, to suggest that Detroit is the new Brooklyn misses the point entirely. Detroit will never be what Brooklyn is. But at the risk of sounding like the girl who didn't get asked to prom telling us that she "didn't really want to go anyhow," I don't think that the people that make Detroit exciting are looking to recreate Brooklyn; they're looking to revitalize the city they love. They aren't attracted to an anonymous blank slate, but to joining a community committed to doing good in a big city.

Here's to doing it our way. Read more here.