Downtown shines because ‘untraditional allies’ work together

Excerpts from the story:

Downtown Detroit looked good because classic Michigan operating principles of creativity and hard work converged with a foreign cultural value: the cooperation that occurred between black and white business and civic leaders, Democrats and Republicans, and between the city and its suburbs.

This last point about untraditional allies toiling shoulder-to-shoulder to achieve something remarkable can’t be stressed enough. The Super Bowl organizing committee’s most important triumph was convincing people to cross race, class, political, and geographic boundaries to showcase Detroit. The other triumph, of course, was that they pulled it off, arguably the greatest economic and civic success in Michigan this century.

At its heart, the project to invest and show off Detroit’s downtown represents a classic Michigan entrepreneurial and creative response to an extraordinarily difficult problem. The lessons learned over the last six years must be documented and shared.

When faced with an immensely complex task, the organizers and workers who executed Detroit’s light filled Super Bowl week bound themselves to an all too rare regional pact. Urgency yielded clear ideas about what to do and how to do it. Smart, industrious, committed people turned to each other instead of shrinking away.

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