Dream City: Creation, Destruction, and Reinvention in Downtown Detroit by Conrad Kickert

Abstract

180 The Michigan Historical Review have been impressed with the fleet of transport vehicles, chefs, servants, electric lights, and hotel stays, not to mention a private yacht during the early years, by the end of the road trips in 1924, the world had endured the First World War and financial panics and had developed a greater understanding that the accouterments of the wealthy often came at a great personal cost to hourly wage-earning Americans. Most striking was the change in domestic life. Americans witnessed the transition from an agrarian, relatively isolated lifestyle to social connectivity made possible by the telephone, recorded music, the automobile, and electric light. Repair shops, parking lots, and petrol stations needed to be part of city planning. While Guinn does not use footnotes, his writing would enable anyone to verify his content, a writing practice that may render the reading more streamlined and enjoyable. While not delving into great detail on every point, the author does not fall into the trap of portraying these men on a pedestal. He approaches the anti-Semitic sentiments of some of the travelers, the enmity they held towards organized labor, and, in the case of Ford, infidelity. Should this be the first book a person reads on these men and women, they will be well prepared for the core topics covered in other writings. Guinn’s work exemplifies that a mixed relationship with the media is not a phenomenon of the digital age. Edwina A. Murphy Archivist Ann Arbor, MI Conrad Kickert. Dream City: Creation, Destruction, and Reinvention in Downtown Detroit. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2019. Pp. 436. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $44.95. Urban designer Conrad Kickert’s Dream City describes the evolution of Detroit’s downtown from the 1805 fire that destroyed the original fortified settlement to contemporary efforts to revivify the city center. Rising from the ashes, Detroit became an entrepot for Michigan’s extractive and agricultural industries, thriving on river trade until it was bypassed in the late 1800s by east-west rail lines unwilling to cross into Canada or bridge the Detroit River. Recovery and new growth came in the early 1900s with the automobile industry, but urban decline resumed as car production and workers migrated to outer-ring and suburban Book Reviews 181 locations. There is scant sign of political involvement until the 1940s when Edward Jeffries served as mayor; succeeding mayors, including Coleman Young (in office 1974 to 1994), were not able to turn the tide of urban decay even with generous state and federal grants. Nor were professional city planners and urban architects such as George Emory or Charles Blessing able to counter the “dirty collar” of blight choking downtown by implementing the standard techniques of demolishing vacant buildings and constructing expressways. A succession of master plans, blue-ribbon commissions, and publicprivate initiatives also proved ineffective, leaving behind great swaths of ragweed and rubble in and near downtown. Public transportation efforts such as street cars, trollies, and a People Mover failed even as automobile traffic in and around the central city became ever more congested despite street widening and the construction of new arterials. Parking lots replaced many derelict buildings so that, by 2001, fifty percent of the city’s downtown was vacant land. The automobile that had saved Detroit was killing it. Detroit’s politicians, planners and business leaders were slow to realize that the problem was not only physical but socioeconomic. As the author points out, new injections of concrete were unlikely to revive a “downtown without a pulse,” much less the moribund social structure of the city (p. 246). Discrimination created neighborhoods that were deemed blighted and in need of remediation through urban renewal, raising class and racial tensions. Major race riots occurred in 1943 and 1967; crime rates soared in the latter half of the twentieth century, changing the sobriquet of “Motor City” to “Murder City.” Construction of the Cobo and Renaissance centers and new sports venues on the riverfront, a ring of three casinos, and the development of various entertainment destinations have not halted downtown Detroit’s deterioration because their fortified architectural designs prevent the street life essential to thriving cities (p. 291). Recently, mortgage mogul...