[mikael colville-andersen] the story of detroit has been told countless times all over the world. the rise and the fall are part of the narrative, but it is especially the renewal, the phoenix rising, that has captured people's imaginations. and yeah, i get it. what a story! i know that most of the renewal, most of the hype, is focused on downtown. the renewal of detroit has not reached most of the people who live here. here in detroit, 90% of the population are not white, they rarely go downtown. i want to move past the headlines, i want to find the reality that is detroit. i want to meet the citizens of this city who are working hard, struggling insistently on making this city more life-sized,

and perhaps, great once again. in a matter of just a few decades, detroit plummeted from being one of america's most prosperous cities to one of its most dilapidated. the decline of the automobile industry was compounded by various financial crises and municipal mismanagement and it all pushed the city towards a total collapse, both economic and demographic.

the city declared bankruptcy in 2013. from a peak of almost two million inhabitants in the 1950s, detroit's population dropped to less than 700 000. recently, however, detroit began to make headlines that had an optimistic flavor, as the city struggled to rise again. it's been called the greatest comeback in history, the land of opportunity, the next brooklyn, and so on, and so on. the fact of the matter is that detroit is still struggling. and i mean, really struggling. its recovery has been uneven and lopsided, which has only increased inequity. the struggled has affected and redefined the entire region, including its canadian neighbor city of windsor, ontario, just across the river. because the decline of the auto industry wasn't just a local thing. far from it. for me, it's a unique opportunity to look at

how two very different political contexts can influence similar stories of urban decline. but we'll get back to windsor a bit later. to grasp detroit's complexity, we have to understand how deeply divided this city is. it has so many fragmented and disconnected pieces that are home to so many distinct identities. we tend to describe where we grow up at the street intersection, right? so i grew up at joy road and greenfield. you literally drop a pin on the map... ...and that's where you're from. i think we were in the top 5 most dangerous zip codes in the country. let me be very clear. eric's neighborhood on the west side was so dangerous that even the local mcdonald's was a no-go zone. they called the "murder mac" in the local parlance. luckily, eric got out, went to college, found success. the classic american dream story. but his story is a rare one. it's not like that for most detroiters.

this city is plagued by poverty, racism, inequity. yeah, daily life is tough here, man. very tough. everything is super divided: color-wise, economically... even in the town. if you look around here, this is just a beautiful town. we're going to get to a street and then make a left turn and it's going to be a completely different town. it's a lot of different cities. it's not really a tale of two detroits that you hear once in a while. it's more like thirty detroits. this building is brand new. yeah. wow! this building opened up maybe a month ago. brand new modular structure. it looks like it could be anywhere in the world. but then, literally across the street, you have steps falling down and emptiness. and lots where there were buildings which are now gone. it's not because people don't care. i think it's because when you're in survival mode, you have other things to worry about. your values become very different when your life is at stake. - right. when food is a core concern, the lawn is not so much.

yeah, right. is detroit good with 630,000 or do you think it needs to scale back up? - it does need to scale back up. it does? - because it's hard for the city to maintain itself with the tax base that it has, which is why you see infrastructural damage and all of this stuff that's not being adequately taken care of. people are cheering for stuff that's supposed to be regular as hell. people were so excited when we got streetlights. but we're supposed to have streetlights! that's a normal thing! it's a normal thing to have streetlights. eric, you work in marketing. by definition, marketing is optimism and broadcasting optimism. how much of everything that i've been hearing about detroit, you know, the rise, the fall, the renewal, how much of it is hype? there are areas in detroit that are clearly making a comeback. there are areas in detroit that are clearly forgotten about. you have this economic resurgence, this comeback. and the question becomes "who is it for"? and that is an excellent question. think about it. hundreds of millions of dollars

are flowing into the city. revitalizing the waterfront, building a new sports stadium, new high-end condos, fancy restaurants. the investments are real, but they are for the most part spend in and around the downtown core and not, unfortunately, where the majority actually lives. they were so excited about having things like the qline and somebody's new niche coffee shops and hipster sit-down restaurants with chicken skin on things. if you like the tigers and you like the qline and you like downtown, you don't like detroit. you don't like detroiters. you clutch your purse when you see a black person walk by. you do everything you can to avoid eye contact when i look at you to acknowledge you as a person and you slink away... oh dear! yeah, yeah. oh my god! i'm five feet seven. i have a ponytail. i'm not that scary.

i'm wearing a suit every day! i think it's pretty easy to identify in detroit the challenges. at the top of the list, of course, is racial and economic inequality. do you think that urban planning could also help to solve it now? when you look at the population of detroit, the region really hasn't changed population size much. it's just the city. the city drained into the surrounding areas, but it's the same number of people, so all that wealth, all those people, all that stuff is still here. yeah. just not inside the city. detroit is a city that is being revitalized, but it's not being revived. it's a thriving, moving, ever-shifting city that is in need of some support. i think that if we talk about supporting the city instead of saving the city, we'll have a better response. there's nothing like... - hey! hey there! - strange people walking past with cameras. sorry. - nothing strange here. just a boom mike and some foreigners.

hey! my man! making moves! - congratulations! nice one, man! - right on! the best thing about detroit is the people living here. they're not just interesting. they're multifaceted. you'll meet somebody who is a roofer and a painter. you'll meet a teacher who's a rapper, an activist who's a gardener. you get these crazy mashups of folks. that sounds like resilience on a scale that you don't see in many other places. i think it's because we've been in a state of transition for 60 years. people are thriving without things and they're creating things here that you don't see in other places, because they have to. that's one of the reasons why i stay here, because i think that as our young people grow, they need somebody who is looking out for their best interests, long-term. it is easy to talk about public transport in detroit because... it sucks. it really is one of the worst systems in the country.

back in the day, detroit had the choice between a subway or what they ended up calling a people mover, a weird, elevated system that looks like something you would see in an amusement park. it doesn't move a lot of people very efficiently at all. more recently, there's a new streetcar line running into the city center, but it is nothing more than a vanity project, and an expensive one. in between that, you have the daily lives of the citizens. most of them live in the neighborhoods around downtown, but they don't come here for work. most of the jobs are in the surrounding cities, but in order to get there, they have to tackle two different bus systems that don't work together. the detroit system takes people into downtown and around the city. but there, tthey have to connecther. to the ironically named smart system, the regional bus system, which is nothing more than a shuttle bus system from the other cities to detroit. it doesn't pick up people along the way. the scale of inequality in this city is massive. racial, economic. the last thing they need is inequality in mobility.

make your way around detroit's various neighborhoods and you'll clearly see how bruised and battered they are. there are more than 62 km2 of vacant land and some 24,000... yeah, i said 24,000, abandoned houses to this day. tired of waiting for the city to do something about all this blight, a man named john george took matters into his own hands. justin, get a crew out here on this with some flathead shovels. okay, people, let's do this! let's go! we're gonna get everything out of the driveway. thirty years ago, a vacant house right next to john's home suddenly became a crack den, so understandably, with the help of neighbors, he boarded up the place. the dealers and users never came back. just like that, blight busters was born and they haven't stopped their good deeds ever since. today, they're helping a single mother by tearing

down a derelict and dangerous garage and boarding up the vacant house next door. you got that? put the dirt in the truck. this used to be just homes the entire way along. this empty spot was homes and they're gone now. the other side of the street as well. is it struggling, this neighborhood, to survive? or is it kind of stable now? you' right. this neighborhood was populated with people. there are a lot of reasons why people left and that's why we've got so much work to do, because at one point, you had almost two million people cutting their grass and taking out their trash and maintaining their property. just imamagine when a million get up and leave. the 700,000 of us that are left, we can either ignore it, move or do something about it. we decided to do something about it. when you're done with this, i want you to hit the backyard. come on, justin. where are those stiffs at, baby boy? let's go! let's go! we've been here for about 4 minutes and they're going for it.

this is insane! this is awesome! what is the art of busting blight? how do you describe that? well, it's really all about spreading detroit love. a blight is like a cancer or a virus. if you don't stop it, it spreads. there are things that need to be around a home and there are things that shouldn't be around a home. we don't want drug dealers going in here. this is a preventative measure until such time we can do better. if we secure this, maybe they'll go to another neighborhood or to another house or get discouraged and leave altogether. yeah. as a father, as a husband, as a human being, i have a moral obligation to my neighbors and to this city and to the children who live in this city, to do whatever i can to make it as safe as possible. there you go. - excellent. our work is work that stabilizes a community and creates opportunity for people to invest. if it wasn't for the work that blight busters and others have done in this community, there'd be nothing left. no coffee shop,

there would be no theater, there would be no resource center, there would be nothing. because we have been fighting this battle in this area for so long. over the years, blight busters has raised more than 20 million dollars through fundraising and donations. they've demolished and boarded up abandoned buildings, they've renovated houses, helped people keep their homes, invested in local businesses and even revitalized the entire neighborhood of old redford, where they now have their headquarters. is it important to do this neighborhood by neighborhood, house and yard by house and yard? i mean, is that really the small breaks in the big structure? well, of course. what is this city but the people? if the people don't feel comfortable in their own home and in their own neighborhood, on their own block, they're going to leave. why do you think over one million people left? what we want to do is encourage the folks that have stuck it out to stay and improve what they have. and at the same time, we want to attract

commercial investment and other homeowners to live in this community. alright! come on, you guys! everybody get on this! everybody get a piece! one, two, three! one, two, three! one, two, three! hold on, guys! let's do this. hold on! hold on! this guy is awesome! yeah, he likes his work too, doesn't he? yes. i'm glad to see the garage go. this is one less safety issue. it's pretty sparsely populated now because some of the houses are gone. do you know any of your neighbors around here? yeah. yeah? there's still a community? oh yeah. everybody knows everybody. everybody helps everybody. how long have you lived in detroit? born and raised here. - really? born and raised here, 38 years. the area that i grew up in, the crime was starting to get worse, so it was time to move.

and what's it like here for crime compared to where you grew up? compared to 30th street and compared to wagner avenue, this is almost like the suburbs. do you feel safer here? yeah. when we first moved over here, we didn't get a lot of police presence. so we can't really do too much or mess with anybody's kids or anything like that, because we'll see it and we're going to report it. i never heard of john george until i moved over here. he's like one of the first people that welcomed us. so for john to do this, it means a lot to me. because i'm disabled, i have seizures. so when you're working on a fixed income and you try to maintain a house, you do the best you can. blight busters is such an inspiring project, that it has managed to build a team of more than 900 volunteers year in, year out. and their youth employment program along with reinsertion initiative are giving opportunities where there once was no hope at all. i believe that in the next three to five years, we'll have the blighted homes under control, either renovated, removed or secured.

once you eliminate that negative energy, the assets that are left will pay dividends. those values will go up, because people want to live around renovated housing and clean decent neighborhoods and beautiful parks. what can the rest of the world learn from detroit? never give up. never quit. never say never. the most iconic view of detroit is from a different country. from here, in windsor, ontario. the border between canada and the united states runs right down the middle of the detroit river behind me. this is the busiest crossing between canada and the u.s. by far. it's this close proximity that makes it easy to understand how windsor piggybacked on the rise of detroit in the 20th century. this is a tale of two cities, absolutely, but it is an incredibly one-sided relationship and that can never be healthy.

everything that is happening over there in big detroit is also happening here in windsor, whether they like it or not. they don't have the same massive racial inequality that they do in detroit. they have the canadian social system to help take care of the citizens who are struggling here. but windsor is at a loss. it's as though they're trying to figure out what they are. because you see, since the early 2000s, as the auto industry struggled, the province of ontario has lost something like 300,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector. and no region has been harder hit than windsor. like detroit, people here simply packed up and left. houses and commercial buildings were abandoned. this isn't exactly detroit, sure. but downtown windsor was hit hard. 25% of commercial buildings are still empty. as this district is struggling with a lack of resources, many houses simply need care.

luckily, passionate citizens are uniting to fix the problem. okay. there's a lot of action here. yes, we got a lot going on today. this is our little things matter program. it is our third project that we've been doing. basically, what that is, is an opportunity for surrounding small businesses and residents to get together and work on little projects around the neighborhood. this one actually is probably one of our biggest. yeah, it looks pretty big. yeah, but what the homeowner did is apply through a microgrant, so they pay for 50% and we pay for the other 50%. we get all the labor, all the volunteers, materials as much as we can. and then we help them fix up their house. and these are all volunteers here today? yes, they are. - oh wow! little things matter is run by the downtown windsor community collaborative, which aims at revitalizing the city center. sarah and her team believe that giving houses a new lease on life and beautifying the neighborhood is a question of comfort and security,

but also one of pride. why does it have to come down? the gentleman that owns this house has been living in the neighborhood for a long time. his house is old and things are coming down, things are falling apart. he got a ticket from the city saying that his porch was dilapidated and he needed to replace it and pay to replace it. but not everyone can afford to do multiple fixes on their house in one year. so he got a ticket for the addition on his house. so he couldn't afford to pay it and he would have to go to court. actually, the city referred him to us to get it fixed. so we're fixing this today so that he can stay in his house and not have to go to court anymore. in a nutshell, i'm helping them demolish a run-down, dangerous section of the house and closing it off so the homeowner is not forced to move out. inevitably, with a downtown our size, we've got people with skills in construction and demo. so that's basically how we're doing this. we put out our network to find people out in the neighborhood who care and who want to tear down a house.

[sarah cipkar] over the years, there's been a lot of disinvestment from the downtown, so a lot of people are moving out to the suburbs. not just people, but services, our arena and a lot of different things. and i think they've been trying to reverse the trend and start to reinvest, but it still hasn't gotten quite there yet. it's really important for projects like this and also other organizations to encourage people to stay here to live and to make the neighborhood a better place. so i mean you're struggling with a branding of the city, but you're also struggling with real, tangible urbanism issues like density and making it a nice place. i think though it's about shifting the focus and saying that we're actually a suburb of detroit. like when you look at what windsor has to offer, like the downtown in particular, i can get on my bike and ride ten minutes, then hop on the tunnel bus and from there get on the qline and be at little caesar's arena and be watching a concert within about half an hour to 45 minutes. but you're saying things that windsor has to offer, but your example was going to detroit.

you know what i mean? no, i think that is an asset of windsor? is it though? i think that we need to see it that way. windsor does have a lot to offer in and of itself and i think detroit is part of that. i think that we need to see detroit as our friend and as our sister. we have a lot of dual citizens, so it's part of our fabric. we're not as canadian as the rest of canada in a lot of ways. how does detroit regard you? to be honest, when i talk to people of detroit, we're not as much of a factor for them. so they don't think of going to windsor for the weekend. what's it like living in the shadow of a big american city? windsor's history mirror a lot of detroit's history. both windsor and detroit make things. they're known for manufacturing, they're known for automotive stuff. i wouldn't say we are in the shadow. i'd say it's a shared identity. we both really went through the recession together. we both are growing and trying to come back and learning from each other's strategies. around 15,000 people live in the city center where sarah's organization operates. most of these citizens exist on a low income.

and 35% of the children live below the poverty line. unfortunately, they're often forgotten by the municipality. but sarah sees the place, and rightfully so, as the core of the city, because poor or not, the city center is the heart of any city. and if you want urban renewal, real urban renewal, let me tell you: this is where you have to start as long as you do it right. is windsor broke? are they struggling to find funds? is there a lack of staff? what do you think the issue is with the city? i think at is core, it might be an issue of priorities. because windsor is actually experiencing an economic boom right now. we have low unemployment, our housing market has been really improving and it's been a good time. i think it's about the priorities. this past year, we had an item come to council with less than 5 days' notice to spend 3 million dollars on christmas lights. and the outcry from our neighborhood

and from other neighborhoods was: "we need that money for alley lights, not christmas lights." three million dollars? three million dollars. yeah. so what does the city focus on? do they maybe have their priorities off? christmas lights for three million dollars? yeah. what else is the city doing that they think is a good idea? you know, our city liked to focus on the big legacy projects. like the vanity stuff that makes us look good and that makes us look good to tourists, but that aren't always things that residents use or want. so sarah's organization is bridging that gap and they do much more than fix houses. they lead sports and fitness programs for all ages, they run a café, organize movie nights in the park, provide community gardens and a farmers' market. they even convince people to participate in neighborhood cleanups. that's massive. the idea is to create community engagement and a sense of belonging by giving people things to do

and a reason to care. this is the second project for our little things matter project. hey, guys, how's it going? i mean, a lot of these projects are urban acupuncture, where you're fixing all these different little things. how does it work into the future of windsor? we always say we're not in it for a sprint. we're in it for a marathon. so that means that the impact of what we're doing now will be seen in 10 or 20 years. because what we're trying to do is build a foundation of people who care about the neighborhood and that's the long-term vision that we have, of making a connected community. because there's always going to be problems, there's always going to be stuff to fix. you're never going to be able to solve everything, even with a little projects matter program. but what you really want is a group of people who'll be there when it's good and when it's bad and that you can call on as friends. and man, the citizens clearly have their work cut out for them. somehow, it really looks and feels like some municipal decisions here are made in order to empty out the city center. one of these odd moves is a new mega-hospital,

located 15 km away from the city center, past the airport, replacing the two smaller ones in the central neighborhoods. now that the masses have moved to the suburbs, the resources are following. but for what? all over the world, we know we need more people in the cities, not around them. it's simple urban logic. but the shopping mall outside the city center has gone through numerous expansions at the expanse of smaller neighborhood merchants. yeah, the car still reigns supreme in windsor. only 3.4% of commuters use public transport, ranking windsor last among midsized metropolitan areas in canada in terms of public transport usage. and it sure doesn't help when you kick out small businesses just to add 43 parkinspots in an already underused parking garage.

the car is so prevalent in people's minds that parking, by extension, is so prevalent, which then means that we're looking at parking as the departure for anything to happen. which is so ass backwards, it doesn't make any sense. because nobody's going to come downtown to park and do nothing. right. this is so logic. i know. sinisa, a young architect, has decided to come back to live in windsor after a few years in toronto. he works in detroit, but he is relentlessly trying to revive his city. here were storefronts. really? here? right here. the pride offices were here. we had a thriving women's hair salon that'd been here for years. and there was a number of storefronts that had been here for roughly twenty years. they basically suffocated the tenants out. they had offers on the table to buy the structure from the city, to renovate the storefronts... when was this done? they took over

all these shops and offices. this is within the last three months. the last... okay! this is really recent! yes. just not what you want. from an urban point of view, it's absolutely the worst-case scenario. so who did that? who made the call? the mayor? the city council? the city council and the mayor. young, creative people like sinisa are doing their own thing, navigating the city's somewhat inadequate planning. the denial art gallery, for example, invited artists to paint murals in an alleyway, hoping to give a new life to a derelict place. and hey! now, it's covered with works by artists from around the world. business owners here have even made their own tv ad to attract young professionals to the city. we're doing basically guerilla branding for the city. we're just kind of seeing what is here and what it can be and unapologetically going for it. we're at a definite crossroads right now and i think it's really important that the next generation, that we don't test their patience and that we give them this sort of platform

to test these ideas and go forward. just a few kilometers from the city center, the neighborhood of ford city is experiencing an unexpected renaissance. this once industrial district was established by the ford motor company in the early 1900s. it thrived for a few decades until ford closed its plant in the 1950s. the neighborhood rapidly declined, becoming one of the poorest areas in the entire city. after years of struggle, it's now making an impressive comeback. there was a building there at some point and in many cities, there would be a fence. somebody owns that. property owners should stay off my land, but here it's wide open, there's grass, it could be a park. i think that's really interesting. all of these spaces become sort of impromptu gathering spaces. there's a street fest that happens here and everyone of theses spaces gets taken over by a different use.

windsor had this notion of having to invent; windsor made ideas, a windsor solution for a windsor problem... it is kind of bad, because you know, i work in detroit, i see how things are happening there. i see the progress that's being made. i lived in toronto and i see how that happens. i've traveled all over the world. there's no reason why we should not be borrowing from other places that work. most people from here, from windsor, are going to go across the border. they're going to go to a tigers' game. they're going to be downtown detroit. there's no rivalries and no reason why we should not be transferring all those ideas as much as possible. it's not a long commute, i know, but why... what's your reasoning for living here and working in detroit? we have problems here, but they are of a different magnitude, and our magnitude is much less because our political system, our economic system, they have a totally different undercurrent. we don't see the people that are at a lower economic standing without any safety net. the street festival has been a huge success. but the shift in ford city is much stronger

than just one event on one street. sinisa and other like-minded people have ideas and projects that will benefit the neighborhood in the long-run. small shops and local businesses are already blooming. what has the experience been like for you, opening a tequila and taco place in this neighborhood? the experience has been overwhelming. you know, when shane and i and chef sat down, it really was an amalgamation of same ideologies, which was building a community around building some place that the community can have to celebrate. you're talking about community. that's almost the first word out of your mouth. it is very much. restaurants are a place for people to come and share ideas and communicate and have fun. even with that, there are community gardens we're trying to help with and some afterschool programs as well. we hope to be very involved. how do you gentrify an area that has so many vacancies? we're not pushing anybody out. we're trying to pull them in. you're sewing the fabric back together as opposed to pulling it apart. i'm not a very good seamstress, but i can make a drink.