The Urbanophile has an extensive write up on “Detroit: Urban Laboratory and the New American Frontier.” The piece has a lot of ideas, but one that particularly caught my eye was the notion that government there was so weak that innovative solutions to problems are possible. In Chicago, if you don’t have the proper permit to tie your shoe laces, you’ll probably have code enforcement on you every time you reach for your feet. But, in Detroit, apparently, that’s not going to happen.
In most cities, municipal government can’t stop drug dealing and violence, but it can keep people with creative ideas out. Not in Detroit. In Detroit, if you want to do something, you just go do it. Maybe someone will eventually get around to shutting you down, or maybe not. It’s a sort of anarchy in a good way as well as a bad one. Perhaps that overstates the case. You can’t do anything, but it is certainly easier to make things happen there than in most places because of the hand of government weighs less heavily.
Go North, young man!
I recall nice, old brick houses in pretty nice shape for ridiculously low prices. Just need fifty like-minded friends to buy up whole blocks and fix them up.