I love that the subtitle of this Detroit Free Press article…

Survey finds third of Detroit lots vacant — John Gallagher

…is:

Positive news uncovered, too.

There are two kinds of people that really symbolize the values of determination and perfectionism to me: kids in skate board parks and graffiti artists. I love this bit from a story about a successful Detroit bike path project:

‘For many locals, the best part of the Dequindre Cut is its colorful graffiti. During the 25 years that the rail line went unused, it became a kind of open-air gallery overgrown with brush and home to wildlife such as pheasants, foxes, and rabbits. The trail’s promoters have used the project to preserve the graphic remnants of its days as a dystopian nature trail visited only by graffiti artists, urban explorers, and the homeless. “It was like a wilderness in the middle of the city,” says Jim Griffioen, a Lafayette Park resident. “It was splashed with an ever-changing archaeology of color that even the most stodgy decrier of vandalism couldn’t deny was art.”’

Cut Loose from the Car — Kelli B. Kavanaugh, Metropolis Mag

A nostalgic effort to capture the graffitic heritage of the site. Awesome. A successful Detroit bike path. Awesome. I hope this project helps to take bike commuting, something Detroit is not known for, to new heights in the city; and to take graffiti, something Detroit should be rightfully proud of, to new levels of excellence.

‘It won’t exactly compensate for the failing fortunes of the automobile industry, but at least it’s a sign of a new way of thinking that’s gaining ground in the Motor City. “This is about having a vision,” Woiwode says. “The Dequindre Cut really is a great way to talk about what could be. It makes people able to imagine just how profound a change there can be in how we get around in southeast Michigan.”‘

Yes indeed, it’s time for Detroit and southeast Michigan to get excited about change. They’ve got a lot of it coming.

“Buying that first house had a snowball effect. Almost immediately, Mitch and Gina bought two adjacent lots for even less and, with the help of friends and local youngsters, dug in a garden. Then they bought the house next door for $500, reselling it to a pair of local artists for a $50 profit. When they heard about the $100 place down the street, they called their friends Jon and Sarah.

Admittedly, the $100 home needed some work, a hole patched, some windows replaced. But Mitch plans to connect their home to his mini-green grid and a neighborhood is slowly coming together.”

For Sale: The $100 House — NYT

Update: Not sure, but this website might be related.

The great awful beast of American representative democracy will emerge angry and cussing from it’s filthy hibernatory den tomorrow for one of the rare displays of its erstwhile strength. Should be a spectacle, if anyone bothers to watch.

Gar Alperovitz gave a talk on campus today as part of a lecture series on Detroit revitalization (later, Kurt Vonnegut was on hand promoting his latest anti-glacier book…). In response to a question he made a throw-away remark about democracy and scale. He pointed out that the US is set to hit a Billion people by the end of the century, and that even at far lower numbers, voting-based representative democracy cannot function. He suggested that hope lay in a combination of local scale growth in direct democracy and a loosening of centralized power to meet it. It’s an interesting point. What is the upper bound on the size of a population that can support a functioning representative democracy, and I suppose, what are the structures and policies and cultures which can push that bound up or down? And then, given the culture and policies the US has now, has it yet gotten too big for it’s own democratic structure?

Probably no knowing, but we’ll have more data in the papers tomorrow. Go Blue, as they say around here.