At 06:21 AM 6/26/2004, Fred Heutte wrote:
It's not every day we get to read a fine article about a member
of this very mailing list.
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http://www.mlui.org/growthmanagement/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16712
Cool article, Fred. Thanks for posting that. Although I tend to disagree
with good portions of his thesis (some of his categories, the level of
agency he assumes and his rampant idealism), this reminds me of Florida's
(and others) paradigm of "Cultural Creatives" - here is an instance which
certainly is about all of those things.
While I agree wholeheartedly with the direction of his argument - which is
really the academic version of Granholm's "cool cities" - it just seems to
neglect the *curtailing* of creativity by various economic social forces
(and, I would argue, the range of "choices" one can really make). My wife
was reading portions of the Florida book to me while I had the end of
Shake's "One Beat" (the interview part) playing on my PC. Nice juxtaposition.
At any rate, what Kelli is doing is exactly the kind of revitalization
which is more important than Stadiums and Casinos, imo.
Not enough people realize that Detroit really was the "Paris of
the Midwest" in the early 20th century. Not to get off on a rant, but
although the auto industry put it "on the map", it also shares the
responsibility for transforming it from what it was to what it is (the
widening of Woodward at the expense of some great architecture, offing the
streetcar system to Mexico City, etc.). Although the article made some
mention of corporate investment downtown, it would be nice to get more of
that investment behind the kind of work that Kelli and people like her are
all about. Now who's being idealistic? :-)
jeff
