While this has been the rainiest Michigan April I can remember (seriously April showers bring May flowers has never rang more true for me than in 2015), it sure hasn’t stopped our city from making appearances several times on the national, even global stage. This month I’ve noticed Detroit stories have been popping up here, there, and everywhere and most encouragingly, the subject matter is varied. There are travel stories, tech stories, and a story bringing hope that the renewal process in Detroit will go differently (and perhaps better) than other cities.
Let’s take a gander at the round-up:
The Chicago Tribune
Chicago isn’t Detroit, but it can learn from Motor City’s innovative rehab
This article pulled at me in an odd way because if I’m being honest here with all of you, I’ve harbored a lot of unjust resentment toward Chicago for years. Learned completely on my own – most people I know adore Chicago – I’ve almost hated the city from afar for being what Detroit couldn’t be. Seeing this almost made me want to gloat, but then I remembered no two cities are alike. It’s not Chicago’s fault it was built up when Detroit was being bogged down. In my growth during this year of the fellowship, I’ve learned to let some of irrational ill will go. Maybe I’ll even start to love Chicago for the great American city it is one of these days.
FORTUNE
Why Detroit could be the next Silicon Valley (and vice versa)
Fabulous collection of data about the economies of the workforce in both places and how it relates to the US as a whole. The author is a vice president at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Metropolitan Policy Program. He is also co-author of The Metropolitan Revolution.
“Private, public and civic leaders would be wise to embrace the convergence underway and retool economic development—workforce training, community college programs, applied research investments—to this new reality.”
The Guardian
Up in the old hotel: what the Strathmore says about Detroit’s growing pains
This 2014 Pulitzer Prize winning publication has done right by Detroit several times in the last year. Their coverage is good stuff.
National Geographic
Part 1: Taking Back Detroit – Portraits of the Motor City by Wayne Lawrence
Part 3: Tough, Cheap, and Real, Detroit is Cool Again
For the record, Detroit has never NOT been cool.
CBS
Video segment on the nationally aired Sunday Morning show about Shinola.
Entrepreneur
Detroit Is Beckoning to Tech Entrepreneurs
Our region is one of the most technically savvy in the whole of the United States: “It’s no surprise, with our auto manufacturing background, that Metro Detroit has one of the highest populations of STEM grads and STEM jobs in the nation.”
GreenBiz
Two Steps Forward
Why Motown is poised to come roaring back
From the award-winning chairman & executive editor of GreenBiz himself, Joel Makower on the future state of sustainability and how Detroit fits into it: “This isn’t just academic. Shell Oil Co. president Marvin Odum pointed out that by mid-century, the world will be adding the population equivalent of two new Detroits every week, 75 percent in urban areas. How we build new cities — and retrofit old ones — will influence how people live in a growing, evolving and adapting world.
Detroit was the perfect canvas to paint a portrait of what’s possible.”
Virgin
Everything you need to know about Detroit
Virgin Atlantic released the above infographic to celebrate the launch of their new route to Detroit next month. It’s fun and bright, which aren’t always two adjectives that can be attributed to international Detroit stories. It also called Detroit one of America’s hottest cities. HOT DAMN INDEED.
New York Daily News
Financial struggles can’t slow Detroit’s energy and creativity
It’s a pretty good beginner’s “How to Travel to Detroit for the First Time” as it hits on several well-established favorites and recent businesses alike.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both gave stellar reviews of the DIA’s ‘Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit.’
From WSJ: “And it is especially fitting that the final production under the DIA’s retiring director, Graham W.J. Beal, should be a celebration of Detroit, whose treasures he fought so valiantly, and successfully, to save for future generations, while also making this the world’s most visitor-friendly museum.”
From NYT: “Filling several galleries at the Detroit Institute of Arts, it is also a serendipitous celebration of this exemplary museum’s hard-won independence.”
And last but not least, The New York Times again:
As Detroit Tigers Evolve, Success Is a Constant
This NYT writer, most likely begrudgingly, sang our ball team’s praises. Always great to see that Old English D.