Detroit is not New York. When I talk to my friends living in more popular cities they always ask me, \u201cso how is Detroit?\u201d It\u2019s a reasonable, banal enough question for typical small talk, and maybe I\u2019m reading too much into it, but it feels like I\u2019m being asked about some exotic far off land. \u201cSo how is living in Antarctica?\u201d \u201cHow is your trip to the moon going?\u201d The truth is that on the surface, Detroit is not all that different from anywhere else I\u2019ve lived. For my fellow Brooklynites, there\u2019s more than a few coffee shops to satisfy your need to catch up with friends, and to my college friends, there are several cool music venues and bars to fill your weekends with something to talk about come Monday. Little has surprised me since I moved here. I knew there would be blight, I knew there was a bustling downtown, I knew there would be young people. So what is the biggest culture shock I\u2019ve experienced since moving here? The conversation.<\/p>\n
I drove home a few weeks ago and as I was exiting my car, my neighbor approached me and introduced himself. This doesn\u2019t happen where I\u2019m from. In fact, the only time I spoke to my neighbor in Brooklyn was when he chastised me for being too loud the weekend before. Seriously, this is a big deal to me. In Detroit, anyone can become someone to you. People are friendly and open, anyone can go from stranger to acquaintance in a matter of minutes, they might even skip a few steps and end up becoming a new friend.<\/p>\n
I love New York (truly), but that\u2019s not how community works there. Community in New York is commodity. It is based on what schools you can afford to go to, which neighborhoods you can afford to live in, the yoga studio you choose, where you get your morning coffee. Community is place, and place is bought in New York. Shared spaces are filler. You don\u2019t lock eyes with anyone on the subway, and you don\u2019t pay any mind when you\u2019re walking down the street. After all, if you stop and chat with a stranger you might be late for that gallery opening you were invited to.<\/p>\n
Detroit is not New York, and it never will be. Detroit will never have the biggest buildings, or the most chic bars, or the largest tourism industry. What it does have, and what it will have, is given to it completely by its residents. This is a grassroots city being rebuilt from the ground up. Detroit will give America an opportunity to redefine what makes a great city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Detroit is not New York. When I talk to my friends living in more popular cities they always ask me, \u201cso how is Detroit?\u201d It\u2019s a reasonable, banal enough question for typical small talk, and maybe I\u2019m reading too much into it, but it feels like I\u2019m being asked about some exotic far off land. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}