pete-rock said:
About a year ago I started a thread called
"What If for Cities" that suggested that Detroit could've used its Motown history and musical heritage to become something like a Nashville for R&B and hip-hop.
Now, it appears that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is
really looking into how to capitalize on Detroit's second-largest export, music.
The good thing about the music industry is that people can do well without necessarily having a lot formal training or education, and plenty of jobs can be generated as singers, dancers, choreographers, producers, musicians, sound engineers, video producers, music execs, etc.
Can this be the boost Detroit needs?
I have a set of initial reactions to this, although they really should be taken with a grain of salt, since my knowledge of the details of Detroit's situation is very superficial.
First, while I think high profile and glittery cultural stuff is necessary for world class status for a city, I don't think it provides much of a basis for regeneration. It's an unstable business, with a tiny pinnacle and a huge and shifting base. It also carries with it a sizable underclass, which an already stable urban area can carry
successfully, so the question would be "Does the city of Detroit have a sufficiently stable system of well fuctioning neighborhoods to encourage the growth of an industry which carries a well known set of downsides".
Further, when a city has a highly publicized population drop, with the attendant instability that brings to neighborhoods, a top priority would be creating a situation at the core where there are a number of contiguous neighborhoods where both residents and outsiders feel safe walking at night. Detroit, like most cities, probably already has somewhat of a focus on this. If there are already populous and safe neighborhoods toward the center of the city, then a focus on building the music industry and taking advantage of the Motown history may be realistic.
To summarize my skepticism, if efforts to strengthen the neighborhood fabric are having some success, a push to highlight and expand a well known asset of the city could be a good thing. If the core is continuing to empty out, the effort might be misplaced, and jobs creation might better be carried out by attempting to attract more stable industries to the core.
That being said, Motown music is a fantastic legacy, and the history should be preserved and if possible expanded. The question is how much effort to put into it as a regenerative tool.