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The online-only presentation begins with this view of a shell at John R and Erskine streets, a block west of Brush Park.
The premise sounds straightforward, though the topic is sensitive and fraught with pitfalls: "Last week, we visited the city to find further signs of recovery as Detroit moves out from under budgetary oversight," writes New York Times reporter Monica Davey at the start of a web-only essay with 14 photos.
Davey, the paper's Chicago bureau, delivers 461 words alongside street scenes snapped by freelancer Emily Najera, who came from Grand Rapids for the project. She's a visiting professor of photography at Grand Valley State University, her alma mater.
The presentation sketches how a city that "was crumbling" is now "transforming" as "old Victorians glisten with new interiors." No interiors -- glistening, gleaming or glowing -- are shown.
Neither are any people, though three are quoted briefly -- a teen awaiting a bus, the mayor and "a Detroiter who moved away, then returned."
A construction scene in Brush Park, "where buildings can list for more than a million," serves as a contrast to decay not far off in Poletown East, where "parts . . . still feel empty" and some streets "are silent and wide open."
All photos are stark streetside shots -- artistically blurred or evocatively lit -- but lacking intimacy, warmth or depth. That sets up this swipe from a Detroit photojournalist:
Did you even get out of the car, NYT? If not, did you at least have the doors unlocked? https://t.co/WtPGf6P527
— Mike Mulholland (@mulho2mj) April 30, 2018
He's far from the only critic as local reactions flow on Twitter and at Curbed Detroit.
Zoe Hoster's snappy tweet characterizes the package as "just reverse ruin porn."
"Definitely some parachute journalism going on here," Detroit Free Press web editor Brian Manzullo tweets as a personal reaction.
Another Detroiter observes:
My problem with the photos (and the story,) is how the photographer didn't go further than 3 miles for 11/14 of them. Out of context they're fine photos, but within the context of the story we're literally looking at two blocks of Brush Park and two street corners of Chene.
— Sean Proctor (@seanproctor_) May 1, 2018
Curbed Detroit's post Tuesday by editor Robin Runyan.
At the city's leading real estate and development site, Curbed editor Robin Runyan wishes The Times would "stay for more than a weekend." In a thoughtful analysis, she posts Tuesday:
The essay focuses on some standalone houses around Brush Park, and doesn’t mention the major-developer-backed developments involved in transforming the area. The rather short take also declines to detail just how long it’s taken the neighborhood to "come back," or the tax incentives offered to developers to rehab it.
The photo essay also falls into the trap of ruin porn that’s been the go-to for any national piece about Detroit for years; now it’s often contrasted with the city’s new arena, which depended on hundreds of millions of tax dollars to get built. . . .
Detroit is more complex, frustrating, beautiful, and yes, even resilient than the national media makes it out to be. It’s not just new and it’s not just desolate, yet this is what the world often sees in these pieces.
Even Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times magazine staff writer living temporarily in Detroit on a long-term assignment, expresses skepticism publicly:
The question that emerges from all these Detroit rising stories, is the city is coming back for whom? Not the people I spend my time there with. Not most of the city. https://t.co/gtRGOkV2p4
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) April 30, 2018
I mean, the children of the very people who abandoned Detroit and accelerated its decline now get to benefit from the decline as they reclaim the spoils.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) April 30, 2018
Nikole is spot on here. And the Black families who were forced to leave the city because their neighborhoods became too unsafe, their schools were abysmal and the only jobs were in the suburbs, still can't move back and take advantage. Inner city still crumbling.
— Carolyn Edgar (@carolynedgar) April 30, 2018
Lastly and powerfully, here's what Patrick Cooper-McCann, a Wayne State urban studies instructor and University of Michigan doctoral candidate, says in detail:
This may be the all-time worst @nytimes feature on Detroit -- and that's saying something. It's feel-good clickbait based on 1/139th of the city, and it doesn't even portray that fraction accurately https://t.co/p50K8XApbx
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
"I found neighborhoods like this one, Brush Park, transforming." I wonder if that could relate to decades of public investment to rebuild the streets, remove public housing, and incentivize a billionaire to build luxury condos for his downtown workforce https://t.co/IPyg5FrIMu
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
"But the frenzy of building hasn’t taken hold all over. Take Poletown East, for instance, a few miles from downtown." Oh. You mean the neighborhood two minutes east of Brush Park? How'd you find it? We keep blight so well hidden
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
Look. I want Detroit to "revitalize" too. I teach a class called Neighborhood Decline and Revitalization! But Detroit isn't the feel-good story of the year. You'd think the Chicago bureau chief, @monicadavey1, would know a thing or two about messy, complex, unequal cities
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
I've read the @nytimes for 18 years. I respect the paper, and some of its coverage of Detroit has been great. But this is as superficial as it gets. "One depopulated neighborhood near downtown is rebuilding; another is not." And the news is ...?
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
Does the author know why one is rebuilding and the other isn't? Or which is the dominant trend and experience for Detroiters? Or what's happening anywhere else? If not, you can't tell a convincing story, even if the photos are compelling
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
An accurate narrative in 32 words: "City services have improved, but crime, failing schools, foreclosures, and water shutoffs continue to destabilize working class neighborhoods, even as areas like Brush Park rebuild thanks to targeted public and private investment."
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
If the story said that, we could all just nod our heads and appreciate the photography
— Cooper (@rethinkdetroit) April 30, 2018
Thank you. I live in Detroit (zip code 48238) and this article is utter nonsense.
— La Femme Negrita (@LaFemme_Negrita) April 30, 2018
