Welcome To Detroit

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Detroit Would have to be one of the most Fascinating cities I've ever been to. Detroit went from being one of the richest cities in the world during Americas golden era, to what is now practically a ghost town. There are whole suburbs that are left, falling down. What were once very beautiful middle class houses on large suburban blocks are now either left to decay or are auctioned off by the council for. At first the amount of unpaid land tax that the original owners owe. Then if still unsold a typical house will be auctioned off for little as 500 dollars. Most of the industrial parks host abandoned Factories that cover dozens of city blocks, which are either closed up or have been left to fall to pieces over decades and the city has some of the most beautiful art deco sky scrapers in the world, left crumbling to the ground. Even the city council went bankrupt just a few years ago, and it must be the only city in the world where the fire brigade is instructed not to put out fires in unoccupied buildings unless they are a hazard to their surroundings.

As a result of Detroit's demise, the city has become a social experiment that's produced some really fascinating and promising outcomes. The city as a whole is clearly in true turmoil. It has some of the worst crime rates and unemployment of any city in the world and the realistic possibility of it ever becoming an industrial city like it used to be seems pretty remote. But Because of all that's happened in Detroit, Detroit has also become an example of how communities of a city can take their well being into their own hands, live without strict governmental rules and become mainly self sufficient. Apart from hosting one of America's largest farmers markets, Scattered through out the suburbs are areas occupied by communities trying to live self sufficiently. There is neighbourhood market gardens where whole communities pitch in the grow their own vegetables and raise animals such as pigs, chickens and ducks for food. There are young people coming in and buying up cheap real estate. People are starting up businesses in fields like IT, Film, Graphic design and art on very little cash and certain areas of Detroit showed me the strongest sense of community I have ever seen anywhere in a western city. I also found the people to be some of the most down to earth and hospitable people I met in all of America.

Driving into and around Detroit is like entering into some sort of Apocalypse. Over 1 million people have left Detroit in the past 30 or so years, leaving what was once one of the worlds richest cities in a true state of decay and dis repair. Nothing I had read or heard about Detroit came even close to giving me an understanding of what the city was like until I arrived.

The first thing I noticed coming into the city at night and trying to find where my couchsurfing host lived was the road network. Being what was once the Motor city, Detroit has the largest grid of Freeways linking a city together that I've ever seen. I was thankful every time I got on one for my GPS, as without it I'd have been completely lost in a sea of highways and overpasses. To go anywhere there is an option of a freeway, which are of course all pretty much empty of cars now and slowly falling to pieces.

When I first arrived in Detroit, I stopped at a Supermarket to get some food on the way to my couchsurfing hosts house. I got out of my car and entered a Supermarket playing Rock music so loud, I considered covering my ears and I had to yell at the attendant so she could hear me. This was the first giveaway that I was in a city very different from the rest of America. After arriving at my host's house I was promptly taken to the pub, as getting drunk and listening to live music is one of the most popular past times in Detroit. I guess if you look at how many amazing Musicians have come from Detroit over the years this didn't come as much of a surprise. Unlike most of America, the people of Detroit also take their drinking very seriously and like Australia they all seem to love to get as drunk as possible in the shortest amount of time.

I spent the following days either driving around the city getting blown away by all the ruins of suburbs and old car manufacturing plants or helping my hosts in their garden which was big enough to give vegetables to about 5 house holds. The garden was on an old housing block and was predominantly maintained by Amelia, a young woman who lived in a house next door which she had brought for 500 bucks and was enervating to live in. Amelia had grown up in middle class suburbia in another city, but had decided to try something new so had moved to Detroit. I found it quite amazing that here was somebody that just 2 years ago, hadn't even picked up a hammer in her life or planted a single seed, was now not only renovating a house and successfully feeding most of the street she was living on with vegetables, but also willing to slaughter the two pigs that were used to fertilise the garden beds and turn them into meat. When I think of places in America where people possibly don't know where cows milk comes from, such a transformation is quite amazing.

My next stop in Detroit was to another couch surfers place on the other side of the city. The house was located at the division line of one neighbourhood that was abandoned and one that was semi occupied. The guy who owned the house had also brought it for 500 bucks and had renovated the house into a small hostel. The difference being that unlike a hostel, it was entirely free to stay there. Upon arriving, I was met and handed the keys, before the owner promptly left for the night. After meeting someone for five minutes I was given the keys to his entire house, had a bed made for me and was told I could stay for as long as I needed. His reasons for setting up a free house came with a quick response that Detroit needed help. And his house provided somewhere for people coming to the town looking for work to live, and it helped bring travellers into Detroit, that wouldn't normally visit, showing them another side to a city with such a bad name.

The last place I stayed in, in Detroit was a street in a mostly abandoned suburb taken up by an occupy movement. It was set up by a guy from California, that had ridden his bicycle from Los Angeles to Detroit and had taken over an abandoned house. I'm not quite sure of the details about how the street went from there, but basically it had turned into an open street, where anyone could come and live in one of the abandoned houses for free, as long as they helped out within the community, which was trying to live self sufficiently.

The community consisted of about 30 people when I had arrived, but as it was the first week of winter, many people that were living there had decided to leave before it got too cold. This point in itself was a good showing that although the community had started off with great intentions, it had some fundamental floors. One of the biggest of these, was that the community was set up with a philosophy that humans can live without any rules. Somewhere in the world this may be true, but in this case what it had created was a kind of drop in zone, where miss fit's and crack head's from all over America had come with the thought they could live for free without actually having to contribute. There was some good people living there, but sadly their numbers were in the minority and with a community structure that was based on having not having one it the first place, these people were in some ways left supporting everyone else.

I spent the first day and night with 2 young guy's from middle class suburbia, who had decided that neither of them wanted to work anymore, so had moved into the community about 3 months beforehand. They lived in an old two story house which when built would have have been someones very nice middle to upper class suburban home. The house looked like it had probably been abandoned for at least 20 years as it was in a state of structural disrepair and had pretty much everything that was any good stripped out of it. In turn pretty much everything in the house had be scavenged up from other abandoned houses, or donated by others, which in their case hadn't been that much. Most of the house was missing windows, there was an old kitchen table, a few chairs, and a gas stove someone had given them. Water came in from down the street in 20lt buckets and the toilet was a hole in the back yard. They had informed me of their plans to put on the power, which for a fee of 20 bucks would be done by a guy down the street, who bypassed the meter box.

Despite their lack of material possessions and much of a clue how to live in this alien world they had put themselves in, they were as accommodating as they possibly could be given the circumstances. They went out of their way to make me feel at home, fed me and were both genuinely good people. Both guy's had seemed to have good plans and intentions. One guy was planning to set up a house that provided free counseling to the kids in the surrounding areas and the other had plans to turn the bottom of the house into an art studio. Unfortunately I struggled to see either of these two things happening anytime soon as motivation to actually achieve anything wasn't something they had in common.

The next day I spent with a guy from Canada, that almost seemed to single Handel support a good portion of the community. I had offered to show him how to sharpen the community chainsaw and help cut wood for the day. After his attempt to cook me 4 rotten duck eggs for breakfast, I nearly left thinking this place had absolutely no hope of becoming anything. Luckily my day spent with this guy gave me a tiny amount of hope, but as one of the few people I saw in the community that had enough motivation to actually be somewhat productive, his enthusiasm was quickly running thin. his biggest concern at the time was the fact that he was the only one who had managed to collect some fire wood for winter, and because about the only community rule is that nobody should be allowed to lock their house, His house would end up being packed full of people every night getting warm.

After spending the day helping collect fire wood and meeting a few people who were genuinely wanting to make this place work, I left kind of confused about what would be the future of this place. There definitely seemed to be some potential and a few good things happening. There was a small restaurant and health food shop at the end of the street which was owned and run by some people who were trying their best to make the community work by providing social help, things such as the chainsaw to use and providing some employment. They had also managed to create a large communal garden and had enough chickens and ducks to supply plenty of rotten eggs and quite a bit of meat.

Sadly it seemed that although the community showed some potential, their idea that a community could function without any rules was clearly shooting them in the foot. When I had arrived there it was at the beginning of winter, so many of the junkies and street bumbs had left, or didn't bother coming out during the night, leaving the street much more peace full than it had been a few weeks earlier but apparently this problem had been a real issue. The other major problem to no surprise was drug use. On the first day I was there I sat and watched as the local dealer did the rounds in his giant pimped out SUV to at least half the houses down the street, and it seemed pretty clear that with no structure or rules that getting people together to be productive was pretty much impossible.

When I left after 2 days I felt that this whole idea was a total failure beyond repair, but who knows. The community was in no doubt started with great intentions and the idea clearly showed potential but as history has taught us, no society has ever functioned with out leadership and some sort of social system, where certain people have the ability to make decisions and set rules on the behalf of others. maybe if everybody who came to this street were similar minded, enlightened and productive, it could work, but in a city with one of the worst crime rates in the world, this isn't going to be a reality anytime soon.

Between staying at these places I spent my days driving around, exploring the cities abandoned buildings and factories. I have never seen factories so large in my life before. Driving around some of these places would take about 15 to 20 minutes driving and would send me through suburbs long abandoned and falling to the ground. It was definitely a strange feeling to see factories where world war bomber planes were made in mass production and factories such as Fords that produced the most famous car in the world, the model T Ford left falling to pieces after many years of being unoccupied. Most of these places are left open and your free to go roaming where you please leading to much urban exploration, however many are so decrepit that entering them poses serious dangers.

After spending over a week in Detroit I left thinking it was one of the most fascinating city's I've ever visited and I left wanting to go back. If it wasn't such a depressing city to be in every day and didn't look like the apocalypse had just happened, I'd possibly consider living there as the good side to this city I found to be truly amazing.

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