Detroit garnered a lot of attention this past month between Chrysler's Super Bowl commercial featuring Eminem and a drive that successfully raised more than $60,000 in pledges to build a RoboCop statue in Detroit (I couldn't make this stuff up). I've read a lot of posts about both issues by metro Detroit bloggers and other media, but I've found a few stories from further afield that offer interesting insights about how others view Detroit. The comments on some of these posts make for interesting reading as well.
So, buckle up for a special "link love" edition this month.
This is the Motor City...and this is what we read!
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Imported from Detroit-Aaron, an urban analyst and consultant from Chicago, sees the Chrysler ad as real evidence of the power of Detroit as a brand. He says few cities have such power as a brand, and the comments on this post at The Urbanophlie demonstrate the power of Detroit to resonate with people in one way or another.
Aaron also points to other articles about the ad in subsequent posts that include Detroit, Eminem and Chrysler's Geographic Imagination by Andrew in Ohio who sees a "spatially cognitive dissonance" between the ad's images and those he holds at least partially responsible for Detroit's decline at Thinking Pseudogeographically and Hoping Detroit Fails by Pittsburgh's Jim Russell (who is, to put it very mildly, no fan of the commercial and unleashed multiple screeds about it at Burgh Diaspora over the past month).
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'Imported from Detroit' rebrands Chrysler and the city it calls home-Randy at UrbanCincy also sees the Chrysler commercial as a great example of rebranding Detroit and selling viewers on the idea that Detroit as a strong entity with plenty of life left in it, despite pervasive rumors to the contrary.
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Imported from Detroit Reminds us that Milwaukee Matters-Meanwhile, Dave of Urban Milwaukee sees the pride, spirit, and toughness expressed by the Chrysler ad as a message resonating with urbanists in other Midwestern industrial cities like Chicago, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee.
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Detroit: What Do Twenty-Something Californians Think?-Gordon viewed the commercial with 14 Californian college students, asking them to write down their thoughts about Detroit before viewing the commercial, and to share their thoughts about the city after watching the commercial. He admits this was an admittedly unscientific survey with a small sample, but the contrast between the "before" and "after" impressions is still an interesting read at Flint Expatriates.
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Super Bowl Victory? Maybe for Detroit and Michigan Art!-After wading through all of the debate over the "ruin porn" and other images used to portray Detroit as a gritty survivor, I loved seeing Michigan in Pictures celebrating an uptick in interest they recorded for some of Detroit's beautiful works of public art, like the massive "Victory" sculpture at the Wayne County Building, after the Eminem ad airing.
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It's So Cold in the D-The intrepid Ronny (aka Gordon Bombay) has a fascination with photographing, among other things, photos of abandoned buildings on his Cincinnati-based Queen City Discovery blog. He recently visited Detroit, where he says he sees the abandoned buildings in Detroit as part of the larger story of a proud city that still retains much of its beauty and elegance.
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Detroit's other micro-funded public art project-Someone decided, for whatever reason, that Detroit needed a statue of RoboCop, and a Kickstarter campaign easily exceeded its goal of $50,000 in pledges to fund the project. Amy takes a look another Detroit statue, one of beloved Detroit mayor and Michigan governor Hazen Pingree, funded by over 5,000 small donations from the people of Detroit and Michigan during the very early 1900s.
And now for an editorial note:
I especially appreciate that fact that the effort to erect a RoboCop statue spawned a spontaneous fundraising effort to raise money for a metro Detroit-based food rescue organization called Forgotten Harvest.
The effort arose from a Twitter conversation between San Francisco screenwriter Gary Whitta and New York comic book author Ron Marz about the appropriateness of the RoboCop campaign at a time when the money might be better spent elsewhere in Detroit. Metro Detroit resident Ryan Meray jumped into the conversation to suggest Forgotten Harvest as a worthy beneficiary for those who wished to donate to a worthy cause in Detroit, and things took off from there.
Forgotten Harvest has long been one of my favorite Detroit-area charities, and I encourage those who really want to do something positive for Detroit to check out Forgotten Harvest.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
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