Quote:
Originally Posted by animatedmartian
I think Detroit is starting to comeback around. I was only born in the 90s so I never really experienced what previous 'hopeful upswings' might have felt like in decades prior, but Detroit's current optimistic upswing does seem to be a systematic change instead of just a visual one. I just found out that less than a month ago, Detroit's tourism company started this advertisement aimed at drawing in more conventions to the newly renovated Cobo Hall.
Yea, more realistic (pessimistic) folks will point at the decaying neighborhoods, but I think once the city government is sorted out, there will be obvious signs of improvement there as well. It may not happen as quickly as most would like, but Detroit at least doesn't feel like it's in a freefall towards doom and gloom which has to be a good thing. A little bit of it is some boosterism, but then go back to 2003 and try to recreate the same images in the above video and in the OP and it'd be near impossible. There just wasn't a lot going on in Detroit 10 years ago.
|
That is the type of promotion that Detroit should have been doing a long time ago….even if it did not have all the new investment that it has now. Nearly all advertisement is hyperbole to one degree or another or they only tell you the good things and not the bad sides. That is just the nature of advertising. Detroit has always had good things to talk about and present to the outside world, as well as bad things. However, the areas media and the people just allowed the bad news to dominate, which in turn helped to incubate more bad news as it helped to destroy confidence in the city.
It’s important to note that these positive changes are going on despite a recent uptick in the homicide rate and a city government likely at its lowest point ever in dysfunction or irrelevance. I am saying this to suggest that Detroit is not held hostage by its statistics and government, as many like to believe. In other words, many believe that corruption and crime is why Detroit declined. Rather than causing the decline, the decline, caused by other factors, simply left the crime and corruption exposed.