Ten years on from being named the US’s first Unesco City of Design, Detroit is marking the milestone with an extra special annual Design Month. The celebrations spotlight the city’s creative talent but also raise a difficult question: has the Unesco badge successfully transformed the city into a global design hub, or is it a branding exercise layering over poverty, crime and an uneven recovery?
The answer depends on where you look. Downtown towers gleam after billions of dollars in reinvestment while other neighbourhoods still grapple with disinvestment. But Detroit has been working to prove that the label fits. Its cultural institutions (including 22 theatres along with 11 museums and libraries) remain central to civic life, and the region is home to more than 5,000 core design businesses employing about 80,000 people across fields from graphic and interior to landscape design. Of course, the city is also home to a healthy population of industrial designers too. After all, major players such as General Motors, Ford, FCA and Masco still house their research and design arms in the area. But the question of whether Detroit represents a true creative economy still lingers.
“In some ways the Unesco designation helped the city to believe in itself,” says Ellie Schneider, director of programming and strategy at the Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center (ISAIC). “It brought credibility and put us in international conversations.” In a city often defined by unemployment and crime, credibility matters, however fragile it might be. Detroit has one of the highest poverty rates in the US (at 34 per cent, it’s almost triple the national average).
Redlining and disinvestment stripped many black residents (about 80 per cent of the city’s population) of the power to shape development on their own terms. Billions have been reinvested in Downtown Detroit throughout the past 15 years, remaking the skyline and polishing core neighbourhoods. Much of it was driven by Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm Bedrock, responsible for projects including the Shinola Hotel, the restored Book Tower and the still-rising Hudson’s Site development. “We think of him as our Batman,” a resident told Monocle.
“The Unesco designation has allowed us to position culture-driven development – murals, oral histories, community hubs – as legitimate design practice,” says Tanya Saldivar-Ali, business development director at AGI Construction and founder of DFO313. “It helps local builders like us claim a seat at the table, or better yet, build our own tables.” Still, even she admits, “the biggest barrier is access. Not only to capital but to the early conversations where projects are shaped.” In other words, the glossy branding hasn’t erased Detroit’s entrenched inequities.
Detroit’s Unesco status was also secured due to the city’s commitment to inclusivity, with programmes aimed at minority communities and people with disabilities. “Ten years in, one of the clearest outcomes is that Detroit has been able to place itself on a global stage,” says Lauren Hood, founder of the Institute for AfroUrbanism. “It has opened doors for collaboration, attracted new resources and created civic pride for residents.” But she also notes the paradox: many of the musicians, visual artists and cultural innovators who gave Detroit its reputation are unaware of the city’s Unesco designation.
The nuance comes into focus during Detroit Month of Design, the city’s annual September festival. The programme stretches across disciplines and is one of the few artistic festivals co-created with the community. Yet inner-city attendees appear sparse. “There’s a lack of information for those of us in the inner city,” says delegate Deserai Lawson, a teacher, Uber driver and architecture buff.
Detroit carries a mix of polish and grit. At night, Motown booms from passing cars while block parties spill into intersections. Downtown is gentrifying; WeWork, Alo, Warby Parker and overpriced coffees have all arrived but its characters keep it original. The duality of authentic spirit alongside corporate refinement is part of the branding problem. For every creative success, critics see another sign of gentrification.
Detroit’s future as a design city is inseparable from its past. It is, after all, the cradle of American modernism. Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Eero Saarinen, and Minoru Yamasaki all studied here. Cranbrook Academy of Art and the College for Creative Studies trained generations of designers. General Motors founded one of the world’s first corporate design departments in the city, pioneering industrial design. Detroit’s history gives it credibility but heritage alone doesn’t guarantee renewal.
The former industrial metropolis is often described as one of the few cities that has fundamentally changed the way the world works, lives and moves. That still feels true on its streets today – the city is both gritty and creative, complex and proud. But 10 years into its Unesco City of Design experiment, is Detroit truly building a creative hub for the future or leaning on branding to cover the unfinished business of crime, poverty and decline?
Rey Pador, a local artist who Monocle spoke to at a Design Month event, subscribes to the notion that “success for Detroit is people not having to leave. Now, people want to stay, and some are even moving in.”
