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Detroit: The Dream Is Now: The Design, Art, and Resurgence of an American City
The Dream Is Now is a visual essay on the rebuilding and resurgence of the city of Detroit by photographer Michel Arnaud, co-author of Design Brooklyn . In recent years, much of the focus on Detroit has been on the negative stories and images of shuttered, empty buildings—the emblems of Detroit’s financial and physical decline. In contrast, Arnaud aims his lens at the emergent creative enterprises and new developments taking hold in the still-vibrant city. The book explores Detroit’s rich industrial and artistic past while giving voice to the dynamic communities that will make up its future. The first section provides a visual tour of the city’s architecture and neighborhoods, while the remaining chapters focus on the developing design, art, and food scenes through interviews and portraits of the city’s entrepreneurs, artists, and makers. Detroit is the story of an American city in flux, documented in Arnaud’s thought-provoking photographs.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published April 11, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 26, 2019
This book makes me want to journey on over to Detroit as it features a multitude of interesting and artistic places to visit in Detroit- one place that I would really like to explore!!!
April 16, 2017
Bonus points for not being ruin porn. Like last year's "Detroit is No Dry Bones," this book goes beyond contemporary architecture and art to celebrate Detroit's people and creative class. It's a good companion to the "100 Things to do in Detroit" book with visuals and richer commentary about several of the commercial locations highlighted there. The perfect gift book for someone making their first sojourn to Detroit.
January 18, 2018
One could say this book is an optimistic portrait of Detroit trying to revamp itself out of its decade long slump of poverty and suffering. Or one could say it's a fetishization of the rich and well off enough especially in comparison to Detroit's standard of wealth moving in to buying up bank buildings and making them into their designer homes, opening up fancy restaurants, buying artist studios super cheap [fuck Brooklyn, that place is hypergentrified compared to here—am I right—one school from Brooklyn has already moved HQ to Detroit to help struggling NYC artists afford their rent], and seem to exist in a state of seemingly willed ignorance at the widespread suffering going on outside the circle of downtown.
Given no one interviewed is given much time to talk about that, and when done it's usually in platitudes. Thankfully in a city that's 80% black they do not only interview white people, however they are the majority, and many of them are transplants bringing with them their Portlandia fantasies mixed in with one coffee shop owner's almost new age philosophy when skirting around the elephant in the room [thus take a look at his quote here properly [troll-lit-ed]]: "I'm grateful that collectively we all share the ability to change and adapt [if you move into the city with enough capital to realize your dream of owning and operating a hip coffee shop], and it's a really beautiful lesson [I get to contemplate everyday]. You can't run from yourself in Detroit [which means I was scared to move back here, but my house is now amazing and well designed, thank you cheap real-estate]. It can be the reason this place is very hard for people who can't honestly face themselves [oh is that all it takes, just facing yourself honestly and saying well almost the entire city was laid off and now at least half of us if not more are living in extreme poverty and if we just keep a stiff upper lip and take your advice we will face ourselves and be opening up a hip bar next to your coffeeshop—who needs Tony Robbins when you've got this guy]. But if you can take the opportunity to clean house so to speak [as in amazingly redesign a decrepit house into a chic yupster middle class DINK sort of setting, you'll be able to have pretty cool wine/dinner parties there] this town is really rewarding [to those who have the money to make it so, which in a way is all cities but then again in Detroit it takes a certain ubersurreal quality that masks overt white and wealth privilege into a symbol of platitude laissez faire "revitalization", that is revitalizing white wealthy lives] and a wonderful place to live.
An African American artist who says overall he feels the redevelopment going on is positive however it is gentrification and him and others are feeling the effects of it. An African American gallery owner says that the real fear is that black artists will not be included—that as the arts community grows it will basically become white dominated and exclusive.
I read "Detroit: An American Autopsy" recently, which was put out in 2013 by a white gonzo esque (minus the drugs) journalist returning to Detroit to work at a newspaper and document a lot of the corruption and suffering going on in the city. Towards the art community at that time he made one comment: that when he reported that he'd found a homeless man frozen in a pool of ice at the bottom of an elevator shaft in an abandoned skyscraper and no one seemed to care enough to remove him that quickly, he got angry emails from the art community (I'm assuming the white transplanted slice of it) that he was being too negative and why won't he write positive articles about the burgeoning art scene. Well in 2017, they got this book, which has to be the most positive thing written about Detroit I've seen so far, however that "positivity" seems to be attached to what one might call the artilization lie, that is that: well if you throw a bunch of grants and money into art in a downtrodden city you will revitalize it and everything will be better. But who is it attracting, rich developers, yupsters who want a cheap studio downtown cause there's a swathe of foodie restaurants and galleries around their house [that's right a food gallery, where you can eat the food art if you buy it, a realization of the culinary world meets the art world in "real time temporary art"], indie entrepreneurs designed products for other indie entrepreneurs and aforementioned people, etc.
Okay, there are some urban gardening projects that seem positive in the book and food goes to the foodbank and not into that imagined downtown Whole Foods they've been talking about. But I think if Detroit really wants to fully and inclusively redevelop, someone needs to come up with some large scale projects: say a cooperatively owned manufacturer, a trades and building cooperative, a cooperative tech company that brings everyone in at the ground level and teaches them from the ground up and everyone is paid along the way, etc., anything large scale and big enough to start a trend that can put Detroiters back to work and raise back their long declining standard of living. This whole books lacks a sociopolitical backbone, its idea of radical change involves indie business and large scale topdown design. That is neoliberalist thought. That is the cult of bailouts with ponzi schemes at the heart of it. If revitalization has the rich and privileged in mind, I don't call it that, I call it utopia for the few, which is what this whole country's ideology is already drowning in. And in Detroit the hypocrisy and irony of that is all the more glaring.
Given no one interviewed is given much time to talk about that, and when done it's usually in platitudes. Thankfully in a city that's 80% black they do not only interview white people, however they are the majority, and many of them are transplants bringing with them their Portlandia fantasies mixed in with one coffee shop owner's almost new age philosophy when skirting around the elephant in the room [thus take a look at his quote here properly [troll-lit-ed]]: "I'm grateful that collectively we all share the ability to change and adapt [if you move into the city with enough capital to realize your dream of owning and operating a hip coffee shop], and it's a really beautiful lesson [I get to contemplate everyday]. You can't run from yourself in Detroit [which means I was scared to move back here, but my house is now amazing and well designed, thank you cheap real-estate]. It can be the reason this place is very hard for people who can't honestly face themselves [oh is that all it takes, just facing yourself honestly and saying well almost the entire city was laid off and now at least half of us if not more are living in extreme poverty and if we just keep a stiff upper lip and take your advice we will face ourselves and be opening up a hip bar next to your coffeeshop—who needs Tony Robbins when you've got this guy]. But if you can take the opportunity to clean house so to speak [as in amazingly redesign a decrepit house into a chic yupster middle class DINK sort of setting, you'll be able to have pretty cool wine/dinner parties there] this town is really rewarding [to those who have the money to make it so, which in a way is all cities but then again in Detroit it takes a certain ubersurreal quality that masks overt white and wealth privilege into a symbol of platitude laissez faire "revitalization", that is revitalizing white wealthy lives] and a wonderful place to live.
An African American artist who says overall he feels the redevelopment going on is positive however it is gentrification and him and others are feeling the effects of it. An African American gallery owner says that the real fear is that black artists will not be included—that as the arts community grows it will basically become white dominated and exclusive.
I read "Detroit: An American Autopsy" recently, which was put out in 2013 by a white gonzo esque (minus the drugs) journalist returning to Detroit to work at a newspaper and document a lot of the corruption and suffering going on in the city. Towards the art community at that time he made one comment: that when he reported that he'd found a homeless man frozen in a pool of ice at the bottom of an elevator shaft in an abandoned skyscraper and no one seemed to care enough to remove him that quickly, he got angry emails from the art community (I'm assuming the white transplanted slice of it) that he was being too negative and why won't he write positive articles about the burgeoning art scene. Well in 2017, they got this book, which has to be the most positive thing written about Detroit I've seen so far, however that "positivity" seems to be attached to what one might call the artilization lie, that is that: well if you throw a bunch of grants and money into art in a downtrodden city you will revitalize it and everything will be better. But who is it attracting, rich developers, yupsters who want a cheap studio downtown cause there's a swathe of foodie restaurants and galleries around their house [that's right a food gallery, where you can eat the food art if you buy it, a realization of the culinary world meets the art world in "real time temporary art"], indie entrepreneurs designed products for other indie entrepreneurs and aforementioned people, etc.
Okay, there are some urban gardening projects that seem positive in the book and food goes to the foodbank and not into that imagined downtown Whole Foods they've been talking about. But I think if Detroit really wants to fully and inclusively redevelop, someone needs to come up with some large scale projects: say a cooperatively owned manufacturer, a trades and building cooperative, a cooperative tech company that brings everyone in at the ground level and teaches them from the ground up and everyone is paid along the way, etc., anything large scale and big enough to start a trend that can put Detroiters back to work and raise back their long declining standard of living. This whole books lacks a sociopolitical backbone, its idea of radical change involves indie business and large scale topdown design. That is neoliberalist thought. That is the cult of bailouts with ponzi schemes at the heart of it. If revitalization has the rich and privileged in mind, I don't call it that, I call it utopia for the few, which is what this whole country's ideology is already drowning in. And in Detroit the hypocrisy and irony of that is all the more glaring.
April 21, 2021
Detroit as the new art mecca. Foodie destination, maker renaissance, and a place of affordable creative spaces. I am heartened to see so many thriving places collected in this one attractive book. It seems good old down and out Detroit is rebranding itself as the new Brooklyn, a place of independent thought, heritage and a creative hand made spirit with a tech twist. Shinola is not the only brand to arise from that melting pot of thinking creative people growing out of, returning to or being nurtured by the history of getting things made in Detroit. Even the urban farms and markets attest to the can do spirit that has never really left, just been overshadowed by the gutting of American manufacturing that grabs most of the headlines. A lovely, encouraging, celebratory book about the grit and authenticity to be found again in this storied city.
July 27, 2018
This was a happy surprise, never having visited Detroit. Contains beautiful photos of historic architecture and contemporary art in various media. I understand that the resurgence of this city that has undergone economic and social devastation in recent decades is viewed cynically as a dreaded gentrification by critics, possibly with good reason, but the new art and the artists featured here, many of them native to the state and/or city, are truly inspiring. Especially heartening to see are the architectural marvels that have been preserved.
June 25, 2017
Scott Hocking
Steve and Dorota Coy
Hygienic Dress League
Steve and Dorota Coy
Hygienic Dress League
April 28, 2019
Gorgeous! Makes me want to get out of the suburbs and go downtown!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews