The streets of Detroit, Michigan

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18
Jan

Detroit on the GT

The once-great Motor City is explored in the first episode of series three.

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May drive three muscle cars – the 2018 blue Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, red Ford Mustang RTR, and black Chevrolet Hennessey Camaro Z1 The Exorcist – on the deserted streets of Motown, discussing its present-day condition and comparing it to its glorious past.

 

The streets of Detroit. Credit: Puzzlebox Records
The streets of Detroit. Credit: Puzzlebox Records

 

Founded on 24th July 1701, Detroit is the oldest city west of the original thirteen colonies on this side of the Mississippi. Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac named the city Detroit, which means “the strait” in French, referring to the Detroit River. While it can be difficult to tell the difference, the Detroit River is actually a passageway that connects two larger bodies of water: Lake Huron and Lake Erie, the natural border between the United States and Canada.

Detroit is the only major American city north to Canada and thus, it is the only city in the US to look at Canada from the south. Therefore, to get to Detroit, some Canadians ought to drive north.

There are at least eleven other “Detroits” in America, including towns in Alabama and Maine, and a village in Illinois, according to The Detroit Almanac.

It has an impressive list of nicknames, being called The D, Motown, The Motor City, The Paris of the Midwest, Arsenal of Democracy, The 313 (after its telephone area code), City of Champions, America’s Comeback City, City of Trees, City of the Straits, The Renaissance City, Hockeytown (a trademark owned by the Red Wings), Rock City (after the Kiss song “Detroit Rock City”), and Hitsville (USA). On average, Detroiters consume 7 pounds of chips a year while the rest of the country eats about 4 pounds annually. Hence, the less known nickname for Detroit is The Potato Chip Capital.

 

Campus Martius Park in Detroit, Michigan. Credit: Diana Day
Campus Martius Park in Detroit, MI. Credit: Diana Day

 

Apart from housing the headquarters of Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors, Detroit is known for many accomplishments in transportation innovation.

The first car was manufactured here in 1896, followed by the first road paved with concrete in 1901, and the first freeway in 1942. In 1928 the first international traffic tunnel – the Detroit Windsor Tunnel – gave cars a shortcut between the United States and Canada under the Detroit River. Driving to the mall became customary when Northland Mall was opened in 1957.

8 Mile Road in Detroit serves as a literal racial dividing line between the predominantly black inner city and the predominantly white suburbs. The Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor and Detroit, is the busiest single border crossing in North America. The city synonymous with the auto industry has a driverless monorail system that moves about 2.4 million people annually.

The world’s first four-way three-colour traffic light was installed in Detroit. Police officer William Potts who was later nicknamed Mr Traffic took the colour yellow from railroad signals and incorporated it in the traffic light. The colour yellow was first used in a traffic light at Woodward Avenue and Jefferson Avenue in 1922.

Obviously, it is dubbed the Motor City for a good reason. Still, cars are not all that Detroit has given the world.

 

The Russell Alger Memorial (1921) with a female personification of Michigan, Grand Circus Park in Detroit. Credit: Alberto Adán
The Russell Alger Memorial (1921) with a female personification of Michigan, Grand Circus Park in Detroit. Credit: Alberto Adán

 

The 72-floor Marriott at the Renaissance Center in Detroit is the 2nd tallest hotel in North America. When it opened in 1977, it was the tallest in the world.

In 1879 Detroit became the first city to assign individual phone numbers, making the party line outdated.

The city has the only floating post office in the US, the J.W. Westcott II. It started as a small maritime reporting agency on the Detroit River that informed cargo vessels of the conditions in port but in 1948 it eventually became a full-fledged post office. As a result, it earned the world’s first floating ZIP code – 48222.

America’s oldest soda – Vernor’s Ginger Ale was born in Detroit. Legend has it that the refreshment was created accidentally. A local pharmacist, James Vernor made a drink but could not sell it as he was called to serve in the Civil War in 1862. He stored the beverage in an oak cask. After the war ended, he came back to find out that the keg had transformed his drink into what is now known as Vernor’s Ginger Ale.

 

Renaissance Center (1973), owned by General Motors as its world headquarters, in Downtown Detroit, MI. Credit: Anna Chapay
Renaissance Center (1973), owned by General Motors as its world headquarters, in Downtown Detroit. Credit: Anna Chapay

 

The city has a rich musical heritage. Detroit is noted as the birthplace of techno music in the early 1980s. Every year in late May the city hosts the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, known as “Movement”, which takes place in Hart Plaza. Although the city cannot take credit for jazz, it is home to the annual Detroit Jazz Festival that is completely free to the public. Other important music events in the city include the Motor City Music Conference (MC2), the Urban Organic Music Conference, the Concert of Colours, and the hip-hop Summer Jamz festival.

Name of many celebrities are connected to Motown: Diana Ross, Alice Cooper, Suzi Quatro, Jerry Bruckheimer, Eminem, Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Aaliyah, Kid Rock, Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Jeff Mills, Smokey Robinson, Donald Byrd, Andre Williams, Nathaniel Mayer, Danny Brown, Big Sean, The Supremes, The White Stripes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas, The Spinners, Nolan Strong & the Diablos.

In 2011 the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was in a deep financial crisis. Kid Rock decided to throw a benefit concert in what he called, “the best-drunk move I ever made”. He raised over one million dollars for the Orchestra, helping classical music in Detroit.

By the way, there is no such area as South Detroit. Apparently, Steve Perry coined it for the sake of rhyme in his lyrics for the song “Don’t Stop Believin’”.

 

The Gateway to Freedom – Underground Railroad Sculpture in Detroit, MI. Credit: Darnell D Garrison
The Gateway to Freedom – Underground Railroad Sculpture in Detroit. Credit: Darnell D Garrison

 

The night before Halloween is known as the Devil’s Night. At the beginning of the 1940s the acts of minor pranks such as egging, soaping or waxing windows and doors, throwing rotten vegetables, flaming bags of canine faeces on front porch stoops, toilet papering trees and shrubs, etc. occurred during the Devil’s Night. From 1970s mild vandalism escalated, mainly, in the inner city to more destructive acts such as arson. To give an example of the damage, more than 800 fires have been set in 1984. In 1995 Detroit city officials organised the Angels’ Night at the end of October. About 50 thousand volunteers gathered to patrol neighbourhoods in the city. 2015 is noted with the lowest recorded number of fires, only 52 fires. 2018 recorded 5 structure fires on the Devil’s Night, with only 4 on the night before.

The Ford Rotunda in Detroit was once a tourist attraction more popular than the Statue of Liberty in New York. It was built for the 1934 World’s Fair and used to be the fifth most visited site in the US before it burnt to the ground in 1962.

 

The remains of the Packard factory, which shut its doors in the late 1950s. Credit: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images
The remains of the Packard factory, which shut its doors in the late 1950s. Credit: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images

 

The Packard Automotive Plant in Detroit is the largest abandoned industrial facility in the world. In 2017 Arte Express held a promising ceremony for phase I of the renovation project, which will include the former administrative building on the site.

There is a non-profit group in the city that has planted more than 81,000 trees in Detroit since 1989. It promotes urban farming and reclaims the vacant lots for new green space. No matter how ridiculous it may sound, the Detroit Zoo was established because a circus arrived in the city and went bankrupt there.

In the early 1960s, Detroit had the highest per capita wage of any city in America. In 2009 the city had a worse unemployment rate than during the Great Depression. Nearly half of Detroit’s adults are functionally illiterate.

 

With grocery shops and restaurants few and far between, buying food becomes a real challenge in some areas. Credit: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images
With grocery shops and restaurants few and far between, buying food becomes a real challenge in some areas. Credit: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images

 

Crime has gotten so bad that the police warns visitors to “enter Detroit at your own risk”. It takes more than 58 minutes for the Detroit police to respond to a call, compared to a national average of 11 minutes in the US. Most police stations are now closed to the public for 16 hours a day. While there were 5,000 police officers in the city about 10 years ago, today there are only 2,500 left and another 100 are scheduled to be eliminated from the forces in the near future. No wonder that the murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City. Around 70% of local murders remain unsolved in Detroit.

There are reports that gangs of young men with AK-47s terrorise gas stations all over the city. The term “carjacking” originated in Detroit, MI. At one point, 100 bus drivers refused to follow their routes as they were afraid of being attacked right in the streets in broad daylight. There are more than 85,000 streetlights in Detroit but thieves have nicked so much copper wires of the lights that more than half of them does not work.

 

William Livingstone House, Brush Park, Detroit. Credit: Yves Marchand/Romain Meffre
William Livingstone House, Brush Park, Detroit. Credit: Yves Marchand/Romain Meffre

 

The city spends more money issuing parking fines than it collects from. In 2013 Detroit temporarily stopped issuing death certificates because it ran out of paper.

People constantly leave the city. There are 70,000 abandoned buildings, 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots in Detroit. As of January 2013, 47 houses were listed on sale for $500 or less, with five properties listed for just $1. It has been for some years now since an unbelievable (from the point of view of an outsider) but, in fact, desperate offer lingers online for foreigners who are qualified and wish to settle down in the US: homes are given to individuals if "they can prove a proper sense of employment and cash flow, as well as plans to renovate".

On 4th February 2013, the contributor Michael Snyder of the Activist Post wrote: “If you want to know what the future of America is going to be like, just look at the city of Detroit.  Once upon a time, it was a symbol of everything that America was doing right, but today it has been transformed into a rotting, decaying, post-apocalyptic hellhole.  Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, and in 1960 Detroit had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.  It was the greatest manufacturing city the world had ever seen, and the rest of the globe looked at Detroit with a sense of awe and wonder.  But now the city of Detroit has become a bad joke to the rest of the world... Back during the boom years, Detroit was known for making great cars.  Today, it is known for scenes of desolation and decay.  It is full of vandalised homes, abandoned schools, and empty factories... But don’t look down on Detroit, because the truth is that Detroit is really a metaphor for what is happening to America as a whole... Detroit may have gotten there first, but the rest of the country will follow soon enough”.

 

Detroit’s once glorious but now decrepit Michigan Theatre, which has been transformed into a car park, takes part in The Grand Tour. Credit: AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Detroit’s once glorious but now decrepit Michigan Theatre, which has been transformed into a car park, takes part in The Grand Tour. Credit: AFP/AFP/Getty Images

 

A great American city of the 1960s and 1970s still has some historic districts, which are worth living and visiting: Downtown Detroit, Corktown, and Midtown. However, the heartbreaking contrast between its past glory and present misery is well-spotted in the first episode of the Grand Tour. Despite the format of the car show, almost every major problem Detroit faces is mentioned by the presenters. British humour is only used to make the blow softer.

 

A panorama of Detroit, MI. Credit: Peter Mol
A panorama of Detroit, MI. Credit: Peter Mol

 

The official motto of Detroit “Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus” is Latin for “We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes”. This quote is attributed to the French priest, Father Gabriel Richard. His words seem to perfectly suit modern Detroit as the city keeps hoping to regain lost prosperity someday.

 

Kiss – Detroit Rock City