Miracle on Woodward Avenue

摘要

Having grown up outside Detroit in the wake of the devastating 1967 riots that drove the middle class to the suburbs, I've been accustomed to viewing attempts to revitalize the city as hope trumping experience. So I wasn't expecting too much from Campus Martius Park, a project conceived as part of the city's celebration of its 300th anniversary in 2001 and opened in November 2004. It's hard to fault any effort to bring back the city, but it was difficult to believe that the area's famously skittish suburbanites would be drawn to mix and mingle in a park smack in the middle of the city's blighted downtown, no matter how good the intentions or the design.