What's Still Great About Michigan

By Catherine

“Welcome to the bottom of the crater,” said NPR's Lansing correspondent, in a recent radio interview about the struggling Michigan economy. Michigan has been a national leader in recession statistics. We've got more foreclosures, more failing industries, and more unemployment than practically anywhere else. BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow called Detroit the “most science fictional city in the world”, referring (I assume) to its positively post-apocalyptic condition. Flint, Michigan, is closing half of its schools and planning shutdowns of services to many city neighborhoods following major population loss. [Update: see comments for more information on Flint.] And even Ann Arbor is showing signs of recession fatigue, with the recent loss of one of the city's major employers (Pfizer) and the University of Michigan tightening its belt.

Michigan didn't just fall on hard times yesterday. Detroit has been in a downward spiral for decades. Michiganders (yes, that's what we call ourselves) never tire of speculating about how much worse Detroit could possibly get. We almost miss disgraced Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in that regard, since the supply of “My God, I thought it couldn't have gotten any worse” moments has slowed to a trickle since he was finally booted out of office. The auto industry has been stuttering for years, and the Oldsmobile plant in Lansing shut down permanently in 2004. Michigan real estate, always in the “affordable” category, now sells for spare change that you can find under the floor mats in your car. Job postings are sparse, and when there is a job opening, hundreds or even thousands of people may apply for it. The governor was slashing the budget mercilessly throughout the real estate “boom,” when Michigan was playing the canary in the coal mine to the rest of the country's irrational exuberance. Now that the whole country has plunged into a “real” recession, the state is somewhere between resigned and panicked at the prospect of what might be next. Rumor has it that thousands of guests of the prison system will be back in circulation. In fact, I actually heard about this on the radio immediately following a story about how Michigan is promoting its tourism industry—a “bargain” vacation. Sure, come to Michigan, and have an ex-convict mix you an umbrella drink as you admire the crumbling Detroit skyline from your lounge chair.

So, honestly, what's great about Michigan anymore? I've been nagging Juli to move back here for years, and sometimes I think she envisions moving into a tarpaper shack and running an illegal dogfighting ring. What's left to do here? Why do so many of us stubbornly stay?

Well, let me tell you. Michigan is still great. Greater than great. For one thing, we are still sitting on a wealth of natural resources—the same wealth that attracted logging, mining, farming, and the industrial revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. Michigan is second only to California within the US in the variety of agricultural produce that can be raised here, and the most fertile part of the state is under Detroit—a place that desperately needs a good razing anyhow. We also have copper mines, shuttered for decades when copper was cheap. Now that people are looting empty houses just to sell the copper, those mines aren't looking so bad. And how about water? Michigan is plopped smack in the middle of the largest body of fresh surface water on Earth. And contrary to what most people believe, that water doesn't disappear forever when we drink it or take a shower. (Anyone ever heard of the water cycle?) As long as John McCain doesn't suck it all to Arizona with his giant straw, the Great Lakes will continue to be an incomparable local resource.

Second, we've got people. Sure, a lot of yellow-bellied cowards have moved out of state looking for jobs. (Cough, Juli. Cough, Em.) But there's a loyal remnant that are here for the duration, and a goodly number of those are actually not ex-convicts. For example, celebrity entrepreneur and Ann Arborite Roger Newton (of Esperion fame) has made a firm commitment to the state, and continues to be involved in the business community here. Likewise, companies in the pharma, IT, and auto industries have been sniffing around at the skilled labor left behind by shortsighted companies like Ford and Pfizer. In a rapidly changing global economy, downriver Detroit can be the next China, or India, with its wealth of labor and low cost of living. And people like me are becoming very clever about telecommuting and freelancing. All of the income in my household is drawn from out of state, or even out of country. Nowadays, it's not that important to live where you work if you have a job you can do in isolation. It's more a matter of whether employers are willing to give up control, and when they see that an employee working from home in Michigan will work for half of what they'd pay an employee in Boston, their resistance starts to give way to greed. From the point of view of the employee, I don't see why anyone would pay high east or west coast rents if their employer will allow them to dial in from anywhere.

And the last reason that Michigan is still great is the same as the reason it sucks. Face it, Michigan is wiped out. That means we are desperate and very willing to change. Want us to tear out our old infrastructure and rebuild it? Sure. We'll do it quick and take chickens in payment. Want us to retrain, reform our schools, build walkable neighborhoods, plant gardens in empty lots? Yeah, we'll do that,too. It's been noted that in regions that have had to rebuild from the ground up, development can actually outpace more affluent areas. This is because the brand new development can implement the newest technology, and newest concepts, which is a lot easier than updating the old stuff or changing people set in their ways. An example is Estonia, which in the 1990's went from being a third world country to having the most advanced communications infrastructure in the world. Estonia implemented internet voting in 2005 and is pioneering the “e-state” and “e-government”--a change unimaginable in old-fashioned, fossilized, legacy-burdened U.S.A. Another example is Taiwan, which went from having a very poor health care system, to having—again—one of the world's best. (They studied the successes and failures of health care in other countries, and then used what they learned in building a new system.)

Michigan is primed for a major recovery, and unlike the rest of the country, we're not in shock about the recession. We've been in recession for years and we are dealing with it, looking to the next step. And maybe this is another (better) reason that Detroit is the most sfnal city in the world, because it has the potential to really become the model of a 21st century city. Two years ago, Michigan was a reflection of the future of the rest of the country. That's still true today.

Detroit skyline image by Meagansphotos, some rights reserved.