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Why did you choose Detroit?

April 2, 2012 · 50 Comments

“Why did you choose Detroit?” That is a question that is asked of me and everyone who lives and goes to school here incessantly. This weekend we were barraged with this question as Detroit was the host of the AIAS Midwest Quad Conference with students and educators from around the Midwest and beyond coming to our city. My response to them, “Why wouldn’t you?”

Why wouldn’t you choose Detroit? Detroit is an amazing landscape of culture, diversity, and people. Our history is in every history book and the techniques we developed here are used worldwide. Our history was great, but our future will be greater. Here in Detroit we have the opportunity to become a city like none other. We have the opportunity to redefine what a city landscape can hold and look like. Detroit can be the model for Urban Revitalization in a way no one has ever done or thought of before.

I want to be part of that. I want to be part of a city that says, “I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks of me. I am going to continue on, forward, and up, no matter how you beat me down.” I want to be part of possibly the largest urban revitalization project ever done with the unearthing of Bloody Run Creek. I want to be part of this growing optimism that finds its way into every soul in within the city.

Here in the D I can do something great, something that matters, something for the good of many. That is why I choose Detroit because together, we are Detroit, and that is what we do.

-Spencer

 

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