Stream : We are working on the mutations of urban spaces and Detroit is one of our case-study cities, given its symbolic dimension and its current situation. We met Dan Pitera who told us about the participatory dimension of the Detroit Future City project, working with citizens and the community in planning for the city. We found this approach very interesting, but it doesn’t deal with the downtown area and is very different from your approach as a real estate developer. We were interested in your thoughts about what is happening in Detroit and your hopes for the future.
Dan Mullen : Detroit is still Detroit. We’re all from Michigan here, and many, many of our relatives grew up downtown. The auto industry was there for many years: that’s really what brought families to the state of Michigan, and in particular to Detroit. And there’s a lot of opportunity in having the capital of the automotive world and innovation right here in Detroit. Even in the manufacturing days, when there was a lot more manual labor, the city was at the cutting edge in terms of design and creativity. That’s important for us, it’s part of our history. We called ourselves the Paris of the Midwest at one point. Downtown Detroit is also really where all the culture and the soul of the state of Michigan started.
Reclaiming downtown
So for us it’s important to help with the revitalization of downtown Detroit and the creation of an urban core now that this opportunity is presenting itself again. It’s all the more attractive because we are surrounded by this beautiful architecture. To be able to come in and help renovate the properties and recruit people to come downtown is really important to us. Not only is it where most of our families were created, some of this late 1800s architecture and early 1900s architecture is just beautiful.
For many years, students at many schools and major universities in Michigan were leaving for the suburbs, but this wasn’t happening in New York, Chicago, Boston, or L.A., where students were moving to the core downtown urban areas. And we recognize that’s where everyone wants to be. You want to walk outside your building, to get a coffee or some dinner. And just to be able to walk from A to B. Live, work, and play in walking distance. That’s why these urban cities are so successful.
Stream : Live, work, and play. That could be the motto of your project. Can you explain this concept a little?
Stream : When you talk about organic growth, do you mean that change is going to happen in a natural way?
Dan Mullen : You can’t force a thing to be something that it’s not, it will never work. You have to look at real estate and development as a way of kick-starting things and bringing resources to a city, but you can’t put buildings in an art district if they have nothing to do with that district. You have to understand the bones of the city, understand the community, understand what people want, do your research, and throw in your “igniters” so that the city can grow organically.
Stream : What do you think of those cities planned from scratch, like Songdo in Korea, where everything is planned, with cameras everywhere that are going to organize and survey everything that exists?
Dan Mullen : If you’re going to start from scratch and develop something it’s a little different. With acres and acres of open land, it has to be planned and built from scratch. But in Detroit we have a deep history and a deep culture that’s been here since 1703. To come in here and wipe out all of that and just say what should be put in place is not the right approach. We want to work with this history.
(This article was published in Stream 03 in 2014.)
