Detroit's miraculous rebirth<

The crowd of big evenings freshens in the big flamboyant hall of Fisher Building, where we play a gentleman's guide to love and mord, Robert L play.Freedman."Hilarious!"("Hilarious"), according to New York Times criticism.Invited by a cultural association, Edward Bell, a 42-year-old African-American born in Detroit, pink butterfly knot and impeccable gray suit, penetrates his life for the first time in the city's most beautiful skyscraper.Fleury of Art Deco architecture, built during the great depression by the brilliant architect Albert Kahn, the Fisher Building, with its integrated eleven -storey garage and its 135 -meter tower, was sold at auction, a year ago,For ridiculous sum of $ 12.2 million - the previous owner having gone bankruptcy.There are more expensive apartments than that to buy in the Trump Tower flashy of the fifth avenue, in New York.

"I have several black friends who support Donald Trump's candidacy.You have to give him a chance: he will shake things.Between the two candidates, I prefer to vote for him, even if it is not a very exciting vote, "admits Edward Bell, who does not hide his disappointment on the balance sheet of Barack Obama in terms of interracial relations.He is not the only African American of Detroit to be tempted by the populist escape.The recent visit of the Republican candidate in a black church in Detroit, on September 3, aroused a few turmoil and a certain curiosity.But it would take a real miracle for him to pierce in the automotive capital (83% black), where Barack Obama had won 98% of the vote in 2012 (and 97% in 2008).

Everything happens in the city deemed "the most crazy" in America, one of the poorest in the country.Three years after declaring the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States, the world capital of the automobile is up.And don't forget that she was the cradle of the Motown (Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson...) - Contraction of Motor Town - then techno in the 80s.

Hardly shaken by the 2008 crisis, the city of Henry Ford and the Fisher brothers is today in full swing.Start-ups and "hipsters" flock, attracted by the promises of reconstruction.The cranes and construction sites stand everywhere on Woodward Avenue, the legendary artery where the "Dream Cruise", the great parade of conventional cars parade each summer, each summer parade every summer.The gaping wounds of the devastated districts were partly absorbed.After losing half of its population in fifty years, Shrinking City (the shrinking city) has stopped the hemorrhage for a few months.Thanks to the skill of judge Gerald Rosen, the city even avoided the supreme humiliation that would have been the dispersion - a envisaged moment - of the masterpieces of the dia (the detroit institute of art), with its prestigious collectionde Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh, and his sumptuous frescoes of Diego Rivera.

Admittedly, Detroit, whose area covers the equivalent of San Francisco, Manhattan and Boston together, still resembles a Gruyère city with strange islets of greenery around which ghostly ruins remain, no man's land to La David Lynch, whereWe find ourselves pressing the accelerator, after dark.These desolate urban landscapes had the merit of inspiring filmmakers.It is here that Jim Jarmusch shot his vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive, that Ryan Gosling made his Lost River and that in 2014 David Robert Mitchell signed It follows one of the best horror films of the decade.So many works that replaced Detroit on the world map of creativity.Cass avenue drug sellers gave way to hipsters from all over America.Detroit is now perceived as "the" recovery not to be missed.The Silicon Valley champions are starting to take a closer look at Tech Town incubators from Cass Corridor, around the Wayne State University campus.

"Since the bankruptcy of the city which has made it possible to relaunch municipal services, there has been an explosion of construction sites in Downtown and Midtown," says KC Crain Jr, the Automative News publisher, the Bible of the 'automobile industry.From the top floor of the elegant headquarters, on the edge of the trendy district of Eastern Market, Kc Crain Jr kisses the skyline from which Greektown Casino Hotel Dan Gilbert stands out..Personal friend of the heirs Agnelli and the managers of the famous Big Three, the publisher is full of praise for the engine role of this billionaire who is active to revive the main city of Michigan, like Cleveland or Portland.

Investors come back in number

In five years, Dan Gilbert has become the face of the Detroit resurrection. «Il a repris 95 édifices pour 2,2 milliards de dollars, et pas des moindres»», s'exclame, admiratif, KC Crain Jr, en désignant du doigt les immenses peintures murales que le fondateur de Quicken Loans, numéro 2 du crédit immobilier américain, a commandées aux street-artists Raoul et David Perre (How & Nosm) et à Shepard Fairey, l'auteur des célèbres affiches d'Obama.Only this 54-year-old self-made-man, a physique of John Wayne, took over a third of the skyscrapers from the historic center of Detroit.In 2010, his decision to transfer the headquarters of his group, and therefore thousands of jobs, in the city center played the role of detonator.His holding Rock Ventures now reigns over an empire of 110 companies, and $ 6 billion in turnover, present in real estate, casinos and high speed networks, in Detroit and Cleveland.

"You have to operate tumors and everything that cannot be saved before treating the fabric of a city," recently welcomed Dan Gilbert at a conference at the Wayne University.The "cleaning" program launched by the Democrat mayor Mike Duggan worked: "We eliminated 11,000 houses in two or three years.The Rock Ventures boss has invested in the emblematic manufacturer of Shinola trendy watches and bikes, a brand that now seduces to New York and Paris, and in the first line of tram, scheduled for the end of the year onWoodward Avenue."In thirty years, I have never seen so much interest in investing in Detroit," adds Chris Ilitch, the son of Mike Ilitch, the other local billionaire who made a fortune by creating the Little Caesars Pizzas fast food chain.The Ilitch family has already invested $ 2 billion in the renovation of the city center, including 630 million in the construction of the new Red Wings hockey stadium planned for 2017.Since the election in 2013 of Mike Duggan, the first white mayor for forty years, Detroit has attracted more and more Chinese investors.And in 2015, the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim offered the Marquette Building, an icon from the Chicago School of Architecture, in the city center.

And now?According to Bryan Barnhill II, a young Harvard graduate from a black suburb, "Chief Talent Officer" of the mayor (in charge of human resources), "the main challenge is to ensure that the Renaissance is fairly distributed within the variousperipheries ".Not easy."Until now it benefits whites and has not been as fast as in Cleveland," observes Bertrand Rakoto, consultant at D3 Intelligence, installed in Detroit.In addition, the overwhelming role of Dan Gilbert, targeted by several federal surveys on his real estate loans, is not unanimous."He plays Simcity with Detroit", we often hear in reference to video games which simulate a city management.Its recent provision of offices for a fundraising meeting in favor of Donald Trump sowed the trouble."It plays an essential role, but such a concentration of powers in the hands of a single operator is a bit risky," confirms the writer Aaron Foley, editor of a black community magazine."That he has created his own private security force in the city center can be a problem.But the real Achille de Detroit heel remains his school system, still "one of the worst in the United States"."Many schools have closed or are still in ruins," says the author of a remarkable book (how to live in Detroit without being a moron) in which he disputes the real impact of "hipsters" in Carhartt - other brand jacketsemblematic of the city -perceived as a narrow white category.

"It's now or never."Loved on a deep white sofa of her spacious house of Indian Village built in 1916, the French novelist Eve de Castro welcomes herself to have opted, a little over a year ago, for Detroit and her magic layers ofSun on the monumental abandoned station.Author of several historical novels, she did not hesitate to sell her Parisian apartment, near the Opera Garnier, to head the city founded in 1701 by the French adventurer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac."Here, a year ago, you could buy a house for $ 17,000.In May 2014, the city even auctions the houses of the East English Village at the floor price of $ 1,000, with a commitment to restore on the part of the buyer.The time of these incredible cases will quickly pass: “Price increased between 70 and 200% in a year and a half in all historic areas.Suddenly, while working on two novel projects and a TV series, she bought auction on an online site another house in ruins, to retype and rent it."There are billions of dollars that are dumped here.Above all, what is fascinating is the convergence of energies.It is a lesson for Europeans and the heirs of Balzac: there is no shame of bankruptcy here.In the failure we learn the lessons to bounce back.»»

«C'est une ville qui a une âme, en plus d'être particulièrement belle architecturalement»», assure Xavier Mosquet, l'homme qui dirige le bureau de Detroit du Boston Consulting Group (BCG) depuis 2005. D'après lui, le «mystère»» du déclin de Detroit puise, paradoxalement, ses racines dans l'essor de l'automobile, à la fin des années 40."As soon as we offer Americans the opportunity to go and live a little further with more space, they tend to get out of cities.»"For her part, Sheila Cockrel, president of Crossroads Consulting, who sat in the municipal council for fifteen years, underlines the role of" racial tensions in the exodus of capital to the outskirts "».To which we can add the responsibility of often light councilors, sometimes downright dishonest.The city has long lived much above its meager means, certain that in the end the federal state would not give it fall and bail out it, as it had bange New York in the 70s.Miscalculation...

Barack Obama was far from being indifferent to the difficulties of Motor City, since he saved the automotive industry in 2008.Xavier Mosquet, who advised the administration in the implementation of the public aid plan, is formal: "Without this plan, nothing of this resurrection would have happened: we would have 1 million unemployed in Michigan.Ten billion is little to save GM and Chrysler.If they had not been saved by the State, all suppliers would have failed and Toyota and Ford would probably have changed...»On the other hand, the White House, tired of seeing the municipality dig a bottomless well, did nothing to avoid the bankruptcy of the city.

Le consultant français y voit une étape «indispensable»» pour alléger la dette.Bankruptcy certainly does not solve the problem of the erosion of the population (800,000 inhabitants against 3 million in the 1960s) or its corollary (the drop in tax revenue), but it lowered Detroit debt from 18 billion to 13billions of dollars.Above all, Motor City now looks at the future with confidence.Most of the major world car manufacturers (Hyundai, Toyota...) kept their research centers there.To attract new skills, the city is focusing on the extension of the field of mobility, with the arrival of future autonomous vehicles scheduled between 2022 and 2025.Already, the experimental circuit of M-City, in Ann Arbor, has become the main test of semi-autonomous vehicles.Last September, Uber announced its intention to open its research center in this area in the vicinity of Detroit.The diversification of the economic fabric already goes through high-tech, biotechnologies and urban gardens.The city even offered itself in October an expansion project of $ 50 million in its legendary music museum, the Motown Museum.

On October 16, the runners of the Detroit marathon crossed Indian Village."Everyone was running, sang, applauded, danted and cheerfully dancing, under a broken water, in a magical atmosphere and a glorious light. Une voisine portait un T-shirt avec imprimé «Don't Brooklyn my Detroit»» »» , raconte Eve de Castro.The risks of gentrification.