Detroit Bike City

"I've always found the best way to read a city's mood in is on a bicycle." 

In today's world of media coming at us from a million different directions, I rarely take the time to read a long newspaper article.  I can't remember ever looking at the Travel section of the New York Times.  But when that line above popped up in my view, I said, "You had me at bicycle."  I just read this whole article, and it was a great read.

It starts as a great bike rider piece, but morphs into a look at the incredible and varied ways community activism, and investment by one rich guy, are rebuilding Detroit.  If you remember the heyday of America's Industrial Age, you remember Detroit as Motor City, the car manufacturing powerhouse city.  Then it became one of the cities hardest hit by the collapse of our manufacturing economy.  For a decade or more, Detroit's been best known for urban decay and "ruin porn."  In this article I read not only about the rebuilding of the former Motor City, but a look at how this whole country is going to rebuild itself while our elected representatives argue in Washington argue with each other in public and joke of free drinks in private.  This article is a look at the D.I.Y. spirit that will spread rapidly when we tumble into our next recession and realize the future is up to us, not the "experts" or the power brokers behind the scenes of our world.

If there's anything about your town or city that you think needs improvement or a new start, read this article.  Then make something cool happen.