Two ancient French cities. The first, founded by Cadillac in 1701; the second, founded by Bienville nearly seventeen years later. Both predate the republic by several generations. Detroit and New Orleans have followed vastly divergent paths in the three centuries since their founding, but there are some interesting parallels between the two.

The St. Charles Streetcar is back in service.

Both cities are a little ragged by time, studded with faded remnants of a more prosperous era. Both cities face struggles for new employment generators. Both have suffered cataclysmic devastation of urban fabric, and a precipitous population loss. Both have fabulous renovated buildings casually intermixed with brooding ruins. And both Detroit and New Orleans have some of the most creative and passionate residents in America; determined to maintain an urban lifestyle unique to themselves.

Magazine Street shops

I’m presenting an album of New Orleans photos today, as a way to catch up with my readers and as a mea culpa for my long absence. I was married last month, and that combined with our honeymoon in the Crescent City somehow pulled me away from my blogging duties. You understand.

We were in town for the freak snowstorm.

So what’s going on in New Orleans these days? A lot; in fact the oldest historic neighborhoods have largely recovered from the aftermath of Katrina. I learned that this is because, before the flood “protection” installed in the early twentieth century, residential construction occurred only on natural levees and ridges. In the deltaic floodplain of the lower Mississippi, the highest ground is actually closest to the river. Here’s where we find the French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, and Esplanade Avenue; and the Warehouse District, Lower Magazine Street, and the Garden District.

Which isn’t to say that the city doesn’t have a lot of work to do. New Orleans’ biggest employer, the tourism industry, was heavily damaged by the bad publicity after the hurricane. We were received like royalty at every shop or cafe we visited (not that this is all that different than my recollection of pre-storm hospitality!).

Restoration work on Esplanade mansion.

We found this month to be a good moment for a relaxing New Orleans getaway, before the intensity of Mardi Gras takes over much of the city in February. New Orleans is currently hosting a terrific contemporary arts exhibition titled Prospect.1, which has been running since November and will wind down on Sunday, January 18th. Featured in the New York Times, this exhibition is housed in high profile settings like the Contemporary Arts Center, as well as abandoned structures and fields in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Contemporary Arts Center, Interior view.

The ‘orange house’, part of the Prospect.1 city-wide exhibition.

Site of levee break, and a stop on the Prospect.1 exhibition. Lower Ninth Ward.

The organizers have prepared an outstanding wayfinding map, and there is a reliable shuttle service connecting all the Prospect.1 venues.

The Lower Ninth Ward, or is it a west-side Detroit street view?

I also made time for a visit to the Preservation Resource Center on Tchoupitoulas Street.

Preservation Resource Center.

The PRC is a strong voice for presentation and sustainable urban living in New Orleans, and has been a critical player in the many post-hurricane debates concerning damaged historic buildings.

A tattered blue roof tarp, a symbol of post-Katrina New Orleans, survives on this shotgun.

With more than a dozen staff members, a permanent exhibition and shop space, and a thick monthly magazine, they are a first-class, professional preservation organization. Since I’m sure all of my readers are already members of Preservation Wayne, I would encourage you to support PRC as well.

A spray-painted Katrina marker left as a remembrance on this restored mansion.

There is no reason Detroit can’t take inspiration from what’s going on in New Orleans; the rebounding neighborhoods, the entrepreneurs populating historic storefronts, the resurgent music scene, and a civic obsession with art, preservation, and culture. Forget Atlanta and its vapid glassy skyline; this haunting, idiosyncratic city is Detroit’s true southern soul mate.

An antebellum mansion succumbing to nature and neglect.

I’m hopeful that the next several years will see a slow improvement in the fortunes of these two soulful American cities, which share more problems, and more potential, than most other towns in America.

I recently had the chance to visit one of America’s most historic gardens, at Monticello outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Monticello west elevation with school group, 2008

If you’ve never had the chance to tour the famous home of our third president (and architect), I’ll certainly recommend it to you. It is a fascinating compendium of experimentation and tradition, and a required stop (along with the nearby University of Virginia) for fans of early American architecture. But be sure to visit in the warm months, so you can devote some attention to the garden: the subject of today’s post.

Garden at Monticello, 2008

Originally tended by the slaves of Thomas Jefferson, today the garden has been restored and is beautifully stocked with heirloom flowers and vegetables (seeds are available for purchase nearby). Monticello’s vegetable garden is a production space, really a miniature farm, and separate from the more formal landscaped garden directly adjacent to the main house. The annual produce yield is divided among the various employees of Monticello, which sounds like a great benefit in our current times. Of course in no way can Monticello be considered an urban location; when it was built, it was on the very western frontier of America. Today it is still resolutely rural. But it certainly got me thinking about the joys of gardening in even the smallest plots.

My own garden so far, 2008

Detroit, as some readers might know, was once an urban anomaly for the large proportion of single-family homes in comparison to its working population. While laborers in New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore dreamed of escaping dense urban districts, their cousins in Detroit were able to buy their own homes on small lots. This means that for those lucky enough to live in Detroit today, there is a fair chance you’ll have room for a garden in your own yard.

Detroit gardener overseeing his plot, 2008

But hope is not lost for those apartment dwellers in denser areas with scant access to private, sun-splashed yards. As cities suffered in the 1970s and 1980s, spawning vacant lots in the wake of demolished buildings, a few hardy souls dared to pull out weeds and plant seeds on the newly open land. Soon the concept of a community garden emerged out of this urban context; a space owned by none but shared by all. In many cities these gardens were started without permission on land owned by the city or absentee landlords; as a result there has been confrontation and even legal action when the land’s value suddenly recovers. But in other cases cities have recognized the community value of these impromptu plots, and “legalized” their status by accepting them into the municipal park system. There’s one right by my place in Santa Monica…

Santa Monica Community Garden on Main Street, 2008

Typically the lots are divided into dozens of small plots, often with long waiting lists among community members. You can grow vegetables, or flowers, or both; you can even install a bench or two and simply create a pleasant social space without getting your hands dirty. In almost all cases the gardens are open to the general public for viewing, conversation, and picnics.

New York City residents have been, and continue to be, pioneers in the development and operation of community gardens. Initially envisioned as a short-term use of abandoned spaces, many community gardens have become legalized and absorbed into the city’s park system, thereby allowing them to resist intense demands for land in Manhattan’s densest and most desirable districts. The 6th and B Garden in the heart of New York’s East Village is well known to me from my years of roaming that neighborhood, and provides a significant community benefit in terms of light, air, open space and greenery. It even hosts small events on a stage in the corner. Its apparent proximity to Tompkins Square Park does not limit its necessity.

With summer not quite here, there is still time to plant. If you’re interested in getting involved in Detroit gardening, check out Detroit’s own Garden Resources Program Collaborative, which is a resource for urban gardeners. Trees can be gotten from these folks, who are helping green the city. There are some rumors about a community garden under development at MoCAD. And here’s a link to the American Community Garden Association, which has an excellent list of hints for starting a garden on a vacant lot near you.

Harmony with nature may not immediately come to mind when thinking of cities. But think again. An article in Sunday’s New York Times reminds us that city dwellers, perhaps contrary to intuition, actually live greener lives than their suburban counterparts. Its all about density and distances, and the city always beats the suburbs in these primaries. (Yes, your blogger has been obsessing on politics lately.)

New Orleans Canal Street streetcar line, under construction, 2003.

Sustainable urbanism is the effort to codify and perpetuate an approach to urban development that prizes connections and adjacencies over large private lots and miserable commutes. One of the best ways to ‘measure’ the green bona fides of a new neighborhood development is through the certification process available through LEED. This acronym, now well-known among designer types, stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED was a system pioneered by the U.S. Green Building Council (an umbrella group of developers, architects, and academics) about a decade ago. Originally, the intent of LEED was to stimulate the construction and operation of sustainable buildings. This original LEED system is now referred to as LEED-NC, where the NC stands for New Construction. Architects refer to LEED-NC requirements on an almost daily basis in a progressive practice, where university or governmental clients increasingly demand buildings that achieve LEED certification.

In recent years LEED has expanded its metrics to areas of immediate concern to preservationists. Many of us who gravitated to historic preservation were appalled not only by the loss of architectural character in American cities, but the sheer waste of embodied energy in the land-filled materials and demolished buildings themselves. For preservationists, it is an article of faith that programming needs should be addressed first with adaptive reuse, and then if necessary with new construction. For urbanists (a group often overlapping with preservationists), sensitive infrastructure development is of major concern to vibrant and renewed urban life. Read this recent Los Angeles Times piece for a good object lesson.

I-75 Northbound in Auburn Hills. The old paradigm.

For this reason (and because of the success of LEED-NC), the LEED-EB and LEED-ND systems are going to become increasingly relevant to preservation and planning work in American cities. Look for them to appear soon in model codes, zoning ordinances, and master plans adopted by municipalities across the country. EB stands for Existing Buildings, and includes points for reuse of existing building stock. ND refers to Neighborhood Development, and thus the LEED-ND system is directly related to sustainable urbanism. In many metropolitan areas sustainable urbanism can be mainly concerned with [sub]urbanism, but the acres of empty land pockmarking Detroit make LEED-ND an urgent and necessary reference tool for our future. I will explore the LEED systems in depth in future posts.

And, by the way, Thomas Sugrue–Detroit native, urban historian and author of a highly recommended book on Detroit–is quoted in the NYT article referenced above.

In the early 1990s, when many of us erstwhile suburban types began our rediscovery of the city, we explored for the first time the buildings and neighborhoods we’ve grown to love. At the same time, we were horrified and hardened by what we saw. Standing amidst the collapsing splendor of Brush Park, a neighborhood once home to Detroit royalty, it summoned all our efforts to understand what could have caused such utter transformation. We convinced ourselves that never again would we stand by while a gorgeous Detroit neighborhood falls to pieces.

Highland Park, winter 2007.

Fifteen years have passed since perhaps the gloomiest days in Detroit. Since that time the Detroit preservation community, with ever-improving attention from elected officials and professional bureaucracies, has done much to stabilize a catastrophic situation.

It has become almost a cliche in Detroit preservation circles to express relief that, despite the carnage of the last half-century, we still have world-class historic residential fabric in Indian Village, Boston-Edison, Arden Park, and a few smaller neighborhoods of note. Indeed, many of us are proud to make our homes in these very neighborhoods. Here we see not just lone monuments guarding half-empty streets, but rows of neatly kept homes, seemingly a world apart. We believe almost instinctively that these neighborhoods are a lasting bulwark against decay; a springboard from which to rebuild Detroit.

This weekend’s piece in the Detroit Free Press is a warning shot to all of us who would count these landmark neighborhoods as ’saved.’ A walk through some of Detroit’s proudest streets reveals vacant, bank-owned homes in grave danger of being stripped for precious metals, architectural details, or in many cases, both. In particular danger are homes whose defaulted mortgages reside in bundles now owned by investment groups with no Detroit connection whatsoever.

It may be time to consider how we save what’s already been saved.

Another aim of this blog will be to give Detroit-area residents a better idea of how the city is seen nationally, or internationally.

Today's article on selling Detroit's parks is our first example.

There is certainly a great deal of open space in the city in the form of vacant lots, but surely there is value to keeping these municipal parcels intact. Los Angeles, for one, is a city that is famously short of public space; and at this juncture it is far too late to do anything about it. New York, on the other hand, has for more than a century built up its collection of parks and playgrounds both great and small.

And a concluding thought from our erstwhile arch-rival: "Parks are the outward visible symbol of democracy" --NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, 1956.