From Model D Media: Immigrants in the 313: ‘This is Where the Future Begins’

You know it when you see it — or better yet — immerse yourself in it.

It can be charted, measured and put under statistical scrutiny, but a neighborhood that benefits from the presence of immigrants is best appreciated in real time, on its own terms, in dramatic living color.

The early voice of Detroit was French, Irish, German, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Spanish and Yiddish. Many of those voices have disappeared into the greater American tapestry, but others came to replace them: Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Albanian, Arabic, Urdu, Bengali and others. And to ensure urban vitality in the region, history suggests there need be a lot more to come in the future.

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Fast forward into the 21st century and Hamtramck still relies on property and income tax revenues from the distressed automakers and their suppliers, but it is also developing an identity quite separate from its industrial and Euro-ethnic cultural past.

A place that was about 90 percent Polish-speaking in the 1940s still retains that ethnic flavor via its three Roman Catholic churches, a Polish National Catholic parish and a Ukrainian Catholic church based on principles of the Eastern Byzintine Rite, as well as assorted restaurants, meat markets, credit unions and retailers. Hamtramck now, however, shares its dense 2 square miles with newer immigrant communities originating in the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. A long decaying commercial strip on secondary main street Conant was recently designated “Bangladesh Avenue,” to signify a decade-long turnaround helped by dozens of businesses opened by Bengali-speaking newcomers. An excellent account of this development appeared in Model D in October.

Economic Development Director Jason Friedmann says the transformation of Conant is only the beginning of what he sees as more investment by immigrant entrepreneurs in the near future.

“We are getting more interest in the south end of Jos. Campau (Hamtramck's well known main drag), where there is a larger Arab community (from Yemen),” Friedmann says. “There is a bakery in the works and other businesses (quite separate) from what's going on the Bangladeshi community.”

To add more multicultural flavor to this urban stew, there is a Bosnian American Cultural Center and mosque in the city, which serves a Muslim population that fled its war-torn country in the late 1990s, a Zen Buddhist center, in a former Polish social hall tucked away in a northend residential neighborhood, and a newly-relocated Hindu temple on Conant.

Debashish Das, who runs a business on Conant and is a member of comparatively small Bangladeshi Hindu community, lives within walking distance of his work and the temple.

“Some of my customers who moved to the suburbs say I should move there, too,” Das says. “But I disagree. I have everything I need right here: business, community, religion. I tell them, 'You should join me, my life is a full as life can be in this neighborhood.' ”

Models for the D

What Southwest Detroit and Hamtramck have to teach us is that by concentrating our most valuable resource —“ people, people, people —“ into densely populated neighborhoods, real social building results. Then even more people are attracted to this growing human core of energy, creating exciting cultural hybrids.

It's no surprise then that these two districts within the 313 are also attractive to young adult artists and professionals who favor the snap, crackle and pop of city life over the generally dull and unremarkable suburban experience favored by their parents. Imagine Corktown, Midtown and Woodbridge infused with a recombined immigrant business and neighborhood buzz (let's use Brooklyn's North Williamsburg and Greenpoint as prime examples), and the mind boggles.

The article’s author, Walter Wasacz, describes himself as “a pierogi-eating, techno/punk-rockin’ Hamtramck native son and resident.”

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, these efforts at rebuilding cities and neighborhoods through adaptive reuse, re-invigoration, and re-investment are not doomed to failure. I applaud the idea people and the workers who see value in human lives, their ability to transform lives by working with life. Another important point, churches and religious centers are of necessity, the heart of the community. Fancy that…