"Detroit has always been a city in the making--a place of promise and change." So writes Mort Crim in Greater Detroit: Renewing the Dream as he explores the city's heritage of abundant opportunity and transformation. Here, in the Motor City, the American dream is reborn every day, making Detroit a place that is constantly reinventing itself.
Accompanied by Susan VanDeRyt's stunning collection of high-quality images from the area's finest photographers, Crim shows the many ways that Detroit fulfills its legacy as a destination for those in search of a better life. The results are clear. Detroit now boasts the largest number of privately owned homes of any urban center in the nation, as well as a staunch work ethic and an unwavering sense of resilience in the face of adversity.
Like the American dream itself, Detroit is about pride. Pride in being a distinctly American metropolis. Pride in the revitalized automotive industry that slumped in the 1980s but that is once again making Detroit the Automotive Capital of the World. Pride in the soaring downtown skyscrapers. And pride in the countless communitywide celebrations--Freedom Festival on the riverfront; the IndyCar race on Belle Isle; and the Gold Cup races on the Detroit River, the best-attended single sporting event in the nation.
Detroit. Renewing and sustaining the American dream. As Mort Crim sums it up, Detroit is where Americans "across the centuries have come to improve their lot--to find the promised land." It is, indeed, the Renaissance City.
