DETROITERS POINT WAY FOR 21st CENTURY CITIES By Grace Lee Boggs Michigan Citizen, Nov. 25-Dec. 1, 2007

In the 21st century cities are becoming what the nation-state was in the 19th and 20th centuries - the primary provider of work. shelter, sustenance, culture and leisure, according to Alev Cinar & Thomas Bender, editors of a new University of Minnesota book, Urban Imaginaries: Locating the Modern City.

As the transnational flows of people, capital, goods and ideas increase and the regulatory powers of nation states recede, city and local governments are finding themselves grappling with critical environmental and even foreign policy questions that federal governments are unable or unwilling to tackle.

Before the end of this century we can even expect the creation of a United Cities Organization to supplement, if not displace, the functions of the United Nations.

Yet very little thought is being given by those in positions of responsibility to how we, the people of the cities of the world, will sustain ourselves in this period of declining jobs and planetary emergency.

Throughout the Third World millions of peasants driven off the land by globalization and mechanization are building favelas that rise up like anthills in megacities that have no jobs for them. (Mike Davis: Planet of Slums , South End Press, 2007)

In global cities like New York and Atlanta high rise condos are being built to accommodate the millions who service corporate globalization, heedless of the stress that these huge concentrations of people are putting on water and other life-essentials.

Meanwhile, Detroiters, struggling to survive in a city which was once a national and international symbol of the miracles of industrialization and presently represents the devastation caused by de-industrialization, are beginning to provide a model of the kind of self-sustaining, low carbon emissions, city needed world-wide in the 21st century.

It all began in the 1980s with the “Gardening Angels,” a loose network of African American elders who viewed vacant lots less as “blight” and more as an opportunity for gardens that would not only provide food for the community but also reconnect young people, growing up in the asphalt jungle, with the Earth. Now creating a local food economy with greenhouses, canneries, markets has become the goal of residents in all walks of life.

A growing number of Detroiters, having recognized that we can no longer depend on factory or corporate jobs for our income, are struggling to create small enterprises based on local resources and talents. An example that I described in last week’s column is “In Our Own Backyard,” a program organized by four community activists to develop skills in unemployed and underemployed residents that will empower them to create their own businesses that also serve our communities.

Detroiters are also exploring how to build an economy based on Work as distinguished from Jobs. Jobs, which are done only for wages and reduce us to appendages to machines, have only existed for a few hundred years and are now disappearing. What our world needs today are not just Jobs, especially routine ones which also pollute our environment and accelerate global warming, but useful Work which not only produce goods and services but develop skills and create community.

All over Detroit, as Hope replaces Despair, there is a hum of activity, not only practical but cultural and philosophical.

Young people, especially, are defining themselves, creating their own language and educating each other. Instead of sitting around and complaining about what Detroit doesn’t have, they are participating in

Spoken Word gatherings that take place almost every night in different parts of the city. The organizers of the Allied Media Conference, convened last June in Detroit, are preparing for another mind-blowing, spirit-uplifting gathering in June 2008.

On Saturday, November 11, entertainer and comedian Bill Cosby led a march through the Rosa Parks neighborhood where the Detroit rebellion erupted in July 1967, urging residents not to be afraid to take back our neighborhoods. After the march Cosby spoke at Triedstone Baptist Church, where Detroit- City of Hope campaigners greeted him with their newsletter reporting what we are already doing to revitalize our neighborhoods. See www.detroit-city-of-hope.org/