La
ville se réinvente à partir de son centre urbain qui se veut un quartier
d’affaires branché, tourné vers la recherche et
l'innovation. Ce mouvement est impulsé par les puissances publique,
privée et philanthropique qui se donnent pour but de faire renaître Detroit de
manière ambitieuse et redevenir, ainsi, une ville qui compte dans le paysage
économique et social mondial. Équiper la ville de la fibre optique est une
étape nécessaire pour faciliter les échanges et offrir le visage attractif
d’une ville tournée vers l’avenir.
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By
Eric Pianin (fiscaltimes.com) - March 29, 2015
Now It’s Detroit’s Turn
for a High-Speed Comeback
Last
fall, construction crews began digging trenches in downtown Detroit to lay
super high-speed fiber optics cable below a new street. This workspace wasn’t
far from three-and-a-half miles of reconstructed pathways, parks, green space
and a refurbished luxury hotel along the Detroit River.
Rocket
Fiber, an ultra-high-speed Internet and TV services for central Detroit, will
offer advanced broadband in a major boost to the city’s technology startup
scene. The hope is that it will entice more upscale residents to the area.
While
Detroit is far from the first major or even medium-sized city to be wired for
the new one gigabit-per-second service – comparable to Google Wire – it is an
important sign of how the one-time motor capital of the world is emerging from
the worst Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy in history. The city is reinventing
itself as an edgy urban center of business, research and innovation thanks to a
unique public, private and philanthropic coalition. This coalition wants to
restore Detroit to its long-ago glory days as a center of commerce, innovation
and culture – and early signs of a renaissance are beginning to spread from the
inner core out.
Dan
Gilbert, the billionaire founder of Quicken Loans and the patron saint of
Motown’s revival, has purchased or taken out leases on 60 or more properties in
the downtown area, including the iconic Hudson’s department store. Many of his
purchases are 20th century architectural masterpieces. Gilbert is bankrolling
Rocket Fiber, the high-speed Internet service that analysts and business
experts say could help downtown businesses compete on a national level for
customers and employees.
Gilbert
and others view Detroit’s mission as a race to the top among Rust Belt cities
that have lagged behind the Southwest, the East Coast and Silicon Valley in
building critical infrastructure – roads, bridges, transit, airports –
essential to their economic futures, The Detroit Free Press has reported. While
Congress and the Obama administration have struggled over new long-term
infrastructure policies, Detroit and other cities on the rebound are taking
matters into their own hands.
Besides
offering state-of-the-art Internet service to downtown businesses and
residents, Rocket Fiber will also open a 5,000 square foot retail electronics
store downtown. It will launch a training center to teach computer and Internet
literacy and become another provider of cable television in Detroit.
From
an infrastructure viewpoint, the city will skip a generation and dramatically
drive business, Matt Cullen, president and CEO of Gilbert’s Rock Ventures, told
The Free Press recently.
Bruce
Katz, vice president and founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program
at the Brookings Institution, counts Detroit as one of the country’s innovation
districts where leading anchor organizations and companies “cluster and connect
with start-ups, business incubators and accelerators.” Those anchor groups are
generally research universities and research-oriented medical hospitals – much
like Detroit’s Wayne State University Medical School and the Detroit Medical
Center. They’re both key employers in the downtown area.
“What
is emerging is a new kind of metropolitan finance where public-private and civic
capital comes together to basically build and grow economies,” Katz said in an
interview. “Right now, all we have to describe public finance in cities is
[municipal bonds], which is just access in capital markets for infrastructure.
But I think the way cities really do grow across many dimensions – not just
infrastructure – is through this aggregation of public, private and civic
capital.”
Early
signs of that partnership are everywhere in downtown Detroit. The
once-dilapidated riverfront has benefitted from investment and spending by the
city, state, philanthropic groups and private investors. The Michigan
Department of Natural Resources stepped in to become an anchor tenant in the
redesigned historic Globe Building along the east riverfront. Michael V.
Roberts, a private investor, converted the former Parke-Davis Research
Laboratory and Omni Hotel to the luxury Roberts Riverwalk Hotel.
The
turning point for Detroit came after last November’s federal bankruptcy court
blueprint. It allowed the city to shed $7 billion of its staggering $18 billion
debt by forcing creditors and bondholders to take a haircut – and the city’s
21,000 pensioners to accept cuts in benefits.
The
centerpiece of the agreement was an $816 million “grand bargain” struck by the
city and state legislature, local corporations and national foundations that
served to blunt the impact of the settlement and spare the Detroit Institute of
Arts from having to auction off many of its masterpieces, including works by
Rembrandt and van Gogh.
Subsequent
anti-blight efforts near downtown and elsewhere involve coordinated efforts by
corporate and civic partners, according to media reports. The M1-Rail streetcar
line on Woodward Avenue, the main north-south artery across Detroit, originated
with donations from Quicken Loans, which is headquartered downtown. Penske
Truck, Compuware, the billionaire Mike Ilitch Family, Henry Ford Health System,
the Detroit Medical Center and others also contributed, according to The Free
Press.
Rocket
Fiber is piggybacking on the M1-Rail streetcar line and is scheduled to launch
later this year. Once the company is up and running, the downtown area can
claim to be another “Gig City,” the nickname that Chattanooga (TN) business
leaders adopted with pride.
Once
considered the most polluted city in the nation, Chattanooga in the last two
decades has cleaned its air, rebuilt its waterfront, and become a hub for the
arts in eastern Tennessee. More recently, an aggressive high-tech economic
development plan and an upgrade of the power grid thrust Chattanooga toward the
one-gigabit connection.
Now
Detroit civic leaders, investors, business executives and residents think it’s
the Motor City’s turn.
“Detroit
has gotten to the future a lot quicker than other cities, and the future is
just a further extension of the way the United States operates anyway as a
public-private-civil enterprise,” Katz said.
***
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