Essay: "Detroit Needs a Statue of Robocop: Part Two"

So why does Detroit need a statue of Robocop?




First, let's talk a bit about one reason why I think this project was so popular: people prefer to give money to charity when they know exactly what the money is for.

Let’s take an organization like the United Way. I generally take it for granted that the United Way does good things with the money I give them, but I must admit that I only have a vague idea of its mission and methods. I don’t know how efficient they are, for instance, or what they precisely do with my money. It might get spent on executive salaries, or marketing, for instance.

The United Way, after all, is a middle man that gives my money to people that need it, and when the personal connection between the doner and the donee is lost, the motive to give is reduced. Why do I want to make a donation to a big, faceless entity like the United Way? It’s just a drop in their ocean. I just gave up my own money without making a difference to anything I can see.

The statue of Robocop avoids this problem. The project's organizers have a set, achievable goal (to build a statue of Robocop) and a set budget (fifty grand) and I can see how exactly the project will be achieved and how much my donation will help. I feel, in other words, like I’m making a difference.

Ah, but perceptive readers will have realized, no doubt, that I am once again dodging the issue. What the fuck is the point of a statue or Robocop? How could it possibly help Detroit?

But to answer that question, we first have to understand what helps cities thrive and grow. Let's be clear here: Detroit is fucked. How could they possibly turn it around? The answer isn't handouts from the United Way. That would alleviate the suffering of people in Detroit but it would hardly get the economy going. So what do we do?

First, remember that Detroit’s poverty might something of an asset. Rent and property values are lower there, and so wages could be as well. Shitty neighborhoods get gentrified all the time - people move in and fix it up. Before long businesses move in, the area becomes trendy, the property values rise, and you have another cookie-cutter prosperous city crammed with overpriced sushi restaurants run by Koreans and multiple Starbucks franchises on the same street corners.

We can see this process happening in whole countries that were previously impoverished. What could cause this virtuous cycle to take hold in Detroit? How does it attract those little green shoots, business getting started who need a cheap place to get going?

Part of this, admittedly, has to do with crime. It doesn’t matter if a place is cheap if it is unsafe. A statue of Robocop is unlikely to help in this regard (you'd need the real thing). But part of it concerns whether the neighborhood or city is a cool place, somewhere that young and hip and poor people want to go. People have to say, hey, yeah! Detroit. There’s something going on there. I’d like to be there.

And so what determines whether a location's poverty is a problem is something as simple and profound as its culture. It explains why certain regions and peoples thrive, while others remain mired in poverty.

In this context, building a statue of Robocop says a lot of things. It says this city has a cool, fun artistic community that can pull a project like this off. It invokes Detroit’s one and only superhero (not counting Justice League Detroit). And most importantly, it says this city can face reality and laugh at itself at the same time, even in its terrible state. Robocop is a second-tier superhero and the post-apocalyptic world the movie envisioned has come to be. By building a statue of him Detroit acknowledges these things and laughs at them. It projects a sense of humour and a honest self-appraisal that gives the city the appearance of self-confidence, perhaps the most important quality of all.

Perhaps Detroit can never be saved (if you clicked the link above, you'll see that its population has shrunk 25% since 2000). But if anything can be done, it will not be the action of one heroic individual or organization, or any top-down measures implemented by governments or charities.  If anything can save Detroit, it will be hundreds and thousands of tiny little efforts by its citizens to change the intangible culture of their city from one of despair to one of hope, just as New York's citizens reversed the decline of their city in the 80's and 90's.

It’s worth remembering, after all, that Robocop did not save Detroit in the movie either. Sure, he stood up against a powerful corporation that was destroying the city. But on his own, and as a police officer, his ability to change the world was limited. But through his example, he inspired others to do the same. And that, I understand, made the difference (although here I must admit that I did not have the heart to sit through all of Robocop 3).

Can a statue of Robocop do the same? I don’t know. I do know that although there’s a limit to what any one person can do for Detroit, there is no limit on what the people of Detroit can decide to do collectively. No limit of all. And so, honestly? I think that a statue of Robocop is worth a shot, particularly if the artists can somehow harness this momentum and it becomes the first in a series of clever artistic projects.
 
And that's why I don't see why money spent on such a project (especially since it is limited in scope, transparent, and achievable) is any more wasted than donations to homeless shelters, which provide services that are absolutely vital but really amount to nothing more than palliative care. The trick is not to simply provide handouts to the people of Detroit, but to find the switch to turn them on.