There is a circularity to much of what one sees in life. It’s one of those things that becomes more apparent as a person ages, as long as they are paying the slightest bit of attention. One of the circular things, seen in both nature in general and human behavior, is the feedback loop. For example, in nature if there is an abundance of greenery in an area and no predators, the population of bunny rabbits can just go up and up. There is almost always a controlling feedback in nature, however. In this case, if there are no predators then the bunnies will just eat and grow and reproduce until there are so many of them that there simply isn’t enough greenery to go around. Then the bunny population will drop, either gradually or precipitously, depending upon the characteristics of the greenery and other factors. This is a feedback loop exerted by the greenery on the rabbit population; first it was positive, due to excess greenery, then it went negative as the bunnies overwhelmed the growth of the greenery and died out. 

There are also feedback loops in human behavior, usually influenced by the fact that everyone seems to love a winner and either loathe or laugh at a loser. Although it has been said that any press is good press, consistently bad press can’t help but harm one’s reputation and cause others to scorn you as a loser. Good press, repeated over and over, applies a patina to a reputation that will resist a lot of corrosion by actual bad behavior, whereas ongoing bad press can sully even the positive aspects of a situation. Since the riots in the 1960s, just how much good press has Detroit had, particularly outside the Metro area? I haven’t researched it (yes I’m feeling lazy today, long story), but having come to Detroit by way of Oklahoma and Las Vegas, I don’t recall having seen ANY truly positive articles in the press about the Big D. It’s all been about a “city in decline,” or the “post-industrial wasteland,” or “ruin-porn,” or Mad Max-type ruminations, or Detroit expatriates who come back for a while to go tsk-tsk in print about what had happened to their childhood remembrances of a fair city.

All of this bad press has caused a seemingly never-ending negative feedback loop for Detroit. If you even considered locating your business here and began to research the city via the media, what would you do? If you had the means to leave the city and saw never-ending stories about the crime and violence and the poor schools…well, I won’t even ask what you would do, because that was what happened. So, if no one wants to move to the city, no one wants to raise a family there, no one wants to start or relocate a business there, and city businesses move to the suburbs, then the tax base begins to collapse and things just get worse. The media picks up on the worsening and perpetuates the negative feedback cycle over and over. Bad press → more flight and avoidance → reduced tax base → worsened city conditions → more bad press, rinse and repeat.

Detroit Metro Mashup has been, in our own small way, trying to stem the tide of bad publicity for what we think is a great city in a great metro region. Other local media and blogs have been doing the same, but our voices are a bit limited in scope relative to the national media. Did I say a bit limited? I meant more like drowned out. But finally, due to massive efforts by countless individuals, organizations, and companies, there is a fair amount of positive news squeaking its way out of the city limits amidst the claghorn (1) squawking of negativism and ridiculous talk of Detroit going bankrupt in a fairly wealthy state.

And, in keeping with our circular feedback discussion, there is finally some positive feedback from the media. Business Insider has just posted an article titled, “25 Reasons Why Detroit Is On The Verge Of An Epic Comeback.” They are postulating not just a comeback, but an EPIC comeback. The article’s link is at http://tinyurl.com/k6fbof5. To us at DMM this is great news, even if they don’t mention the dozens of other reasons that Detroit is making a comeback. We hope that this is the beginning of a long-lasting “positive” feed-back loop for Detroit and the metro area and that we will soon see more stories about people moving into Detroit, about services being restored and enhanced, and the tax base once again increasing. Help us in this effort and promote Detroit!

(1) ”a strange bamboo flute with a saxophone mouthpiece attached to it called a claghorn — a dreadful instrument that I invented" —Ian Anderson, interview with BBC Radio Scotland, 27 August 2001 (from Wikipedia).