CINDY (BOROVOY) DISKIN A.P.R.N.,

Adult Nurse Practitioner, Board Certified
Providing Health (are and Disease Prevention

Everything Old Is New Again

Going to a movie or a store in the
occasionally
"neighborhood"
now can mean a drive
lead bus tours
of six or seven miles, which would
into the old
have encompassed three or four neigh-
Jewish neigh-
borhoods in the city. Which is fine
borhoods of Detroit.
when
everything is working, but an
Sometimes the bus
impossibility
when the stoplights fail
is filled with younger
and
the
gas
pumps
lock up and the
people, which is nice
- ,
because many of them ATMs won't give up their treasure.
GEORGE
The big idea now in the field of city
react as if they are vis-
CANTOR
planning
is called the New Urbanism.
iting some mythic
Reality Check homeland. They have
It calls for the design of self-contained
neighborhoods. Where you can walk
heard the tales but
to most places and bus service is con-
they don't know the territory.
venient
if the destination is a bit too
1 I remember one young woman who
far for ambling. Apartments right over
gasped in astonishment as the bus
the stores. Sidewalks and small lots so
drove along Outer Drive. "I didn't
neighbors
get to know each other's
realize there was really a street called
faces.
With
the garage situated around
Outer -Drive," she said. "When my
in
back
instead
of protruding out
bubbie told me she lived on Outer
from
the
front
of
the house.
Drive, I thought she just meant a
In
other
words,
the New Urbanism
street in the outer part of Detroit."
But it's even more fun when
the seniors are on board. They
listen respectfully as we explore
the roots of Jewish history in
•the city, through the ruins of
almost forgotten neighbor-
! hoods.
When we reach Linwood
and Dexter, though, they perk
up. Every street ties a memory
down; every block brings a
sigh.
The kids look at the tiny
lots, the houses crammed
1 together, the abbreviated back
Homes on Tuxedo between Dexter and Wilde-
yards that end in an alley. The
mere show the coziness of the old neighborhood.
children of suburbia can't quite
believe these were the places
their parents and grandparents
looks a lot like those old Detroit
loved so much.
neighborhoods from the 1920s to the
But the seniors remember who lived
1950s. It seems like we had a pretty
where and sleeping on the front porch
good
thing going back then and never
in a heat wave and walking to the
really
knew it.
Avalon for a 12-cent Saturday mati-
•
Some
of us live in houses larger
nee. And how good and uncomplicat-
I
than
our
grandparents could ever have
-1 ed life seemed.
imagined.
There are decks and even
Part of that is just garden-variety
pools
in
our
expansive back yards,
nostalgia, of course. But there was also
where no noxious alley intrudes. Air
a certain and genuine simplicity that .
conditioning cools the hottest days
has been lost.
and
even if we wanted to, we couldn't
I thought about these old neighbor-
go
out
and sleep on the front porch
! hoods again during last summer's
because
there isn't any.
blackout. Our lives today are spread
But
for
every gain there is a loss. I
out in an interdependence so pro-
can't
help
feeling that in those old city
: found that when one part of the sys-
neighborhoods there was a sense of —
tem fails it can take everything down
I don't know — shared fortune, for
with it.
want of a better phrase, that is now
George Cantor, a West Bloomfield
missing.
resident, is a native Detroiter and
Maybe it takes the lights to go out
longtime Detroit journalist. His e-mail 1 to see clearly what is gone.
address is gcantor@thejewishnews.corn

I

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cfnatIVVIN
,

FAR
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Observer 6 " liErrentrir ` JACK J

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10/17

2003

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