It was midnight at the Magic Stick and The Garden Bowl, a bowling alley–dive bar hybrid in Midtown Detroit, and a touring all-girl punk band had just taken the stage. The sound of clanging pins meshed perfectly with their wild, gritty sound, and in between fervent head bangings, I could discern a neon-red “You Can’t Stop Detroit” decal affixed to the lead singer’s guitar strap.

I had seen the same motto emblazoned across T-shirts, storefront windows and bumper stickers throughout the streets of Detroit, which, following its 2013 bankruptcy, began billing itself as “America’s Great Comeback City.” The skeletal remains of its bygone industrial heyday, like the Packard Plant, the largest abandoned building in the world, are still visible throughout the Motor City, but a new generation of intrepid artists and entrepreneurs only see new opportunities, taking advantage of cheap rent and newly vacant historic locales to breathe life back into a town that’s known for pulling itself up by its bootstraps.

The next afternoon, I tour venerable institutions like the Motown Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts, home to 65,000 works of art, most notably Diego Rivera’s epic “Detroit Industry” frescoes, and saw the city’s proud past at every turn—including in a new spate of locally driven startups and communities carrying the torch of Detroit’s “Made in the U.S.A.” tradition with a sleek modernized appeal.

Formerly crime-stricken areas turned revitalized cultural hubs, like Corktown and Midtown, are now home to scores of hip restaurants, bars and art galleries like the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. The Detroit Mercantile Co. sells handmade “provisions for the urban pioneer” in a throwback general store setting, and Shinola has brought manufacturing back to the Motor City with its luxury line of high-end leather goods, watches and bicycles.

Another unlikely source of innovation can be found at the Heidelberg Project, a community art initiative that turned a few derelict blocks in the Lower East Side into a whimsical interpretation of the city’s past, present and future. Run-down and abandoned homes are used as canvases; some are covered in vinyl or draped with stuffed animals. There’s a sculpture of a Hummer on one lawn, half-buried and refigured as a raised garden, representing the city’s deeply rooted history, with an idealistic look toward a blossoming future. “It just belongs here,” Lisa Marie Rodriguez, a local sculptor and volunteer curator, says about Heidelberg’s evolving aesthetic. “It inspires people to see the city in the most unexpected ways.” While the GM Renaissance Center is still the tallest building in the skyline, Detroit’s enduring spirit seems to be sprouting from powerful new seeds.

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