When I visited post-Katrina New Orleans a couple years ago, my friend/tourguide laughed when I asked if various construction projects around town were due to the hurricane. He told me there were plenty of scaffolding and yellow cones before the storm, and afterward, well, some of the builders found themselves eligible for various government grants and assistance. Here’s Thomas Morton in Vice seeing something similar in Detroit ruin photography (via.) “The city’s second-most-overused blight shot is of the mile-long ruins of the Packard Auto Plant in East Detroit. ‘This is the visiting reporters’ favorite thing to see,’ [photographer] James [Griffioen] said. ‘The people all come here to shoot the story of the auto industry and they love this shot because they can be like, ‘See that? That’s where they made the cars,’ and then forget to add the footnote that the plant’s been closed since 1956.’”
Witold Rybczynski visits Dystopia, MI: “What makes Detroit unusual is that there are so many of these abandoned hulks, that they are so large, and that they are generally surrounded by open land, since their neighbors have long since been demolished. The result is a curiously suburban landscape… It’s like Berlin or Warsaw in 1945. Just as in post-World War II photos of those ruined cities, the most shocking thing is to see people carrying on their everyday lives in the midst of so much physical destruction.”
Abandoned schools in Detroit might double as zombie movie sets. (via.) On the other hand, “Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished.”
“‘Is this your first time in Detroit?’ Mary inquired. ‘You’re going to love it! It’s just like Paris.’” – Washington Post travels to the “Most Miserable City in America” and declares it “beguilingly authentic — gritty and romantic.” (via.)
“The Rise of the Ephemeral City” in Metropolis: “Likely to fail, are the attempts of places such as Manchester, Cleveland, and Detroit to tie their futures to becoming ‘cool.’ With an emphasis on what the Romans would have called ‘bread and circuses,’ leaders in these old industrial centers think cultivating their cultural cachet will lure enough skilled workers and affluent singles to their towns… ‘There are simply not enough yuppies to go around,’ demographer William Frey says.”
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