Posted on 07/19/2011 7:30:20 AM PDT by flowerplough
What does “ruin porn” tell us about the motor city, ourselves, other American cities?
... Its impressive collection of pre-Depression skyscrapers have been memorably lionized as a “American Acropolis” by Camilo José Vergara, the pioneering photographer of American ghetto landscapes. Buildings that have escaped the wrecking ball have also, for the most part, escaped gentrification, since most of Detroit’s economic elite remain sequestered in the suburbs, with little of the desire for urbanity that one finds among the leisure classes of Chicago, New York, London, or (even) Philadelphia. Nor has the city ever been able to do on any significant scale what Pittsburgh has accomplished with its defunct Homestead steel mill, now a shopping mall, or what New York has done with upscale condos in old warehouses—leverage the hollow shells of a productive economy into the shell games of the credit economy.
...
Coleman Young, Detroit’s charismatic and still-controversial mayor during the years of the city’s most precipitous decline in the nineteen seventies and eighties, put it well in his fascinating 1994 autobiography, Hard Stuff: “Detroit today,” he wrote, “is your town tomorrow.” From the 1967 riots, when Detroit became the flashpoint of the country’s political and racial crisis, to the deindustrialization and crime of the nineteen seventies and the nineteen eighties, the city has been a bellwether of each major urban crisis since World War II. Today, Detroit, to use an overused but appropriate metaphor given the city’s scarred appearance, is “ground zero” of the collapse of the finance and real estate economy in America. Detroit has been hit as hard as any city by the foreclosure crisis and by unemployment, and so it embodies the looming jobless future, or more precisely, our worst fears about that future.
(Excerpt) Read more at guernicamag.com ...
It tells us the truth.
It tells us A truth. THE truth can't be "told" -- but that's getting into something else.
Anyway, I think that, by the time this happens to Silicon Valley, anybody without a "666" on his forehead will be dead.
The truth about the future.
The roots lie in the late 60s.
The pictures - as always - are depressing.
However, after reading the article, is it only me that found that if one dug beneath the flowery writing, there was little - if any - substance?
Generalities like “failed this or that,” don’t hack it.
Something went wrong. Actually, lots of things went wrong. Dammit, put on an engineering hat and figure it out so we won’t do it again.
And keep the nice sounding verbiage for publications that don’t matter - like the NYT.
Zimbabwe on the river.
Well they do have a new football stadium......
They just need stronger unions and higher taxes and everything could be fixed.
What happened to Detroit was done on purpose with malice aforethought.
It very plainly shows us the results of the progressive/liberal agenda being implemented. Detroit, though it's unions and liberal politicians, bought into the lie that it's better to give people what they want and need rather than to allow them to fail. When personal failure is made impossible, societal failure is guaranteed.
yet, they will never try to vote republican because they’ve been taught to fear what it may bring.
No one should surprised that as the muzzies take over Michigan it begins to look more and more like a third world country.
I've been thinking that Detroit was a test run for the US economy.
EXACTLY! Detroit stands as a monument to liberalism, liberal policy and Democrat corruption. The road to Hell and Detroit, is paved with good intentions.
...and the band played on.
Despite the usual articles about Detroit there are some good things there. There is a vast pool of practical engineering knowledge wasting away on retirement around Detroit. Unfortunately the unskilled population of Detroit doesn’t want knowledge, they just want money.
When it comes right down to it, if given a choice of vaporizing Detroit or Ann Arbor, I would allow Detroit to survive. Detroit may be a parasite but its an indifferent parasite. Ann Arbor on the other hand is an angry, self righteous and demanding parasite that has as much to do with Detroit’s downfall as Detroit does.
“Something went wrong.”
No, life happened. All things have a lifecycle, some longer or more elegant than others. Cities too. I’ve seen enough constructs appear, flourish, and - despite the vibrancy exhibited in their prime - die.
Yup.
And that truth is why people who fantisize about regentrification of such areas are naive.
It is astounding how we can hypnotize ourselves as a society.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.