Detroit represents the shortcoming of American-style, car centric urban development. Wide highways slashed through decaying neighborhoods now serve a city devoid of people in whole neighborhoods. In a city that lost 60% of its population since its 1950 height, extensive infrastructure designed to serve millions of people now serves thousands. After Detroit’s July 1967 civil unrest, over 200,000 whites fled Detroit in fewer than five years. Now over 50,000 homes lie vacant and decaying.
During WWII, Detroit was dubbed “the arsenal of democracy” for all the military equipment that rolled out of its auto factories. Planes from Detroit went on to bomb European cities. In a form of fitting, yet ironic, justice Detroit, too, has been bombed. Except this time, it’s a city destroyed from within by the American forces of racism, the automobile, and anti-urban government policies.
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Renaissance Center (colloquially known as Detroit’s Death Star)
The Caroline Crosman School (built 1911)
Drink liquor then “Save Your House.”
Black Power mural welcomes visitors.
Your rights?
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Attempts to rectify Detroit’s fallen status fall short. Everywhere there are fields of surface parking lots, where there were once businesses, people, and wealth. A near-empty monorail system circles a quiet downtown. Downtown is a skyscraper graveyard full rotting Art Deco architectural gems and empty storefronts. Renaissance Center soars above downtown, secluded from the aging and indebted city. The imposing appearance of the nearby Greektown Casino abuts the ominous city jail. Suburban residents travel to Detroit for sports games at Comerica Field; they return afterwards by car to their safe, quiet, and white communities.
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Ten-year-old pumps his own gas
Man repairs fan
The atypical homeless lady: white and blond
Man waits to cross Woodward Avenue
Homeless shields himself from the camera’s stare
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Detroit represents flaws in American culture across levels: government policies that encouraged suburban development at the expense of cities; corporations that developed America’s love of car culture; planners who designed cities and city life around the car. Most of all, Detroit represents the failure of American democracy to end racial segregation. Over fifty years after the end of legal racial segregation, Detroit is a city divided along borders of race and class.
Detroit’s fitting Latin motto is: “Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus.”
We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.
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Recycling center
Toy car crash
Is this advertisement for Obama’s campaign of HOPE and CHANGE an ironic critique of progress?
Drink liquor then “Save Your House.”
Your rights?
Industry and religion
Ford’s River Rouge Factory
Power lines at River Rouge
Lone home in a former neighborhood
Lone home, weedy lots
Nobody knows Detroit’s exact number of abandoned structures.
Former auto body shop
Freshly painted business on empty street
Freshly-painted service station near site of Detroit’s 1967 civil unrest
Candy store littered with used needles
On Devil’s Night (October 30) thousands of homes fall prey to arsonists.
Yoga shop abuts demolition site
Demolition of Brewster Douglas Homes
These columns once supported the roof of an industrial temple, the Packard Auto Plant.
Once active railway abuts the Packard Auto Plant.
The Packard Motel has very good internet ratings.
Michigan Central Station was once the world’s tallest train station at seventeen stories.
Renaissance Center (colloquially known as Detroit’s Death Star)
Vacant skyscrapers
Graffiti lion perched on derilict factory.
Homeless man begs for alms at empty intersection.
Teddy bear pinned to wreckage of burnt home.
Man waits to cross Woodward Avenue
Man repairs fan
Homeless shields himself from the camera’s stare
The atypical homeless lady: white and blond
Ten-year-old pumps his own gas
The Caroline Crosman School (built 1911)
“This is the most fun I’ve ever had in school.” (graffiti from abandoned Caroline Crosman school)
“This place is beautiful.” (graffiti from abandoned Caroline Crosman school)
Ideal vs. reality
Detroit Baptist Church
