{"id":1058,"date":"2009-04-13T09:32:45","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T14:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/13\/amidst-the-ruins-of-motor-city\/"},"modified":"2009-04-13T09:32:45","modified_gmt":"2009-04-13T14:32:45","slug":"amidst-the-ruins-of-motor-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/13\/amidst-the-ruins-of-motor-city\/","title":{"rendered":"amidst the ruins of Motor City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brush_park_5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As goes Motor City, so should go the world – or at least eco-activists might like to argue that. The archetypal home of American car culture, Detroit, has been decaying for years. It’s now collapsed from a city of two million to less than half of that, and in the process it has opened up dramatic possibilities for regeneration.<\/p>\n

Photo District News <\/a>has collected some glimpses of the ruins. Kevin Bauman’s Abandoned Houses <\/a>, from which the above photo is taken, are akin to real estate sales photos gone wild, while Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s “Ruins of Detroit” series <\/a>include some stunners, like this photo of the United Artists Theater:<\/p>\n

\"Marchand%20and%20Meffre%20-%20United%20Artists%20Theater.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These, like Timothy Fadek’s<\/a> industrial ruins and Sean Hemmerle<\/a>‘s Time magazine photo essay<\/a>, include many that seem as if they’re right out of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker<\/a>. Bruce Gilden’s photo-essay on Detroit Foreclosures <\/a>includes a poignant soundtrack reminding us what the current economic crunch feels like to some.<\/p>\n

The Time article <\/a>that accompanies Hemmerle’s and Marchand\/Meffre’s photos reports that among the ideas proposed for redevelopment of Detroit are “the reforestation of the city’s dead zones” and “the planting of large-scale networks of parks and commercial farms.” While there’s plenty of room for visionary public policy, Detroit doesn’t exactly have a long history of that kind of thing, so, if it was up to me, I would leave a lot of room for the anarchists and artists to get things going. Unfortunately, since Fifth Estate<\/a>, the longest-running anglophone anarchist periodical in North America, moved out of Detroit in 2001, the local political scene seems a little less prepared for this kind of thing. Artists<\/a>, however, have been busy making the urban landscape theirs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The price for grassroots eco-regeneration is certainly right: Jennifer Lance at environmental blog Red Green & Blue<\/a> reports that you can buy a foreclosed home in Detroit for $40 <\/a>these days. She even volunteers to do that and to donate it to any organization that would turn it into a park, wildlife sanctuary, or urban garden. Any takers?<\/p>\n

The kicker is that this might not even be necessary. Rather like the Chernobyl exclusion zone or the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> — formerly a toxic chemical dump — Detroit is, in places, already reverting back to nature. (Though, on Chernobyl, there has been some controversy about reports that it’s become a wildlife haven<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Describing the city as a “Wild Kingdom<\/a>,” Detroitblog.org<\/a> describes whole neighborhood blocks reverting to prairie, alleys resembling hiking trails, roving packs of wild dogs, feral cats taking over entire buildings, and a resurgence of pheasants, foxes, opossums, turkeys, roosters, and raccoons, along with imported “ghetto palms” (Ailanthus altissima) spreading through the city like weeds and, by their height — sometimes reaching several stories — offering a gauge for how long particular parcels have been neglected.<\/p>\n

More photos of Detroit reverting back to nature <\/a>can be seen here <\/a>and here.<\/a> The Greening of Detroit <\/a>is an institutional non-profit working on urban eco-regeneration, while Motor City Blog <\/a>keeps tabs on interesting goings-on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As goes Motor City, so should go the world – or at least eco-activists might like to argue that. The archetypal home of American car culture, Detroit, has been decaying for years. It’s now collapsed from a city of two million to less than half of that, and in the process it has opened up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196,691215,689354],"tags":[4468,4469,4451,4470,4471,4472,4473],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","category-politics_postpolitics","category-image_nation","tag-anarchism","tag-landscape","tag-mortality","tag-nature","tag-ruins","tag-urban-blight","tag-urban-studies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-h4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9342,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/07\/10\/detroit-as-template-for-urban-change\/","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":0},"title":"Detroit as template for urban change?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently visited Detroit (for the\u00a0ASLE \"Rust\/Resistance\" conference) and was interested in seeing how it's changed since I wrote\u00a0this (brief) piece. Given how little time I spent there, my impressions aren't worth much, but here they are. Compared to other cities, Detroit\u00a0feels \"underpopulated.\" The leading industrial center of the early\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2017\/06\/detroit6-275x155.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1140,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/10\/22\/walking-historys-ruins-w-chris-marker-arvo-part\/","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":1},"title":"walking history’s ruins w\/ Chris Marker & Arvo P\u00e4rt","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Moore may be American cinema's best known film essayist (or propagandist, if you like), but the leader of the genre is still alive and kicking, at age 88, living quietly in Paris (no doubt with one or several cats). Chris Marker's Pictures at an Exhibition is a walk through\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1098,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/30\/mercy-mercy-me-the-ecology\/","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":2},"title":"mercy mercy me (the ecology)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZPIrevDt22k&hl=en&fs=1& The explicitly ecological piece on Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), which, like a lot of his music at the time, fuses a clear-eyed realism with an optimistic, gospel-tinged sense of possibility. I'm not sure where this video comes from (or why David Bowie\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/ZPIrevDt22k\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8699,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/03\/24\/and-what-im-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":3},"title":"… And what I’m reading","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Some books I've recently received and\/or am currently reading... If you'd like to review any of them for this blog, let me know. And if there are others published in the last year that should be on this list, let me know that too\u00a0(in the comments). Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptise\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"20160324_153919_resized_1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/03\/20160324_153919_resized_1-155x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/09\/29\/setting\/","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":4},"title":"setting","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"David Byrne has a great, observation- and photo-rich post from Detroit (Don't Forget the Motor City) that relates back to some of the themes I touched on when I posted about that city's decline and potential reinvention as an near science-fictional green city. Julien Temple's Requiem for Detroit (as David\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Visual culture"","block_context":{"text":"Visual culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/image_nation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"100_0482.JPG","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/09\/100_0482.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5527,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/02\/03\/last-man\/","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":5},"title":"Last man","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm catching up on the news that Theo Angelopoulos died last week. Hit by a motorcycle. Now that the \"last of the European modernists\" (as he's often called) is dead, where does that leave us? Like kids searching for a father we never knew? http:\/\/youtu.be\/EC-AhAYLnOc (Watch it all here.) (In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/EC-AhAYLnOc\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}