Detroit in Ruins

A photo essay:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit#/?picture=370173054&index=0

15 more photos like this one:

 

Is that one of those 3D posters that, if you stare at it long enough, an image pops out?
Gotta be either that or one of those M.C. Escher posters you buy in a college bookstore your freshman year and hang on your dorm room wall.

 

These pictures make me almost physically ill. Looking at all the artifacts left behind in the abandonment. The books, the chandelier, the upended grand piano.

 

I watched the Kite Runner on Netflix last night.

I was thinking about how sad it must have been for people to have to abandon their city and know that it had fallen into disrepair.

Then I look at this and think about my mother & her family who are from Detroit and think how sad it must be for them.

It looks like something post apocalyptic.

 

I wonder if it's worse in other large Rust Belt cities?

 

The only place that leaps to mind is Gary, Indiana.

Bigger cities like Cleveland & Pittsburgh have done a pretty good job remaking themselves. Detroit just seems to be rotting away at it's core and not enough people seem to care.

 

Somebody like JR would remember this...remember the urban prairies we linked here years ago?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aMV8_J49diKs

This may or may not have been the same link...

Very interesting stuff. Sad.

 

I've seen a few other sites about ruins of Detroit and other places. There was one of Tiger Stadium before it got demolished.

Very sad to see. Too bad they can't be restored.

 

Six years old, a friend's mom took us to see Dr. Dolittle for her son's birthday party. Found the first crush of my life in that movie with Samantha Eggar -- all in that very balcony.

 

BookTV interviewed a photojournalist on this very subject a few months ago. Fascinating and sad at the same time.

 

Just saw a TV report that some company had relocated to Detroit and was adding 3500 or so jobs, and that another company had just expanded its hiring there.

It's not rocket science. It takes jobs to rebuild the Rustbelt. Buffalo, Erie, Detroit, Cleveland have lots of cheap water and cheap land. I know there's more to it than that, but those places have the use the assets they have to actract business.