

Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline - cubix
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089_1850973,00.html

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Flemlord
It's not just Detroit. My parents grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, a couple hours
north of Detroit. We went back for a funeral last year and drove around the
city. My mom's house was ok, but my Dad's neighborhood was derelict.

Half the houses were literally gone, nothing but empty lots. Apparently
there's a crack house epidemic going on where houses go vacant, drug dealers
set them up as crack houses and rig them for quick incineration when they get
raided, Lots of people die and the houses burn to the ground before anything
can be done.

Most of the remaining houses in the neighborhood were vacant, with broken
windows and empty driveways. My dad's old house was one of the few still
occupied, although the front porch had partially caved in and two houses to
the left had disappeared. We'd been planning on knocking on the door and doing
the nostalgia thing but we were scared to get out of the car.

~~~
iseff
This doesn't matter much, but Saginaw is North/Northwest of Detroit.

As someone who grew up in (outside of, but that's the style of Detroit -- no
one lives _in_ Detroit) Detroit and takes enormous pride in that fact, it's
been funny to see the massive amount of press recently about the fall of the
city. I think the rest of the country is just sitting nervously, thinking
"what if that happens to our city?!"

The funny thing is, when I was growing up we NEVER went to downtown Detroit.
There were basically only two reasons to go there: (1) to watch the Red Wings
or Tigers (the Lions didn't even play there until recently, and the Pistons
still don't), and (2) to go to the Auto Show. We would just spend all our time
in the beautiful suburbs. However, now, when I go back home to visit, it's
amazing, we spend ALL our time downtown and talk about how much better it is
and how much we love it. Quite the opposite of how the press talks.

If you want some perspective on how Detroiters feel about all this, I highly
suggest reading Mitch Albom's article, The Courage of Detroit
([http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/the_bonus/01/0...](http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/the_bonus/01/07/detroit/)).
It's long, but try to get through it all.

~~~
Flemlord
Thanks for the directional edit. Fixed. The suburbs of Saginaw, at least those
where our relatives live, are very nice. You'd never know how bad some of the
inner city areas are.

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ShabbyDoo
I have a hobby of photographing abandoned places. These photos are amazing. A
friend from Detroit has been bugging me to go there for the weekend, but it's
hard with a family at home. Cleveland's actually a bit better -- most of the
abandoned stuff is commercial rather than cultural and has little
architectural value. Of course, a lot of the really beautiful stuff was torn
down in the 60's and 70's, and a lot of once great buildings now have lesser
purposes.

Once category of sad decay is places of worship. As white people left the city
for the suburbs, they built new churches/temples. Their previous buildings
were often purchased by urban congregations who couldn't afford to keep them
up. Just this week, it was announced that fifty Catholic churches are to be
closed within the next year.

Note: I'm an atheist, but I enjoy architecture. So, please don't take this as
a religious opinion piece.

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gaika
There's a ghost town in the middle of Silicon Valley too:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawbridge,_California>

~~~
ciscoriordan
In Palo Alto, there's an interesting abandoned Sun Microsystems building
(<http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/sun_microsystems.htm>). It might be
gone now or fixed up, those pictures are a few years old.

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jm3
c.f. the Fi-Times' "The Travails of Detroit"
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2b815a94-0863-11de-8a33-0000779fd2...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2b815a94-0863-11de-8a33-0000779fd2ac.html)
on the detroit reality gap.

~~~
gasull
FTA: _the $1 houses that still go unsold_

Is this true? $1 houses?

~~~
ciscoriordan
If they are going for $1, they aren't tenable. But they do exist. They just
don't have anything of any value left inside, might be condemned, etc..

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/19/1-detroit-house-
sel...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/19/1-detroit-house-sells-
aft_n_119862.html)

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ckinnan
It is, to large degree, the tragic outcome of dysfunctional tax, educational,
and regulatory policy. Newt Gingrich gave an interesting speech on the fall of
Detroit last year:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNM6HHJTUMM>

~~~
dzohrob
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a "large degree," but the story of
Detroit is more about race than it is about any of those things. (It's also
about the auto industry, of course, and poor government.. but those are
intertwined with racial issues as well.)

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edcdave
I was born in the Detroit suburb of Garden City over 50 years ago and had lots
of relatives in the area. Many of my Polish relations lived in Hamtramck. My
father and uncle worked for Ford. In the 50s and 60s, we saw a lot of
downtown, but things were on the decline even then. We moved out in 1966.

I came back to Detroit in 1979 as a manufacturing engineer for a company
making components for the M-1 tank. Chrysler was the prime contractor, but
right about that time, Iaccoca went hat-in-hand for his famous bailout. There
were people selling Dallas papers in the median of Woodward Ave. Even then, I
spent some time Downtown. The RenCen, Bricktown. But I lived out in
Birmingham.

I tear up when I see the desolation that Detroit has become.

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alecco
What a shame to see so many good buildings left to decay. Are there policies
in US to let people use empty buildings? In Argentina, after the 2001 crisis,
many factories and other buildings were taken by former employees. Several of
those ventures were highly successful. But there was always the danger of the
owner to show up and seize everything disregarding the new occupiers. IMHO
there should be some legal cover to define a fair solution to this situation.
But it is very stupid if society lets such an opportunity escape because of
taking private property law too strictly.

Better a bunch of knowledgeable workers as entrepreneurs than a crack and
prostitution den.

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paulbaumgart
Viceland's got a compelling set of pictures, too, about a closed high school
in Detroit: [http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n2/htdocs/schools-out-
forever...](http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n2/htdocs/schools-out-
forever-625.php)

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YuriNiyazov
That is the saddest thing I've seen the whole day

