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Why is it that people are so fascinated with the decline of our city? It’s not that Detroit is the only urban center beginning to collapse in on itself, Baltimore, Newark, Buffalo, St. Louis come readily to mind. But Detroit is different. Possibly there’s an element of schadenfreud attached to Detroit’s decline that both enthralls and repulses people. In the course of less than 50 years –a blink in the history of a city - it plunged from the pinnacle of urban industrial prosperity to the depths of urban industrial decay: completely, indisputably, very likely irreversibly.
The latest article I’ve seen that focused on our urban nightmare is City Journal’s Feral Detroit by Steven Malanga. He cites the phenomenon of abandoned neighborhoods being overrun by vegetation. The blog Sweet Juniper seems to have coined the term
to describe structures and even whole neighborhoods that are being reclaimed by untended vines, shrubs, trees and weeds. It contains a multitude of striking photos. Here is a small sample:
The City Journal article
references a paper done by Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer that contends Detroit’s population decline, fundamental to its demise, was largely a self inflicted wound, caused by the “Curley Effect”:
Though some blame Detroit’s population losses on larger economic forces, economists Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer argue in a groundbreaking paper that the city’s problems are mostly self-inflicted. (The paper, called “The Curley Effect,” gets its name from legendary Boston mayor James Curley, who favored Irish residents and pushed other groups out.) After winning election in 1973, Detroit’s first black mayor, Coleman Young, consolidated his power, driving white residents, who had voted against him, out of the city by withdrawing services from their neighborhoods. Eventually, Glaeser and Shleifer write, Detroit became “an overwhelmingly black city mired in poverty and social problems”—and shrinking fast.
There is much to support this version of history, not the least of which is politicians’ predilection to reward supporters and punish opponents. But regardless of where you place blame, the result is incontrovertible, as demonstrated by these photos from discarded lies – hyperlinkopotomus:
First is an aerial photo showing the density of the neighborhood around St.Cyril’s Roman Catholic church and school on Detroit’s near East side in 1949.
The next illustrates the same area in 2003, the year St. Cyril’s was demolished creating an even larger urban prairie in the middle of the city.
This is a photo of the ruins of St. Cyril just prior to demolition:
And here’s what stands in the near vicinity today:
photo from Detroit Liger
“Desolate” cannot begin to describe the emotional impact of a city that has come undone.
Tomorrow we’ll cover a growing movement to return Detroit to its roots, so to speak.
I have to admit, there is something very fascinating about it. As a kid, we had a really defunct area of town in upstate New York (imagine that, now the whole place is pretty much defunct) but I loved driving through it because I was completely fascinated with the place.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it is -- a certain sadness, a bit of an imagination spark, maybe even that feeling you get when telling scary stories around the campfire as a kid...
kmbr,
ReplyDeleteI think you've hit on it: an innate human fascination with train wreaks - looking away only when our individual tolerance for horror has been breached.
Thanks, you've sparked an idea for how to start my next post, coming later today, weather permitting.
Dewey- you're right, Detroit is different. But why? Will anyone ever figure out the answer?
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you're going to report on the Urban homesteading movement.
Mrs. P
I think it's because most ruins (in Rome, in the Iberian peninsula, etc.) are so old that people think of them as picturesque. Or they think of a catastrophe, such as the last World War, wrecking buildings and neighborhoods.
ReplyDeleteDetroit jolts one with the idea of the Coliseum crowded with people... and then abandoned and in a state of disrepair ten years later. People just walked away.
Plus, there is that unique feature of the Midwest: fecund soil in which something ALWAYS takes root. Just this past summer, I was in a small town near Mission Point, having lunch, and I realized that the defunct business across the street had a young maple growing in the display window. It was the oddest thing: The building had been closed only a couple years and the paint hadn't even faded - and yet there it was! Now multiply that by 250,000 and you have a fitting metaphor for the vagaries of life and death.