Beauty In Blight

This one's a follow-up to the Detroit post, as I really wanted to touch on the aspect of urban decay and blight. Take a look at this photo from the amazing site Motorless City, which chronicles via photographs the physical decay of the city. How beautiful this house must have been back in the day, a stately mansion that probably had some rich family living it in, raising their children. Now, it is broken down version, surrounded by an open field and an another architectural skeleton. Perversely, I find the current image more appealing. In fact, I've always found these one of the most enticing aspects of urban space. I know, I know, what kind of an urbanist am I?

I don't have a great explanation, as my head knows that these foreboding conditions are what provide fodder for the haters and keep people from moving to them. But, having grown up in Philly in the 80s, it was a big part of my visual language. Burnt-out houses on Green Street and all over North Philly. Tags everywhere. Weeded lots. There was something beautiful in it, that ugliness held a power that a manicured lawn and flower bed never could. It has extended to my artistic aesthetics as well, fueling my love for film noir, Mean Streets, Hubert Selby Jr.'s books, Mobb Deep's The Infamous, graffiti, etc.

I've tried to think about why and think I've come up with some thoughts. For me, this ominous look provides the grit and ugliness that I associate with the urban; it's the complete opposite of the sanitized, "pretty" surburban look and in some ways I always define the urban as anti-suburban. In fact, I would suggest that our entire pop culture is obsessed with perfection, ashamed of anything that doesn't fit this norm. That attitude definitely explains why the cities are looked at with hostility in this country, as you can't hide from poverty, violence and blight within those limits. In the land of studio pop stars, Dr. 90210 and US Weekly, it's a radical choice to exalt decaying buildings.

Or perhaps it's that sense that in a city, nothing remains dead for long. There is always a chance for rebirth, there's always a chance to re-use or restore an old building, as evidenced by the many people living in former factory buildings. Even in a decrepit house like the above, there's still a hopefulness to me, a sense that someday that place could be restored to its former grandeur or it could become a boutique hotel or a community center or who knows what.

All of which leads to my greater point which is that there is a real urban aesthetic, a way of seeing the world differently. I hope to pursue this more and more as I write here, but this seemed like a good chance to establish these ideas. These buildings serve as a sort of shibboleth for me, a test of whether or not you really feel comfortable in this world, whether you can see the hope in a rundown house or the conversation behind the scrawlings on walls.

Requiem for Detroit

The arcade of the abandoned Central Michigan Depot, with a view of the ticket counters in the background

I hate to continue on the sad notes today, but I had to discuss this article in Bloomberg News about the city of Detroit and its continuing decay. The city is back in the public eye with the auto industry bailout talks and it isn't a pretty sight. Jobs, people and hope are disappearing and it's having a staggering toll on the urban landscape there.

Of course, this isn't a new story, as Detroit has always been held up as the horror story for older American cities. Growing up in Philly, Detroit was the warning word that we were on our way into oblivion. However, the article makes me think that this period might be much worse that anything that came before. The auto industry may go bankrupt, the unemployment rate is at 10.1% already and rising, and the city leads the nation in foreclosure and poverty rates. There's already enough abandoned lots throughout the city to fill the city of San Francisco and the worst is yet to come. I mean, whoa. That's about as bad as it can get; the city's gonna become the ultimate urban nightmare scenario - shrinking, older, poorer, without enough tax receipts to provide the services for the population.

There's obviously a lot of implications for designers, as the city is going to need to be completely rethought and redesigned for the future. It's nice (and shocking) to hear people talking about making the city less-auto dependent. The urban farm idea also has potential, as both a means to beautify and provide food for local residents in the short term. Whenever things are this bad, there's an openness to experiment, which should allow for a greater emphasis on issues of affordability, different forms of transportation, more public space, more green space, etc. However, in Philly, there was a similar policy to acquire large parcels around the city to entice developers (Neighborhood Transformation Initiative). Most of the time developers had no interest in taking a gamble in these neighborhoods; when they did, they built hideous surburban-style developments (see the Westrum development on Girard Ave in Brewerytown) It's going to take a much more concerted effort by all of the local stakeholders to come together and map out a city-wide future.

I want to believe that it all comes down in the long run is people. How many are willing to stay and fight for the city they love? I imagine that if you went back in time and read the newspapers in NYC during the 70s or Philly during the 80s, there would have been a similar sense of doom. But, both of those cities survived because enough people came together and fought, forming neighborhood groups, homesteads, squats, whatever it took to stabilize their neighborhood.

But, I'm not sure that will be enough with the forces at work in this case, with the trouble of the auto industry, the national economy and the failure of corrupt local leadership. Detroit has been struggling before this and decades of down times are hard to overcome. And that's the only certainty in all of this; the plight of Detroit is a tragedy and a sad indictment of America's view of its cities. We are willing to watch a great ones struggle and fall to its knees, the city that gave us the automobile, Motown and Joe Louis. For that, we should be ashamed.