http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=C4&Date=20101002&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=10020806&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=10
With Detroit's shrinking population, the city has begun to tear down entire neighborhoods, planning to loose a third of its size, as its unable to afford city services to the areas of dwindling population. They are turning much of it back into farm land. Pretty sad.
What was that movie with Will Smith, and before him, Charlton Heston...? either that or a song by REM...
Quote from: Barklessdog on October 05, 2010, 09:08:44 AM
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=C4&Date=20101002&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=10020806&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=10They are turning much of it back into farm land. Pretty sad.
Considering the situation it sounds like a pretty darn good solution to me. At least the land will (hopefully) produce something.
It's sad that the city has had such a long decline. Some of those beautiful buildings have sat abandoned for 30 years? You'd think someone would have done something in that amount of time to try and stop the decline...
Quote from: Kenny's 51st State on October 05, 2010, 09:19:27 AM
What was that movie with Will Smith, and before him, Charlton Heston...? either that or a song by REM...
Soylent Green and I Am Legend. I only become aware of the Will Smith movie not long ago.
That is really hard to look at, very sad to see such once beautiful interiors and buildings left to the vandals........I hope Seattle never falls to this :-\
I believe you're thinking of The Omega Man, not Soylent Green.
Perhaps it's sad - perhaps it's just evolution in society. Of course, it's easier to be dispassionate when you're not one of the displaced.
Al just pipped me to the typing...
Nearly Michael... the Heston film was The Omega Man - both films were from the same story... but Harry Harrison's "Make Room, Make Room" (filmed as Soylent) is equally apocalyptic... Edward G's last movie; he knew he was dying when he played that death scene; possibly one of the most honest and emotional portayals I've ever seen...
http://detnews.com/article/20100919/OPINION03/9190309/The-three-I-s-of-Detroit-s-decline
QuoteTwo-thirds of Detroit residents don't have a high school diploma. Half are functionally illiterate. Only about 10 percent graduated from college. Illegitimacy is a direct by-product of ignorance. More than 70 percent of the city's babies are born to unwed mothers, and more than half to teen-agers. There's no greater predictor of poverty. Most Detroit babies are added to the welfare rolls before they leave the delivery room.
Already, Urban Farming, an international outfit that has made Detroit its headquarters, is said to boast some 500 small plots under cultivation to supply free food to the city's poor. "It wouldn't surprise me, frankly, if Detroit produces more food inside its borders today than any other traditional American city," Renn writes.
Even raccoon- and pheasant-hunting is not unheard of within the protein-poor city's limits. Yes, a retired truck driver reportedly shoots raccoons and sells them as food, at $12 per carcass to feed a family of four.
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100919/OPINION03/9190309/The-three-I-s-of-Detroit-s-decline#ixzz11VDcE8BP
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v104/Fenderbird/misc/detroitjpg-10cdca11100a12e4_large.jpg)
I bet in our lifetimes we will see it happen more. Detroit is a rare example of bad business planning and short-sighted union representation working alongside inept and/or corrupt local government. Rare but not unprecedented. It is a cousin of Gary Indiana, and to some degree the abandoned cities of the Roman empire and along the silk road. But the Romans probably had better schools. In a way Detroit is returning to the development and size it would have had prior to 1900. The auto industry was kind of a century-long boom town blip. You see similar shifts throughout the US in cities in different ways. The flight of traditional families from neighborhoods of cities of the northeast hasn't meant abandonment, but a social and economic shift - a reversion - to the patterns of the people who lived there in the streetcar era. Black families began moving from the industrial cities of the north in small but observable and documented numbers to the deep south starting in the early 80s. The sun belt has been growing over the last 30 years, the rust belt has been declining, and the northeast has been festering. We live in interesting times.
Detroit is great for those guys who sell old doors, mantelpieces, lights, etc. Kind of like that scene in Patton where the bedouins find the watches and fillings.
Interesting timing on this. CNN has been running a short piece on Detroit and the apparent lack of fresh food available locally. They are interviewing people who are trying to get urban farming started in areas like this.
I read an article about Detroit around a year ago which discussed many of these things. One thing that struck me is that it seemed like some people there were offended that other people were saying what they considered to be negative things about Detroit. These residents were saying that Detroit was just like any other city and would find a way to bounce back and be normal again. These were all people who had lived in Detroit all their lives and were very loyal to it.
Following on from the 1954 book I am Legend Vincent Price starred in 1964 in The last man on earth. Same kind of scennario. Virus escapes, turns ppl into Zombies, Star has to exist is a world of zombies while he works out how to escape or find a cure for said virus........sound familiar? ;D
Quote from: lowend1 on October 05, 2010, 09:35:31 AM
Considering the situation it sounds like a pretty darn good solution to me. At least the land will (hopefully) produce something.
Very sad pics indeed, but I agree that turning some of it back into farmland, maybe even forest is a good solution. I'd love to go snooping around those buildings though, but I'd bring a pistol or something, just in case I run into any unsavory types.
This is hard to look at, but also hard not to look. Being a Realtor has taken me into the "hard times" sections of Chicago, but nothing like this. Along with the demise of Detroit go the fortunes of many small towns where suppliers churned out bearings and components but may have lacked to capital to transform manufacturing methods or even find an offshore partner.
On the flip side, there must be cities that have found new used for old architecture, alongside newer buildings. Milwaukee comes to mind.
A lot of cities you go to you see where at one point they tried to revitalize them but ultimately failed. Dallas, Indianapolis & Cleveland come to mind. Hopefully this is not a growing trend.
Quote from: Barklessdog on October 06, 2010, 01:04:03 PM
A lot of cities you go to you see where at one point they tried to revitalize them but ultimately failed. Dallas, Indianapolis & Cleveland come to mind. Hopefully this is not a growing trend.
Dallas???
Quotejust in case I run into any unsavory types.
In Detroit? Never.
Dallas isn't bad. I would compare it to San Francisco really - a few run-down areas with lots of reprobates wandering around, and lots of money and nice stuff around it. I think that most of the older US "downtowns" have got the same problem - no one wants or needs to go there anymore to shop or visit doctors like they used to. The local governments tend to want to soak business for revenue so the smaller and medium sized ones that would have rented office space can and do go to suburban office parks. The outlying housing tends to get run-down. The concept is 19th century, and it takes creativity to sell the idea now. Most do not. Some do.
Quote from: Barklessdog on October 06, 2010, 01:04:03 PM
A lot of cities you go to you see where at one point they tried to revitalize them but ultimately failed. Dallas, Indianapolis & Cleveland come to mind. Hopefully this is not a growing trend.
Every year I stay at a friend's house in Indianapolis (near downtown) and am impressed at what I see. Lots of places are getting renovated and sure, there some crappy areas, but overall I would say they are making progress.
if they don't clean it up wolves will move in and eat everyone. old gregory hines movie.
When I went to Indie, Dallas & Cleveland it was not so much turning into ghetto but more like failed new development areas. Although I was just in Dallas (yesterday) and was told that Dallas is actually doing pretty well compared to the rest of the US. Still, our favorite Mexican Resteraunt was gone (The Cadillac on Market Street). I will no longer be going to Dallas now.
The first time I ever went to San Jose (about 1995), downtown was depressing. At least half the shops were closed, and there was such a big crime problem that there were cops in the door of every club, and they were doing random street searches. Six years later, it had come around quite a bit. Not that I found anything more interesting to do in San Jose than go to the Winchester Mansion and eat at Gordon Biersch. 8)
Quote from: Freuds_Cat on October 05, 2010, 11:20:27 PM
Following on from the 1954 book I am Legend Vincent Price starred in 1964 in The last man on earth. Same kind of scennario. Virus escapes, turns ppl into Zombies, Star has to exist is a world of zombies while he works out how to escape or find a cure for said virus........sound familiar? ;D
Thanks, that is interesting. I had no idea that the Omega Man had a predecessor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4mYireNvcg
So "I am Legend" (the Will Smith movie), which I was hugely disappointed of as it dumbed down the anit-civilisationist hordes to zombie status and lacked all the political overtones of the Heston version, is perhaps more a remake of the Vincent Price than the Heston movie.
Re Detroit, I was there first and last time in 1981. My first American city at the time. Back then, the American dream in the shape of an autoworker having a house in a nice neighborhood and enough money to afford a boat, four cars (for himself, his wife and the two children) plus the kids' college education at Ann Arbor was coming to an end. The neighborhoods were beginning to deteriorate, the infrastructure began to look shabby, yet people were still desperately holding on to that dream. I have a soft spot for Detroit as a city since then.
But you could still see that it had once been the proud workers neighborhood through which in the fifties and sixties the State Department would deliberately guide Russian diplomats and state visitors in their limos to rub in on them how much better an American auto worker lived than his Russian counterpart.
Quote from: uwe on October 13, 2010, 05:06:55 AM
So "I am Legend" (the Will Smith movie), which I was hugely disappointed of as it dumbed down the anit-civilisationist hordes to zombie status and lacked all the political overtones of the Heston version, is perhaps more a remake of the Vincent Price than the Heston movie.
George A. Romero says that Night of the Living Dead was "basically rippeded off from a Richard Matheson novel called I Am Legend."
In the Omega-Man there is a fine dialogue between the leader of the hooded hordes, Matthias, and Heston, where Matthias explains his ideology which was in essence: "Any type of technological progress is evil as it brought us into this apocalyptic scenario in the first place, we will never ever allow it". He wants to see what remains of humanity locked in a constant dark age and has fundamentalist religious fervour about it, in a way he's a Taliban. And he has a motive that transcends the "kill to eat" mono-mindedness of the zombies in the other films and that is fear of change.
That was a fine role for Anthony Zerbe, an excellent character actor.