Abstract
This chapter provides a detailed account of the ruins of Detroit and “ruin porn.” It establishes that interest in Detroit’s ruins fits within the tradition of ruins outlined in Chap. 2. It also emphasizes that some people have viewed Detroit’s ruins positively; others, negatively, and explores the reasons for this difference of opinion. It closes by speculating about what we should do about situations like Detroit’s.
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Notes
- 1.
Apel uses this phrase as the heading to the conclusion of her book. In the conclusion, she writes: “Detroit has become only the most extreme example of what is happening in the nation’s declining cities” (Beautiful Terrible Ruins, 154).
- 2.
Andrew Moore, Detroit Disassembled (Bologna: Damiani/Akron Art Museum, 2010), 119.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Mark Binelli, Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2012), 281. A couple of pages later, Binelli alludes to the unfortunate provenance of the German term “ruinenwert,” which, he says, comes to us courtesy of Albert Speer, planner of future ruins and executor of various Nazi architectural projects.
- 5.
Binelli says that this interest seems especially keen among those “from Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands.” “Every Detroiter I know who has ever photographed an abandoned building and possesses any kind of Web presence has been contacted by strangers from Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Paris, or Berlin, asking about the best way to sneak into the old train station or offering to pay for a local tour” (Detroit City Is the Place to Be, 274).
- 6.
See Annie Murphy, “This Spanish developer helped rebuild Lima and now he’s betting big on remaking Detroit,” PRI’s The World, December 27, 2013, https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-12-27/spanish-developer-helped-rebuild-lima-and-now-he-s-betting-big-remaking-detroit.
- 7.
See Alana Semuels, “Detroit’s abandoned buildings draw tourists instead of developers,” The Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2013, http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-detroit-ruin-tours-20131226-story.html.
- 8.
Binelli, Detroit City Is the Place to Be, 280.
- 9.
Quoted in J.C. Reindl, “60 urban explorers get rare tour of Packard Plant,” The Detroit Free-Press, October 24, 2015, http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2015/10/24/60-urban-explorers-receive-guided-tour-packard-plant/74539126/.
- 10.
See Robert Allen, “Take a legal, public hard-hat tour of Packard Plant,” The Detroit Free-Press, September 26, 2017, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017/09/26/packard-plant-detroit-tour-public/700341001/.
- 11.
Quoted in Nick Paumgarten, “Detroit Valentine,” The New Yorker, December 12, 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/12/detroit-valentine.
- 12.
As Allen’s article notes, “Most of the remaining industrial tenants left in the 1990s, when the property developed a reputation for wild rave parties.” Allen, “Take a legal, public hard-hat tour of Packard Plant,” The Detroit Free-Press, September 26, 2017, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017/09/26/packard-plant-detroit-tour-public/700341001/.
- 13.
Third Ear Recordings, Techno City: What Is Detroit Techno?, n.d.
- 14.
See Will Lynch, “Bringing it all back home: how techno is poised to return to Detroit,” The Guardian, December 8, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/08/techno-detroit-return-berlin-tresor.
- 15.
See Ted Loos, “Picturing Motor City: Julia Reyes Taubman Trains Her Lens on Detroit,” Vogue, November 15, 2011 (http://www.vogue.com/873706/picturing-motor-city-julia-reyes-taubman-trains-her-lens-on-detroit/); Paumgarten, “Detroit Valentine”; and Apel, Beautiful Terrible Ruins, 92.
- 16.
Macaulay, Pleasure of Ruins, 166.
- 17.
As Dora Apel writes:
In 2007 nearly one hundred homes were foreclosed upon every day, with an estimated two thousand people moving out of the city each month. Crowds grew unruly when they could not get into overcrowded Cobo Hall job fairs, and ten thousand people lined up on the first day when one of the city’s casinos advertised for new workers. For decades, more buildings have been demolished than built in Detroit, a practice of “unbuilding” that has become the city’s primary form of architectural activity. The average price of homes dropped from $97,900 in 2003 to $12,400 in 2009. The banks are also responsible for “zombie” properties, affecting thousands of people in Detroit and some three hundred thousand nationwide. These are created when banks start foreclosure proceedings but then decide not to finish the foreclosure process, walking away from vacant homes whose owners they have forced out … In 2014 the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force found that 84,641 homes and buildings across Detroit, 30 percent of the total stock, are dilapidated or heading that way, with 114,000 vacant lots and 559 big empty industrial buildings. (Beautiful Terrible Ruins, 40)
- 18.
Quoted in Joel Kurth, “Detroit pays high price for arson onslaught,” The Detroit News, February 18, 2015, http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/special-reports/2015/02/18/arson-fires-detroit-cost/22596529/.
- 19.
Binelli, Detroit City Is the Place to Be, 191.
- 20.
Packard: The Last Shift, directed by Brian Kaufman (Detroit: Detroit Free-Press, 2014).
- 21.
Dillon, Ruin Lust, 28.
- 22.
Merewether, “Traces of Loss,” in Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed, edited by Michael S. Roth, Claire Lyons, and Charles Merewether (Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1997), 26.
- 23.
Thomas Morton, “Something, Something, Something, Detroit,” Vice, July 31, 2009, https://www.vice.com/read/something-something-something-detroit-994-v16n8.
- 24.
Binelli, Detroit City Is the Place to Be, 272–273.
- 25.
John Patrick Leary, “Detroitism,” Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Ideas, January 15, 2011, https://www.guernicamag.com/features/leary_1_15_11/.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Binelli, Detroit City Is the Place to Be, 281.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997), 8.
- 30.
Packard: The Last Shift.
References
Allen, Robert. “Take a Legal, Public Hard-Hat Tour of Packard Plant.” The Detroit Free-Press, September 26, 2017. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017/09/26/packard-plant-detroit-tour-public/700341001/.
Apel, Dora. Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015.
Binelli, Mark. Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2012.
Dillon, Brian. Ruin Lust: Artists’ Fascination with Ruins, from Turner to the Present Day. London: Tate Publishing, 2014.
Harries, Karsten. The Ethical Function of Architecture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997.
Kurth, Joel. “Detroit Pays High Price for Arson Onslaught.” The Detroit News, February 18, 2015. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/special-reports/2015/02/18/arson-fires-detroit-cost/22596529/.
Leary, John Patrick. “Detroitism.” Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Ideas, January 15, 2011. https://www.guernicamag.com/features/leary_1_15_11/.
Loos, Ted. “Picturing Motor City: Julia Reyes Taubman Trains Her Lens on Detroit.” Vogue, November 15, 2011. http://www.vogue.com/873706/picturing-motor-city-julia-reyes-taubman-trains-her-lens-on-detroit/.
Lynch, Will. “Bringing It all Back Home: How Techno Is Poised to Return to Detroit.” The Guardian, December 8, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/08/techno-detroit-return-berlin-tresor.
Macaulay, Rose. Pleasure of Ruins. New York: Walker and Company, 1966.
Marchand, Yves, and Romain Meffre. The Ruins of Detroit. Göttingen: Steidl, 2010.
Merewether, Charles. “Traces of Loss.” In Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed, edited by Michael S. Roth, Claire Lyons, and Charles Merewether. Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1997.
Moore, Andrew. Detroit Disassembled. Bologna: Damiani/Akron Art Museum, 2010.
Morton, Thomas. “Something, Something, Something, Detroit.” Vice, July 31, 2009. https://www.vice.com/read/something-something-something-detroit-994-v16n8.
Murphy, Annie. “This Spanish Developer Helped Rebuild Lima and Now He’s Betting Big on Remaking Detroit.” PRI’s The World, December 27, 2013. https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-12-27/spanish-developer-helped-rebuild-lima-and-now-he-s-betting-big-remaking-detroit.
Packard: The Last Shift. Directed by Brian Kaufman. Detroit: Detroit Free-Press, 2014.
Paumgarten, Nick. “Detroit Valentine.” The New Yorker, December 12, 2011. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/12/detroit-valentine.
Reindl, J.C. “60 Urban Explorers Get Rare Tour of Packard Plant.” The Detroit Free-Press, October 24, 2015. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2015/10/24/60-urban-explorers-receive-guided-tour-packard-plant/74539126/.
Semuels, Alana. “Detroit’s Abandoned Buildings Draw Tourists Instead of Developers.” The Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2013. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-detroit-ruin-tours-20131226-story.html.
Taubman, Julia Reyes. Detroit: 138 Square Miles. Detroit: Museum of Contemporary Art/D.A.P., 2011.
Techno City: What Is Detroit Techno? Directed by Third Ear Recordings. n.d.
Vergara, Camilo José. “Downtown Detroit: ‘American Metropolis’ or Vacant Land—What to Do with the World’s Third Largest Concentration of Pre-Depression Skyscrapers?” In Metropolis, 1995, 33–38.
———. American Ruins. New York: Monacelli Press, 1999.
Young, Coleman. Hard Stuff. New York: Viking, 1994.
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Whitehouse, T. (2018). Detroit: New Ruins and Old Problems. In: How Ruins Acquire Aesthetic Value. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03065-0_4
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