I just got back from some more time in Detroit. Lots of new photos to post. My brain was sore after being there only a few days. The overall breadth of the continued decay and destruction is really sad. It's gotten far worse in only a year and after criss crossing the city from east to west and the river to 8 mile, you really realize the full scope of things. More than anything I just feel sad that it has come to this. Check this video out of robinwood st...from a few years ago..and some of those house are no longer standing or have been torched.
http://detroitnews.com/article/20090514/METRO08/905140408/Charlie-LeDuff--Off-Woodward--life-hits-a-dead-end
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
"Detroit - prairie and pavement" is a forthcoming book and exhibition of photographs on the urban anthropology of Detroit. Photographed by Ian Brown.
PHOTOS FROM THE PROJECT
ABOUT
Detroit was once the fourth largest city in the United States. It has lost over half it's population over the last 50 years. Unemployment is staggering ; there over thousands of abandoned houses and vast areas of the city are a virtual urban wasteland.
Hulking old factories and plants lie in ruins. The natural environment has slowly reclaimed whole city blocks and vacant swaths of former city streets giving rise to the term "urban prairie". Pheasants, coyotes and even deer are seen roaming in parts of the Detroit environs. Services have been cut, 911 wait times are approaching an hour and the city has taken on a sense of desperate and lawless desolation.
However, there are glimmers of hope for some renewal. Detroit offers an opportunity to exercise some ideas on urban thinking that would never be possible in another city. New approachs to impossible circumstances mean Detroit can be the proving grounds for new urbanism, much the way it was for the automotive industry that built the city in the first place. Will Detroit rise up again? or will it slide further into decline? For now it is caught somewhere between prairie and pavement.
Followers
About Me
- ian brown
- Toronto Photographer Ian Brown's style has been described as raw, engaging and intimate. Visit www.ianbrownphotography.com for more.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment