Monday, October 6, 2008

the first day of my second life


i have this idea that detroit will be the city of the future and we will all be left in its wake. one might laugh at this idea, knowing that detroit is in a constant state of rest and unrest. a shrinking city. a place of vandals and wildflowers. i now consider it post post-industrial, although i have never visited. but things happen in detroit, as much as one might be turned off by the idea. such efforts of the heidelberg project, object orange, and others (i am in the midst of finding these others) are reinvigorating detroit. or maybe they are just the beginning of the mass renewal that is starting to happen and this urban utopia i dream of invigorates detroit in the wrong direction. but, luckily, things move slowly in detroit, and it will take more than a few new buildings to bring the major capitalists. it is not a global city and it really has no chance of becoming one, so my bet is a safe one. rebecca solnit wrote a great article published in Harpers about detroit and its return to something other than a city, more than a city. i suppose we'll see what happens.

1 comment:

Relatively Painless said...

I stumbled across your blog and this entry, and i have to tell you, as a metro-detroiter that the city really does have character that is absent to the world eye. Little by little and under-ground culture of change is stirring and i find myself constantly falling in love with the gems that I uncover.

Hold out hope for us...