I found this article humming through my Twitter feed, comparing the costs and benefits of the two dominant story-lines about Detroit: Detroit Lament and Detroit Utopia.
Detroit’s so close to what Pittsburgh is and is not that I tend to wiggle it’s existence like a hurt tooth to make sure it is still there and not here. Other than feeding that cruel fascination with Detroit, this article gives me hope for another reason: it uses academic language in a clear way to express a significant social problem and propose a solution to it.
The problem is not the death of Detroit-that-was,), but the denial by Detroit boosters than there is anything to document in its urban fields and empty homes.
The idea that, because the carapace of Detroit-that-was distracts from the vision of Detroit-that-they-want, it should be ignored is, as Willy Staley, the author of “What’s Really Pornographic? The Point of Documenting Detroit,” ahistorical. It’s a intentional dismissal of a city’s remaindered parts because they are inconvenient.
At the very least, Detroit-that-was deserves a memorial in memory, even if it’s only flickr’s.
Inspirational Quote:
“Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.”–Leo Tolstoy
