Category: shrinking cities
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Downtrodden Detroit
A continuing theme in the mainstream media is the consistent eulogization of Detroit – perhaps due to the fact that, according to Paul Clemens, unlike other cities, Detroit “is one of those places that require you to have an opinion about them”. In his recent review of Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charles LeDuff Clemens…
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Shrinking Cities: Sugrue Part I: Arsenal
Arsenal Moving along with the Shrinking Cities readings, the first part of ‘Origins of the Urban Crisis’ by Segrue recounts the development of the City of Detroit around WWII as the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ which made it one of the highest paying blue-collar cities in the US. In the words of Segrue, “Mid-twentieth-century Detroit embodied…
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Shrinking Cities: The Forgetting Machine
One of our supplementary readings for the Shrinking Cities group is the recent essay by Jerry Herron on The Design Observer entitled ‘The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit.‘ The author is from Wayne State and has been a resident of Detroit since the early eighties, so it avoids some of the outsider…
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Siftings: 01.11.12
““All great art is born of the metropolis.” – Ezra Pound :: image via NY Times A great little snapshot on urban serendipity from the NY Times that looks at the accidental ‘curation’ of spaces that the urban environment yields, such as the framed view from the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge. Perhaps the uniformity…
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Upcoming Lecture on Detroit
Detroit: the 21st Century Challenge – a test of equity, vitality, and sustainability THURSDAY DECEMBER 9TH, 5:30 TO 7 P.M. Please join us for a moderated discussion with Dr. Ellen Bassett of the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning and a panel of speakers including Dr. Robin Boyle of Wayne State University in Detroit;…