The Fantastic Ruin of a Modern City

[mbarrick]

What happens when a modern city made wealthy in the first third of the 20th century falls into decay and ruin after nearly half its population moves away? Look at Detroit.

Here's a few of the more spectacular images from the site:


An abandoned, burnt-out mansion.


A railway platform designed for millions of passengers, serving none for decades.


A grand theatre at the base of a skyscraper, serving as a parking lot.

Comments

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've read plenty about urban decay, but I've never seen it presented like this. It's remarkable. It's also a testiment to the wisdom of our past (and even present) city councils that have made much maligned conscious efforts to make downtown undrivable and commuting a pain in the ass. It keeps the downtown alive. Manhattan was largely spared from this kind of urban decay both by geography, as you mention, and the fact that it grew up as a pedestrian city with good transit before the introduction of the car. It's more like European cities in that regard. Another aspect that saved New York City, and was mimiced by Toronto, was consolidation. Consolidating the outer bouroughs into the city allowed the suburban tax base to feed back to the city. Detroit didn't do this. Not thier fault, of course - no one saw urban sprawl coming and Detroit got it first.

Which is why Vancouver is wholly unique, though. In Vancouver the city planners were able to see what happened to cities like Detroit and Los Angeles and took conscious steps to prevent this from happening here, facilitated to a certain extent by the geography.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

on the other hand it would be cool and kind of creepy to explore some of those old buildings...the history would be amazing...although that parking garage makes me want to cry...one of my friends snooped around the very old brigham young university in provo, utah when they were down there...they did it at night and he said it was really creepy...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I'll have to find the sight again, I don't remember the city, but it is a bunch of college kid who started out exploring a derelict building at their university and then progressed to old factories, sewers, and all sorts of weird urban spaces. It's quite neat...

Found it.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

http://www.actionsquad.org/missions.html

And Vancouver copy-cats

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

http://www.wraiths.org/missions.htm