I don't think there would be anything wrong at all if people moved to Detroit to do art, or urban farming or whatever. Places where people can live cheaply and have room to work are essential for the creation of new art.
I don't think 'ruin porn' is very useful if that's all it is. But if you spend any time in Detroit, the ruination is pretty inescapable. To me it feels less like ruins and more like fallow land, as though all it's waiting for is the right spark. Beyond both these ideas -- Detroit as lurid icon of urban decay, and as unrealized potential -- there's something that the rest of the world tends to ignore, which is that Detroit has real people living there across the whole spectrum of human experience -- the desparate, the scary, the hopeful, the evil and the good. And somehow every 'good' thing that comes to Detroit doesn't really reach down to help the poorest of the poor. On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Arturo Lopez <arturo.m.lo...@gmail.com> wrote: > http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n8/htdocs/something-something-something-detroit-994.php?page=1 > > Very funny article about Detroit "ruin porn" and all the cleverly > cropped photos to make everything look depressing when outside > journalists come to the city. > > I loved the line about a "bunch of “Billyburg hipsters” moving to the > city to start urban farms. Mostly because this is an actual dream of > my girlfriend, and I can now use this to tease her that no one wants > her to move in to their hood and start an urban farm. haha. > > -Art >
