City of the Future
As a native Detroiter, I feel tremendous sadness that the city of my birth and this once great American metropolis has become synonymous with America’s industrial decay. Detroit has turned into a symbol of the country’s fall from glory, whether one likes that outcome or not.
I only lived a year here, on the city’s west side, on Glastonbury near River Rouge Park, before my family moved out of state. Perhaps it was best they left when thousands of families, almost all white, were fleeing to the suburbs. This flight followed decades of redlining and segregation that had stifled opportunities for the city’s African Americans. Tensions in Detroit came to a hot boil in the 1967 riots that left 43 people dead and 2,000 buildings destroyed.
What befell Detroit was far greater than what the city alone controlled. Federal policies promoting interstate construction, the petro-based economy that allowed for suburban development, the lack of opportunities for disadvantaged and non-white residents, and trade policy and treaties like NAFTA each took their toll. The automobile makers who once made the city rich inevitably restructured, and the debate rages if organized labor or the Big Three really brought the Motor City to its knees. Today, the city is infamous as a symbol of capitalist ruin, where nearly four in 10 residents live in poverty, according the U.S. Census, and Detroit tops the FBI’s list, as of 2018, for murder and violent crime rates for large cities. See my story on Detroit’s fall from glory on my policy blog.
So, if you are looking for a happy story, or a story on plucky urban farmers and tough urban pioneers who are making a go in this truly American city, this photo essay is not what you want to see. That is someone else’s story, not mine. I took these photos between 2015 and 2018, and what I saw profoundly impacted me. For a great photo essay, see Andrew Moore’s series in his book Detroit Disassembled.
Keywords: Detroit Photos, Detroit Photographs, Detroit Decay, Detroit Urban Decay, Detroit NAFTA, Michigan Central Station, Downtown Detroit, Detroit Abandoned, Abandoned Homes Detroit