Detroit — The incredible shrinking city

I've been spending some time in Toldeo and Detroit recently, in fact I have a tremendous amount of pictures to post, but that's another post. These two pictures (right & below right) by Lowell Boileau from The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit are of the fabulous Michigan Theatre in Detroit while it was being used as a parking garage. Like much of Detroit the Michigan Theatre is now gone forever.

"The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit all began as sparkling edifices, the fulfillment of the dreams of their architects and developers.

Their end did not come suddenly, as part of some natural disaster or war.  Instead it resulted from an accumulated lack of basic aesthetic sensibility.  A small thing left broken here, an indiscretion of taste there, until a preponderance of damage equals an insoluble situation. What was revered becomes scorned.

Abandonment and vandalism follow and the damage becomes irreparable."
— from Detroit Institutes of the Arts

Cities are shrinking all over the world.

Shrinking cities are a cultural challenge to us. In the Shrinking Cities project, architects, academics and artists investigate recent developments in Detroit, Ivanovo, Manchester / Liverpool and Halle / Leipzig - and make suggestions.

Shrinking cities is a project (2002-2005) of the Federal Cultural Foundation, under the direction of Philipp Oswalt (Berlin) in co-operation with the Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the magazine archplus.
— from shrinkingcities.com

Link: The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit

Link: the Rape of Detroit: Scavanger Desecrations of the Ruins of Detroit