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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

This is unsympathetically referred to as "ruin porn" around Detroit. Yes, there are an exceptional amount of abandoned buildings (there are about 600,000 people in a city that could probably comfortably hold 3x that), but there are also world class universities, sports arenas, restaurants concert venues, houses and apartments, etc.

http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n8/htdocs/something-something...

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I think being dismissive of this sort of thing ignores the bigger point. American Society has a group of people (I'm going to say age 35 and below) who had never lived through a significant downturn before this. So sites like this aren't necessarily saying "Detroit is a lost cause" they are marveling at the idea of abandon buildings which is a fairly new concept to a lot of us.

I, for example, grew up in Las Vegas and am endlessly fascinated by the Fontainebleu building (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontainebleau_Resort_Las_Vegas). It's a 68 story resort that just ran out of money after they constructed the outer structure. So this 735ft tall neon blue building just sits there in the middle of the strip waiting to be dealt with (most believe it will never be finished at this point).

But my fascination with it isn't that I think the Vegas strip is dying its just that I'd never seen something like that fail to be completed before.

This reminds me of the "Eyesore of I4" which is a high-rise building under construction for the past 10 years just outside of Orlando, Florida.

http://andrewlerner.blogspot.com/2010/05/eyesore-of-i-4_07.h...

I'm from Detroit, and in high school use to sneak into these abandoned buildings and take pictures. I loved it, and it was a distinct characteristic of the city for me. At the time I would have called myself an urban explorer.

There are many Detroit cheerleaders in and around the city who would dismiss this as "ruin porn" and then bash whatever media outlet published the articles. Detroit has perpetually been in a state of self-declared "renaissance" dating all the way back to the founding of the city and the motto on the city flag that translates to something along the lines of "out of the ashes rises the phoenix."

I love Detroit, and loved my time living downtown. For me, the ruins were a part of that and what I loved. It's also ultimately what led me to move as there wasn't much happening in the city. On the occasions when things did happen, they happened with banners and streamers and proclamations about how this is a testament to the cities viability.

Detroiters need to learn to love what's unique about their city. Embrace the history. Rome celebrates it's ruins, why can't we? In celebrating the ruins, maybe we can't stop being so sensitive to it and start drawing attention to the rampant corruption that has left this city in this state. Maybe if we stop ignoring the past, and its affect on the present we can shape the future.

Was Rome celebrating its ruins in 400AD?

Surely there's some interesting things to celebrate, but a 50 year old crackhouse that's still occupied by crack addicts probably isn't one of them.

What makes Rome's 'ruins' great is - well, probably a bunch of things - but certainly the longetivity is one of them. There's nothing impressive about rotting crack houses.

There are a few abandoned buildings in Detroit that might count as having grandeur, like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Central_Station, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Army_of_the_Republic_Buil.... I agree that acres of rotting single-family homes isn't so impressive.

My real point is this: Detroiters are in denial. They all cry that the media and the world doesn't portray them properly while pretending that nothing is wrong with the city.

Celebrate the beauty that exists (Michigan Central was actually what I was thinking of with the Rome comment) and take advantage of the rest. Do you know how cheap it is to live in the city? Yes: there are acres of abandoned rotting land, but what's keeping Detroit from turning it's warehouses into startups? Imagine SOMA on a city scale.

> what's keeping Detroit from turning it's warehouses into startups? Imagine SOMA on a city scale.

What's missing is the things start-up employee type of people are looking for in a city: density, diversity, transit, food, Asian girls...

Hah. Detroiters are in denial. Right. Detroit is in revival in the sense that there is a very small amount of investment occuring in a couple of small areas. Before this, there was NOTHING. They've gotten three or four major companies to move downtown, including the major league teams and it appears that cobo hall might even get some help from the suburbs. Seriously, prior to 2003 there was very little to talk about. It's been slow going, but I think the "revival" is real.

The thing that people miss when comparing Pittsburg and other cities to Detroit is that it is square MILES upon miles of complete ruin. The "ruins porn" is good for the city because it raises awareness of what destruction can take place when you remove the underlying economic structure from a community.

In terms of "startups", you are free to do -- there are city taxes, but it's probably doable in some areas, but keep in mind the lack of city services and that it is still a very, very dangerous city.

To be pedantic, Rome wasn't in ruins in 400AD. The Visigoths wouldn't sack it for another decade and the Vandals plunder and raped the city proper more than 50 years later. The last nominal imperator was dethroned by a barbarian in 476AD.

Hey, doesn't your username mean "skull fucker"?

EDIT: This isn't linked to your post at all, just wondering.

Something like that. You're not the billionth person who's asked or anything.

So no prize?

A few thoughts on “ruin porn” from the site admin:

http://detroiturbex.com/updates/?p=47

  > How would you feel about an unending stream of
  > tourists arriving daily in your hometown to pick
  > over the carcasses of your ruined neighborhoods,
  > taking pictures of devastation to show their friends,
  > stealing souvenirs to hang on their walls at home,
  > and leaving without making even the slightest effort
  > to understand or improve the condition of your city?

I'm curious why one would expect tourists to improve the condition of the city. Most tourists don't go places to volunteer as part of a rebuilding error.

Also a great comment here: http://detroiturbex.com/updates/?p=47#comment-14

Is Detroit really troubled with an unending stream of tourists?

Were that the case, it should be easy to make enough money off of them to restore the city.

I assume when you mention world class universities you're referring to UM Ann Arbor -- maybe Kettering too. Is there a lot of cross fertilization between the city and the schools? Do a lot of UM students live or move to Detroit?

I'm a UM student and I can't say there's much alumni activity in Detroit itself. Grads generally either work in Ann Arbor, Metro Detroit (Birmingham, Royal Oak, etc.) or leave the state entirely.

This graphic from Forbes is pretty telling: http://goo.gl/4uBr

I'm a UM grad and I live in downtown Detroit. It's amazing: great culture, music, food, night-life, and I feel safe. I took our entire office to my place before a Tiger's game last week and now multiple people are looking into moving downtown and others are interested after that graduate.

Downtown might be okay. However, if you go outside just a little bit, you are in the danger zone. This isn't speculation.

Even 8 years go it was bad. I worked downtown and could regularly hear gunshots from my office during the day.

Wow, that's a pretty crazy graphic. At first I thought I just couldn't see the black lines, so I clicked Seattle.

I'm an alum of UofM.

If graduates do stay in Michigan, it's to continue working or studying in the Ann Arbor area. Only a handful do find jobs in the metro Detroit area (mainly engineers and consultants), but that's a trickle opposed to the flood.

Detroit's premier college is Wayne State University, and I can not speak for its graduates.

I think the reason a lot of grads from the state of MI don't live in Detroit is there is nothing attracting them to do so. When I graduated from MSU (2005) I knew more people from MSU and U of M moving to Chicago than Detroit to work. If Detroit were anything like Chicago or any other big city you would find a lot of U of M, MSU, CMU, WMU, OU, etc grads going to live and work in the city.

I also graduated from U of M, and then moved to Chicago, and I know others who have. Originally born and raised in Michigan.

sports arenas

One of them sold for under $600,000 a couple years ago!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverdome#Sale

The Silverdome is in Pontiac which is about a 30 minute drive from Detroit and the Lions moved out of there about 10 years ago so that's not too relevant to this topic.

Comerica Park, Ford Field, and Joe Louis Arena are actually in Detroit and they're all great facilities. Comerica Park and Ford Field are across the street from each other and both are state of the art. The area surrounding those 2 stadiums is one of the nicest parts of Detroit. Joe Louis is located on the water, a couple miles south of Comerica and Ford Field, and while it might be old, it still has a great atmosphere and is probably my favorite out of the 3.

Pretty incredible. Could've sold my house, bought that and turned the interior into a giant vegetable patch with some grazing land. A fattoria with stadium seating and reasonable exterior defenses against zombie hordes. Much more interesting than a house in the suburbs.

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