Detroit: the last days

[TommyJ]

Detroit: the last days

Detroit is a city in terminal decline. When film director Julien Temple arrived in town, he was shocked by what he found – but he also uncovered reasons for hope

When the film- maker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent.

Leaving behind the gift shops of the "Big Three" car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown's auto-makers, the city's ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows.

Like The Passenger, it's hard to believe what we're seeing. The vast, rusting hulks of abandoned car plants, (some of the largest structures ever built and far too expensive to pull down), beached amid a shining sea of grass. The blackened corpses of hundreds of burned-out houses, pulled back to earth by the green tentacles of nature. Only the drunken rows of telegraph poles marching away across acres of wildflowers and prairie give any clue as to where teeming city streets might once have been.

Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car. Our excitement at driving into what feels like a man-made hurricane Katrina is matched only by sheer disbelief that what was once the fourth-largest city in the US could actually be in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth. The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature.

One in five houses now stand empty. Property prices have fallen 80% or more in Detroit over the last three years. A three-bedroom house on Albany Street is still on the market for $1.

Unemployment has reached 30%; 33.8% of Detroit's population and 48.5% of its children live below the poverty line. Forty-seven per cent of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate; 29 Detroit schools closed in 2009 alone.

But statistics tell only one part of the story. The reality of Detroit is far more visceral. My producer, George Hencken, and I drove around recce-ing our film, getting out of the car and photographing extraordinary places to film with mad-dog enthusiasm – everywhere demands to be filmed – but were greeted with appalled concern by Bradley, our friendly manager, on our return to the hotel. "Never get out of the car in that area – people have been car-jacked and shot."

Law and order has completely broken down in the inner city, drugs and prostitution are rampant and unless you actually murder someone the police will leave you alone. This makes it great for filming – park where you like, film what you like – but not so good if you actually live there. The abandoned houses make great crack dens and provide cover for appalling sex crimes and child abduction. The only growth industry is the gangs of armed scrappers, who plunder copper and steel from the ruins. Rabid dogs patrol the streets. All the national supermarket chains have pulled out of the inner city. People have virtually nowhere to buy fresh produce. Starbucks? Forget it.

What makes all this so hard to understand is that Detroit was the frontier city of the American Dream – not just the automobile, but pretty much everything we associate with 20th-century western civilisation came from there. Mass production; assembly lines; stop lights; freeways; shopping malls; suburbs and an emerging middle-class workforce: all these things were pioneered in Detroit.

But the seeds of the Motor City's downfall were sown a long time ago. The blind belief of the Big Three in the automobile as an inexhaustible golden goose, guaranteeing endless streams of cash, resulted in the city becoming reliant on a single industry. Its destiny fatally entwined with that of the car. The greed-fuelled willingness of the auto barons to siphon up black workers from the American south to man their Metropolis-like assembly lines and then treat them as subhuman citizens, running the city along virtually apartheid lines, created a racial tinderbox. The black riots of 1943 and 1967 gave Detroit the dubious distinction of being the only American city to twice call in the might of the US army to suppress insurrection on its own streets and led directly to the disastrous so-called white flight of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

The population of Detroit is now 81.6% African-American and almost two-thirds down on its overall peak in the early 50s. The city has lost its tax base and cannot afford to cut the grass or light its streets, let alone educate or feed its citizens. The rest of the US is in denial about the economic catastrophe that has engulfed Detroit, terrified that this man-made contagion may yet spread to other US cities. But somehow one cannot imagine the same fate befalling a city with a predominantly white population.

On many levels Detroit seems to be an insoluble disaster with urgent warnings for the rest of the industrialised world. But as George and I made our film we discovered, to our surprise, an irrepressible positivity in the city. Unable to buy fresh food for their children, people are now growing their own, turning the demolished neighbourhood blocks into urban farms and kick-starting what is now the fastest-growing movement across the US. Although the city is still haemorrhaging population, young people from all over the country are also flooding into Detroit – artists, musicians and social pioneers, all keen to make use of the abandoned urban spaces and create new ways of living together.

With the breakdown of 20th-century civilisation, many Detroiters have discovered an exhilarating sense of starting over, building together a new cross-racial community sense of doing things, discarding the bankrupt rules of the past and taking direct control of their own lives. Still at the forefront of the American Dream, Detroit is fast becoming the first "post-American" city. And amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer's map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all.

So perhaps Detroit can avoid the fate of the lost cities of the Maya and rise again like the phoenix that sits, appropriately, on its municipal crest. That is why George and I decided to call our film Requiem for Detroit? – with a big question mark at the end.


Requiem for Detroit? is on BBC2 on Saturday 13 March at 9pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/...-urban-decline

[Georgie]

Notice the subtle and typical "heart of gold" propaganda? The city is ugly on the outside but inside it has a heart of gold. I'd love to know who these "farmers" are in Detroit. If Zimbabwe is any indication about nigger farmers...

"Social pioneers" guffaw. Just give it time, it'll turn out to be an even bigger nigger shithole than it already is.

[Leonard Rouse]

Originally Posted by TommyJ

On many levels Detroit seems to be an insoluble disaster with urgent warnings for the rest of the industrialised world. But as George and I made our film we discovered, to our surprise, an irrepressible positivity in the city. Unable to buy fresh food for their children, people are now growing their own, turning the demolished neighbourhood blocks into urban farms and kick-starting what is now the fastest-growing movement across the US. Although the city is still haemorrhaging population, young people from all over the country are also flooding into Detroit – artists, musicians and social pioneers, all keen to make use of the abandoned urban spaces and create new ways of living together.

With the breakdown of 20th-century civilisation, many Detroiters have discovered an exhilarating sense of starting over, building together a new cross-racial community sense of doing things, discarding the bankrupt rules of the past and taking direct control of their own lives. Still at the forefront of the American Dream, Detroit is fast becoming the first "post-American" city. And amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer's map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all.

So perhaps Detroit can avoid the fate of the lost cities of the Maya and rise again like the phoenix that sits, appropriately, on its municipal crest. That is why George and I decided to call our film Requiem for Detroit? – with a big question mark at the end.


Requiem for Detroit? is on BBC2 on Saturday 13 March at 9pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/...-urban-decline

Is this guy on f'ing dope?

[Georgie]

Originally Posted by Leonard Rouse

Is this guy on f'ing dope?

Yeah I'm sure all the 120lb skinny jean wearing vegan hipsters are just flocking to Detroit to start growing food, sip on their lattes and create new ways for us to live in a cross racial society. This sounds like something that came out of a diversity promotion office of some kind.

No way in hell any of that was based in reality, except the factual parts in the beginning.

This article secretly, whether it realizes or not, says quite a lot of huge truths. The fact that it became a nigger shithole and Whitey ran and Detroit "lost its tax base" ...now isn't that interesting. The whole prospect of it "spreading" to other states. More subtle facts.

Who knows maybe this is Detroit 2.0 (subtle joke allusion to Haiti being rebuilt and called Haiti 2.0). lol.

[Karl Lueger]

As a White city it was the automotive capital of the nation,
as a nigger shit-hole its haitian..

Humans came from all parts of Europe to work and raise White families there,
in what was at one tine even called "the American capital of anti-semitism.."

then-the kike symptoms came to full effect after they detonated another nigger-bomb...


http://letdetroitdie.com/blog/

YouTube- George4title, Inflation.us Detroit Ground Zero for Economic Collapse Part 1/4

YouTube- George4title, Inflation.us Detroit Ground Zero for Economic Collapse Part 1/4

[Johnsonsmith]

There's still a lot of white people in Detroit. The problem is all jobs are going away to fatten up profit margins. No solution in sight.

[Johnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by TommyJ

Detroit: the last days

unless you actually murder someone the police will leave you alone.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/...-urban-decline

Awesome . It's like amweika before it became a police state under Reagan/Clinton/Bush

[William Broad]

Nigga be crazy, Detroit is dead and it's going to keep rotting, at best it might continue existing as a zombie or something but rising like a phoenix? ha

[Roy]

Here's the fact that no liberal wants you to know. The areas around Detroit that aren't nigger infected are quite fine. There are a number of videos on Youtube that blame Detriots problems on any one of the following: crime, poverty, hopelessness, the global economy anything at all, except the niggers. I'm quoting someone here, but I'll repeat it:

Cancer:
1) Invades healthy tissue
2) Agitates tissue, then spreads to other parts of the body
3) Reproduces rapidly until several areas are affected
4) Body dies

Niggers:
1) Move into a white area
2) Agitate all nearby humans
3) Multiply rapidly until area dies (Detroit)
4) Moves to new area

[George Witzgall]

this article clearly states the reason Detroit went downhill was because "black workers from the South" were brought in to what was a prosperous, white city:

But the seeds of the Motor City's downfall were sown a long time ago. The blind belief of the Big Three in the automobile as an inexhaustible golden goose, guaranteeing endless streams of cash, resulted in the city becoming reliant on a single industry. Its destiny fatally entwined with that of the car. The greed-fuelled willingness of the auto barons to siphon up black workers from the American south to man their Metropolis-like assembly lines and then treat them as subhuman citizens, running the city along virtually apartheid lines, created a racial tinderbox. The black riots of 1943 and 1967 gave Detroit the dubious distinction of being the only American city to twice call in the might of the US army to suppress insurrection on its own streets and led directly to the disastrous so-called white flight of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

it goes on to state "one cannot imagine... a city with a predominantly white population" being engulfed by such an economic catastrophe:

The population of Detroit is now 81.6% African-American and almost two-thirds down on its overall peak in the early 50s. The city has lost its tax base and cannot afford to cut the grass or light its streets, let alone educate or feed its citizens. The rest of the US is in denial about the economic catastrophe that has engulfed Detroit, terrified that this man-made contagion may yet spread to other US cities. But somehow one cannot imagine the same fate befalling a city with a predominantly white population.

is it just me, or does this sound a bit.. truthful?

[George Witzgall]

The vast, rusting hulks of abandoned car plants, (some of the largest structures ever built and far too expensive to pull down), beached amid a shining sea of grass. The blackened corpses of hundreds of burned-out houses, pulled back to earth by the green tentacles of nature. Only the drunken rows of telegraph poles marching away across acres of wildflowers and prairie give any clue as to where teeming city streets might once have been.

this sounds really cool. if whites ever retook the city it would be a really cool place to rebuild. lots of cool architecture.

Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car.

"street zombies" haha it sounds like a vnner could have written this.

[Alex Linder]

Originally Posted by Leonard Rouse

Is this guy on f'ing dope?

Guardian's a brit-commie paper. Niggers can't be guilty of anything, responsible for anything, or limited by anything that can't be improved with white man's money. Niggers are victims. Only. Always. Bad things happen around and to them, but never because of them. White racism and the decline of the auto industry killed Detroit. Certainly not niggers.

[Dale VanderMeer]

Don't also blame the tapirs for Detroit's demise either.

Carl Levin, Sander Levin and Geoffrey Fieger all have a hand in this mess in Michigan.

Originally Posted by Alex Linder

Guardian's a brit-commie paper. Niggers can't be guilty of anything, responsible for anything, or limited by anything that can't be improved with white man's money. Niggers are victims. Only. Always. Bad things happen around and to them, but never because of them. White racism and the decline of the auto industry killed Detroit. Certainly not niggers.

[Joe_J.]

Blacks Destroy Every City They Settle In

[Georgie]

Originally Posted by Roy

Here's the fact that no liberal wants you to know. The areas around Detroit that aren't nigger infected are quite fine. There are a number of videos on Youtube that blame Detriots problems on any one of the following: crime, poverty, hopelessness, the global economy anything at all, except the niggers. I'm quoting someone here, but I'll repeat it:

Oh my, not only are they like cancer but they're worse than nuclear bombs! (as demonstrated by the rebuilt Nagasaki/Hiroshima).

This is like some weird macro/micro universe type thing.

[George Witzgall]

Originally Posted by Georgie

This is like some weird macro/micro universe type thing.

what is the meaning of this?!

[Georgie]

Originally Posted by George Witzgall

what is the meaning of this?!

Just like our bodies have cancer and fight it, go higher up and you have another type of cancer (niggers) that have to be fought.

[Leonard Rouse]

Originally Posted by George Witzgall

what is the meaning of this?!

It's a fractal phenomenon: Zoom in and it's out-of-control cells destroying a body. Zoom out and it's niggers destroying cities.

If cancer cells had culture, it would be hip hop.

[George Witzgall]

Originally Posted by Leonard Rouse

It's a fractal phenomenon: Zoom in and it's out-of-control cells destroying a body. Zoom out and it's niggers destroying cities.

thank you for that clarification. I thought for a second you were going to invoke chaos theory.

[Leonard Rouse]

Originally Posted by George Witzgall

thank you for that clarification. I thought for a second you were going to invoke chaos theory.

If a nigger farts in the White House, 10 White soldiers die in Iraq?