Category Archives: ruins

A City of Missing People

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in decline, Detroit, incremental change, Jobs, ruins

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Detroit's Michigan Central Station

Tourists usually pick a place to visit that’s the best at something. New York and Chicago have their skyscrapers. Orlando has its amusement parks. Detroit has decay. My wife and I stayed there a few days last summer and, honestly it was just sad. Detroit was built for 2 million people but only 700,000 people live there now. It’s a city of 1.3 million missing people. Detroit has this endless supply of buildings–wonderful buildings–that nobody uses. That’s what really gets to me about this city. All the lost potential, wasted effort, abandoned beauty. The world’s biggest ghost town.

I just saw  Detropia, a film that explains the problems of Detroit through a collage of lives, no narrator. It doesn’t get overly nostalgic and it’s not a movie of “ruin porn,” although you can’t tell Detroit’s story without ruins. Detroit’s strategy is to invest in its best places and try to build outward again. Some young people are moving downtown and that’s probably the best way for the city to start over. The problem is, the city can’t really afford to invest in itself anymore. It’s spread out over 140 square miles and it just can’t support its current population with this massive infrastructure footprint. When there’s block after block with one house where there used to be 20, how can you afford to maintain the streets, water and sewer lines, the police and fire departments, or even to plow the snow?

The thing that builds a city, millions of people making individual decisions, has been the undoing of Detroit. It’s become a repository for the state’s poor, and when they’re lucky enough to find more work, they leave. It’s a logical decision. The city is so far gone, so disappeared, that I’m afraid no matter how much the economy recovers, pretty soon it just won’t be a logical place for anyone to live.

Corktown neighborhood

Grand Army of the Republic Building, built for Detroit's Union Civil War veterans

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Borscht Belt Meets Rust Belt

01 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in casinos, decline, gambling, ruins

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Tamarack Lodge Hotel, photo courtesy Bearings

It’s almost Labor Day, when the last summer vacationers will be leaving the Catskills. It’s pretty safe to say that most of them left a long time ago, though. The area known as the Borscht Belt is where countless middle-class Jewish families streamed up from New York City and spent their summers in the countless hotels and bungalow colonies. It’s where young comedians like Don Rickles, Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks plied their trade. Where nobody puts Baby in a corner. Today, it looks more like the Rust Belt.

I spent about half my childhood here as the son of school teachers but never got to see the area in its heyday. Never got to take advantage of the vast entertainment infrastructure that existed from the ’40s to the ’60s. The interstate highway system and cheap airfare brought everyplace in the country that much closer to New York City, and everyone apparently decided to vacation someplace else. Today, a lot of the old hotels are just sitting empty, waiting to burn down. Or waiting to be turned into a casino.

Ever since I could read I remember seeing a billboard practically begging, “Casinos mean jobs.” Atlantic City had just legalized gambling, trying to bring back their own lost summer crowds and it was another nail in the coffin of the Borscht Belt. They’re still pushing for gambling in the Catskills, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo is considering ending the state’s gambling ban. It’s too late, though.

State governments don’t really want their own residents gambling. It’s always a losing proposition*, so it’s best to get out-of-state suckers to spend their paychecks at the craps table. You want your residents spending their money on the mortgage and sending their kids to college instead. That’s why  casinos are usually located near state borders. The problem for New York State is that it’s surrounded by legalized gambling, so most of the gamblers they get will be New Yorkers. I doubt that will stop legalization, though. The state’s coffers have too many holes right now. And the Catskills will finally get their wish.

Grossinger's Uniforms, photo courtesy Bearings