Our man Wes Janz, ever excavating the potential within the Rust Belt, returns with this provocative piece for Design Observer's Places Journal: This Is Flint, Michigan.


Our man Wes Janz, ever excavating the potential within the Rust Belt, returns with this provocative piece for Design Observer's Places Journal: This Is Flint, Michigan.

"Flint is a city I return to, its deep decline and the determination I find among its residents haunting me, challenging me. We did a second weeklong driving tour in October 2008 — again with Olon, and with planning professor Nihal Perera and a group of students — to Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio; Braddock, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; and Camden, New Jersey. This tour, the Distress Too Tour, plus estimates of 10,000 to 12,000 abandoned houses in my home city of Indianapolis, led to more questions. I became convinced that the pain of the Rust Belt has got to be understood, especially by today’s students, by our future architects and designers. This world of central city abandonment, institutional racism, intransigent poverty, unending decline of the physical infrastructure — this is a world they need to know, to come to grips with and maybe get involved with as citizens and as architects. That meant that I had to get involved, had to dig deeper into one place to give dimension and depth to my curiosity. I needed to know more about Flint and its people."