Post by Bryan on his recent trip to Flint. Exposes through images and words the decay and desolation of a post-industrial city...
More importantly he points out that as long as Flint has people like Brian Willingham (Cop/Photographer/Poet) working to make Flint and humanity at large more aware equitable and right, that there is still reason to be hopeful...Subtopia.
11 Comments
man flint was played out wayback in the early 80s with nader's raiders and roger and me.
what exactly did they play out, not much has seemingly changed...
exactly that nothing has changed and nothing will change. and meanwhile there are more places like this being created, so flint is played out while the progress of these events continue.
Bryan, if you're reading this:
I tried to post it on your site, but I must have screwed up my blogger login.
If you ever come back to Indianapolis, look me up and we'll go to Hubbard and Cravens - good, local coffee, in a space of my design.
As for Flint: it was heartbreaking to me to visit it 12 years ago, and I can only imagine in the interim it has gotten worse. While I think Detroit can remake itself, Flint leaves me feeling hopless. I think some cities maybe *are* best off disappearing.
i dont accept a place gets played out. as in, it reaches an end. unless of course it is disastrously and literally completely wiped off the map. at which point something else becomes of it later on.
i think while places go on becoming like Flint, Flint too is in a state or change, subtle or not. for better or for worse. in this sense it is a precursor fr other places, not of what they will become, but maybe what they could become.
what can Flint become? how might it be a case study for preventing other places from becoming like it, from helping others to move on beyond it? im not ready to give up on Flint and neither are the residents. there is a responsibility in there, we owe Flint as much as we owe New Orleans, and yet maybe in the cracks Flint is already making something of itself again. we owe it hope at the very least.
liberty
will do! i may be back there early next year.
maybe Flint can become something connected to Detroit? maybe Flint doesnt have to heal all on its own. maybe there needs to be a larger regional effort that would include other places too? im just rambling, but i think perhaps the conditions of Flint should be examined in context of the retired auto industry and think how it can be releveraged, remade, directed into something else?
i dont know ....
there i would agree with you partially but instead of some self-deprecating existence in flint--in a state that has one of the worst economies in the nation--the best thing for those 100,000 people, living there, might be to move to detroit. then they could push it back over the 1,000,000 mark. the people of flint could be heroes instead of some sociology project....
so they can become part of a larger soc project in detroit? tough to ask and absorb the migration of 100k people. isnt the world already going through enough geo-economic landscape withdrawal already, global migration epidemic?
there is a lot to learn from flint and maybe flint should be the place to teach it.
i dont know - i'd like to believe in some kind of resiliency, an improvisational evolution, some new urban ecology, scrap futures market, utilizing the old factories and industrial space, using the engineering schools in the area. there are still pieces to work with. maybe some new social justice movement emerges there? what if there is more life still in flint than in most other american cities? depends on what we value.
but its time we see flint residents as people and not just robots for our factories, or demographic heroes.
i know there are some good projects in flint, i need to look more into what is already being organized. more updates on local progress later.
is that you michael?
Perhaps Flint could be remade into some kind of attachment to Detroit: another far-flung bedroom community? A sub/rural farming community that supplies organic food to Detroit? Ethanol manufacturing for all the ethanol cars Detroit might be making in the future? I agree that there is an industrial infrastructure there that seems it could be reused, though my tendency would be to go with the rural farming. If the land isn't great for crops, maybe it is good for free-range livestock, or maybe the car manufacturing facilities can be turned into hydroponic greenhouses. Just change out the roofs.
That said: at base analysis Flint is a factory town. What has become of the mining towns that sprung up 100 years ago?
or, rather, what could become of the mining towns that spring up 100 years ago and the malls that sprung up 20 years ago and the industrial plants that are springing up today? how should spatial planners consider the end life of their design, not just designing for today but their structures for tomorrow as well? can architects plan for the overall morphology and multiple posible use of their buildings, can they plan appropriately for decay? decay morphing towards adaptable reuse design, etc.?
planning for the uh.....future in our design today.
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