Many American rustbelt cities are contracting radically as we enter the second decade of life in a WTO world, where industrial production has moved to China, India, and other developing nations. This has created a new kind of American ghost-town, on the outskirts of once-thriving midwestern cities — or, in the worst cases, in pockets right in the middle of town. David Tribby has documented some of the ruined areas of Gary, IN in a book called Gary Indiana | A City’s Ruins. Dark Roasted Blend has a gallery of some of the photos from Tribby’s book, along with a potted history of the town’s rise and fall.
(via Rustbelt ghost-towns: Ruins of Gary, Indiana – Boing Boing)
DETROIT—After spending more than a century exploiting urban decay to create deeply moving, socially conscious works of art, the art world announced Tuesday that it had captured all the beauty it was going to find in rusted-out cars, abandoned houses, and condemned industrial sites. “These modern ruins speak to the very heart of the human condition, but at this point every last inch of Detroit and Oakland has been documented in photographs, on film, or as part of a multimedia installation,” said artist Devon Gerhart, who told reporters that devoting so much time to contemplating the wounded grandeur of blighted cityscapes had led him to the point where he just wanted to see the places cleaned up. “I made my career portraying the plight of the homeless, but now I’m starting to wonder whether they’d prefer it if someone just helped them find a place to live.” The world’s artists later confirmed plans to spend at least another 50 years churning out heavy-handed depictions of the inherent soullessness of suburban sprawl.
Courtesy of E.
Something of a philosophical shift also has happened.
In working with Historic Savannah and the Metropolitan Planning Organization, city inspectors and administrators also are recognizing that calling for demolition isn’t the end-all solution.
Instead of an abandoned home, the city ends up dealing with a vacant lot. It becomes quickly overgrown, attracts loiterers and isn’t as marketable as a historic home that, with work, adds unique value not only to the housing stock but to the property tax digest.
Rather than resort to “demolition by neglect,” the groups have been more willing to work together. Sometimes it’s a matter of citations, but other times it’s a matter of offering resources, education about tax credits for historic renovation or finding assistance programs that offer homeowners help with repairs.
“We have an underlying, visible, continual element of deteriorating buildings,” said Tom Thomson, executive director of the planning organization. “Part of it relates to poverty, but I’m guessing a large majority are under-producing income properties, so landlords don’t want to mess with them. It is a big problem. We agree with that, but if it has historic significance, we want to do all we can before we order it demolished.”
The fate of all things: abandonment. Sooner or later what is built will be left to crumble. In the goodness of time all manufactured structures will be forgotten. Cities will disappear, skyscrapers will hollow out, warehouses collapse, dams fall, and vehicles stop in their tracks. Here is a wonderful catalog of modern ruins. Listed by country. Ruin is a global destiny.
Ghosts of Shopping Past; Interview by Nozlee Samadzadeh
Landscaping overgrows, walls develop mildew, ceilings cave in—a building can be shut down, but that doesn’t make it go away. Brian Ulrich’s photographs of closed-down malls and big-box retail stores reveal the potential ghost towns lying inside successful shopping complexes all across America.
Photographer Brian Ulrich lives and works in Chicago. His work has been shown in Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Photography; Galerie f5.6 in Munich, among others. He is a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow. All images copyright the artist, all rights reserved.
