This week on the long-form design musing site Design Observer, Wayne State University Professor Jerry Herron takes on the always-complicated topic of Detroit Ruins. He begins with ye old ancient Rome introduction, and his own feelings, claiming to know more about Detroit's crumbling relics than most of the the natives do. And so he begins the long process of educating us on Detroit's lost history and the complications for the modern world. What results is a trip through ruin porn dropping many provocative lines along the way, which we expect to rile everyone up. Examples:
This city is never coming back; whatever happens next will be without urban precedent because the context of city no longer applies in this place where history has finally run out. We’ve all had a hand in our collective making, and now we’ll have to live with the consequences, not the least of which is our ignorance about the origin of things, so that we stand stupefied or angry or fascinated — camera at the ready —before the monuments to ruination.
· The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit [Design Observer: Places]
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