Abstract
Abstract
Detroit scares the hell out of most people. If it doesn’t scare you it will shock you. Sprawling over more area than Boston, Manhattan and San Francisco combined, Detroit’s population has declined 63% since 1950. There are currently 78,000 abandoned structures, and an unemployment rate of over 18%. This is a city literally gone bankrupt - characterised by crime, blight, poverty and ruin. Once the example par excellence of the glories of industry, ‘The Paris of the West’ is now the poster child for everything gone wrong with modernist urban development.
Detroit is the site of urban desolation and decay so extreme that it is difficult to imagine how the gaping holes in the urban fabric could possibly be mended. And yet the people left in the city do imagine - and dream - and fight for Detroit, and to have meaningful lives there.
This fight takes place not on the large scale of city planning, but on the small-scale of human bodily intervention. Large-scale urbanism on the upswing focused on the car industry and developed infrastructure and a car dependent society that alienated the human body, and further alienation occurred on the downswing with the emergence of unsafe and violent settings. A city broken.
‘There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.’
- Leonard Cohen, Anthem
In a city broken, bottom-up initiatives fuelled by hope and an unrelenting spirit have found potential in small-scale interventions made possible only because of decay and desolation, and the bankruptcy of top-down systems that have relinquished control.
This paper will draw from urban theory and take its point of departure in the small-scale, where new methods for urban development are explored. Here the body becomes a vehicle for the rejuvenation of site and spirit in urban decay. Based on the author’s connection with, and journeys to Detroit, the following stories will be told: Human Remainings, Urban Decay and the Everyday, and Slow Roll – bikes as connecters.
Keywords: Urban decay, urban intervention, artistic intervention, hope, initiative, bottom-up initiatives, urban development, Detroit.
Detroit scares the hell out of most people. If it doesn’t scare you it will shock you. Sprawling over more area than Boston, Manhattan and San Francisco combined, Detroit’s population has declined 63% since 1950. There are currently 78,000 abandoned structures, and an unemployment rate of over 18%. This is a city literally gone bankrupt - characterised by crime, blight, poverty and ruin. Once the example par excellence of the glories of industry, ‘The Paris of the West’ is now the poster child for everything gone wrong with modernist urban development.
Detroit is the site of urban desolation and decay so extreme that it is difficult to imagine how the gaping holes in the urban fabric could possibly be mended. And yet the people left in the city do imagine - and dream - and fight for Detroit, and to have meaningful lives there.
This fight takes place not on the large scale of city planning, but on the small-scale of human bodily intervention. Large-scale urbanism on the upswing focused on the car industry and developed infrastructure and a car dependent society that alienated the human body, and further alienation occurred on the downswing with the emergence of unsafe and violent settings. A city broken.
‘There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.’
- Leonard Cohen, Anthem
In a city broken, bottom-up initiatives fuelled by hope and an unrelenting spirit have found potential in small-scale interventions made possible only because of decay and desolation, and the bankruptcy of top-down systems that have relinquished control.
This paper will draw from urban theory and take its point of departure in the small-scale, where new methods for urban development are explored. Here the body becomes a vehicle for the rejuvenation of site and spirit in urban decay. Based on the author’s connection with, and journeys to Detroit, the following stories will be told: Human Remainings, Urban Decay and the Everyday, and Slow Roll – bikes as connecters.
Keywords: Urban decay, urban intervention, artistic intervention, hope, initiative, bottom-up initiatives, urban development, Detroit.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Titel | A Body Living and not Measurable : how bodies are constructed, scripted and performed through time and space |
| Redaktører | Kathleen Glensiter Robers, Ya-hui Irenna Chang, Lukasz Matuszyk |
| Antal sider | 14 |
| Udgivelsessted | Oxfordshire, England |
| Forlag | Interdisciplinary Press |
| Publikationsdato | 2016 |
| Sider | 167-181 |
| ISBN (Trykt) | 978-1-84888-437-3 |
| Status | Udgivet - 2016 |