Ford Transit Gloria Detroiti?

[Nigel Watts]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddes...otography-detroit#/?picture=370173054&index=0.

Strange that the richest country in the world is not more eager to preserve its heritage

 

[Flyfisher]

Those are amazing, if somewhat depressing, pictures and remind me of similar ones I've seen of Chernobyl where the inhabitants were evacuated leaving the buildings, that were not nearly as grand, to gradually decay.

Perhaps they have a different perspective given that their entire country is only a couple of hundred years old. I know my American friends who have visited have been amazed that our house could be twice the age of their country. :lol:

 

[CatherineB]

Shocking, incredible, incomprehensible.

How could whole stocked libraries and schools be abandoned like that, is there no concept of waste?
How could whole police stations be abandoned with all that evidence and personal information lying around, is there no law regarding privacy of information?
How could all those valuable buildings and their contents be allowed to go to ruin - is there no perception, if not of their historical value, then even their financial value in terms of salvage?

I am quite sickened, actually. A testament to a mean and wasteful society. I am shocked at how shocked I am.

(Trying to look on the bright side, do you think they'd take a tenner for one of those art deco chandeliers?)

 

[Ixia]

Also shocked at the waste, I'm slightly more suprised by all the abandonned books, than the actual buildings themselves. Almost looks post apocalyptic, the way the buildings have been left. Quite bizarre and such a shame.

 

[biffvernon]

My favourite is:

There's another great collection at http://www.detroiturbex.com/

and a year or so ago there was a film called Requiem for Detroit shown on the Beeb. It's not on the i-player anymore but it's probablable available somewhere on 'tinternet.

Maybe start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr9b5921vAk&feature=related
You'll have to download it in bits. I expect there's a torrent version out there somewhere.

 

[JohnB]

Making replacement windows for the right hand side of that house would have been an interesting challenge!

 

[Feltwell]

If the other elevations are anything like that one, that may be a rare example of a building that is genuinely beyond the point of no return.

Unlike these houses in Liverpool -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12104475

Ignoring the Ringo connection for a moment, "beyond economic repair my arse!" as one of that city's fictional sons might say......

 

[FamilyWiggs]

It's gone - pulled down in 2007:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Livingstone_House

The wiki article on Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit is interesting. Just how does a city manage its decline? From a population peak of 1.8m in the 1950s to half that 60 years later is not an easy transition to manage. I would imagine that for every building that should be saved, there are 10 surrounding it of little merit. You can't have a city of isolated historic buildings in otherwise empty wilderness.... well I suppose you could in theory but the economics don't really work.

The bulk of the city seems to be thriving (well, being redeveloped) despite a 22% unemployment rate.

This is in the article "The city has cleared sections of land while retaining a number of historically significant vacant buildings in order to spur redevelopment;[90] though the city has struggled with finances, it issued bonds in 2008 to provide funding for ongoing work to demolish blighted properties.[91] In 2006, downtown Detroit reported $1.3 billion in restorations and new developments which increased the number of construction jobs in the city.[29] In decade leading up to 2006, downtown Detroit gained more than $15 billion in new investment from private and public sectors.[76]"

How should a vast city manage its decline?

 

[biffvernon]

How should a vast city manage its decline?

It'll be good practice for managing a vast civilization in decline.

The initiatives to produce locally grown food seem a good place to start.

 

[Flyfisher]

I suppose the shock factor in many of those photos is that there doesn't seem to be any 'management' at all. It's looks like they simply closed the buildings one day and never went back, hence the library full of books etc.

I remember walking around a number of derelict London docklands buildings in the 80s and although they were clearly derelict, they did not have that 'overnight abandoned' look that many of those buildings in Detroit had because they had been stripped of their fixtures and fittings, leaving just the empty shells to gradually decay until they were properly demolished and the area redeveloped.

However, there are plenty of abandoned buildings in the UK as well, although perhaps not on the scale of Detroit. This is an interesting webite (if you like that sort of thing), and also contains the Chernobyl photos I mentioned previously: http://www.urbanxphotography.co.uk/gallery.html

 

[Flyfisher]

It'll be good practice for managing a vast civilization in decline.

The initiatives to produce locally grown food seem a good place to start.

It might be a good place to start and I'm sure it's a fine way for a small minority of the population to carry on while the vast majority of (mainly) city dwellers are fed and watered by more conventional techno-agriculture and the rule of law is still broadly accepted and obeyed. But once "a vast civilisation in decline" gets hungry and moves out of the cities to swarm across the country looking for food, then . . . well, it won't be very pretty.

I find it hard to believe that non-intensive, locally produced organic food production is a sustainable solution for the modern world. Yes, it's a feasible 'lifestyle choice' for a small minority of people, but only because the vast majority do not live that way. In that sense, an 'eco' lifestyle is highly elitist. I don't find any particular comfort in such things, but we have to be realistic about the way the world is, not how we'd like it to be.

 

[biffvernon]

But it's not the modern world, reliant on petrochemical derived fertilisers and pesticides, that we're talking about. It's the post-modern world, when oil production is in decline and folks eventually realise that anthropogenic global warming is the worst thing to have happened to planet Earth since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55 million years ago.

 

[Flyfisher]

OK, post-modern world, call it whatever you wish, but I've not seen any realistic or acceptable proposals for supporting 6.5 billion people (9 billion by 2050) from the eco-lobby. I don't think that a local allotment, a composting toilet and a windmill is really going to do the trick do you? So where is the vision for a sustainable world, independent of fossil fuels, in 40 years time? I suspect that the inconvenient truth is that there isn't one.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Call me Malthusian, but surely the inconvenient truth is that there isn't a sustainable solution for a world with 9 billion mouths to feed - and currently an additional 212,000 mouths each day. The 7 billionth baby will be born sometime this year.

Locally produced organic allotments aren't going to feed the masses - heck they only just feed the missus! :wink:

I've been saying in jest all along - start stockpiling guns, water and sandbags. With FF's hungry marauders, the former is probably foremost.

 

[biffvernon]

I never claimed it is going to be easy to feed 9 billion people in a post-oil world,perhaps it will prove impossible, but we either give it a try or die.

Organic farming is what you do, out of necessity if not out of choice, when you don't have the chemicals. Localism is what happens when transport is not available. The reaction in Detroit can be studied usefully as a model, however incomplete it may be.

As my late friend Dr David Fleming said, “Localisation stands, at best, at the limits of practical possibility, but it has the decisive argument in its favour that there will be no alternative.”

Those who despair with a cry of 'It can't be done' had best read up on Olduvai. http://dieoff.org/page125.htm

(It was written 15 years ago so it's about time you got round to reading it!)

 

[Flyfisher]

All of that makes sense if you really believe that there is no alternative. If you believe that technology finishes with fossil fuels. If you believe that we can't find alternatives to just turning back the clock. History abounds with example of people who had no faith in our abilities to do new things, to solve apparently insoluble problems, and who consistently argued against new technologies in favour of turning back the clock. Are we not supposed to learn from history?

I'm coming around to the idea that technology is our only salvation. Our current rate of technological progress is such that it's pretty much impossible to make predictions about the future. Simple extrapolation is not good enough - remember the 70s predictions of not being able to feed the world by the end of the century (which was nothing to do with running out of oil), or the old Victorian one about London being 6 foot deep in horse droppings if the 'traffic congestion' continued to grow?

We've all lived through a time when new technologies have been invented, developed, become dominant, been superseded and are now totally redundant - been and gone in a single generation! I spent my working life in a field of business that didn't even exist when I was at school - and a wonderfully short working-life it was too. None of this start work at 14, retire at 65 and die at 67 nonsense that was the norm little more than 50 or 60 years ago. In the past 20 years alone we've seen the internet come from nowhere to being practically as essential as water, in the developed world at least. There is simply no way that we're going to turn our backs on technology just because something as trifling as oil might become a bit on the scarce side or possibly give us a bit of an atmospheric chemistry problem..

What we need to continue is energy. With energy we can make oil and all the other agrochemicals we may or may not need to sustain our modern world. And we all know there are abundant sources of energy available to be harnessed. Many of them we already know about and already have quite effective technologies to exploit them. Many new technologies are already being developed that will be even more efficient, and who can predict what currently unknown technologies are yet to be developed?

Of course, there is a leap of faith involved in such a vision. But if staying as we are is not an option then we seem to be faced with effectively turning back the clock and trying to live low-energy lives - something that seems highly unlikely to feed 9 billion people - or continuing to push the technological boundaries in hope - yes hope, not certainty - of finding new solutions to the problems we face.

But faced with the certainty that we can't continue as we are and the near-certainty that we can't support our current population with a low-energy lifestyle, then pushing as hard as we can for technological solutions starts to seem like a good bet to me. At the very least it seems to be the best bet for a civilised future because stockpiling guns, ammunition and other weapons in order to protect your family's personal smallholding doesn't seem a very civilised way of life to me.

And if it doesn't work out, then I doubt we'll be any worse off for at least having tried, so what do we have to lose?

 

[biffvernon]

I don't see any question of turning clocks backwards. Time only moves forwards and we won't unlearn what we know.Of course technology has a very big part to play, but if it is to be any use it will be to move us forward to a low-energy future.

One critical thing is whether the job can be done in time. Oil shortages will hit hard and fast and it takes time to change the world. It may be possible.

The other critical thing is global warming. This is far more serious than 'a bit of an atmospheric chemistry problem'. It is likely to wipe our species from the face of the planet.

 

[Flyfisher]

Sorry Biff, but you're still pedalling too much doom and gloom to convince anyone to change. All you do is keep stating the problem but not offering any practical solutions.

I don't believe a low-energy future is particularly enticing for the vast majority of the western world. Perhaps that's why the green movement is failing to really engage the vast majority of people? Isn't that the real challenge here?

Even you will only admit that the changes you say are necessary 'may be possible' and that climate change is 'likely' to wipe our species from the face of the planet. If you really want to engage people, you need to explain what they have to do and what their lives will be like as a result. I've never heard any eco-campaigners actually do such a thing. What does a low-energy lifestyle really mean in practice?

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Why a "low energy" future?

I quite like my high energy lifestyle.

If peak carbon has passed, and if it is the cause of AGW, then surely what we need is a low-carbon energy future - not a low energy future. Indeed, a hi-tech future based upon renewables or as yet undeveloped energy sources would preferrably be high-energy.

 

[JohnB]

Sorry Biff, but you're still pedalling too much doom and gloom to convince anyone to change.

It worked for me .

If you really want to engage people, you need to explain what they have to do and what their lives will be like as a result. I've never heard any eco-campaigners actually do such a thing. What does a low-energy lifestyle really mean in practice?

I'm working on it, but you'll have to be patient.