Economy

Google Street View tells a story of Detroit’s struggles

 

July 2007; all photos are created using Google Street View, which retains copyright for these images. These images are being published for purposes of editorial comment.
August 2009; all photos are created using Google Street View, which retains copyright for these images. These images are being published for purposes of editorial comment.
September 2011; all photos are created using Google Street View, which retains copyright for these images. These images are being published for purposes of editorial comment.
August 2013; all photos are created using Google Street View, which retains copyright for these images. These images are being published for purposes of editorial comment.

Last night, I discovered a story how Google Street View can be used to tell the story of cities, including the agony of my home city, Detroit. I wish I had discovered this earlier, because it is a great tool to document change, despite the weirdness of Google’s spy cam on all of us, in our neighborhoods. I decided to use the time machine portal to see how the former home of my Michigan relatives fared between 2007 and 2013. So this is a very personal issue for me.

What I found was not surprising, and I had reported on this on an earlier post. What I discovered today was a more rich visual tale of the decay that really is the story of Detroit’s ills over the past six years (2007-’13). I think this kind of storytelling should be used in the face chirpy “Detroit on the rebound” news coverage that some want to promote that seeks to ignore the full story.

About a month ago, I published a blog about my reaction to seeing parts of Detroit that had fallen into disturbing decay, complete with ravaged neighborhoods, arson-torched homes, and the collapse of communities. This sparked a bit of a backlash by a group of current and former Detroit area advocates (all white, like me by the way) who rushed to Detroit’s defense and said negative storytelling ignores the “good people” and “good stories” and tales of the recovery. I then reviewed the data, and think rose-colored perspectives can be naive at best given the indicators of crime, poverty, employment, population health, and more. I do think balance is critical, but you cannot ignore what you see, particularly with tools like Google Street View, and in the work of recent documentary photographers.

This is an American story and an American tragedy, with many villains, many victims, and a still uncertain future. Recovery will take decades. Right now many people are struggling, and many people have just walked away–like my relatives did decades ago. Many in leadership positions in our country  would prefer to have our country spend tens of billions to preserve our strategic priorities in foreign lands and willfully ignore a once great city that is, by all definitions, an “African American” community that many in this country care very little about.

I talked about this with an old public health classmate of mine and how young Americans go overseas to address global issues of poverty and development. He wryly commented, maybe some new grads can work on “third world” issues in our country. I think he is right.

Thousands of them a year, bro

Charlie LeDuff, author of Detroit, An American Autopsy, has provided one of the most painful descriptions of nihilistic self-destruction I have ever read. It is a brutally honest dissection of Detroit. While working as a reporter for the Detroit News, he became close to a company of the city’s beleaguered firefighters, who have battled literally thousands of fires intentionally set by criminal arsonists throughout the metro area. LeDuff shared this comment from one of the firefighters who is asked to do the near impossible–save a city the residents are intentionally burning down.

“In this town, arson is off the hook. Thousands of them a year, bro,” the firefighter told LeDuff. “In Detroit, it’s so fucking poor that a fire is cheaper than a movie. A can of gas is three-fifty, and a movie is eight bucks, and there aren’t any movie theaters left in Detroit so fuck it. They burn the empty house next door and they sit on the fucking porch with a forty, and they’re barbecuing and laughing ‘cause it’s fucking entertainment. It’s unbelievable. And the old lady living next door, she don’t have no insurance, and her house goes up in flames and she’s homeless and another fucking block dies.”

In my entire life, during which I have visited dozens of countries, I have not witnessed anything as bizarre as this. I have seen worse than this, and things vastly more evil than this. But the utter pointlessness of this chaos, besides pure anger and loss of meaning, seem overwhelming. And people live with this, next to his, surrounded by this, engulfed by this. For those of you out there who may snicker and even enjoy this, take heed. LeDuff and many other chroniclers of the downfall of the American middle-class in cities like Detroit have a message for you. Detroit is not the past. Detroit is the future, coming to a place near you, and quicker than you think.

Most of these crime scenes are in what used to be called the Delray neighborhood, near Dearborn and Jefferson, by Zug Island. Hard to imagine that people still make the best of it here. It is home to someone. I often wonder what Canadians just across the Detroit River may have thought seeing flames, if they could see the smoke amid the heavy industry that surrounds this former Hungarian-American enclave. This is now called a “ghost town” within a city.

God has left Detroit
Billionaire Matty Manoun owns this once grand statement to beaux arts civic architecture, the abandoned railway station in Detroit that is now famous for ruin porn photographers from around the globe.
A Bike Lane now graces a stretch of Michigan Avenue near downtown Detroit.
Abandoned buildings on Jefferson Avenue in River Rouge neighborhood.

In April, I spent a couple of eye-opening days in my home town, Detroit. I was born here. My grandparents lived here for decades. My biological family (I am adopted) grew up here on my birth mother’s side. I only lived here a year, before my adoptive parents left in 1966, a year before the deadly race riots of 1967, one of several that have spanned more than 120 years.

Photographers who parachute into Detroit, like me, are rightfully accused of being disaster voyeurs. Photographing Detroit is now its own photo genre many dub “ruin porn.” Taking pictures of a dying place, where real people are struggling just to survive, is by definition schadenfreude.

I guess I have a saving grace. I am a native son. I really was born in a hospital here. My family, on my birth mother’s side, has true Detroit roots, and for that reason I feel a strong attachment.

I wrote a short essay about my trip in April, and I find myself feeling deeply unsettled now about how the last eight years of our Great Recession have been handled and the wars that preceded it. Going to Detroit you cannot ignore the massive impact of trade policies like NAFTA and the globalization of manufacturing in the years before and after its signing, when the United States began to export its manufacturing jobs overseas.

Jeez, here we are the wealthiest country on earth, and yet we let our great industrial center literally collapse before us, all while venturing overseas to preserve our strategic interests. We all watched and let the patient wither in agony, at times laughing at the patient’s demise. Today the lethal court clown of a city titillates us with reality TV that delights in the destruction of Detroit and the goofy exploits of its charismatic preachers, reality star cops, and wacky urban survivalists.

Downtown Portland, a profile in Northwest-style gentrification

Portland is no stranger to gentrification. I’ll use that term to describe the redevelopment of urban properties that “revitalize” areas from being low-value for tax collectors to high-value and geared to serve people with high-income levels. That is my own definition. One piece of downtown that has transformed over the last two decades is around Burnside Street and the blocks of SW and NW 10th through SW and NW 14th. One of the anchor businesses here is Powell’s Books, a great institution. Whole Foods moved in more than a decade ago, and there continues to be a lively debate if the company follows the prevailing winds, or moves the local real-estate market up in price once it chooses a site. (For the record, I have shopped and eaten here many times.)

The landmark building in this section of downtown is the old Henry Weinhard’s Brewery. This is a classic late 19th century brick factory style structure that once was home to the former local beer company of the same name that is now folded within the larger MillerCoors brewing empire. The old factory is now mixed-used retail and condos, following the redevelopment completed in 2002. The building retains a facade of a brewery, but it doesn’t brew beers. Scores of other fine microbreweries do that around town. On any give night, there is a lot of foot traffic, and people usually pack the Henry’s Tavern located inside the old factory. When I first moved to Portland in 1983, I remember this part of town as being a popular area to many homeless residents, warehouses, and retail businesses that came and went.

Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.

You know you are in Portland when …

Portland reportedly has the highest number of breweries than any city in the country, at nearly 60, plus an uncountable number of microbrewing enthusiasts. I have my own favorites in the realm of microbrews. At the West Coast’s largest bookstore, Powell’s, one can find more than a few resources to help a person try this centuries-old tradition at home. Prost!

(Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Indonesian traffic jam

 

Traffic is bumper to bumper in many places in Indonesia.

The traffic on Bali and Java were among the most congested I can recall anywhere in the world. You can read another article I wrote describing exactly how dangerous it can be to use public transportation in Indonesia as well. I shot this, in February 2009, from inside a long haul bus that took me from Denpesar, Bali, to the island of Java. (Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Scenes from the Columbia Hills, high on the Gorge

 

During my visit to Columbia Hills State Park last weekend, I took a hike to the crest of the hills that stand a couple thousand feet above the Columbia River Gorge, from the Washington side. There are miles of open space. Windmill farms lie to the east. To the south, one sees farmland and cattle country in Oregon. Beneath my feet were a dizzying array of blooming flowers, the balsamroot and lupine. I now rate this as one of my favorite perches in the Pacific Northwest.

Pretty Portland, without the grit and the grime
The view is from the Eastbank Esplanade.
Another view of the South Waterfront development.
This photo was taken near the waterfront.

Every single city in the world, and country for that matter, would prefer to present a postcard image of itself to the world. Portland’s emerging brand is one of “smart development,” urban villages, greater density, and urban beauty. These are descriptors I grabbed from the cultural ecosystem. Other observers may have alternative brand labels.

I took these photos over the past few days. South Waterfront is a development on former brownfields industrial land that once was used to build ships. The tram that connects to OHSU and a streetcar are some of the high-cost infrastructure projects that support this high-end neighborhood. It also has been the subject of attacks for being a tax giveaway to developers and for nearly going belly-up during the Great Recession. Condos had to be converted to apartments as a result of the tanking real-estate market that defined the bubble that burst.

I snapped the downtown Portland photo from the Eastbank Esplanade of the lovely cherry trees in full bloom and the city in the background. It is the type of image we see in Portlandia, on postcards, and in stock images that sell the city to the world. We are not showing the four or five tent camps I passed on my bike route that took me to the vantage points where I took these pictures. You can read more about that on some of my other blog posts.

Big house and the small house, and the dark history they tell
I photographed this old plantation manor and slave cabin in Mississippi in 2000.

In May 2000, I took a road trip through Louisiana and Mississippi. I photographed a number of slave cabins and old plantations. My notes are buried somewhere, and one day I might dig them up. I do not recall getting the name of this old plantation home in southern Mississippi. I photographed it from the distance, from the road. If you look close, there are two cabins to the left. Those are the slave cabins. On many plantations, the “small house” stood very close to the “big house.” All of the plantation’s wealth was derived from using slave labor to grow cotton and other agricultural commodities sold to local, national, even international markets. It was a system built and sustained by the lash, as President Abraham Lincoln so eloquently referenced in his Second Inaugural Address.

It’s all about the grain, and the global marketplace
Shot with a GoPro at the Port of Vancouver.
This is the largest grain elevator on complex on the West Coast.
Shot with a GoPro
Shot from Frenchman’s Bar Park, in Clark County, Washington.
This ship will soon be filled with grain for markets in Asia.

Vancouver, Wash., is home to the United Grain Corp.’s export terminal. According to the company, the grain elevator complex is the largest grain elevator on the West Coast. This is a massive facility. The complex dominates the landscape on the banks of the Columbia River north of Portland. Cargo ships will line up on the Columbia River and basically park in the river until there is a berth for at the terminal or across the river at the Port of Portland’s export terminal on the Willamette River. Wheat grown in western Washington is one of the main exports, mainly for global markets.

I took the photos of the anchored cargo vessels from Frenchman’s Bar Park, in Clark County, just north of Vancouver. It is a beautiful spot to see how the global commodities market works–one ship and one train at a time.