deindustrialization

Inside Michigan Central Station under construction, a decaying archway is featured behind construction tape, a sign that reads "Men Working Above," and a construction worker walking in front of the archway toward a construction machine.

Detroit and the Glorification of the Past

Christian Golden compares the use of ruins in the documentary Detroit: Comeback City and the fiction film Gran Torino, arguing that ruins in these two films resonate with the city’s efforts to attract business and investment through imagining a nostalgic past that can be retrieved to renew Detroit’s future.

Mediapolis Live: Dora Apel on “Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline” (Part 2)

Our Mediapolis Live series continues with part two of an interview with Dora Apel, author of "Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline." Here, she and Mediapolis co-editor Brendan Kredell discuss the legacies of Henry Ford and Coleman Young in contemporary Detroit, and the critique of "creative class" urban planning.

Mediapolis Live: Dora Apel on “Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline” (Part 1)

Our Mediapolis Live series continues with an interview with Dora Apel, author of "Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline." In the first of a two-part series, co-editor Brendan Kredell discusses with Apel her notion of the "deindustrial sublime" and the nomenclature of ruin photography.