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The Death And Decay Of Detroit, As Seen From The Streets
With the stock market hitting record highs day after day, it is easy to move on and forget that one of American's once premier cities, Detroit, has been bankrupt for nearly a year. But out of mind doesn't mean out of sight, especially now that Google has launched its street view Time Machine, which provides for 7 years worth of street images, showing the time shift of the tumultuous period period starting in 2007. One blogger who decided to take this time lapse data and apply it to the city of Detroit is GooBing Detroit who, as the following time-lapse photos demonstrate, has captured Detoit's unprecedented slow-motion collapse into death and decay in what is the closest we have to "real time."
Perhaps what is most stunning about the following series of photos is not the ultimate fate of the bankrupt city, but how quickly a once vibrant metropolis has succumbed to blight and sheer desperation.
Hopefully not coming to a street near you.
All photos from the Goobingdetroit tumblr depict various areas and streets in Detroit, then and now.
2009
2011
2013
Montlieu between Gilbo and French, City Airport Neighborhood. Top to bottom Google streetview circa 2009, 2011 and 2013.
2007
2009
2011
July 2013
September 2013
Chene between Palmer and Ferry. 15 of the 20 properties on this block have been, or are subject to, tax foreclosure. Looked like a nice bakery.
2009
2013
Healy Street north of Hamtramck
2009
2011
2013- July
2013 - August
Exeter between 7 Mile and Penrose, Northern Detroit.
Brightmoor neighborhood.
Around 7 Mile, West Side
Northwest, near Grand River
West Golden Gate, Detroit
Southwest Detroit
East side, near Alter Road
Patton Street, NW Detroit
Feel like you can kind of see how this scene unfolded:
In the top photo, the tree is blocking the view of that yellow house in the middle — that house isn’t in great shape, but it’s ok. The house to the left has neatly trimmed hedges and a chair on the porch. The house on the right has been gutted by fire.
I imagine that middle house - since it’s been demo’d by 2012 - caught on fire and caused the further damage to the house at the right. Whoever had been living in the nicely maintained house on the left, moved out, and that house was gutted.
In the last photo — with the nicely maintained house farthest to the right — you see another nice house on the left, with a boarded up, but fairly stable, house in the middle. By 2012, both nice houses are gutted, as is the boarded up one in the middle.
Springwells Village
Near City Airport. Wonder why they didn’t take down the one next door while they were at it…
From top to bottom: 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013. Hickory Street between Manning and Pinewood, northeast Detroit.
Of the 12,093 properties in this Detroit neighborhood, 1,037 are owned by the City of Detroit, mostly due to tax foreclosure. Another ~4,500 are either subject to tax foreclosure right now, or will be in the next year or two.
Eastwood between Queen and MacCray, Northwest Detroit. Just east of Osborn, in “Burbank”… if anyone actually calls it that. Of the 34 properties on this block, 24 have been tax foreclosed, 13 are at risk of foreclosure, and precisely 1 property is in good tax standing.
Corner of Thaddeus and S. Leigh Street, Southwest Detroit. That’s a lotta washing machines…
Hazelridge between Celestine and MacCray, Northeast Detroit
This block is incredible. Still pretty dense with housing, but only one of them is occupied. If you go a block to the west, the housing stock changes to brick and the neighborhood looks pretty stable.
The New York Times visited this block during the Motor City Mapping survey:
"Blight, as Karl Baker, one Detroit resident, has seen, tends to spread. Along his block of Hazelridge Street on the East Side, he is the only remaining tenant. “Everyone went bye-bye,” Mr. Baker said the other day as he walked up the center of the silent street to get to his house since no sidewalks had been shoveled.
Most of the houses nearby are standing but abandoned, and visitors have clearly passed through — empty liquor bottles lie along debris-covered floors near broken windows and doors, every memory of a metal appliance or gutter seems to be gone from some of the homes, and two old couches that were dumped along a lawn are now blanketed by a thick layer of snow.
The last neighbor left six months ago, he said, and the single streetlight overhead has not worked for months. “I love the quiet, but if something went wrong, the city isn’t going to come,” Mr. Baker said. “They don’t do anything.”
Hoyt between Liberal and Pinewood, Northeast Detroit
Arndt between Elmwood and Ellery, East Side, Detroit
Lady waving to the street view car in the first image, c. 2009. Nearby the Heidelberg Project, and in the style, though not sure if a Tyree or not.
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Obama, a man after Kwames heart
for bald-faced manipulation, the phtog took the before pictures in sunny Summer and the after pictures in grey Winter. sort of like the non smiling lady in the before picture for wrinkle creams.
Yeah, sure, that's why the after photos compare so poorly. In winter lighting even the most well kept home can look like a burned out, graffiti-covered shell with mountains of fucking garbage and overgrown trees in front of it.
Should have taken photos the next day after a big snowstorm when everything is covered by a serene white blanket.
But, but....remember who is to blame here.....the white folks who moved across eight mile.
I hope they left flowers for the 'too lates'.
The hardest thing for me to swallow is not the demise of the Detroit I worked in. It is that the same arrogant politics and impossible promises that I listened to from Detroit’s politicians (that killed Detroit) are now being made on the national stage. I see the same kind of suckers in other states believing the crap today’s politicians spew out … the same way Detroiters did. I believe this will end badly. God help us…
I never forgot the big stink GM made in Detroit when I was working at GM in Detroit’s Rencen. GM had just announced prior to the UAW contract renewing that it was closing plants around the Midwest and building new ones down south.
In the middle of the discussion Crains Detroit defended GM said it had to be done. They pointed out a GM union worker in Michigan has about $45 in wages and benefits per hour. The same job for a Toyota non-union worker in Alabama in their new start up plant was making just $17 in wages and benefits per hour. How was GM going to compete?
The Crain article caused such rage in the UAW we felt it in GM. I got a call the night of the article and I was told not to report to work until notified. It seems the streets in front of GM’s Detroit headquarters were mobbed with union protesters and they wanted no incidents. The next day the TV broadcasted “…all GM’s plants were going to have wild cat shut downs in the coming days…”
Shortly after the Crains article, the protests at GM headquarters and the threat of work stoppages at all GM’s plants caused GM to back down on the planned plant closings. This was typical of UAW union ‘negotiations’ in Detroit. I believe Detroit would never have come to its current state if the UAW had not priced labor rates too high for Detroit’s Auto plants.
Note: Many years later when GM finally went bankrupt I noticed that all of the plants originally listed by GM years before in their original announcement were finally closed. Another concession was a new “starting” wage job in GM plants (all the big three did it) that finally matched the Toyota non-union worker wage and benefits of those in Alabama. And recently Michigan is now a right to work state...
A day late and $2 too much.
S&P 2000 DJ 17000 WTF!!!!!!!!!!
It's going back to nature, as it should. Like Chernobyl. Wasteland.
All Bush's fault no doubt.
Where are the neighborhoods that all the union leaders and liberal politicians live in? Bet they don't look nothing like this, eh?
1.2 million retirees and pensioners and 300 thousand employees producing product for sale. Business model failure. Nothing more and nothing less. Try it on a small scale. 12 retirees and 3 employees making product to sell. Simple enough math but the minute you get unions and government inolved you get fuzzy math and other numbers. Night all.
All of the charts and grafts in the world are meaningless when London prints your money and shoots the politicians who suggest changing matters.
too bad that show The Walking Dead is based in Gerogia, these pics look like ideal locations. In fact some of the towns in TWD look nicer than this
Been at St John's near Detroit for a wedding this weekend. My brother wouldn't tour me throuh the residential areas, but did drive me by the old train station. Not a single piece of glass left in any of the windows, stories high. The kids with the sling shots must have been busy over the years.
But impressive barb wire and concertina fence, guranteed to keep the riff-raff out.
The Problem is Greed and the Uneducated Masses Nothing More, Nothing Less... You remove those two things from the Humanity; and the begining of greater things happen.
The two conditions are taught by the system itself. Theres a little book that goes on talking about these problem of humanity. Even thousands of Years ago; and we haven't learned yet.
Every Democrat controlled city in America is headed for the same fate.
Major Cities with huge inner Cities are typically Democratic...Please name a top 10 City that is Historically GOP Controlled and you will find the same conditions..see Miami and Dallas. Same shit diffrent diaper at best. It's at the State level that you see the biggest policy differences that truly effect the main street of big US Cities. Show me a Red State and I'll show you major Cities in less decline....but still in decline.
600th!
Not going to discuss race, but certain people just don't get the message.
The rest of society doesn't exclude you because of your race.
They exclude you because you're violent, ignorant, and refuse to learn.
karma for having slaves I guess.
I notice that most properties where tax foreclosed not bank foreclosed. So the county sent in wrecking crews and destroyed the properties that belonged to the banks? I guess the banks did want to pay the property taxes. Just shows the power to tax is the power to destroy literary
Yes, indeed.
Evolution sucks if you're the neanderthal.
What is that supposed to mean? :)
too much niggers in detroit
Maybe someone can enlighten me. Why hasn't anyone ever brought up CAPR1 to show the actual assets of the municipalities, etc. Are they liquidated in the court bankruptcy proceedings or hidden. According to many CAPR1 statements I've seen since reading Walter Burien's revelations on the topic, they usually exceed or at least meet most liabilities and the bankruptcies are false.
Thank god for technology! Go west young man! Uoops, welcome to china. show me zpapers. Sorry went too far./sarc
Winters are rough up north.
You've maybe seen the series on History channel, "After Humans" - kind of looks like that. If people were gone nature would take everything back and reconstitute it within 100 years. Only thing remaining would be porcelain toilets and sinks - they seem to last forever...
Toilets are a must have even for nomads so it's good thing they last forever.
And the idiot democrats who are running the city are their own worst enemy. There was a time when the properties were forclosed on, but not yet fallen into total disrepair that there were people who were buying homes for 5 or 10 $k so they could live within their means. The city then told these new owners that their house was worth $100k and that their $5k tax bill was now due. (To try and pay for their bloated pension program). This tactic, which looked great on paper killed any chance of Detroit limping along along waiting for a real recovery.
The venomous and vicious racism on these posts is very disheartening to me. The utter hatred many of you have for black people is simply uncalled for. Granted, most the racist posts are directed at underclass urban blacks who have a culture COMPLETELY different from middle class black people. The underclass has absolutely no skin in this game whatsoever. They don't stand a chance. Many of them have uneducated parentage and go to schools that are a disgrace to the idea of public education. The culture, morals and belief system are different. But not every black who lives in a poor neighborhood is underclass trash. But if you're stuck in that kind of system with no support or influence towards becoming a productive citizen, chances are you won't become one. Personally as a middle class black I believe that cutting back certain entitlements would in fact benefit many poor blacks; but there has got to be an alternative to living on handouts. There are few jobs for uneducated poor blacks.
And another thing. Most poor blacks don't own homes!! Many of these house are owned by absentee landlords who don't keep the property up (for whatever reason). I find it incredible that people are putting the decline of Detroit on the black people left there when it is the white people who left (both the workers and the capitalists) who are behind what happened there.
Yeah just keep on blaming whites, I have no sympathy for blacks now that they got black for president it's time to stop the affirmative action.