A fantastic BBC documentary about the post industrial shell that Detroit became it's past and future. It shows how, through the automotive industry and it's pioneering mass manufacturing processes, the city grew wildly and then fell in on itself creating desolate neighbourhoods and unsustainable social conditions. In showing Detroit as this micro world with it's creation of cars and the manufacturing of the 'American Dream' the creation of suburbs and societies split along economic and racial lines which then crumbles it acts as a metaphor for America and the world at large. It also shows how Detroit is coping with this post industrial world it created: as a return to farming and small scale community and cottage industries. As one lady put it- "you could see it as a portrait of a world gone wrong, or as a vision of the future." Really cool. Watch it here.
'The Michigan theatre to me is like the classic story of it all- I mean that's where Henry Ford built his first car, his wealth creates this building with this magnificent theatre, and then the theatre dies. Why? No parking. And then the building's gonna die so what do they do? They gut the theatre and make a parking lot out of it.'
