David Byrne: ‘Don’t Forget the Motor City’

The musician and World Hum contributor recently spent a week in Detroit, and he’s posted a lengthy, thoughtful item about the visit on his blog. Much of it focuses on the origins of Detroit’s infamous urban decay:

This is a city that still has an infrastructure, or some of it, for 2 million people, and now only 800,000 remain. One rides down majestic boulevards with only a few cars on them, past towering (often empty) skyscrapers. A few weeks ago I watched a documentary called Requiem For Detroit by British director Julian Temple, who used to be associated with the Sex Pistols. It’s a great film, available to watch on YouTube, that gives a context and history for the devastation one sees all around here. This process didn’t happen overnight, as with Katrina, but over many many decades. However the devastation is just as profound, and just as much concentrated on the lower echelons of society. Both disasters were man-made.

(Via The Daily Dish)

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