[Re]thinking_ruins

Abstract

There has been a drastic change in the urban landscape for most rust-belt cities that dot much of the Midwest. These cities have and still are experiencing major fluctuations in population from their inner cores to their Metropolitan. In some cases up to almost 50 percent of the population have left behind their homes and memories. This shift can be related to many different factors such as the political, economical, and social barriers which urban environments experience. The visible result of this decline has been most apparent in the abandoned housing stock within the inner city limits. So what becomes of all this unused and wasted space? The intention of this thesis project is to identify and highlight those abandoned spaces. The goal is to repurpose, reprogram, and connect these blighted areas. It will be a cultural change in recognizing the opportunity in vacant buildings, rather than a misfortune. The goal is to take a landscape urbanism approach by respecting the past layers of the city and move forward through those traces to create new, viable environments. The intention of the project is to choose specific neglected and dangerous houses and rethink their use; this will lead to a process that tests the ideas conceptualized in the thesis and can be proven through their results. The most appropriate city to test a thesis of this magnitude would be Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is an alluring monument of post industrial decay. The glamorous city transformed into a residual testament of apocalypse. It has transformed from a city of over 1.8 million to 951,270 people from the years 1950 through 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau). Detroit’s wealth and glamour were dependent on industrialization and modernity. The mass production of automobiles, in time, would become a major factor in the demise of power and capitalism that Detroit once represented. The irony is that there is a certain dichotomy embedded into the roots of Detroit, where the machine that created the city, dismantled the city piece by piece. Now, the challenge is to envision these dismantled spaces as an asset to Detroit, rather than a further liability to its neighborhoods and communities. The city had land for growth. Workers on the assembly lines had the resources to start their own dream; a dream of their own house, backyard, garage, and most of all, their own automobile. This was what was so unique about Detroit. All other cities of the time stayed clustered into boroughs, while Detroiters moved farther and farther away from the downtown corridor because of the flexibility and convenience that its infrastructure offered. Soon tram lines, trains, and other forms of mass transit began to go dormant in lieu of the automobile. Expressways acted like veins that brought people to and from the city. Neighborhoods such as Detroit’s east side began to fall victim to abandonment and the evolutionary regression of nature; waiting for a return to the former grandeur it once knew. The goal is not to return Detroit to “how it used to be”, but in fact, how it will move forward in the next century. Now Detroit is left with endless, vast open spaces and an abundance of vacant homes. Detroit has the existing infrastructure and potential to become one of the greenest and most radically viable cities in the world. Through innovative approaches, the intention of this thesis project is how to asses these issues associated with abandoned structures; at the same time supporting Detroit in becoming the precedent by creating new, viable solutions for other cities facing a decline in population.