Kevin Bauman’s 100 Abandoned Houses
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Years ago, after delivering a lecture at Michigan my return flight was snowed in. I was forced to crash at an acquaintance’s place in Detroit. As a New Yorker who had never seen an abandoned block, let alone an entire abandoned neighborhood, I was shocked at the zombie-movie level of desolation in that city. Underscoring the lack of a human presence were, get this, packs of wild dogs running around on the streets.
Perhaps no other U.S. city has had such a Roman rise and fall as Detroit. The once-bustling auto manufacturing center had been America’s fourth-largest city, boasting a population of nearly two million residents in 1950; today that number has dwindled to just over 700,000. While the city has taken measures to revive the local economy, thousands of houses have been abandoned in the region, from modest one-family homes to stately manses.
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