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Post-Apocalyptic Detroit

January 4, 2011, 10:53 am

Some cool pictures of abandoned buildings in Detroit.   How do you abandon a public library and leave all the books?  All these buildings appear vandalized.  Could it be a sign of Detroit's problems that no one bothered to even steal the books?

I can't find the link right now, but these pictures remind me of ones posted a few years ago of Russian towns abandoned after Chernobyl.

Tags:
Category: photography
  • http://sailorette.blogspot.com Foxfier

    *fingers twitch* Oy. I'll take those books, don't even have to pay a haul-away fee....

    That said, I suspect some staging of the photographs, especially the Highland Park Police Station one, and the biology model one. (I think this is the original story-- has link to pictures in annoying clunky click-to-go-through format.)

    There are a lot of splashes of red in the center of pictures, and a lot of colorful accents that lack the dust that's around them. Probably just staging in moving something from the bottom to the top, maybe dusting a few things off to catch the eye, rather than planting. I know that shiny and red is a really major draw to the eye in pictures.

  • http://sailorette.blogspot.com Foxfier

    Wow... I thought I remembered something like this from a few years back.

    http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/02/i-scrapper.html

    Someone did get some books.

    I just can't believe the waste....

  • Henry Bowman

    Why steal books when (a) you can't read and (b) they are not completely worthless, but they aren't worth much, and they are heavy and take up lots of space.

  • Gregg

    These pictures have been around for a while - 18 months maybe. Some of the architecture is incredible. It doesn't seem like people would just desert these places, but several of the pictures give you the impression that people just quit going there.

  • http://euripidestrousers.blogspot.com Ken

    Bet there's some metaphorical gold in them thar stacks....

  • Matt

    Does it even count as "stealing" if they're so obviously abandoned?

    Driving through Detroit, you see a lot of places that make you think something along the lines of "that building would be marvelous, if it weren't in Detroit".

  • Maureen

    If it's just dust, fine. But that's a building with an opening into it, so I can practically smell the mold and mouse nests from here. (Well, maybe not yet. But soon.)

  • MJ

    All because they didn't build light rail. See what happens, people?

  • caseyboy

    This past summer I got an email that compared Hiroshima 65 years after the atomic bomb and Detroit 65 years after that same date. The images were startling. Hiroshima has developed into a modern, vibrant metropolis while Detroit, well the pictures say it all don't they? Geez, makes you wonder what it would have been like if we hadn't waged that War on Poverty. Detroit stands as an example of affects of liberal/progressive do-gooder policies.

  • oldf4drvr

    Let's hear a little optimism; you're looking at some of the destination stops for Detroit's $500 million light rail project.

  • Les Gov

    Reminds me of the scene in Atlas Shrugged where Dagny Taggart and Henry Reardon encounter extremely degraded living conditions, which were caused by a leftist subversion of capitalism, while they were driving around looking for John Galt and his energy generator. I always imagined (or perhaps the book said) they were driving around Detroit. Amazing how much of Rand's book has come true.

  • Benjamin Cole

    Free trade is a feckless lass, bestowing kisses and slaps as she flirts about.
    Sure GM execs were arrogant, sure labor unions wanted too much.
    But if the USA had been an island nation alone in the world, what would happened to Detroit?
    In the 1960s, the best architects, the talent etc in the world went to Detroit. It was the tech capital of the world.

    Free trade. Why not go whole hog. Why not a powerful WTO,and a global central bank, and a world currency?

  • Chuck Walla

    I do not understand. After 50 years of control over Detroit and Michigan, the Liberal Progressives have created all the social justice, education and jobs programs, school meals, welfare, WIC, health programs. Detroit should be the Progressives Shangri-La! Why, what happened? Where is the prosperity that con only come from tight state regulation and high taxation. I don't get it. Don't the Progressive ideas work after all? It would seem that is the reality here.

  • Mike

    I'm an occasional Coyote Blog reader. Stumbled upon this post while searching "Abandoned Properties Detroit". The Chernobyl photos you seek can be found by searching for the town of Pripyat.