In many ways, nothing better epitomises the ‘American Dream’ than Detroit in the twentieth-century. By inventing and revolutionising the production of the automobile, Detroit embodied the melding of human labour and technology that made the U.S. the apotheosis of world capitalism. The advent of the car has dictated, still to this day, the way that we design and build cities, and has permanently altered how metropolitan societies operate within them, from how they get to work to where they choose to live, shop and eat.
Many feared that with the collapse of the manufacturing economy that built Detroit, there would be no reason for it to exist anymore. Indeed, considerable areas of the city have effectively vanished; some estimate that as much as half of all the properties in Detroit have either been razed or are being considered for demolition.
However, like the ethos that has turned innumerable urban disasters into capitalist boomtowns, many Detroiters are holding on to a belief that cities, like markets, are cyclical, and the cycle has finally come around. If the scale of Detroit’s failure is unprecedented, then so (the local reasoning goes) is the scale of it's opportunity.