imagesthoughts

Flint, as a city, is shrinking, or moving, or growing by

shrinking, or something--it's hard to tell right now.

What we do know is that Flint lost 60,000 jobs during

the 1980's when GM began closing factory doors. Quick

math tells us that's about 1/3 of the population hitting

the unemployment line, or moving out, or moving to the streets.



So now, Flint has a lot (think: thousands) of abandoned,

unsafe, unkept buildings. These buildings sometimes

become crack houses, or targets for arson fires, or

places to dump bodies.

The goal of the city, like any city, is to build a place

where people want to live. So the county land bank

assumes control of these properties and, in some cases,

demolishes them (right now, at a rate upwards of 3 per

week). What else can they do?

Flint is building by tearing itself apart. Believing

this statement, though, doesn't make house demolition any

easier to watch. Under different circumstances, families

could live in these homes.

Families did live in these homes.


These houses are artifacts of a city-that-was, a time-that-passed,

an infrastructural collapse.

Collapse.


How do we build quickly enough to satisfy needs, while remembering

that explosive growth can cause, well, explosive collapse?


Remember what journalist Steve Jessmore told us:
"Flint isn't all lost--there's a lot of hope."

Click image to begin playback
Captured and edited by Adam Pruden.
Music by Sufjan Stevens "Redford"

Click image to begin playback
Captured by Bre Gary and edited by Adam Pruden.
Music by Home Video "Gas Tank"