Rethinking Detroit

After World War II, European cities never reached the shrinkage excesses of American cities, with uninhabited lots where formerly residential neighborhoods were populated and an inversion of open and built spaces that seem like the other paradoxical side of modernist dreams. However, even European cities have to deal with a change that finds expression in that specific demobilization of fixed capital that takes the name of industrial divestment: a substantial change in the scenario that shuffles the cards, contradicts destinations and functions, changes economic conditions. and symbolic practices. The dynamics of Detroit today present themselves not only as a threat, but as an opportunity to reflect the paradigms of urban growth and development, starting with the city that was the metaphor of the American dream par excellence.