Would you say that metro Detroit is "uglier" than other metro areas? (Warren: house, neighborhood)

[poptones]

I used to live in the Detroit area. I was born in Ypsilanti and went to school there and in Mississippi. As I grew older I spent less and less time in Michigan, and after my divorce I left and never looked back. Now I go up there time to time to visit my daughter who lives in Jackson, and the one thing I notice is how UGLY the entire place is. Not just Jackson, but the places I used to live like Belleville and Ann Arbor. There's something about the architecture, it's like cheap knockoffs of french chalets or something. It's very hard to put my finger on but the whole place just looks old and depressing.

[AlohaHuey]

Originally Posted by poptones

I used to live in the Detroit area. I was born in Ypsilanti and went to school there and in Mississippi. As I grew older I spent less and less time in Michigan, and after my divorce I left and never looked back. Now I go up there time to time to visit my daughter who lives in Jackson, and the one thing I notice is how UGLY the entire place is. Not just Jackson, but the places I used to live like Belleville and Ann Arbor. There's something about the architecture, it's like cheap knockoffs of french chalets or something. It's very hard to put my finger on but the whole place just looks old and depressing.

I think you hit on something.

To locals, the deterioration is slow and barely noticeable. To those who moved away and come back to visit, the decay and decline are much more visible and evident.

[imcurious]

I have a question about architecture. I assume there are talented architects in the U.S. - why then so much ugliness? Is it due to poor city planning? If so, is that a reflection on city planners? What kind of education do city planners typically have? Is art or architecture part of the curriculum? I am guessing not, BUT there are beautiful buildings around, mostly from days gone by . . . so what does that mean? The buildings with nuance and detail and artistic features . . . I assume those designers/architects/planners died out. Were the replacements merely incompetent or otherwise deficient in schools of art and architecture? I don't understand . . . who invented the strip mall and who decided to string ugly buildings together willy-nilly all over the place? When it first started happening, why was there not an uproar? I am perplexed!

[imcurious]

I also heard that the uglier parts of Detroit are being restored to farm land and I think this is awesome!

[poptones]

I don't know if you're serious but that's probably a good thing. When I lived there THIRTY YEARS ago there were entire blocks in Detroit where it was nothing but filthy (impassible!) streets lined with empty, decaying homes. I'm not exaggerating when I saay it looked post-apocalyptic. It looked like a place you'd go to be eaten by zombies.

The architecture seems to have been deliberate, but most of it sprang up after the war so it was all stylistically similar. Lots of steep roofs, gingerbread trim, tiny windows, tiny rooms, tiny homes, unbelievably steep and narrow stairwells, attics built out for bedrooms - it's all over the place. I spent the first four years of my life in a house like this in Ypsilanti, and my daughter lived in a house very similar just a few years ago nearly two hours away in Jackson. Blocks and blocks of homes built in the 1940s as quickly as possible, usually using only 4 or 5 floor plans for the entire community, using the cheapest materials available. Cramped, old, and decaying.

[detshen]

Originally Posted by imcurious

I also heard that the uglier parts of Detroit are being restored to farm land and I think this is awesome!

That is true, the city has urban farms and this idea seems to be growing, it's a great thing because the city is so large, but the current population is small, all that space can now be put to good use growing healthy food, and some of the schools have farms so the the local children can be involved.

[canudigit]

Originally Posted by poptones

I used to live in the Detroit area. I was born in Ypsilanti and went to school there and in Mississippi. As I grew older I spent less and less time in Michigan, and after my divorce I left and never looked back. Now I go up there time to time to visit my daughter who lives in Jackson, and the one thing I notice is how UGLY the entire place is. Not just Jackson, but the places I used to live like Belleville and Ann Arbor. There's something about the architecture, it's like cheap knockoffs of french chalets or something. It's very hard to put my finger on but the whole place just looks old and depressing.

I'm curious as to where you live now, because I have been to most of the contiguous states and I have yet to see, with the possible exception of the more upscale parts of Southern California, anyplace without it's share of "ugly". That mid-century architecture, unfortunately, affected the entire U.S., not just Michigan. And in places like the Southwest, what they lack in outdated, pre- and early 20th century buildings they more than make up for in cheap, deteriorating modern, tan, stucco "ugly". Ditto the Southeast, except instead of tan stucco it's mobile homes with huge satellite dishes in the yard and disheveled shacks. Not that those places don't have many beautiful homes to balance that, but so does Michigan.

Just curious.

[poptones]

I live in the south and there's plenty of ugly (and boy was there a lot of ugly in Tucson!) but it doesn't stretch on for MILES AND MILES the way it does in Michigan.

Chicago has similar architecture, and there's plenty of "old and empty" there too, but it doesn't have the dreariness of Michigan. And yeah, part of it too I'm sure is me - the people there often seem spectacularly rude. And I've lived in many places from NY to Los Angeles.

[canudigit]

Originally Posted by poptones

I live in the south and there's plenty of ugly (and boy was there a lot of ugly in Tucson!) but it doesn't stretch on for MILES AND MILES the way it does in Michigan.

Chicago has similar architecture, and there's plenty of "old and empty" there too, but it doesn't have the dreariness of Michigan. And yeah, part of it too I'm sure is me - the people there often seem spectacularly rude. And I've lived in many places from NY to Los Angeles.

I would have to respectfully disagree with you. My experience has been that while the northern cities are indeed full of "ugly", the rural countryside in the North tends to appear tidy and prosperous compared to the rural parts of the Southeast, while the southern cities, in contrast, are much more attractive than their northern counterparts.

As far as the "ugly" stretching on for miles and miles...just one example, Hwy. 17 between Murrell's Inlet and Mount Pleasant, SC. This entire stretch gives the appearance of blight and poverty, from the shuttered, rotting down 1930's era gas stations/bait stores/liquor stores to the mobile homes up on blocks. The city of Georgetown is the only part of that stretch of road that doesn't look completely poverty-stricken and neglected. I can think of other examples, but it wouldn't serve to prove anything except that everyone sees things through their own eyes and draws their own conclusions based on that. One man's junk is another man's treasure. I'm happy in Michigan and, at least in the peaceful farming community where I live, it looks great to me and I'm always more than ready to come home to it.

[Hoarfrost]

Originally Posted by imcurious

I have a question about architecture. I assume there are talented architects in the U.S. - why then so much ugliness? Is it due to poor city planning? If so, is that a reflection on city planners? What kind of education do city planners typically have? Is art or architecture part of the curriculum? I am guessing not, BUT there are beautiful buildings around, mostly from days gone by . . . so what does that mean? The buildings with nuance and detail and artistic features . . . I assume those designers/architects/planners died out. Were the replacements merely incompetent or otherwise deficient in schools of art and architecture? I don't understand . . . who invented the strip mall and who decided to string ugly buildings together willy-nilly all over the place? When it first started happening, why was there not an uproar? I am perplexed!

Well, a little thing called Modernism happened. But Modernism can't be blamed for the sorry architecture of American mid-sized cities. Blame urban planners and real estate developers, who made profit the deciding factor in all decisions.

Read up on Le Corbusier. Great in the fields of furniture and interior design, disastrous ideas on urban planning.