But is this tragic? Experts have cited Detroit as one of the great opportunities for urban renewal. Some suggest that the city take a page from the playbooks of Phoenix, Arizona, and Flint and simply bulldoze old, abandoned properties and use eminent domain laws and careful planning to create the massive, open “green spaces” that cities like London and New York keep trying to cultivate on a smaller scale. Only the other day I spoke to Sarah Sharp, an urban planner and artist who had packed up her Manhattan life and moved to The Motor City to join what she sees as an “urban frontier,” where people are “scratching out little communities and making gardens to feed them.” The aesthetic quality of the decay has not been lost on the mainstream media either. Time magazine called it a “…Beautiful, Horrible” decline. With this in mind the Motor City, already a symbol of America’s fading industrial past, could offer a look into the low-impact, environmentally flexible cities of the future.
     A rejuvenated cosmopolitan America may follow this urban decay. But for now, these plans are academic, theoretical. Currently, all we have are these arresting images which show that not only has rural decrepitude marched into urban America but — as surprising as a daisy growing out of the sidewalk — nature has become a city dweller too. The old, creepy house at the end of the lane has multiplied and reproduced like the southern kudzu which coats many of these buildings. But the surrounding narrative has changed. We may live among many more eerie, abandoned homes than we did a decade ago. But with all the green possibilities, we may spend more time thinking about the future of these communities than their past as we tiptoe by.