A higher education? "Street Wise, 101"

The building above, is directly across the road from the high school pictured below, one can see part of the metal post on the far bottom right to confirm this. Can anyone imagine this? What happened to the culture here? I suppose, if one were to ask 100 people, that you'd likely get 100 different responses. There were two men that were approaching me while I was photographing the school and this building outside the vehicle. "Hey! What are you doing there?!" one man screamed about 50 yards away. I turned to quickly bolt for the vehicle, as these men were now approaching towards me very quickly and again I heard, "What are you doing?!!"

I got into the vehicle and speed away, the rest of the entire photo shoot was conducted inside the vehicle and for good reason. I want to make it very clear, that this neighborhood and all others that I'm about to show, are very dangerous and filled with dangerous people. Some of these people have nothing to loose and perhaps a trip to jail, is better than the life they have now? I suspect, that many of the homeless people that are roaming the streets of Detroit today, would rather not risk confrontations such as the one I experienced, looking for a place to squat. Not twenty years ago, not today and likely not tomorrow, either. As for those that have lost their homes recently, perhaps the water, gas, and electric had been shut off? Perhaps, even before they actually left the home, the utilities have been shut off (could not be maintained) and they were then forced to leave the premises? If people are expected to stay in their homes, isn't it reasonable that the utilities not be shut off and other "maintenance" be made, in making the home livable? What about the maintenance of the people, themselves? Where would the money be generated to make such a notion possible? Catabolic collapse, is not a pleasant concept to contemplate... Isn't this what catabolic collapse is all about, the attempt to maintain the unmaintainable, until all resource is gone?

"greenstatistician" asked a question that I've asked at least 100 people that have lived in Detroit their entire lives, "When did Detroit start to fall?" That is assuming that, indeed there was a time when the society stopped "progressing" upwards and started proceeding downwards or declining... I think that perhaps shortly after my visit to see Santa at Sears, this may have come about. Most people, that I've talked to, think the riots that Detroit experienced during 1967, was the turning point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_Street_Riot So might have Detroit experienced 40 years worth of Catabolic Collapse, already? I'm going to strongly suggest, it has.

It seems to me, that every time that I visit Detroit, it seems to have slipped further and further into decay... Sure there have been periods of recovery and I've witnessed this too, but these were only partial and could never again reach the heights experienced perhaps a decade before it. The pattern of decline is also the same, always reaching new lows. The neighborhood that I've been focusing on wasn't this bad 20 years ago! Furthermore, I'll be so bold to suggest it wasn't a "bad neighborhood" to live in 30 years ago. No, sir! I would not have thought twice about driving the main streets here 30 years ago. Now, here I was catching myself not spending "too much time" in one particular area in the neighborhood and moving on to another, was perhaps the way to go. There were very few vehicles on the streets and some of those vehicles looked like they came out of a "Mad Max" movie. One that passed by didn't even have a windshield in it! "Back then" the houses and yards were neat, orderly, and many of the driveways had Cadillacs on them............. I cannot tell you, how jolted and sad it was coming away from this experience...

http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=558