Detroit Research Volume 1

27
... The Final Frontier ...
Michael Stone-Richards
I had the new sensation that the air was touching
things; that the space between things touched
them, belonged in common; that space itself was
revealed.
Adrian Stokes, Inside Out: An Essay in the Psychology
and Aesthetic Appeal of Space, 1947
I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally
with space, no doubt a great deal more
than with time.
Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 1967 / 1984
Over space, man has begun to win victory.
Futurama: To New Horizons, General Motors, 1939
New York World Fair
When considering what the principal theme of the
inaugural issue of Detroit Research would be there
was, in a sense, little doubt: space(s). Detroit has
a lot of it, 138 (or 139) square miles of it, of which
40 square miles is vacant space. The readily available
clichés – we all know the relevant figures off
by heart - tell us that within this square mileage one
could fit Manhattan, Boston, and San Francisco. In
his recent book – part memoir, part urban analysis
and social critique – journalist Mark Binelli begins
a chapter on “How to shrink a Major American City”
with the limpid declaration: “There was no getting
around it: Detroit had too much space.” Major exhibitions
at Cranbrook Art Museum and MOCAD
(in 2007) were devoted to Shrinking Cities; nature
was returning, taking over (or reclaiming) urban
spaces as pheasants and assorted game could be
spotted in certain parts of town; properties may be
cheap but services are wanting. Many young artist
types recently relocated to Detroit when asked
why they had moved to Detroit could scarcely find
anything more compelling to say than, It’s cheap.
The list of privations could easily be extended.
Sisyphus and the Voice of Space, 2010.
Courtesy of Scott Hocking and Susanne Hilberry Gallery.
The bleeding loss of population density has only
served over the decades to dramatize the de-industrialization
and de-population of Detroit which,
after the last census in 2010, seemed to suggest
that a tipping point had been reached.
This is a far cry from the vision, the city of
the future, the city of tomorrow set out in splendid
Technicolor in GM’s To New Horizons, its futurama
film for the 1939 New York World Fair. “Mentally
and physically,” says the voiceover, “we are progressing
toward new horizons.” 1 To get a picture
of these new horizons, the futurama invites us to
“travel into the future [of 1960], this wonderworld
of 1960,” where, one learns, “The accelerating
rate of Man’s progress in all fields of endeavor has
paralleled closely our progress in the freedom of
movement from place to place,” this wonderworld
in which “more desires have developed to be satisfied.”
The future, of course, is a future for the motorcar,
a future with “Highway engineering at its
most spectacular”, where “The motorway continues
through the mountains. Without tedious travel, the
advantages of living in a small town are within easy
reach, bringing the people who live there into closer
relations with all the world around. [And here the immortal
lines, O reader] Over space, man has begun
to win victory. Space for living, space for working,
space for play. All available for more people than
ever before.” One does not need to be a follower of
Jane Jacobs or Louis Chevalier (author of The Assassination
of Paris so admired by Guy Debord) to
see this wonderworld of 1960 as an utter nightmare