Next American City magazine looks at Detroit and its rebuilding efforts

The Next American City magazine examines Detroit's options for rebuilding either through reuse or demolition.

The magazine is a quarterly that investigates urban innovation.

Excerpt:

Many Detroiters see these empty buildings as liabilities rather than opportunities. The city’s hesitation to re-use abandoned structures is deeply ingrained: “In a city so starved for investment,” says University of Michigan Professor Scott Kurashige, “Detroit chooses short-term profits from marginally beneficial new developments, like parking lots, over preserving buildings with immense potential.”

But some Detroiters deeply appreciate these storied, vacant structures. “They represent the raw material, the building blocks for rebuilding the City,” says Francis Grunow, president of the Detroit preservation group Preservation Wayne. Grunow advocates “adaptive reuse”—remodeling a building after it has outlived its original purpose —for the benefit of small businesses and organizations.

Read the entire article here.