Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City

Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City

Gordon Young

Language: English

Pages: 288

ISBN: 0520270525

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


After living in San Francisco for 15 years, journalist Gordon Young found himself yearning for his Rust Belt hometown: Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of General Motors and “star” of the Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me. Hoping to rediscover and help a place that once boasted one of the world’s highest per capita income levels, but is now one of the country's most impoverished and dangerous cities, he returned to Flint with the intention of buying a house. What he found was a place of stark contrasts and dramatic stories, where an exotic dancer can afford a lavish mansion, speculators scoop up cheap houses by the dozen on eBay, and arson is often the quickest route to neighborhood beautification.

Skillfully blending personal memoir, historical inquiry, and interviews with Flint residents, Young constructs a vibrant tale of a once-thriving city still fighting—despite overwhelming odds—to rise from the ashes. He befriends a rag-tag collection of urban homesteaders and die-hard locals who refuse to give up as they try to transform Flint into a smaller, greener town that offers lessons for cities all over the world. Hard-hitting, insightful, and often painfully funny, Teardown reminds us that cities are ultimately defined by people, not politics or economics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

according to Highsmith, but it wasn’t until the civil rights movement reached full force that things began to change in Flint, albeit slowly and grudgingly. Simple demographics made it nearly impossible to maintain the status quo. The city’s African American population tripled to roughly eighteen thousand between 1940 and 1955, and by the close of the sixties it had climbed to almost thirty-five thousand. The traditional black neighborhoods were too small to handle so many people. In the

and a fireplace for $140,000. It was in a nice part of town off East Court Street where “the four hundred”—Flint’s elite—had lived when my mom was in high school. Ted could keep tabs on his business back in California out of a spare bedroom on the second floor. During the summer and academic breaks, Jan and Ted lived in an apartment in San Pedro on a hill overlooking the Los Angeles harbor. It was a fitting location. “I think of Pedro as the Flint of Los Angeles,” Jan joked. They were bicoastal,

It also provides yet another illustration of Charles Stewart Mott’s power and influence. One morning in 1917, a survey crew headed by a twenty-six-year-old named Charles Branch was preparing lots for new houses on the far East Side. The workers were surprised when a well-polished automobile cut across the empty field, stopping near the surveying equipment, and none other than Charlie Sugar stepped out and started a conversation with Branch. Mott: “Did you read in the paper last night that we were

Betsy said. “Sometimes I feel lost and alone without them.” Delarie added, “They made it seem normal.” Delarie raised two boys in the neighborhood. She rented a house across the street—now abandoned—for several years before moving in Fading Murals | 167 with her mom. The boys were eighteen and twenty-three now and still lived with them. The youngest was working on his GED, hoping to join the army. If all went well, he would be in boot camp at Fort Bennington in July. “He had some trouble in

sitting on the porch and talking without the need for firearms. She left the gun on the table, and it was distracting. I kept glancing at it. “She’s concerned about my safety,” Betsy explained, sensing my discomfort. “I’m concerned about my safety, too,” Delarie added. I asked what they thought of Dan Kildee’s shrinking-city concept. It got a cold reaction, even from two residents who might leave the city to 168 | Fading Murals escape its problems. “There are parts of Flint where you can sit

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