Last week’s Time ran an interesting article by Alex Altman: Road to Renewal. Altman puts forward that Detroit is an icon of America’s crumbling cities and exurban Rust Belt. The population is just a quarter of it’s 2 million peak. Empty factories, unused transit centers and desolate streets characterize the one-time center of industry and culture in the region.

What would a new Detroit look like? Many say it will have to be smaller, greener and denser. The city can start with the chunks of town that have withered into wasteland. The exodus from Detroit–triggered by suburbanization and the 1967 race riots–dovetailed with the national foreclosure crisis, which has battered few cities as badly as this one. According to a regional listings service, the median home-sale price has plunged to a paltry $5,737–yet tens of thousands of dwellings stand vacant. But the “long-term perspective,” says Heidi Mucherie, director of the organization leading the Detroit Vacant Property Campaign, “is that these are opportunities.” It’s the hopeful note sounded by Detroit’s optimists: The approximately one-third of the city lying empty or unused–an area about the size of San Francisco–is not just an emblem of its corrosion but also the blank slate on which to chart a path to renewal.

Time also put up an accompanying photo essay by Sean Hemmerle online. Beautiful stuff…

There are many efforts to restore Detroit in one way or another. Naturally, there are big pushes to restore the industrial core of the city and bring business and commerce to the area. But let’s be realistic: the New Detroit will not be the Detroit we’ve known and (sorta) loved all these years. In fact, despite my sympathies with the people of America’s Rust Belt, I think we need to be honest with ourselves that the manufacturing sector is not going to magically reappear. Sure, a restored economy maybe built on green jobs will do the region good; but it will never be the same. Ever.

If we can come to terms with the concept that regions of our country will rise and fall with America’s changing needs, we can then do some really (for lack of a better word) awesome things. After all, we are a disposable society and our modern architecture of glass and plastics seems built to erode or, at least, be replaced.

At the Heidelberg Project, an outdoor art installation that has become one of the city’s top tourist attractions, founder Tyree Guyton says Detroit’s struggles could help unlock creative solutions. Standing amid houses awash in Technicolor polka dots and trees festooned with stuffed animals, Guyton poses the billion-dollar question: “What might the future look like?” Plenty of people are trying to envision it. Among the ideas are the reforestation of the city’s dead zones, the planting of large-scale networks of parks and commercial farms, and schemes to repurpose unused space–such as in the Brightmoor neighborhood, where Justin Hollander, an urban-planning professor at Tufts University, suggests converting vacant housing into parking lots that would accommodate the local trucker population. But progress has been fitful. “I don’t see a lot of action on the city’s part,” says University of Michigan urban-planning professor June Thomas, who cites the absence of a master blueprint. John Mogk, a professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University Law School, issued a different indictment to the Detroit Free Press: “The plan is not focused on building a first-class city with a smaller population but, unrealistically and wastefully, on rebuilding the city to its former size.”

Reforestation you say? When I first saw the picture above in the print edition, I thought: plant a forest. Rip up those sidewalks and half the roads, bury the power lines, tear down the condemned houses and plant a forest of local flora. In ten or twenty years, reintroduce regional wildlife. I’d put money down that the remaining houses will see their values increase dramatically.

It’s among the many options of what we can do with at least parts of our dilapidated cities. Let’s put aside our obsessions with recreating yesterday’s glory and creating a new one. A new Detroit is a great place to start.

PS - So I’m coining a phrase right now: exurban reforestation. And I’m going to talk about it a lot here. I just need to do some research.

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Mental Floss’s Stacy Conradt looks into the history of ten of America’s favorite toys including play-doh, slinkies and tinker toys. Two of my favorite stories on the list:

Lincoln Logs

Lincoln Logs were invented by John Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright’s son. The original instructions included a how to construct a replica of Abraham Lincoln’s cabin, but also how to construct Uncle Tom’s cabin.

Sea Monkeys

Sea Monkeys are real (and that’s what they look like). I always thought they were a scam because I never once saw living Sea Monkeys swimming around in their little plastic home. Not once. They were “invented” in 1957 by Harold von Braunhut, the guy who invented X-Ray specs. They’re really brine shrimp and are ideal for packaging as a toy because they enter a natural state of suspended animation in certain (shippable) environments. When kids release the “monkeys” into the prepared water, they “hatch.” The reason they’re so active (supposedly… I’m still bitter that mine never worked) is because one of the packets you dump into the aquarium contains a type of salt that increases the sexual activity of the little critters. Yep. Think about that the next time your kid is fascinated by Sea Monkeys.

The article is a wealth of nickel knowledge good for any bar room conversation and will probably serve you well in a game of Trivial Pursuit one day. Though, I have to admit, I wasn’t pleased to see those troll dolls on the list; they always gave me the creeps.

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One of the objectives of the International Space Station is to get a better understanding of how materials behave differently in zero-gravity. If humankind is ever to survive in space, we need to know what to expect from the absence of gravity as well as know what to expect from gravity on Earth.

That includes bubbles…

Tip to my friend Rob Stoll for trolling through hours of zero-gravity goodies.

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Companies monitor their target markets very closely and, especially in the case of beverage companies, often test their response to those trends in limited markets (Coffee Coke anyone?) before going into full-blown production. With a limited market test of Pepsi Natural (Pepsi Raw in the UK), I think it’s clear what soda drinkers are demanding of Pepsico.

Like the vast majority of sodas on the market, the sweetener in Pepsi Cola is high fructose corn syrup, increasingly under scrutiny for America’s obesity and diabetes problems. Pepsi Natural is made with pure cane sugar similar to Boylan’s and other cane sodas. Cane has a rawer sweetness as it comes from a plant, not seventeen chemical processes. Check out these ingredients:

Sparkling water, sugar, natural apple extract (color), caramel color, citric acid, caffeine, acacia gum, tartaric acid, lactic acid, natural flavor, kola nut extract

That’s a big improvement over their other brands. So bravo to Pepsico, right? They’re putting a healthier product on the shelf. No chemicals, artificial sweeteners or additives. There’s even kola in the cola!

What does the Pepsi Natural say about Pepsico’s other products? From the name, I’d guess they are the unnatural versions of the product? If Pepsico knows they’re unnatural, why are they still selling a can of Pepsi Max for half the price of a Pepsi Natural? If it’s healthier, will it be marketed more than Pepsi’s new logo (much less prominent on this bottle)? Why don’t they just supplant all the sickening soda (losing feet, going blind kinda sickening) with the healthier alternative?

These are just a few questions I have when a big conglomerate tries to take the high road. The one thing that always strikes me when I’m in the organic food market is how many organic products are put out by companies with reputations for making unhealthy products. These companies are Ayn Rand’s instant undoing.

Take Heinz Ketchup for example. That Heinz Organic Ketchup is on the shelf at Whole Foods (probably for a dollar more than regular) hasn’t slowed down mass-production of the in-organic variety loaded with HFCS and other biochemical phenomena. If the organic ketchup was manufactured on the scale of the bad ketchup, would it be cheaper?

Pepsi Natural is not the beginning of Pepsico’s natural cane soda revolution; it’s a public relations stunt. If (or when) this attempt to take the high road fails, that failure will be blamed on hesitant consumers, weak ad campaigns or packaging design. A good old-fashioned glass bottle with a metal cap is better for the environment than plastics for sure. But, at a distance from the cooler, one might not even recognize this bottle as a Pepsi.

Or the taste. Early reviews say that it’s bland and flat. But maybe that’s the point.

Whether Pepsi Natural fails or succeeds, it has taught us one thing: the people making Pepsi aren’t ignorant to its harmful affects on the human body. We know that they know what the high road is.

PS - If you have an opportunity to try Pepsi Natural, be sure to let Soft Drink Reviews know what you thought of it.

PPS - An unrelated but funny take on Pepsi’s new branding.

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Very interesting news for archaeologists and just about anybody interested in mythology’s roots in facts:

The remains of a medieval “vampire” have been discovered among the corpses of 16th century plague victims in Venice, according to an Italian archaeologist who led the dig.

The body of the woman was found in a mass grave on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo. Suspecting that she might be a vampire, a common folk belief at the time, gravediggers shoved a rock into her skull to prevent her from chewing through her shroud and infecting others with the plague, said anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence.

In the absence of medical science, vampires were just one of many possible contemporary explanations for the spread of the Venetian plague in 1576, which ran rampant through the city and ultimately killed up to 50,000 people, some officials estimate.

The article is a great read for anyone interested in the birth of the vampire myth. Vampirism was basically a myth started by gravediggers during the plague. It’s a fascinating read. And for anyone who thinks a society can be well explained by it’s mythology and monsters, it’s delicious.

Ignorance about the natural stages of decomposition probably fed the original vampire myths, Borrini said, noting that historical documentation of vampires harped on the oddly life-like appearance of recently buried bodies.

“There are some recurring aspects in vampire exhumation reports (usually written in the 17th and 18th century by church-goers and well-educated men, and sometimes even by scientists): uncorrupted corpse, pliable limbs, smooth and tensed skin, renewed beard and nails,” Borrini said. At the time “death was linked to a cold and stiff corpse, or to a blanched skeleton (dry bones),” he said, so evidence of anything to the contrary was considered worrisome when the rare body was exhumed for examination.

In the middle of the plague in Venice, however, victims were being dumped into mass graves such as the one on Lazzaretto Nuovo very regularly, exposing bodies at every gruesome stage of decay.

REFERENCES

Vampire (Wikipedia)

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It is a national pastime to celebrate the weaknesses of our Presidents and they in turn give us no shortage of material with untold numbers of scandals and affairs. Annie Kevans has painted the portraits of over two dozen Second Ladies, real or rumored, in a series “All the Presidents’ Girls”…

Notable mentions are Marilyn Monroe, Jefferson’s slavegirl Sally Hemings, Blaze Starr, Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones. And there’s William Rufus DeVane King who had an affair with James Buchanan? Curious.

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Brooklyn is a borough in flux, mostly characterized what everyone calls ‘gentrification’. But in the last few decades, before young professionals started moving in, the borough’s most significant change has been de-industrialization. Many parts of Brooklyn still had thriving mills, plants and refineries, particularly the area around the Gowanus Canal.

The area sometimes now referred to as Gowanus is sandwiched between two very successful neighborhoods, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. Since the nearby strip of Smith Street, for example, went from a crime-ridden alley to a blooming row of restaurants and boutique shops, Gowanus has struggled to form an identity. Old mills made an ideal location for artist studios of course and there is lots of open space for megastores like Ikea.

Buildings like this remain…

I find these old industrial buildings aesthetically pleasing and that’s why I went around some months ago and took a whole bunch of pictures of them before they’re torn down or - believe it or not - converted into condos.

The Gowanus area is about to undergo a massive residential and retail rezoning that could be the death knell for some of these buildings. Towers of condos are popping up but, with the economy headed toward depression, they are largely empty. Activist groups are pushing for a major clean-up of the notoriously filthy canal.

So take it in while you can…

This page has never been anti-development like some of the area’s concerned citizens. The only hope is that these architectural gems, with their smokestacks and other industrial details, survive the change.

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