Jump to content

Downtown Detroit

meguy22

By meguy22
in Photos & Videos

Recommended Posts


  • Replies 71
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Garris Town

Garris

Posted
Posted

Best pics of Detroit i have ever seen, Handsdown...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Agreed. The best photographers can even create images overriding your personal experience of a place. That's certainly the case here :).

- Garris

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Chow Unincorporated Area

Chow

Posted
Posted

great pics, I lived in Michigan for 13 years but I have never been to downtown detroit. Maybe I should some day.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Downtown is very different than most people expect it to be. I was just with a friend who hadn't been downtown in five years and he couldn't stop saying "It's actually kinda nice down here." Give us five more years and we could have something even more special.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Allan Metropolis

Allan

Posted
Posted

That has to be the ugliest skyline in the country.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You have to look at it from the side most of us see it from on a daily basis. People love to take photos of the city from across the river, but that it is the absolute worst angle of the skyline. I could hardly call this ugly.

800x600_detroit_downtown_deroy.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
cmj2k5 Unincorporated Area

cmj2k5

Posted
Posted

Trolls rule.

If that skyline looks good then there isn't one in the country that looks bad, when you compare to any other city, it looks like a before/after pic, detriot being 30 years ago.

If you take away that big blob of a building on the left that doesn't fit in at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jackson Unincorporated Area

jackson

Posted
Posted

Its a shame, because if there was a transit line running through that neighborhood pictured, it would be thriving.

  It's just my opinion...

But I think Detroit's skyline looks like it is old and dying.

I prefer this

well, from the perspective from that picture, it may be asethetically pleasing, but from where most people perceive the modern skyscrapers, which is from the street, it is actually terrible architecture. Most of those buildings could be designed by a cookie cutter, and serve as a disgrace to the architectual profession. If you want to see traditional, padestrian-oriented cities like detroit revitalize, you need to build buildings with more elaborate articulation, so that they infuse energy in the spaces in which the people occupy. Those pictures of charlotte (?) depict a downtown that may be economically stable, but as far as a traditional function of a downtown, the buildings fail to adequately master the space in their context.

If you take away that big blob of a building on the left that doesn't fit in at all.

totally agreed. The renaissance center could be the worst thing done to any cityby its own people in the history of mankind. Not only did it draw much of the cities commercial energy away from downtown, but it took thousands of jobs and relocated into one massive structure, which for the most part is isolated from the rest of the city and has direct highway access, simply making it easy for people not to live in the city, instead allowing them to easily commute from a suburb into downtown. This was not built for people in the city, it was built for people outside the city, and hence, Detroit has suffered greatly. Its kind of ironic, because everything city leaders have done to help the city in the last 60 years have actually destroyed it. No highways ever should have been built; on the contrary, transit lines should have been extended, keeping the urban areas vital. It also would have been a lot cheaper.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
dtwjim Unincorporated Area

dtwjim

Posted
Posted

I agree the Ren Cen does detract from downtown. I work there and commute from the suburbs, I get right off of 75 and straight into the parking lot and then right back on the highway at the end of the day. I'm only there every couple months or so and I don't usually bother to explore downtown. I must try to venture out more as the weather gets warmer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jackson Unincorporated Area

jackson

Posted
Posted

I agree the Ren Cen does detract from downtown. I work there and commute from the suburbs, I get right off of 75 and straight into the parking lot and then right back on the highway at the end of the day. I'm only there every couple months or so and I don't usually bother to explore downtown. I must try to venture out more as the weather gets warmer.

Actually, I've never even been to Detroit, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens when you consolidate a whole bunch of jobs into one building and you build direct highway access. There is something very similar not far from where I live, that functions very much like the Renaissance Center does:

6677357-R1-040-18A.jpg

The huge concrete mass in the middle of this picture is the Empire State Plaza, which lies where thousands of people used to live (in beautiful apartments and brownstones). Pretty much the same thing as detroit: a huge chunk of jobs (state jobs, in this case) in a massive structure, situated a substantial distance from the center of downtown, and directly connected by highways and underground parking, where suburbanites commute and travel home each day, many never stepping foot in the city. In the middle lies the Corning Tower, which at 44 stories, towers over the rest of the city, although, like Detroit, it isn't close to being at the center of the rest of the skyline. I'm just a teenager, but I am smart enough to figure out that this is possibly the most retarded thing ever done to a city (maybe second to Detroit). Albany, where this is located, is not a big city (95,000 residents), so think of how devastating a monstrocity of this magnitude must be to this city. Not only did it take up 40 blocks of high density neighborhoods (and taking huge amounts of properties off the tax rolls), it required two highways to be constructed for the traffic it produced, one being between downtown and the residential district to the south (there is also, for some weird reason, a lawn that surrounds it that is several blocks wide) and the other being between downtown and the riverfront, completely severing access to one of the city's most valuable assests: the hudson river. I want to meet who ever designed and developed this, and see how retarded they are in person, because whoever though this up is a moron and obviously knows nothing about cities. There is really no other way to describe it other than retarded. This is a disgrace to human society, and we deserved to be punished for actually doing something this dumb. I want to meet the architect, and ask him if he designed the facads with a cookie cutter. The complex of buildings is surrounded by a wall, as if it is a fortress and the rest of the city is a hostile environment. Albany is a traditional city, and like all traditional cities, they thrive on padestrians. Trying to adapt it for the automobile as a primary mode of transportation does nothing for the city except ruin many of the reasons people go to cities in the first place. They destroy the environment that architects and city planners have carefully crafted for centuries, and as a result, albany has suffered, loosing over 40,000 residents and virtually all downtown activity after business hours.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RiversideGator Burg

RiversideGator

Posted
Posted

As to Albany, I have been there and that building should be called Rockefeller's folly. It is a horrendous design with no interaction with the city. By the way, when I was there in 2001, I was shocked to find ghetto conditions in old brownstones right across from the Governor's Mansion. What is wrong with people in that city??

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Spartan Gigalopolis

Spartan

Posted
Posted

You have to look at it from the side most of us see it from on a daily basis.  People love to take photos of the city from across the river, but that it is the absolute worst angle of the skyline.  I could hardly call this ugly.

800x600_detroit_downtown_deroy.jpg

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That has to be the best picture of Detriot I have ever seen, and probably the only one not from accross the river. It looks much better from that angle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Allan Metropolis

Allan

Posted
Posted

IMG_8946.jpg

Now you've seen two from not across the river :P

Most people don't know that there was a proposal in 1985 which would've rivaled the Renaissance Center in terms of office space. It was to be built even further to the east than the Ren Cen is. It would have been called Rivard Place. BetaWest Properties Inc. planned to develop the landmark riverfront project, but the company scaled down its proposal in unsuccessful efforts to attract an anchor tenant, and eventually cancelled its plans.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Garris Town

Garris

Posted
Posted

I dislike Minneapolis skyline, its a bunch of modern nice buildings that are all the same size, theres a lack of an idenifying building.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Have you actually ever been to Minneapolis? It's a gorgeous skyline, with many distinctive and, in some cases, landmark buildings (the IDS building pops to mind). It looks totally different from a number of different angles and, most importantly, looks fantastic from the downtown streets. That photo looks quite old to me (I was in Minnesota for 4 years) and the city is growing so quickly that I'm sure it looks different now than when I left a year ago.

I'm not a big fan of the Detroit skyline myself, but it undoubtedly has some excellent examples of early skyscrapers. Detroit is one of the more depressing places I've ever been, but I've been following news of the pockets of renewal in the city and wish nothing but the best for the city. If Detroit can pull itself up by its bootstraps, then every metro in the US has hope.

Albany is interesting. Empire State Plaza is actually quite striking to see in person and is considered a landmark of modern architecture. Unfortunately, it did absolutely nothing for the rest of the city and has had all the deleterious effects that was noted in Jackson's post. Poor Albany. It's virtually as depressing as Detroit and, despite some nice character-filled parts of town, seems to resist all substantial improvement. I don't know what Albany (or any of the upstate NY cities) will do for renewal. I'm hoping that ultra-low home costs compared to other white-hot cities will spark development for places like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester.

- Garris

Providence, RI

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Loughlin Whistle-Stop

Loughlin

Posted
Posted

Me personaly no but i have seen several pictures from my dads trips and its just my opinion that i dislike it, the building that is sorta a cross between the US bank tower (la) and the Peachtree tower (atlanta) is kind of cool, but it would look better taller, a perfect skyline to me would be LA, with one main bulding in the skyline, Minneapolis just dosnt have that, thats why i dislike it, and what would being in the city have to do with seeing its skyline?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.