The life and death of american cities and "Detroit" the movie.

     

    After our first lecture on Tuesday, I asked our professor for more insight into the Detroit burnings in the 60's. He suggested that if I wanted to know more to start with the movie "Detroit". This movie covers a few nights during the summer of 1967 where civil unrest and police brutality erupts stemming from a insanely brutal police force in the city that had been unlawfully arresting and beating people of color. The movie plot continues by highlighting the situation of the annex of the Algiers motel. At the motel over a night, 3 unarmed, innocent people were shot to death by police for a suspected weapon. 

    While watching this movie, I remembered our other assigned reading from Jane Jacobs, "The uses of sidewalks:safety".  In that reading Jacobs speaks about the safeness of cities and the importance of a safe path of travel throughout the city for people. This safe travel, extending through neighborhoods, creates a zone of safety that depends on the community. The dependence on the community translates as a phrase she states as "eyes on the street". To quickly summarize the ideal, the multiple uses of buildings throughout the day creates an active sidewalk during the entire day and night. This activity then by nature, creates witnesses or "eyes"  on the street that will keep the sidewalk safe. The community then discourages acts of crime for fear of being seen in the act. Here is where I began thinking of the relation of the movie and Jacobs writings. 

    The movie outlines a burning Detroit during a time where the streets were not safe. Nor were the streets able to be managed by the community from the immense pressure and brutality of the police that were disproportionately policing these neighborhoods. Here the streets did not suffer from the lack of diversity in program of building, but suffered from the very group of police that swore to protect the people of Detroit. This movie brought to light a large amount of questions and ideas that I hope to gain the answers to as I continue reading about the Detroit fires and the civil discourse that took place during that time. I thought that I would share with you what the movie outlines and offer an invitation to watch the movie through the lens of Jane Jacobs readings. It made me think a lot about how cities are designed and how the severe oppression in the 1960's created this time in history where cities were failing its citizens and there was no helping hand to reach out. I hope the movie spurs more questions from you like it did me.