The New American Tourist

I spent time at the Heidelberg Project today, and came across six young ladies from France who were in the United States on holiday.  It got me wondering about the new wave of visitors (especially Europeans) who now consider Detroit as a travel destination. Redefining the possibilities of what an urban center has to offer, there is a growing minority who identify with the unconventional, over the status quo.

With camera in hand, and an appetite to explore, the new American tourist no longer seeks the usual suspects found in the pages of your AAA travel brochure. Niagara Falls and Disney World are being replaced by the allure of transitioning landscapes littered with disappearing remnants of the industrial age. Buildings such as the abandoned Packard Motor Company plant on East Grand Blvd, have now become a vacation destination for urban explorers looking to get one last glimpse before it's all turns to dust. Last Sunday I counted 15 cars parked in front of the Packard plant, undeterred by shards of busted windshield glass littering the pavement.

In Detroit, the obsessive fascination with abandoned buildings and urban decay has become a "field of dreams" for out-of-towners and locals seeking a new visual context in which to get away from it all. Many locals chafe (understandably so) at the onslaught of outsiders taking interest in what many consider to be the downfall of a once great city.  At the epicenter of Detroit's image as a has-been industrial behemoth, is the iconic Michigan Central Depot on Michigan Avenue. A classic example of the Beaux Arts style of architecture, the station now sits in lonely solitude while awaiting its fate.

What are the motives that drive us away from the so-called real world, in order to connect with stoic structures fighting the consequences of a failed economy and the passage of time? The new American tourist is casting away the tidiness and excessive order associated with the cookie cutter aesthetic of strip malls and big box stores, in favor of the chaos and unpredictability of marginal spaces. Just as baby boomers have romanticized the roadside culture of Route 66, a new generation is contemplating the reinvention of urban America,  and how to embrace it.

Bryan

Lindsay

Paul