Abandoning Flint

Baltimore has some of the same themes as what is described in Bryan Finoki's post but it's not nearly as extreme as what has become of Flint. As seen in the pictures in the post, I have not come across abandoned strip malls or neighborhoods with the overgrowth that high in Baltimore.

There we were in this plain white vehicle truckin’ northbound on the I-69 with oversized Starbucks cups in our hands...whizzing past corn fields and Rest Areas and strange taxonomies of roadkill that accumulated every few hundred yards or so on the highway’s shoulders... squirrels, raccoons, mice, gophers, rabbits, cats, drivers (who knows what else) … the road to Flint was already a stroll through a long cemetery.When Wes, Nihal, and I headed up there a few weeks ago I couldn’t wait to pick up on that geography of urban ruins that weaves so many of my interests together about architecture, global economies, lost histories, indigenous culture, systemic poverty, the road trip, contexts of abandonment, informal communities, urban salvagers, and so on.