“Professor, we don’t need to be studied. We need help!”

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

The disappearing city:

Flint is elusive. It’s like this for me now, after twenty-plus visits: Buildings once there are now gone, replaced by lawns, by weeds, maybe by gardens. Buildings I photographed are now charred rubble or have disappeared. I knew something once, but now it’s changed; or maybe my memories are faulty, maybe I’m at the wrong intersection, expecting to see a building that is a block away. That happens. People I knew have left. They lose jobs, lose interest, lose their way. I lose touch with them. That happens, too. I think I know somebody, and on my next trip to Flint, find out they’ve vanished.

This is the parking lot at Buick City, which used to be a large factory run by General Motors:

Here is an architect trying to re-envision what his profession means in a post-industrial world:

Post-Flint, I’m asking: How do we prepare our students for the multiple realities of the world they are about to enter as young professionals and will inherit as global citizens? How might such contemporary issues be introduced to our students? How should architectural education acknowledge the breakdown of the Rust Belt? Is it time to be more engaged not only with the failed policies and falling infrastructures of our shrinking cities, but more importantly, with the remaining residents? I remember, daily, a woman in East St. Louis who said to me: “Professor, we don’t need to be studied. We need help!” How, then, are we to help?

Post-Flint, I’m wondering: What is the place of an architect in a setting where few building permits are issued, where many more buildings are being demolished than designed? What can architects work on if “development,” “next phase,” “expansion,” “anticipated growth,” “better tomorrow,” and “recovery” are stripped from our day-to-day? Or, if the conversations are about developments in scavenger activities, the next phase of federal demolition funding, expansion of landfill holdings, anticipated growth among local salvage yards, a better tomorrow for demolition contractors, or the recovery of urban animal populations? To put this differently, can we shift away from the overwhelming, and suffocating, economic and legalistic frameworks that dominate our profession, our university programs, and our lives?

Post-Flint, I’m searching out “small” initiatives, curious about local progress made by individuals who toil beneath, in spite of, and without knowledge of the larger plans and recovery prospects imagined by trained professionals. I wonder if our work should begin not with development or expansion, not even with a charrette. Might we start with an individual, someone we know on a first name basis? Is this, in a place like Flint, more appropriate? Is this a way, finally, to humanize our profession? To begin with Keith, with Adam, with Wendy? As I move through these moments and ask these questions, I do my best to resolve the contradictions between what I thought was the case, what authorities tell me needs to be done, and what I find. Flint churns as a deepening inconsistency for me, beset by problems, scarred by solutions, and alive with … well … alive with lives.