Indian Creek : Lifestyles of the Rich and Paranoid

Extraits de plusieurs articles du Miami Newstime portant sur l'île de Indian Creek à Miami. Une communauté fermée, autonome et insulaire de 33 luxury and exclusive villas :

"Indian Creek Village was founded on the lofty ideal that rich people need not share streets with the huddled masses. In 1939, the 660-acre man-made island just south of the 123rd Street Causeway — winter haven to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the Woolworth family - incorporated to evade annexation by Surfside."

"The official seal of Indian Creek Village depicts a closed front gate. That's all the chic North Miami-Dade island's 33 multimillionaire residents want you to know. You're not welcome."
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-04-29/news/anti-semites-lose-on-super-rich-indian-creek-island/

"In the few maps that record South Florida before the era of dredge-and-plat, Indian Creek Village survives as an obscure speck of land off the northern tip of Miami Beach. Originally earmarked to become part of a much larger manmade island, the islet was instead remodeled into a free-floating country club during the roaring Twenties.
Its topsoil, once sprinkled with mucks and peats, was reseeded in the fashion of an English countryside. A red-tiled clubhouse, designed to emulate a Spanish castle, came next. Rounded into a dainty fingertip and hemmed by concrete, the original plat, still in use, carved 41 bayfront lots from the horseshoe of land surrounding the golf course. A single, two-lane road connected Indian Creek to the outside world."
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1993-03-16/news/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-paranoid/

Indian Creek, à découvrir sur USanatomy en Juillet 2011

Detroit, the dying city

Another sharp article by "24/7 wall st " :

"As Detroit Dies, Solutions Disappear"

and some sample of the fabulous work of Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre :
http://www.marchandmeffre.com/

We should be analysing detroit in july 2011.
To be followed.

America’s Ten Dead Cities: From Detroit To New Orleans

Some quotes of a very sharp article by the site "24/7 Wall St" :

"A city does not die when its last resident moves away. Death happens when municipalities lose the industries and vital populations that made them important cities.
The economy has evolved so much since the middle of the 20th Century that many cities that were among the largest and most vibrant in America have collapsed. Some have lost more than half of their residents. Others have lost the businesses that made them important centers of finance, manufacturing, and commerce.
Most of America’s Ten Dead Cities were once major manufacturing hubs and others were important ports or financial services centers. The downfall of one city, New Orleans, began in the 1970s, but was accelerated by Hurricane Katrina.
[...]
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a study of what they described as America’s 150 forgotten cities. The municipalities on their list were medium-sized and ranked by measurements that included poverty. The reason for their demise largely match the cities on the 24/7 Wall St list. The MIT research work goes beyond a mere list of statistics and points out reasons why some of these cities will never recover. In almost every case, tax bases have disappeared, which has undermined the ability of local governments to spend money on revitalization. Abandoned areas of these cities have high crime rates, which not only keeps people from relocating to these areas but is actually an incentive for them to move away. This in turn, leads to the image of these cities as desolate urbanscapes."

The top ten of the disapearing cities is :

1. Buffalo
2. Flint
3. Hartford
4. Cleveland
5. New Orleans
6. Detroit
7. Albany
8. Atlantic City
9. Allentown
10. Galveston

The USANATOMY project is about the clinic description of some of these cities.
To be continued...

Read more: America’s Ten Dead Cities: From Detroit To New Orleans - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2010/08/23/americas-ten-dead-cities-from-detroit-to-new-orleans/#ixzz1Lt0R2mMp

Life and death of great american cities

Jane Jacobs, Françoise Choay, Saskia Sassen, Mike Davis, Rem Koolhaas, Michael Sorkin, Robert Venturi and Louis Kahn conducting the autopsy of Mickey Mouse.

Lancement du blog

La ville est morte et l'urbain règne.
La ville est morte, l'amérique l'a tuée.

Le moment est venu de réaliser une autopsie.
Bienvenue sur le site urbain d'USANATOMY.