Christian Burkert (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover)
Last Exit Detroit
Award of Excellence
Documentary
Blighted by poverty and home to a chronically ailing car industry, Detroit could be the most maligned place in the US. Although the outlook for Detroit was not that bad either. The first half of the last century was pretty good for the city: after Henry Ford built the first car assembly line there in 1913, it became the center of the global automobile industry. But from the 1950s on, the city started losing its inhabitants, mainly to the suburbs. With a population that has fallen by half since then, Detroit is declining faster than anywhere else in America. Through the years, communities within the city continued falling apart. The economical downfall of the mono-industry of producing cars, a shrinking tax payer base and political corruption, made the city apparently incapable stopping the decay. Author Thomas J. Sugrue writes in his book The origins of the Urban Crisis - Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit the following sentence: "Whatever on hope remain for the city, is due to the peopleÕs persistent efforts to resist the paralyzing aftermath of poverty, racism and economical decline."
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Metal Waste
A young man is cutting metal in an old industrial plant to sell it on the metal yard. With an over-strained and scandal hunted city government and disproportional costs of bureaucracy, people often try to help themselves when they want to make investments in the old infrastructure.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Skyline
The Detroit Skyline seen from a roof of the giant ruin of the Packard Automotive Plant. The plant was the most modern car manufacturing plant in the world, when it opened in 1907.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Working
The GM Detroit/Hamtramck Plant (also called "Poletown-Plant), where Buicks and Cadillacs (even the presidential limousine) are built nowadays.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Foreclosed and Abandoned
Kenneth Sheldon checks an abandoned house in his neighborhood. Foreclosed and abandoned houses are often undisturbed places for drug dealers and drug addicts or other crime related activities.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Clean Up
The "Motor City Blight Busters," a non-profit organization - helped by many volunteers throughout the city - is fighting against the decay in the city since 1989.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Prom Night
Teenagers getting ready to celebrate their prom night.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Past Grandiosity
The Michigan Theatre was once a thriving place. Ironically it became a parking garage and a symbol for the decline of Detroit.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Capitol Park
Capitol Park in downtown Detroit is a central bus stop and a gathering point for most homeless and unemployed people.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Drugs
Abandoned houses or properties offer drug depended an undisturbed place for consuming drugs. Mainly hard drugs, like heroin or crack-cocaine, are one of the biggest problems the city. A lot of crime is directly related to drugs, but for a lot of drug users it is often impossible to break the circle of crime (associated with obtaining drugs) and their addiction without help from outside.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Celebrating
People on the streets celebrating Detroit's ice hockey team the Detroit Red Wings and their victory in the Stanley Cup finals in front of the Hockeytown Cafe on Woodward Avenue.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Urban Gardening
Community gardens sprout more and more in the city to oppose the blight and decay and to positively affect the people in the neighborhoods. The picture shows volunteer Xavier working in the Birdtown Community Garden.
Story: Last Exit Detroit
Rebuilding
The reopening of the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel, which was a big hotel in the nineteen-twenties, should mark a symbol for the rebuilding of Detroit.