Destroying Detroit (in Order to Save It)
On this June morning, with the heat and humidity rising, residents emerge from their homes one by one: mostly women, mostly older, mostly taking care of their mothers and grandkids. They’ve been calling the city, they say, for years without response and feel as abandoned as the houses that surround them—the foreclosed, devitalized structures that require immediate wrecking. They have questions for Lorenzo. Comprehensive to-do lists for this man who has powerful machines and, so, they figure, actual power. They ask when the dead trees are coming down. They want to know when the drug dealing will stop. Does Lorenzo’s boss have a job for their sons, by any chance? Or for their nephews? Or what about for themselves?
Author:
Source:
GQ
Published: Jun 1, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,522 words)