Batteries Not Included

This past weekend I stumbled across the movie *batteries not included on TV. I haven’t seen this movie since I was a kid, but I remembered it had something to do with robots and that I had liked it.

Well, imagine my surprise to discover that the movie has preservation issues at its core. A large corporate development is planned for a city block, and all but one of the historic buildings has been torn down. The tenants of the final hold-out decide to make a stand to preserve their home, their community, because even without the benefit of the surrounding structures, there is still a community within the building. It seems like a hopeless struggle, with bulldozers waiting at the door, and a gang of thugs sent to “persuade” the tenants to leave.

They pray for help, and help arrives, in the form of tiny flying saucers with the ability to repair pretty much anything overnight and all they need is a little electricity. With multiple small repairs around the building, the tenants begin to find hope and renewed energy to preserve their way of life.

This situation arises all too frequently. Unfortunately we can’t all count on tiny robots to repair the buildings we treasure, and it certainly does not happen overnight. It takes time, and the efforts of many people like the tenants of this building to make a difference in a community. But like in the movie, small improvements can spread hope and inspire others to invest in maintenance and development. It takes many small steps to revitalize a neighborhood.

But why would you try to revitalize a building if it has lost all of its context, its neighborhood? That is a struggle Detroit (amongst many other cities) is facing right now. So much of the city has suffered decline, and there are many blocks where only one or two structures remain, and those are in poor repair.  A radical proposal has been made to tear down 10,000 of these structures to make way for new uses – urban agriculture for the time being, and hopefully future development when there is again a demand. While I applaud the creative thinking in finding uses for this underutilized land, I worry that we may be losing the last vestiges of neighborhoods, some of which are still inhabited.

Detroit has a history of tearing down neighborhoods in the name of progress – take for example Poletown – a thriving Polish community that was cleared in 1981 to allow for expansion of an automobile factory. More recently are plans to flatten up to 414 homes and as many as 56 businesses that employ nearly 1,000 people in the Delray neighborhood to make way for an additional bridge to Canada.

The preservationist in me starts to war with the urbanite. Is it advisable to demolish historic fabric (albeit in disrepair) in favor of other uses like urban agriculture that could contribute to the vitality of a city? What about the neighborhoods that are functioning, steeped in tradition, history and diversity and where people care about their homes and their neighbors? Does progress mean the removal of everything that came before? If this were a movie, we’d only have to wait for visitors from space to solve our problems – all set to an inspiring soundtrack of music of the 1980s (perhaps featuring We Built This City by Starship?).

Tags: *batteries not included, Delray, Detroit, flying saucers, Poletown, robots, Starship

2 Comments to Batteries Not Included

1. 

   preservation is such a tough topic, one I tried to tackle by joining a preservation group, but quickly became discouraged by the lack of governmental and neighborhood support.

   Much more interesting to me is urban planning and the possibility of reusing the land that is reclaimed by demolishing these structures in disrepair. I would also add, though, that when tearing them down the work be done in an environmentally-friendly way. It can be done, take my hometown for example: http://www.in.gov/ifa/brownfields/2576.htm
Zane D. on June 24th, 2010
2. 

   Zane, Thanks for sharing the article. One of the saddest things about demolition of older structures (aside from the loss of history and context) is the loss of the historic materials which exhibit so much craftsmanship. And often they are a higher quality than what is commercially available today. I hate to think of all that work wasting away in a landfill. Detroit does have some resources to salvage historic materials, but certainly not enough to keep up with the proposed demolition. Check out the Architectural Salvage Warehouse http://aswdetroit.org/ for one.
Mara Braspenninx on June 24th, 2010

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