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    Back to Design and Architecture

    Design and Architecture

    Motor City, Out of Gas?

    On this DnA, we talk at length about Detroit with Andrew Zago, starting with its outsize cultural contribution: a car culture whose twenty year output of desirable cars equated, in his view, to Jobs' years of productivity at Apple; astonishing music; car culture's close relation, the midcentury Modern architecture, planning and related crafts,…

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    By Frances Anderton • May 12, 2014 • 1 min read

    On this DnA, we talk at length about Detroit with Andrew Zago, starting with its outsize cultural contribution: a car culture whose twenty year output of desirable cars equated, in his view, to Jobs' years of productivity at Apple; astonishing music; car culture's close relation, the midcentury Modern architecture, planning and related crafts, centered on Cranbrook Academy of Art.

    Then we discuss how it imploded, literally, becoming a strange donut of a city with declining, poor, and largely African-American populace in the "hole" in the middle, ringed by suburbs created by White Flight and, more recently, "Bright Flight."

    The full episode

    1 of 2
    Detroit No More; Neverbuilt Los Angeles
    1. 0:00Motor City, Out of Gas?You’re reading this
    2. 21:02Neverbuilt: Frank Lloyd Wright
    • https://images.ctfassets.net/2658fe8gbo8o/AvYox6VuEgcxpd20Xo9d3/769bca4fbf97bf022190f4813812c1e2/new-default.jpg?h=250

      Frances Anderton

      architecture critic and author

    • KCRW placeholder

      Andrew Zago

      Zago Architecture / Southern California Institute of Architecture

      Culture

    The full episode

    1 of 2
    Detroit No More; Neverbuilt Los Angeles
    1. 0:00Motor City, Out of Gas?You’re reading this
    2. 21:02Neverbuilt: Frank Lloyd Wright
    Back to Design and Architecture