Ghost Towns and Urban Homesteading

[inulro]

A while ago, a bunch of you linked to a piece of photojournalism in the Guardian about Detroit's crumbling Victorian public buildings. That was neat, but what really interested me was the article linked at the bottom of it, The Dirtbombs on Detroit: A City of Unlimited Possibilities, which details why Detroit is a great place to be an artist because you are not "overburdened by living expenses". This is probably my favourite quote of the year.

Coincidentally (or not), a little before that I found a series of articles (follow the links!) about Cairo, Illinois (the starting point for which I can only assume came from Neil Gaiman's blog), a ghost town with a troubled past, and a bunch of young punks who started a business there. I think it ultimately folded, because unlike Detroit there was really *no economy* left in Cairo.

The enterprise is interesting, though. One of the articles refers to "urban homesteading", talking about moving to depopulated towns and turning vacant lots over to guerilla gardens and livestock grazing, rebuilding community. I think this sounds like a really cool concept, but if you Google for the term you find it has been appropriated by guilt-ridden upper middle class hippy types who think keeping some chickens in their back yard is, like, really radical.

I like the idea of there being places where I could go to write where I wouldn't have to work full time just to keep a roof over my head. Should I ever become un-lazy enough to do so, of course. Unfortunately, the only places I have the right to live that fit that criteria are places where you are encumbered by a bloody awful climate - the outports of Newfoundland, post-mining Uranium City (apparently you can get houses there for < $20,000 CDN, but Google for the location to see why!). If anybody knows of any depopulated towns in Canada with minimal cost of living that aren't hundreds of miles from civilization and therefore internet and groceries, let me know. Or in Europe, for that matter.

Comments

[kest]

A friend of mine was working on a documentary last year about a town in Italy that's been taken over by artists. I'll have to look up the info for you.

[kest]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussana_Vecchia,_Liguria

[quercus.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting piece, thanks.

It reminds me of Bristol in the '80s-'90s. Back in the times when Hotwells was full of hippy buses, because down by the docks was cheap and empty.

I loved the comment about Dutch photographers too!