40,000 detroit buildings marked for demolition

The way most of the world now perceives Detroit Photo: ThunderKiss Photography

Detroit's bankruptcy painted a picture in the international community's mind of a city on the brink of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Films such as Jim Jarmusch's vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive, set in the nocturnal back-ends of the city where creatures go to hide, only emphasise that image.

Yet the city has been popular with investors, attracted by rebounding property prices and improving economic conditions. Indeed, Detroit is far from the end of civilisation: the population may have declined since the automobile boom of the 1990s, but the city still has 70,475 people living there, according to the US Census Bureau, more than Boston, Seattle or Nashville. The community has maintained architecture around Detroit, even as the city struggles to find a way to recoup its deficit - including by selling its art collection.

Part of the turnaround, though, will involve removing the buildings in a state of disrepair, to make way for new projects or restorations.

The Detroit Blight Removal Task Force has teamed up with Data Driven Detroit and Loveland Technologies to survey 380,000 parcels of land within the city to identify those structures infected by blight, explains Architizer. Citizens are even invited to "blext" - text in notifictions of buildings infected by blight with pictures and other information - so that the mapping of the city can be as accurate and complete as possible.

The Task Force has marked 40,077 buildings for "immediate removal", with another 38,429 potentially needing to be removed if not taken care of.

Dan Gilbert, Task Force co-chair and chairman of Detroit-based corporation Quicken Loans, says: "Like cancer, unless you remove the entire tumor, blight grows back."

Other organisations have formed to help preserve important architectural landmarks. Preservation Detroit and Michigan Historic Preservation Network have begun a survey, which ranks buildings as Very Important, Important or Less Important based on their "architectural integritY" to help determine which structures should be kept.

"Demolition absolutely needs to happen," Emilie Evans, a specialist at MHPN tells Architizer, "but strategically."