Photo Credit: Darren Gygi

Not the Marilyn Kind

Christopher Caldwell, unmoved by Marilyn.

BY Christopher Caldwell

August 2, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 43

"Decaying industrial cities" are no longer a blot on the American landscape. What we have now is decayed industrial cities. From a certain vantage point—the consumerist one—the empty shells of these places are more pleasant than the actual, living cities were. Factories, tanneries, and high schools have been refitted to serve the people who survived them, whether as malls or as assisted-living facilities. The firehouse is now the Firehouse Pub. Stan’s Muffler Shop has become Melissa’s Muffin Shop. It is not urban planning so much as taxidermy.

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