Walking through the Toronto airport (on a regular basis) you pass a gallery of photos. The photos are of abandoned buildings, a great room with books strewn about, a large church fallen into disrepair. A sign of the times, as funds get tight it is more cost effective to tear them down than repair them. A sad state of affairs in North America and in direct contrast to the UK, where 800 year old buildings remain in use today. A great example of that being Virginia Park, which could have been torn down and replaced with high density housing, instead it was repaired and turned into a thriving residence. It might be painful and more expensive, but we could learn from the English in this regard.

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have documented the decline of urban Detroit in their book The Ruins of Detroit. The shots on their site are breathtaking. There is something so wrong about our allowing this to happen and the fate that awaits some of these beautiful buildings. So wrong.

Haunting. We squander our past.