Overview

"Chronicles grassroots efforts to recover, rebuild, and enjoy architecturally iconic but economically obsolete places in the American Rust Belt. A pioneering Detroit automobile factory. A legendary iron mill at the edge of Pittsburgh. A campus of concrete grain elevators in Buffalo. Two monumental train stations, one in Buffalo, the other in Detroit. These once-noble sites have since fallen from their towering grace. As local elected leaders did everything they could to destroy what was left of these places, citizens saw beauty and utility in these industrial ruins and felt compelled to act. Postindustrial DIY tells their stories. The culmination of more than a dozen years of on-the-ground investigation, ethnography, and historical analysis, author and urbanist Daniel Campo immerses the reader in this postindustrial landscape, weaving the perspectives of dozens of DIY protagonists as well as architects, planners, and preservationists. Working without capital, expertise, and sometimes permission in a milieu dominated by powerful political and economic interests, these do-it-yourself actors are driven by passion and a sense of civic duty rather than by profit or political expediency. They have craftily remade these sites into collective preservation projects and democratic grounds for arts and culture, environmental engagement, regional celebrations, itinerant play, and in-the-moment constructions. Their projects are generating excitement about the prospect of Rust Belt life, even as they often remain invisible to the uninformed passerby and fall short of professional preservation or environmental reclamation standards. Demonstrating that there is no such thing as a site that is ""too far gone"" to save or reuse, Postindustrial DIY is rich with case studies that demonstrate how great architecture is not simply for the elites or the wealthy. The citizen preservationists and urbanists described in this book offer looser, more playful, and often more publicly satisfying alternatives to the development practices that have transformed iconic sites into expensive real estate or a clean slate for the next profitable endeavor. Transcending the disciplinary boundaries of architecture, historic preservation, city planning, and landscape architecture, Postindustrial DIY suggests new ways to engage, adapt, and preserve architecturally compelling sites and bottom-up strategies for Rust Belt revival."

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9781531504687

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Reviews

"The ruins of factories and refineries in Buffalo, Detroit, and Pittsburgh offer new possibilities for revitalizing the Rust Belt, according to this architectural study from urbanist Campo.-- ""Publishers Weekly"""

"The ruins of factories and refineries in Buffalo, Detroit, and Pittsburgh offer new possibilities for revitalizing the Rust Belt, according to this architectural study from urbanist Campo.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" When we cannot rely on the private market or the public sector to pursue the preservation and stewardship of disused industrial landscapes, we may turn to creative, citizen-led initiatives to step into the void. Dan Campo is our intrepid, interpretive guide through these fascinating buildings and places, making the case for their enduring significance, inspiring readers to take action, and nudging public policy toward supporting these efforts.---Elihu Rubin, Associate Professor of Urbanism at the Yale School of Architecture This remarkable book takes us into the world of large-scale urban abandonment where conventional top-down preservation seems doomed to fail, but where citizens groups, arts collectives and marginal entrepreneurs have managed to substitute their own DIY idealism and improvisations. Campo's wonderfully-written and deeply-engaged book lifts historic preservation out of its elitist cul-de-sac and points towards possibilities of bottom-up renewal. He goes beyond preservation to speak to everyone struggling to act - whether for preservation, or sustainability, or anti-racism or equity - when so many bureaucracies and experts seem paralyzed.---Robert Fishman, Taubman College of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan Campo looks beneath the shiny surfaces and official histories of cities to tell the stories of how independent, resistant, and creative people are reshaping the post-industrial city. It is also a history of how the relentless ""growth machine"" of urban redevelopment continues to undervalue the communities and cultures that have emerged at sites and districts from Pittsburgh to Buffalo. Campo's deeply researched, compellingly argued, and thoughtfully pragmatic manifesto is a critical contribution toward a more progressive and more original American urbanism.---Ray Gastil, former City Planning Director for Pittsburgh (2014-19) Daniel Campo has given us an enlightening, compassionate and critical book about abandoned industrial ruins and the intrepid people who have inhabited them through diverse acts of transgression. These large, seductive complexes have been unencumbered by official regimes, literally 'out of control, ' permissive and wild. Campo excavates and reconstructs the histories of five significant industrial sites since abandonment in Buffalo, Detroit and Pittsburgh with the stories of artists, youth, former workers, preservationists, local communities and ex-urban explorers. Without permission or standing, 'post-industrial DIYer' creatively inhabited and enlivened these ruins. What's next? Must these places be tamed by legitimate reuse? Is stabilization and ongoing itinerant use possible? Campo tells an engaging story while posing compelling questions about their future.---Lynda H. Schneekloth, Professor Emerita, School of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo/SUNY"

Author Information

Daniel Campo, Ph.D., is an urbanist and Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Graduate Built Environment Studies in the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University. He is the author of The Accidental Playground: Brooklyn Waterfront Narratives of the Undesigned and Unplanned. He was previously a planner for the New York City Department of City Planning.

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