The 1965 promotional video Detroit: City On The Move captures the city before everything went to shit.

Since this film was made, Detroit’s population has dropped by more than 60% and the future couldn’t look bleaker. There are some glimmerings of hope though. Artists and entrepreneurs are heading to the city to take advantage of cheap real estate and an atmosphere that is conducive to new ideas and energies. When you’ve got nothing left to lose, people and places will embrace anything that offers even the slenderest thread of hope. Creative people thrive in such conditions. I’d thought about moving to Detroit and buying a house for $8,000. But, it’s just too damn cold.

The film is narrated by then-mayor Jerome P. Cavanaugh with the enthusiasm of a man who has been taking bong hits of carbon monoxide. Maybe he saw what was coming.
 

 
Art can save neighborhoods. The Heidelberg Project is an example of the restorative energy that artists and the creative spirit can bring to a community. Detroit is at the crossroads of an absolutely ugly death or a beautiful re-imagining. It’s time to take the money spent on wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, drugs) and use it to resurrect America’s dying cities. There are people ready and waiting with ideas and dreams to make things happen - people like Tyree Guyton.