Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Book of the Week

Audiobooks

Factual

Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

Book of the Week: The Last Days of Detroit

Book of the Week: The Last Days of Detroit: Episode 3

The Last Days of Detroit

Episode 3

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, The Last Days of Detroit, Episode 3

Writer Mark Binelli sits in on a gun proficiency and safety class in Detroit.

Writer Mark Binelli discovers the first thing that Detroiters want to talk about is crime, so he sits in on a gun proficiency and safety class.

The city of Detroit has suffered like no other US city; it's post-industrial decline, rapid and relentless, chronicled by photographers and journalists alike.

Detroit had been the beacon city of the 20th century, home to the massive Ford plant which, in the 20 years from 1908, produced 15 million Model T Ford cars, and put a nation on the road. In 1928, with skyscrapers dominating the city skyline, you could justifiably have called Detroit the most modern city in the world.

But by the time Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in 1959 - the other great Detroit bequest along with the auto industry - the city was already in inexorable decline. The 1967 riots - at the time the worst in US history - did not cause the problems, but did highlight them. The big three car companies had largely gone elsewhere; bereft of finance, urban planning was in meltdown; corruption was rife; and racial tensions were running high.

After a break of 16 years, Mark Binelli returned to live in the city whose suburbs he grew up in. He found an urban prairie, with 90,000 ravaged and empty buildings, a school system that was impoverished and a crime rate second to none in the US. But Binelli also discovered a new Detroit emerging; with urban farms and a vibrant arts scene. Is a new future, he wondered, being wrought on the post-industrial frontier?

Mark Binelli is the author of the novel Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Men's Journal. Born and raised in the Detroit area, he has now, after three years back in Detroit, moved to New York City.


Read by: John Schwab
Abridger: Pete Nichols


Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Mark Binelli's portrait of a city in post-industrial decline

By Mark Binelli. Portrait of a city whose rapid and relentless post-industrial decline has been chronicled by photographers and journalists alike

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Book of the Week

The Last Days of Detroit

Episode 3

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4