My sister-in-law who lives in Montana shared this article with me. She and my brother [[he grew up in Detroit but has been in Montana for some 30 years!) were here last month for a family wedding.

Butte, Detroit: Cities in arms
"Some cities are wondrous things; organisms at once propagating and receding, a single entity with parts living and others dying. We don’t often experience whole cities where success and despair are partners, growth and decay lie side by side, and history’s tumult remains visible.


I grew up in such a place —Butte, Montana. Last month I visited another — Detroit, Mich. I had never been there but my friend Brian, who grew up south of Detroit, invited me to visit.
I had earlier shown Butte to Brian and he reciprocated by taking me around Detroit. We both appreciate cities with profound pasts and hopeful futures. Both cities are the products of immigrants, proclaim architecture of the Gilded Age, have ethnic studded populations, and enjoy a history of revolving migration. In almost all criteria, with the ironic exception of numbers of people, Detroit and Butte are urban."

http://mtstandard.com/news/opinion/b...a4bcf887a.html