Living in Philly, I think about ruins all the time. Mostly because they’re everywhere here. There are places less that a mile from City Hall that sit vacant and crumbling and gorgeous. (Like the Divine Lorraine hotel pictured in this flickr set that will soon be overpriced condos).

It’s really easy to romanticize this stuff mostly because it’s pretty and makes you stop and ponder in the way that art and smoking a cigarette and religion can. But you know, it’s a complete position of privilege to be able to say that it’s pretty. It’s easy to be in ah of urban ruins when you don’t have to live in the neighborhood that’s crumbling. The July issue of Harper’s has a great article about Detroit and what the author Rebecca Solnit calls “the post-American landscape.” I lived in Michigan several years ago not too far from Detroit and I once took some folks visiting from California on a drive through the city. One of them uttered the sentence all slow and film dialogue like, “This looks like Beirut” by which I think he meant, “How did this happen?” and “This is totally amazing.” Solnit romanticizes the decay too, but she has a vision for new green agricultural cities in places like Detroit that makes sense and is really beautiful to envision.

The photo above comes from photographer Julia Solis. There’s a whole gallery of ruins called The Garden of Crumbling Delights at the site of the group Ars Subterranea: The Society for Creative Preservation. Found over at the Dwell blog.