http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,688152,00.html
*Still working on the consequences of the collapse of East German industry. Involves demolishing big chunks of derelict cities, and either "restoring" them to some kind of Next Nature or building huge facades of public art to keep up local morale.
*They're doing a way better job of managing depopulation than Detroit, and this Spiegel article has a laudably upbeat, can-do tone, but it's still a Gothically spooky situation. The populace went broke. They left. It's over.
*Or rather, it's NOT over, not like Fatehpur Sikri or Chichen Itza are over; but it's an ever-more truncated, ever more elderly version of an intensely-managed European existence.
*Ballardian "cultural event" in an abandoned swimming pool:
