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After living in San Francisco for 15 years, journalist Gordon Young found himself yearning for his Rust Belt hometown: Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of General Motors and “star” of the Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me. Hoping to rediscover and help a place that once boasted one of the world’s highest per capita income levels, but is now one of the country's most impoverished and dangerous cities, he returned to Flint with the intention of buying a house. What he found was a place of stark contrasts and dramatic stories, where an exotic dancer can afford a lavish mansion, speculators scoop up cheap houses by the dozen on eBay, and arson is often the quickest route to neighborhood beautification.
Skillfully blending personal memoir, historical inquiry, and interviews with Flint residents, Young constructs a vibrant tale of a once-thriving city still fighting—despite overwhelming odds—to rise from the ashes. He befriends a rag-tag collection of urban homesteaders and die-hard locals who refuse to give up as they try to transform Flint into a smaller, greener town that offers lessons for cities all over the world. Hard-hitting, insightful, and often painfully funny, Teardown reminds us that cities are ultimately defined by people, not politics or economics.
- Sales Rank: #758823 in Books
- Published on: 2013-06-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.00" w x 6.00" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
From Booklist
Fifteen years into his life in San Francisco, journalist Young and his wife finally bought a small house that provoked in him nostalgia for the sense of belonging he had growing up in Flint, Michigan. Should they trade their overpriced home for better bargains available in hard-pressed Flint and make a major contribution to a struggling city? Inspired by a blog he started for Flint expatriates, Young spent two summers indulging his nostalgia and seriously considering a return to the birthplace of General Motors and subject of Michael Moore’s documentary, Roger & Me. He meets real-estate speculators, hearty urban pioneers, politicians, and city planners pushing the idea of shrinking cities like Flint that have suffered deindustrialization and depopulation. Beyond the harrowing facts of staggering crime and diminishing services, Young saw a city fighting mightily to reclaim its glory days as a solid, middle-class town. Young compares youthful memories of Catholic schooling and free swimming lessons to the grim present of abandoned houses and shuttered schools in this poignant, often funny look at an iconic Rust Belt city struggling to recover. --Vanessa Bush
Review
"A journalist living in San Francisco decides to move back to decrepit Flint, Mich., where he was born and raised. . . . It matters because: As cities like Flint go, so goes much of the nation. Perfect for: The amateur urbanist who wants to go to Flint without actually having to leave the backyard."--Alexander Nazaryan"Atlantic Wire" (06/12/2013)
"A poignant, often funny look at an iconic Rust Belt city struggling to recover."--Vanessa Bush"Booklist" (07/01/2013)
"Teardown is a story, readable and affecting, sad and funny, animated by human impulse and the American preoccupation with real estate values . . . it is a remarkably intereting read that is likely to resonate with anyone who has ever left home."--Philip Martin"Arkansas Democrat Gazette" (06/16/2013)
"Young has written this love poem to his arson-prone, deindustrialized hometown and its impoverished and traumatized citizenry using a snappy yet journalistically skeptical style. . . . Even casual readers who have no experience with Rust Belt cities or real estate investment will find Teardown compelling and worth their attention."--Jim Schulman"Washington Independent Review of Books" (07/26/2013)
"The style of Teardown is Rolling-Stone-style journalism, relatively informal, strongly first person, loosely organized. But there is modern history, too, and wide-ranging inquiry into economics and (especially) politics. The strongest narrative interest, though, springs from Gordon s contacts with Flintites old and new, people doing what he is contemplating."--Randall Mawer"Lost Coast Review" (08/03/2013)"
"While scholars and urban planners throughout the US and Europe debate strategies for revitalising former industrial cities that are shrinking, forgotten or failing, Young reminds us that storytelling, including the kind of inconclusive ending we might find in a contemporary novel, sometimes reveals more than the most careful study can. Better yet, a good story shows us why we should care, even if it doesn t provide any solutions."--Sherry Lee Linkon"Times Higher Education" (10/31/2013)"
"One does not have to be from Flint to appreciate this book."--Stephen High"Middle West Review" (04/01/2015)
From the Inside Flap
"One can read Teardown and go 'My, my, my! What a horrid town! Thank God I don't live there!' Oh, but you do. Just as the Roger & Me Flint of the 1980s was the precursor to a wave of downsizing that eventually hit every American community, Gordon Young's Flint of 2013, so profoundly depicted in this book, is your latest warning of what's in store for you—all of you, no matter where you live—in the next decade. The only difference between your town and Flint is that the Grim Reaper just likes to visit us first. It's all here in Teardown, a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city."—Michael Moore
"There must be a thousand good reasons to flee Flint. I can't assume there are many reasons to return. Gordon Young's Teardown supplies a few of these answers. A humorous, heartfelt and often haunting tale of a town not many could love. Fortunately for us, a few still do."—Ben Hamper, author of Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line
"Teardown is the tragic and somehow hilarious tale of one man's attempt to return to his hometown. Gordon Young is a Flintoid at heart and his candid observations about both the shrinking city and his own economic woes read heartbreakingly true."—Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
"Teardown is a funny and ultimately heartbreaking memoir. The travails of house hunting are skillfully interwoven with Young's attempt to reconcile life in his adopted city of San Francisco with his allegiance to Flint, the troubled city of his childhood. The result is an all too contemporary American story of loyalty, loss and finding your way home."—Tom Pohrt, illustrator and author of Careless Rambles by John Clare
"Like so many other Flintites, I visit my hometown with a mix of sadness, repugnance and anger. Yet the man I have become, the life I lead, and the dreams I carry were all born in Flint, and Flint remains in my heart. We only knew it as home—as a place to learn, love and live. Flint is too easy to criticize, but I look back in gratitude for the values Flint instilled, the education I received and the bonds I made that remain with me to this day. You can take the boy out of Flint, but you can't take Flint out of the boy."—Howard Bragman, author of Where's My Fifteen Minutes?
"Armed with an aluminum baseball bat and a truth-seeking pen, Young returns to the post-industrial wasteland of his hometown in search of a derelict house to buy and restore. At least that's his cover story. Young's true mission is to reclaim his past is order to make sense of his present. If you're bewitched by the place where you grew up, you'll find comfort and a sense of home in the pages of Teardown."—Jack Shafer, Reuters columnist and a former Michigander
"This beautifully written tale of Gordon Young's homecoming offers an unforgettable journey to the heart of one of America's most compelling places."—Frank J. Popper, Rutgers University
Most helpful customer reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Flint -- its crisis and its promise -- explained as never before.
By Connor Coyne
I can think of two types of person that might enjoy this book. People who don't live in Flint and want to understand the place, and people who do live in Flint and want to understand how people on the outside see our fair city. Author Gordon Young is part of an increasing number of people that fall into both camps; he grew up in Flint and, like so many Flintstones, left the place for greener pastures.
Now a San Francisco journalist, Young is best known in Flint for his Flint Expatriates blog. It's an extensive, wide-ranging, and evocative collection of anecdotes, archive, history, and armchair analysis, and many of us have been hoping for years that Young would share his own observations in a full-fledged book.
Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City does not disappoint.
The book is a memoir, following Young's personal quest to buy a house in his hometown, fueled in large part by fond and complicated memories of his own childhood there.
Despite his extensive blogging, Young is surprised by a Flint that has changed drastically in the almost thirty years since he left. Budget shortfalls and public safety cuts coincide with skyrocketing crime. Many blocks are filled with abandoned houses, and hundreds burn down in arson sprees. Defiant homeowners in Carriage Town pump many times their house's value into renovation, while equally determined holdouts in the impoverished Civic Park neighborhood fight to keep a single block from falling into decay. The city is in crisis, and has been for decades. Most of Flint's residents live in a perpetual state of damage control as one calamity follows another.
Now I should pause for a moment, because the above paragraph could really describe any number of accounts of Flint.
Ben Hamper's Rivethead, written in the midst of decline, well conveys the sense of a town's psychological disintegration. Various academic studies portray depopulation and poverty in stark numbers. The Flint Journal and many others have provided illuminating histories of Flint, enhanced by photos and primary sources. And Michael Moore's "Roger and Me," released in 1989, still expresses abandonment vividly (even if the number of abandoned homes has since multiplied many times). So in several ways, Young is operating on well-trod territory.
Here is why Teardown is unique among all the others:
Despite being framed by the very personal narrative of Young's home-buying quest and his own memories, Teardown is by far the most balanced and circumspect encounter with Flint that the world-at-large is likely to get.
First, among the characters he encounters -- from well-connected politicians, to frustrated homeowners, to a determined clergy, to young parents trying to make a fresh start in the midst of entrenched policy, everyone is given a moment to speak, and their views are presented eloquently and sympathetically. So when would-be town-downsizer Dan Kildee encounters an Eastside resident on Jane Street (where Kildee's own family had once lived), the man says, "somebody needs to fix these houses up, not just let them fall down!" '"Fix them up!" he yelled without looking back, pointing into the air for emphasis as he waded into the shadows.'
Young allows his characters dignity in their crises; the very element missing from Forbes' "worst cities" lists, and uniting Flint's citizens despite their many issues and disagreements.
Second, following even deeper veins, Young manages to capture the paradoxical current of both hope and despair so many express about life in Flint. Other accounts have hinted at this contradiction, but none have ever come so far in bringing it to life.
"It's impossible to spin, sugarcoat, or sanitize Flint's fate," he writes toward the end of Teardown. "Flint demands mental compartmentalization, the ability to absorb bad news while simultaneously ferreting out encouraging signs." And so his quest begins with Rich, a California real-estate agent who happily jeopardizes his own finances by buying up houses in Flint, under logic that seems increasingly shaky as time goes by. Michael and Dave and Judy and Jan and Sherman all look to the future with a feverish determination that could be called impassioned, even if it is not optimistic. And Young himself, drawn back toward the neighborhood where he grew up, and discovering it blighted and empty, is encouraged in his search by the sight of a faded mural his sister had painted decades before. All the while, bad things keep happening: serial homicide, arson, falling revenue, and failing services. Flint is a desperate place, and a weird place, but it is a place that somehow draws intense loyalty and even obsession from those who live there by choice and necessity. Young has expressed this contradiction in a way that no one else has.
Teardown is a couple hundred pages long, but with short chapters and focused episodes, it's also a quick read. In many ways, Flint is a small town; Flintstones reading Teardown will recognize many characters (Disclaimer: Indeed, a neighbor of mine features, and is part of the reason I was asked to read and comment on an early manuscript of the book), but the anonymous characters are just as compelling, in some cases appearing naked and threatening, or in others simply asking obvious and unanswerable questions. One man, arriving unannounced at the mayor's office, simply says: "I've given up on Flint, and I wanted to see if he could give me a reason not to give up on it."
Considering all this, you should read Teardown.
That is:
If you don't live in Flint and want to understand the place, then read it.
If you do live in Flint and want to understand how people on the outside see Flint, then read it.
And if you don't know a thing about Flint, and don't know why so many words and thoughts would be spent on a place filled with such evident misery, you should read it too. We all confront crises in our lives, and accounts of the confrontation of crises are both universal and timeless.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
A Love Letter
By blueskyjen
My girlfriends and I who have moved away from Flint, always joke that you can take the girl out of Flint, but you can never take the Flint out of the girl. We like to think we are somehow connected to the place we left. This wonderful, meandering, insightful book explains every reason why. It explains why I left, why I get so homesick, and why it will always be home, even if there is no home in the city limits left to visit. It's funny. It's sad. It is so much more than a story about Flint, Michigan. It's a history lesson. It's about industrialization, the housing collapse and an introductory to Urban Planning in the 21st Century. And, it's a love letter. It is far from the usual song and dance about Flint and how awful a place it must be. It maintains the integrity of the great people of Flint but also shows what poverty, desperation and ignorance can do to a city over three decades. Gordon Young, you did good.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
"It's not OK for things to be this way."
By Dr Jim
I haven't thought about Flint this way since Michael Moore's Roger and Me. While Moore's movie was a first warning shot on the effects of globalization, it was also Moore's escape from Flint.
The opposite is true in Tear Down, here we have the author arriving back in Flint many years after he has moved away and made a name for himself. Still the messages are similar, which are well crafted, thought provoking looks at the effects of GM's exodus from my hometown of Flint, Michigan.
The plot has Gordon Young, a former Flintoid arriving back in his hometown via San Francisco armed with a mission to giveback to his city in some way and rediscover his roots. The narrative takes you deep inside the story with an insider/outsider approach that adds depth to his observations. Young now must face some hard realities while trying to follow through on his goal.
Tear Down is packed with excellent research, descriptive profiles and vivid detail. In short, this book knocked me out and perhaps is a last warning shot to all of America on the high cost of globalization.
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