Last week, I did a blog entry on how the crash will reshape America's geography, starting with the observation that you can buy a good sized family home in Detroit for $7500 (that's right: seven thousand, five hundred dollars.).

Now, Toby Barlow in the New York Times reckons Detroit could be the birth place of a new nation with homes selling for as little as $100. "Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished. From Tyree Guyton's Heidelberg Project (think of a neighborhood covered in shoes and stuffed animals and you're close) to Matthew Barney's "Ancient Evenings" project (think Egyptian gods reincarnated as Ford Mustangs and you're kind of close), local and international artists are already leveraging Detroit's complex textures and landscapes to their own surreal ends. In a way, a strange, new American dream can be found here, amid the crumbling, semi-Majestic ruins of a half-century's industrial decline. The good news is that, almost magically, dreamers are already showing up."

It's an interesting piece to read, but it doesn't quite gel. The optimism and hope it expresses is just window dressing for something that's heart-breaking to watch.