In downtown Flint, Michigan there is a particularly sad and forlorn building known as Genesee Towers. It is basically a multistory parking garage with a multistory office building on top of it. Neither of which are much used anymore, as the building decays from lack of maintenance and lack of tenants.

Genesee Towers was built in 1968, at which point Flint and the Midwestern Rust Belt economy was still humming along quite nicely with many thousands of blue collar workers employed by the automobile and other manufacturing industries. It would not be long however before all this began to change, and now more than three decades later things have morphed into who knows what. Also, big city downtowns seemed to become at least somewhat obsolete not long after 1968 with most retail shopping and some offices moving to suburban areas which left the old downtowns at least somewhat desolate.

Major college towns like Ann Arbor and East Lansing seemed to adjust OK, with restaurants and specialty shops catering to a collegiate crowd replacing the more general department stores, drug and grocery stores, and other businesses that mostly relocated to suburban mall areas. Some bigger cities like Detroit and Chicago were able to at least keep such attractions as museums, public libraries, sports stadiums, and other cultural/entertainment venues.

Then there are other cities like Flint that have not fared as well. There are signs of hope, though, one of which is the University of Michigan campus at which I work. Another is the "College and Cultural Area" which is somewhat outside of the core downtown but close enough to be at least somewhat associated with downtown. The university and other institutions keep people coming and in some cases living downtown or nearby, and also provide positive signs of activity and vitality.