Two (former?) centers of the automobile industry which were at the center of the local economies and then began to decline, to different degree

and in different ways, at times violently, as in Detroit. Recent efforts at bringing new life to them is still a work in progress. Despite their

obvious differences, they share sometimes uncanny similarities, in their being centers of modernisation in the arts and culture, and in

architecture,presented here through four projects: motown, palimpsests, driving Detroit and Torino.

This last one is a work in progress.