Detroit Downtown is a very special area. You can still feel the former wealth and the motor city's majestic ruins tell their own story. Former factory buildings have been transformed into lofts, galleries and artist studios.There is an incredible artistic potential downtown drawn by the unbelievable creative opportunities in forgotten Detroit.

Detroit's Lafayette Park—the first urban renewal project in the United States—tells a vastly different story. Within a sprawling, decentralized city that has suffered near-disastrous decline, this racially and economically diverse enclave just northeast of downtown has not only aged gracefully but today flourishes with new life. These townhouses have been designed by Mies van der Rohe in the 1960s as part of a wave of a largely urban renewal project across the U.S., and still stands as a model of good urban design.

Nothing symbolizes Detroit's grandiose rise and spectacular fall like Michigan Central Station. And no other building exemplifies just how much the automobile gave to the city of Detroit - and how much it took away.

Detroit is a blank canvas waiting for some more visionaries.