Geeks logo

Viceland’s Abandoned Explores Decay and Rebirth in North America

How abandoned industry can both harm communities and bring them together.

By Frederick ParkPublished 7 years ago 5 min read
Like

This year Vice Media has introduced a new program to their Viceland Channel that explores all things abandoned in many parts of the United States and Canada. Hosted by Canadian skater Rick McCrank, the program Abandoned travels to places with abandoned structures and even entire ghost communities.

In the program, McCrank attempts to find out more than just the cause of abandonment and the state of the abandoned structures. With the help of the locals, he finds out how this abandonment impacts the surrounding community and how the locals have dealt with the state of affairs.

The show explores how industry and commerce came to affect communities in both their growth and recession. In one episode, McCrank travelled to remote areas of Newfoundland to see how and why remote port settlements were becoming abandoned. In these small “out-port” towns along the coast, people who had subsisted off fishing for many generations were gradually being forced to move due to scarcity of their very source of income. Due to large commercial fishing operations, the population of fish had been deeply decimated. With this blight on local resources, many had made the decision to relocate to the more populous areas of the province, leaving behind the eerie remains of their small villages.

The complex effects of heavy industry on the lives of people in postindustrial places were further explored when the program visited remote areas of British Columbia. In these remote areas of the British Columbian wilderness, McCrank explored how the establishment of industry such as canneries, copper mines and logging once served as a source of livelihood for locals, many of whom were native peoples, but served as an environmental disaster in their careless abandonment. In an area known as Namu, McCrank explores a fish cannery that was once a source of jobs for locals, but had become a source of harm to the ecosystem as it decayed into the water it stood over. Locals noted that this site was continuously inhabited by native people for many centuries and generations until the closure of the cannery drove people out. Since no effort was made to properly demolish the cannery, it was left to rot and pose problems for the fish in the area, a source of food for many locals.

As a skater, McCrank often tries to contact other skaters to see how they have dealt with abandonment in their community. McCrank strives to show how the generally negative impact caused by these abandoned places and the void created by their abandonment can lead to positive outcomes for some ambitious members of the community. For instance, McCrank noted in several communities such as New Orleans and Detroit, local skaters had taken it upon themselves to create impromptu skate parks on properties where the city or other parties had made no development efforts.

McCrank found, when interviewing locals in these places that the skaters had built their own recreational spaces because their city had made no efforts to create safe and clean places for them to congregate and unwind. Many of the locals that McCrank interviewed concluded that rampant social ills such as gang violence, other violent crimes and drug abuse were exacerbated by the unwillingness of the city to create safe places for recreation. Locals in urban areas of Ohio noted that many of the skate structures they built on undeveloped properties were torn down by the local government, fearing they could lead to issues of liability. Locals believed that this valuing of legal accountability over community engagement perpetuated many of the social problems experienced in these places by disenfranchising the local youth. Because of this void, they reasoned that a sense of boredom and shiftlessness served to entice youth to abuse substances and participate in criminal activities. Young people in East New Orleans noted that the flight of many people following Hurricane Katrina had caused many businesses to also leave the area. They found that their movie theaters, amusement parks and other places of leisure and fun were forever removed, leaving them with little positive activity to occupy their time. With fewer inhabitants in the area and the worsening of social problems, the city and corporate businesses sadly believed there was no value in investing in the community.

The program served to explore how the efforts of locals to take positive redevelopment upon themselves served to better the community when they were ignored and underserved by their government and businesses. In studying New Orleans, McCrank visited a skate park that local youth had developed in a space underneath an interstate overpass. The young men who developed the space noted that it was previously a spot where people would go to do drugs and commit crimes. With no real space to skate in their neighborhood, these locals saw fit to make productive use of this peculiar spot. Their efforts were helped by the generous contribution of a resident across the street who saw the benefits of their efforts and provided them with power and water. Their project was so successful that it was later deemed a city-sanctioned skate park.

While acknowledging the destruction and devastation caused by the flight of industry in many places, the show explores how people deal with the aftermath of abandonment. Abandoned explores how the people living in the midst of abandonment strive to better their community and adapt the structures and voids of their landscape to work toward a positive future.

review
Like

About the Creator

Frederick Park

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.