The Ruins of Detroit: The Transience of the American Epoch?

I'm not one of these real estate agents who perpetually paints a rosy picture about housing. I'm all about keepin' it real...but wow, looking at  these images is just too real even for me. I can't stop staring at these photos. They are all at once mesmerizing in all their decay  & beautiful in their destruction.  Mere remnants of a by-gone American era. A reminder of the fleeting nature of any  predominant society. Nothing lasts forever....

In their 2010 book The Ruins of Detroit, French photographers Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre set out to document the decline of an American city. 

"As Detroit''s white middle class continues to abandon the city center for its dispersed suburbs, and its downtown high-rises empty out, these astounding images, which convey both the imperious grandeur of the city''s architecture and its genuinely shocking decline, preserve a moment that warns us all of the transience of great epochs." - Buy.com 

Check out  more gorgeous eerie photos of  what were once architectural masterpieces now reduced to abandoned derelict ruins here.