Cultural Writing. This issue of DETROIT: IMAGINARY CITIES includes contributions from a wide range of writers, artists, urban planners, architects, elementary and high school students based in Detroit, New Orleans and Berlin, among other places. "The project invites artists, architects, filmmakers, journalists, and sociologists from different cities to examine what kinds of things happen in once thriving urban centers with current diminishing populations. The show's rich material demonstrates - among other things - that out of verifiable decline can emerge multiple, and surprising, reconstructions, even forms of rebirth. A third source for our title is the notion of a city as a location, where separate things co exist; where people, cars, squares, businesses, buses, parks, bikes, lots, playgrounds, fountains, pets, trains, function apart and together"-- Lynn Crawford.