Artist-activists in Detroit wanted to make a statement about the number of abandoned, dilapidated buildings crumbling throughout their once fine city.

"The artistic move is simple, cover the front in Tiggeriffic Orange - a color from the Mickey Mouse series, easily purchased from Home Depot. Every board, every door, every window, is caked in Tiggeriffic Orange. We paint the facades of abandoned houses whose most striking feature are their derelict appearance."

They called the project, "Detroit. Demolition. Disneyland." The idea, of course, was to foment discussion on the state of Detroit's rehabilitation efforts and highlight pockets of structural misery.

But a funny thing started happening. The City of Detroit apparently began moving the orange-painted structures up on the list for immediate attention and demolition. And that left the artist-activists to puzzle: "In this relationship, where do the city's motivations lie? Do they want to stop drawing attention to these houses? Are the workers simply confused and think this is the city's new mark for demolition? Or is this a genuine response to beautify the city?"

Could this be a reasonable response to our own city's untended blight?

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