Visiting the Ruins of Detroit: Exploitation or Cultural Tourism? ELIZABETH SCARBROUGH ABSTRACT Are Detroit ruin tours a form of morally permissible cultural tourism, or do these tours amount to a form of exploitation? To answer this question I compare Detroit ruin tours with ‘slum tours’ – guided tours of slums in the world’s major cities. I argue that exploitation of the sort we find in slum tourism also exists, to a lesser extent, in Detroit ruin tours. To show this I detail two different accounts of exploitation and argue that Ruth Sample’s account best captures what is most morally problematic with slum tours and ruin tours. I then identify the similarities and differences between slum tours and ruin tours, and provide suggestions for how ruin tours could be retooled to avoid some (but not all) of the worries of exploitation. Finally, I suggest that with the proper framing Detroiters could embrace photographic tours as a new form of cultural tourism. 1. Introduction Although the heyday of popular attention to ruins occurred during the 18 th century’s obsession with the picturesque, ruin contemplation began before the 18 th century and continues to this day. In the past few years there has been a surge of ‘ruinlust’, 1 espe- cially in Detroit, Michigan. Photographers and photojournalists have flocked to Detroit’s modern ruins; many have labelled the resulting photographs as ‘ruin porn’. 2 Whereas the predominant medium of the 18 th -century picturesque was painting, the medium of this contemporary ruin porn is photographic. As a consequence unofficial and official ruin tours, which aim to provide opportunities for photographs, have become increasingly popular. 3 In an article for the New York Times Magazine, Mark Binelli describes unofficial ruin tours: One afternoon at the ruins of the 3.5-million-square-foot Packard Plant, I ran into a family from Paris. The daughter said she read about the building in Lonely Planet; her father had a camcorder hanging around his neck. Another time, while conducting my own tour for a guest, a group of German college students drove up. When queried as to the appeal of Detroit, one of them gleefully exclaimed, ‘I came to see the end of the world!’ 4 Some enterprising Detroiters have capitalised on this ‘ruin porn’ movement by set- ting up their own tours. Jesse Welter, a 42-year-old Detroit native, has been making a living by taking people inside these decrepit structures. His ‘urban exploration’ tours are illegal (because tourists are encouraged to trespass), but popular. However, many Detroiters are uncomfortable with these burgeoning businesses. ‘The decay is not © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2016, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Journal of Applied Philosophy doi: 10.1111/japp.12237