Detroit: the rebirth of a techno utopia

Once a symbol of the American dream, Detroit has become a byword for urban decay. But now things are changing. Electronic music legends including Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Carl Craig explain how creative young people are colonising the city's derelict spaces and striving for a better future

Electronic snaredrums crackle like fireworks as night falls on downtown Detroit. The sound reverberates around the skyscrapers on the waterfront of Hart Plaza, where the self-proclaimed techno rebels of Underground Resistance are bringing the first night of the city's Movement festival to a climax.

Eviscerated by decades of economic decline, Detroit needs all the heroes it can get these days, and the four shadowy figures on the stage are given a mighty ovation: hometown icons in the place where techno was born in the 1980s, and where this annual open-air electronic dance extravaganza has become a cultural beacon.

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by Matthew Collin via Electronic music | The Guardian