You probably don’t expect an e-mail form the country and the city I’m writing  I say “hi” from Lodz in Poland. Why do I write to you? The reason is really easy to explain – we have a lot in common. By „we” I understand our cities and maybe you and me as young people trying to do something positive for others in the place which is seen as „the last place on earth you want to be” by people from outside. Maybe just few words about my city. We are the third biggest city in Poland with population 740 thousand and over one million with surrounding cities.

Lodz developed rapidly in XIX century from a little village in to one of the biggest textile industry in Europe. Everything collapsed in 1990 after the communism felt down and the eastern markets (mainly Russia) were cut of. Now after twenty years from that time the city lost 100 thousand citizens (because of emigration mainly) and hundreds of factories and tenements are standing empty and being destroyed by scrap metal collectors, weather and other conditions. People got really discouraged and leave the city for good what influence the community in a very bad way.
Our situation is very familiar to yours. We also have huge cultural traditions. The famous film school in which for example Roman Polanski got his director skills. If you are interested in classical music you have to know Artur Rubinstein – the famous pianist or may by you heard about Daniel Libeskind who designed the buildings which will stand in the place of WTC in NY City. They both were born in Lodz.
So the clue is that I and my friends three years ago founded an NGO called Topografie (from the word topography corresponding to the city area) and we are trying to do many good things for the city and it’s community. Few months ago we got from our university a part of a building in which we are developing a cultural center now. It’s exactly like in a Palladium movie which motivated me to write to you. People here are 24 or 28 and they are being given big empty buildings to make something out of nothing.
And there is my proposal – lets do something together! Let share some projects and show the situations of our cities to one each other communities. Let show them that we are here and we are doing positive change  (popular word in your country few years ago:)
I was thinking about a photo exhibition and video bridge during the opening for starters. We will print out the photos of Detroit and put them in our city, in places where they look very similar and you will do the same with pictures from our city. But that is only a beginning we can start thinking about something much more interesting.
What do you think about this kind of cooperation? Please write me back and I hope it will be a start of a new transatlantic understanding.

Thanks for reading the letter
Michal

PS
I`m posting some links to sites where you can read more about the city and see some pictures of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81%C3%B3d%C5%BA

http://snakeeyes.blox.pl/html/1310721,262146,169.html?9

http://zbyszek2.digart.pl/digarty/

Whatch the “katalog glowny” catalogue, with 76 pictures – that`s Lodz
http://plfoto.com/131434/autor.html

http://picasaweb.google.com/aviadilo/SpacerPoOdzi14062008#
http://picasaweb.google.com/aviadilo2/ZONAOdz14062009#”