The Unmaking of Detroit
Detroit is well on it's way to being a memory. The city government is trying to cope with a collapsed tax base and abandoned properties that are falling away into ruin. Essential city services are on the verge of being apportioned out on a triage basis.
Strapped for cash like most cities, Detroit officials are trying novel - and controversial - ways to fix the longstanding issue: The Detroit Works Project proposed by Major David Bing would shift the city’s resources to the more vibrant neighborhoods, prioritizing working lights, water systems and trash pickup to areas that are heavily invested. On the other hand, blighted areas – huge swaths of the city - would be divested of resources in a bid to encourage residents to move out of those parts of the city.
Fortunately, there is already a plan for what to do with the "evacuated" portions of the city, but how many apples can you eat?
Detroit has lost around 250,000 residents since 2000. A lot of them have been moving down here. If economic circumstance is making Illinois look good, then they are well and truly hosed.
Occupy Detroit!
Please?
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Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Percival, I spent a couple of days about a week ago driving in and around Detroit. It was the first time I had been there in several years, and the differences were really stark. I remember thinking that it was like driving through any other major city on, say, Christmas morning when everyone is at home or at church rather than at work or on the road. The second thing that hit me was block after block of shuttered and abandoned buildings like the one in your photograph. Not just one,..but mile after mile of it. It was depressing. I could be persuaded to support fencing the thing off at some point, as a national monument to the logical results of progressivism. Take a bow, unions, statists, and their apologists in academia. You earned it.
Oct '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
It's almost half a century since Detroit had a Republican mayor. It stands (sort of) as a monument to the leftist mentality.
America, this is the future that Obama and his party have for you.
Oct '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
raycon: It's almost half a century since Detroit had a Republican mayor. It stands (sort of) as a monument to the leftist mentality.
America, this is the future that Obama and his party have for you. · Oct 21 at 7:28pm
No, it's more like california.
Mar '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Dave, when I saw the triage story, I remembered reading your post on your drive through Detroit.
A friend of mine and I drove up to Detroit for a wargaming convention the summer after we graduated from high school and a few weeks before we started college. It was my first trip anywhere when I wouldn't be under the supervision of anyone older than me. The idea that one day that city would look like a set for The Terminator would have been awesome to the eighteen-year-old me, but now just seems chilling.
This didn't involve an army crossing a border, or a bomb being dropped, or an outbreak of some hideous plague, or even little green guys in flying saucers.
They did this to themselves.
Apr '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/snweb/sets/302324/show/
Apr '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
If you haven't read Matt Labash's piece on Detroit from a couple years ago I would highly recommend it:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/945aynyk.asp?nopager=1
Edited on Oct 22, 2011 at 11:20amNov '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
The dystopian nightmare portrayed in Robocop would be an improvement. And it had better TV shows,too.
May '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
It's a lot like the mid-America cities in Robert Ferrigno's "Prayer" trilogy. By the way, LA was pretty much like that in the books as well.
Jan '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Yes, all of the above, but is it fixable?
Of course not.
So, what now?
Aug '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Steven Crowder's late 2009 video for PJTV shot on location in Detroit is also well worth your time, to see what half a century of "liberal" stimulus programs looks like.
Mar '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Detroit is the inevitable results of the parasitism of a statist society. Sap its strength until the host is destroyed and then move on. California is next.
Jan '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Conservatives, let me recite your favorite rhetorical ploy - the profession of impotence - back at you here.
"Can you imagine what would be the reaction in the mass media if Republicans were responsible for a civic disaster on the scale of Detroit?"
(You can substitute Camden, NJ and many other cities as well, but we'll stick to Detroit for now.)
Now conservatives, ask yourselves how many times the subject of Detroit has come up in the GOP Presidential debates. You've had 8 or 9 candidates able to say whatever they wanted in front of a TV audience of millions, yet not once has the 50-year-old abject failure of Democrat Party governance in Detroit ever been mentioned.
The Democrats get off scot-free.
Why are our candidates so afraid of discussing, let alone highlighting, the dismal results, plain to see, of one-party Democrat rule? Why is the subject off-limits?
Why do Democrats freely castigate Republicans for venial sins, but Republicans refuse to lay blame in the face of the mortal sins like Detroit?
Why do they slap our faces, and all we think we can do is duck?
May '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Sure, it's fixable. The first thing to do is pass a Michigan right-to-work law. Then there's a chance.
But they won't, so Detroit will collapse slowly like a hot air balloon, and they will demand ever more money from the rest of us and accuse us all of racism when we don't send it.
If they shock us, and fix their union problem, we should all help however possible.
Jul '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Freesmith:
Now conservatives, ask yourselves how many times the subject of Detroit has come up in the GOP Presidential debates. You've had 8 or 9 candidates able to say whatever they wanted in front of a TV audience of millions, yet not once has the 50-year-old abject failure of Democrat Party governance in Detroit ever been mentioned.
The Democrats get off scot-free.
Why are our candidates so afraid of discussing, let alone highlighting, the dismal results, plain to see, of one-party Democrat rule? Why is the subject off-limits?
Why do Democrats freely castigate Republicans for venial sins, but Republicans refuse to lay blame in the face of the mortal sins like Detroit?
Why do they slap our faces, and all we think we can do is duck? · Oct 22 at 4:37pm
As Duane noted above: the scream of racism.
Jan '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
So, Jimmy Carter and Duane, the reason our leaders don't fight back is because they are intimidated by a risibly false charge of racism.
And you're OK with that?
I suggest we demand new, better leaders, ones who are not so diffident - people who understand that the way to stop a bully is not to duck his punch, but to knock his teeth out (figuratively speaking, of course).
Call them Men.
Edited on Oct 23, 2011 at 9:35amJan '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Duane
The problem is not the lack of a Right to Work statute; that is a by-product of the real problem.
The real problem is the domestic Evil Empire known as the Democrat Party.
Edited on Oct 23, 2011 at 9:17amOct '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Let's give Detroit to victims of the Japanese tsunami. Perhaps they can rebuild their lives and the city. We should also invite Muslim Christians, especially Copts and Caldeans, to resettle and help revive some of our disintegrating (read: Democratically-run) cities.
Jan '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Wild West: "Let's give Detroit to victims of the Japanese tsunami. Perhaps they can rebuild their lives and the city."
That's very generous of you to offer Detroit to the survivors of the tsunami. Unfortunately, the proposal mostly imports ancient and childless Japanese and still sticks America with the Detroit Democrats. What are those aged Japanese going to do with them?
Here's a contrarian suggestion: Why not send the failed Democrats of Detroit into exile in Fukishima? Impossible as I know it is and as catastrophic as it would be to the innocent Japanese, as a fantasy it does have the unquestionable benefit of getting them the hell out of this country.
Addition by subtraction.
Dec '10
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
Percival,
I was living there long ago when they first called it the 'rust belt'. The big lie works the best. Marx knew and Hitler knew. There is no global warming but they used that lie to destroy Detroit. Only Ford still stands now but for how much longer. The American People should be very angry about this. They should rise up and strike down the murderers of Detroit. We do that in America at the polling place. Oh please Gd, 2012 ASAP!
Mar '11
Re: The Unmaking of Detroit
James Gawron: Percival,
I was living there long ago when they first called it the 'rust belt'. The big lie works the best. Marx knew and Hitler knew. There is no global warming but they used that lie to destroy Detroit. Only Ford still stands now but for how much longer. The American People should be very angry about this. They should rise up and strike down the murderers of Detroit. We do that in America at the polling place. Oh please Gd, 2012 ASAP! · Oct 23 at 4:57pm
I think in the end it was a lot of things. Detroit has been on this trajectory for a while now. One of the pictures available on-line of the deterioration is a shot of a Packard plant which closed in 1956.
Businesses run their course: the environment in which they arose can change and if they can't change with the new circumstances, they fail. But the natural way of such things is that someone else with an idea and access to capital will come along and start something new. In Detroit's case, that has stopped happening because the business environment has been poisoned by omnipresent statism.