Posted on 03/20/2005 6:17:14 AM PST by wingblade
"of course there would have been government intervention"
On first reading,I thought he was saying benign neglect.
After a second read and your comments,it is not clear to me.
I'm a firm believer that Detroit's biggest problem is that the vestiges of '67, '68 are still standing. Frankly, I believe that if 3/4ths of the city was razed, and allowed to go wild over the last 20 years the city may actually have a bona-fide chance at rennaisance.
The problem is because of reactionary, as opposed to pro-actionary, government. The fact remains that over the course of 30 years, local government couldn't harness a labor pool of most despicably indigent that available so as to raze the urban blight is a travesty. All this tells me is that there is no "vision" in local government. I wonder how many millions of $'s have been squandered over the last 30 years, whereby 100's of square miles could've lain fallow.
The bottom line is that of the succession of leadership since the "Great Rebellion" none has had the pecunies, cajones or frijoles to raze the eye-sores that gut the Detroit landscape. And I blame third-rate politics as the numero uno reason. While Archer may have been a glimmer of hope, he failed to seize the bull by the horn to till the field for future planting.
There is an attempt at renaissance at the present, however, it is entirely predicated on federal and state tax dollars. The biggest problem with Detroit is that its a cow-town in reverse. The streets get laid out after dark, and rolled up before sunrise. The population swells 50% for a few short hours, and then everybody goes home to the 'burbs (black and white alike).
I believe that the key to Detroit renaissance is formation of a company called Detroit Demolition & Rennaissance Corp. The mission of this company should be almost complete after 30 years, but the sad truth is that its hardly begun. What profit is there in demolition?
With all of Democrat "make-work" philosophy, not a single liberal politician on the Detroit political landscape had the foresight and vision to see that demolition would be even more expensive now than 10, 20 or 30 years ago. With all of the "elite-thinking" schooling of these liberal thinkers hadn't anybody thought to put the greater population to work (at paupers wages), and absolutely raze into pastoral farm-land the urban blight eye-sores that assualt our eyes?
There is very little middle class in Detroit. There are those who have money and there are those having none. There are some very exquisite properties in the Detroit area (as are burned out hulks). People who have money live in gated communities of mansions (or in neighborhoods of burned out hulks). If in the latter, they wear their wealth in pounds of gold and drive cars they payments for are two times that of a house payment in the affluent 'burbs). In other words, they live in dilapidatd shacks having no intrinsic value (other than sheer shelter value) that would translate to equity in any real sense.
The interior of these domiciles may be cozy, comfortable and richly furnished. However, the outside of the homes are what a normal rational person would consider to be an eyesore. These people commute to sub-urbia to make their livelyhood. These people drive $50 to $100k cars. They spend two or three months salary on theft prevention measures on both the homes and cars. Every few months the local media runs stories about people dying in house fires because they couldn't get passed the theft prevention measures.
Or these people wear their wealth around their necks.
In sub-urbia, people live in $250-$500k (or more) homes, and drive soccer-mom vehicles (and no ornate jewellry).
Imagine what real estate within Detroit proper would go for at present if the burned out hulks of '67 vestige weren't present for the cockroaches to live in?
It seems to me that Detroit moved out to greater sub-urbia (such as Pontiac) in the latter '70s and now the big deal I can only view as some sort of "implosion". What pisses me off the most is that after the current renaissance is being built on tax-payer financed "bond-money". If Tom Monaghan & Company (including pillars such as the likes of the Illitches, Fords and Fisher's), want to revitalize Detroit, they should do so on their own dime. It is my firm opionion that it is a government's best interests for growth to raze blight (unless their ultimate desire is to foment discord and dissention).
Don't EVEN try to get me wrong that the same thing isn't going on in local Warren, MI governemnt (a classic example being the recent scandal pertaining to re-broadcast of city council meetings being blacked out because of percieved legal liability issues). The fact that Detroit government leadership can't see passed their greedy and grubby fingers is only all too clear to me. One only needs to look at the success of outlying Detroit suburbia to see the failure of urban Detroit governmental policy makers. We ALL have our dirty laundery.
http://us.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/02/23/statue.vandalism.ap/
It needed a good cleaning anyway.
LOL! Dat fist become white! Thanks for the link.
"Sounds interesting. Don't know if the fall of Detroit can be broken down to any simple changes.
I can say that Cleveland had a very similar history - peaked in population in the 1950s and is currently half the size it was then. And although Detroit is a very visible, very poor city, Cleveland has the lowest household income in the country and the largest percentage of children living in poverty. If I had to point to any particular things that have been influential in bringing down both Detroit and Cleveland, I would say the second most influential has been white flight, precipitated not only by race-based rioting but also by court-ordered school desegregation and disastrous school busing policy.
The biggest influence on poverty, however, is the shift of our national economy from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge-based economy. Just like the incredible poverty in the plain states during the Depression and the transition from a farming country to a manufacturing country, the cities hurting most right now are those who were the traditionally wealthy blue-collar cities, what we call the Rust Belt now. It's no surprise that some of the poorest cities in the country are Buffalo, Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Flint and Gary - when factories started closing and whole local economies imploded in these manufacturing capitols, local government tax bases disappeared and a lot of the people who could afford to move got out (or moved to the suburbs).
Hope this helps - an interesting discussion - I'll have to check out that documentary."
"If I had to point to any particular things that have been influential in bringing down both Detroit and Cleveland, I would say the second most influential has been white flight, precipitated not only by race-based rioting but also by court-ordered school desegregation and disastrous school busing policy."
Is "white flight" mostly fear-based towards the end? What usually precipitated the race-based rioting, school desegregation, busing, etc?
Can it be simulated by one one of those computer games like Sim City? What sort of failure model can a computer game give you? If so, can you do a "Detroit" with it? There must be professional versions of something like that. What do the pro's use?
Dallas, Memphis, New Orleans, Mobile - where does one stop.
Ya Detroit is the end run of the democrats 'managed' economy, and make work projects...
Looks very similiar to the decay so common in other communist areas of the world, like Cuba or the Soviet Union.
I'm a Windsor native who received his MA at Wayne State. I always like to point that for all the liberal worship of Canada's supposed social democracy, even a city run by a Liberal-NDP-CAW oligarchy like Windsor never had to submit to the sort of big-government Great Society programs that Detroit did. There's the rub.
And the best thing about Windsor is...the hot Michigan and Ohio chicks coming up to get drunk :-P
Unofficially, the Detroit Tigers IS a Canadian baseball team. I always got beat up in the schoolyard for rooting for the Blue Jays.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.