Posted on 03/15/2009 9:23:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
As President Barack Obama’s auto industry task force heads to Detroit today to assess the feasibility of rescuing the dying automakers, there’s a strategy that the White House ought to consider as a solution, albeit an extreme one, for what ails the city where the sirens never sleep.
At this point, the best help to Michigan’s economic woes might come from razing much of the Motor City.
It’s an audacious statement, yes. It may sound like life imitating The Onion. This is beyond broken windows theories — we’re talking about broken houses, buildings, skyscrapers; an entire broken community, economy and polity.
In December 2008, the median price for a home sold in Detroit was $7,500. You read that right. There are no zeroes missing. That’s seven thousand five hundred dollars:
Among the many dispiriting numbers that bleakly depict the decrepitude of this onetime industrial behemoth, the steep slide of housing values helps define the daunting challenge to anyone who wants to lead this shrinking, poverty-pocked city of about 800,000 people …
On a positive note, Detroit’s homicide rate dropped 14 percent last year. That prompted mayoral candidate Stanley Christmas to tell the Detroit News recently, “I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but there just isn’t anyone left to kill” …
John Mogk, a professor at Wayne State University Law School noted that “a thousand people are leaving the city every month and the city does not have the financial resources and the economic base to solve its own problems.”
The full truth is actually worse than that number indicates, because stepping back to view the whole picture reveals that Detroit has no realistic hope of changing its destiny. They have no hope in their council leadership, which seems to alternate between blame games and conspiracy theories. They have little hope from President Obama, whose cap-and-trade plan — regardless of what you think of its necessity — contains the death knell for Michigan’s primary industries. They’re too far gone to be the next green enterprise zone after Wilmington, Ohio. They’re past the point of keeping up appearances just for the sake of survival.
While the vast majority of the problems plaguing the automakers (most of which are based outside the city), are of an entirely different variety than the ones destroying Detroit from within, the simple fact is that even with another bailout of the auto industry, no good worker or talented executive in their right mind will want to live or work in or near Detroit in the near future absent a fundamental change for the city and its surrounding area.
Beyond the shock of the $7,500 figure, it’s clear that most of the homes in Detroit collapse in value the instant they’re built: the raw materials are worth more than the houses themselves. And with the credit crisis inspiring more and more communities of empty, bank-owned homes, these houses are not likely to gain value back anytime soon.
This isn’t about spending less — President Obama is already inclined toward throwing more taxpayer funds at the problem. This is about how that taxpayer money ought to be spent: attempting to reinvigorate Detroit communities that are too far gone to be saved, or by buying up essentially valueless lots, knocking down the empty homes and buildings that the terribly run city has never gotten around to destroying, selling their materials for firewood value if at all, and starting from scratch.
Razing these former houses and condemned businesses — now transformed into tinderboxes for arson, crime, and urban decay — until you achieve critical mass would end the problem of oversupply and the roughly one-third overvaluation of homes. Demolition crews would provide jobs at least for the short term.
If we don’t do it ourselves, the societal ramifications for these communities could well effect a far more terrible result, as do-it-yourself arsonists have been doing in Detroit for years. Taxpayer funds for Detroit is just a band-aid on cancer: it won’t change the endpoint for the city, and buy delaying the fundamental change that needs to occur, it will only make things worse in the long run.
In the end, the White House should take guidance from history and Matt LaBash:
Detroit has always been a city of fire. Nearly all of it was destroyed by fire in 1805, more of it burned in the Detroit Race Riot of 1863, and over 2,000 buildings were consumed in the Twelfth Street Riot of 1967. Even its flag contains fire; its Latin motto translates, “We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.”
This city can come back, and so can the American auto industry that supports it. But the hard choice has to be made. It’s time to bombard the Motor City with urban policy chemo.
Get rid of the socialism and people will start moving back...
Without the automobile industry Detroit has no reason to exist. Revoke the city’s charter, turn the land over to the State and charge tourists five bucks a head to see it: “The Ruins of Detroit State Park”.
If you burned down the city, where would you put all the muslims ..... the folks that make the city the cesspool that it is?
It would be nice if it were that simple. Each derelict house razed costs taxpayers at least $10,000. Perhaps if they used county jail inmates to do some of the clean up it might help.
What Detroit needs is Security Concepts and RoboCop. Tear down old Detroit and build a new Detroit.
You do not have a real estate problem as much as a societal problem and a cultural problem. Detroit schools enjoy the highest paid per pupal in the state. And they are broke. The city is broke. They graduate 20%. So no education for future jobs. And did I mention that they are arrogant and racist? There are beautiful homes in Detroit that are vacant and just ready for occupants. But why renovate when you can get robbed outside your door. Detroit can not govern it self. They have an uneducated populus. I am off my soap box now.
I’d buy that for a dollar!!
Can we do Cleveland next?
kidding
TIME Magazine photo series: "The Remains of Detroit" http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1864272,00.html
"The Michigan Theatre"
"Built in 1926, this glorious building functioned as a performance space until 1976, when it was converted into a parking garage."
Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
Oh, dear...
The housing is worth so little because human animals have trashed them and, even if the housing were brand new, nobody wants to live among animals. .
In a civilized town, a Victorian house like this that had not been trashed would be worth Big Bucks.
If you tear these Detroit buildings down and build brand new ones, the social pathology will simply trash them again.
Elsewhere.
Preferably a very far away elsewhere.
Hell Uh, back where they came from comes to mind. I'm sure their spiritual home, Saudi Arabia, would welcome them all with open arms, like it did the palestinians...
Less than 50% can read.
Less than 25% graduate from high school.
Nobody works, drug sales and prostitution are the only industry.
Every elected official is incompetent and corrupt.
The voters refuse to elect anyone with half a brain.
No need to tear it down. Just cut off all state and federal funding.
When the host dies the ticks will leave!
I'm not.
Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
Oh, dear...
St. Margaret Mary School Many of the city's Catholic schools have been closed, though the churches they are affiliated with remain active.
Maybe it has something to do with having gone to Catholic schools in Chicago.
I lived in Michigan in the 60s.
Even then we called it the water, winter, welfare, wonderland
Detroit is the poster city for liberal policies.
I still live in Michigan, far from that hell hole!
Racial Rhetoric:
The Detroit Free Press and Its Part in the Detroit Race Riot of
1863
By Matthew Kundinger
http://www.umich.edu/~historyj/pages_folder/articles/Racial_Rhetoric.pdf
It’s been going on for quite a while.
Sorry, but Michiganders, along with the rest of their Midwestern cohorts, demand Socialism.
Voters get what they want in this country.
Seeing those wonderful HDR photos (A technique I’m going to start working on) it got me to thinking about what I see in New Jersey.
After 30 years of non-use, they’re finally tearing down the old factories and warehouses along the rail tracks in Newark, NJ and Harrison, NJ. A soccer stadium is going up in Harrison and the Performing Arts Center and Minor League baseball stadium went up in Newark a few years ago.
In Hoboken, the old Port Authority warehouses on piers along the Hudson River are now luxory condos. Those warehouses where empty for 30 years as well.
Coming in from the suburbs, I still see the giant Ciba Geigy (Now Novartis) plant grounds in Bridgewater, NJ empty. You can see where the tracks and roads used to go but the buildings are gone.
Same through the Plainfields and Edison.
It’s interesting to think of how many people were employed in those buildings and areas at one time. New Jersey has lost population but I guess we’re all working in office buildings away from the tracks tapping on keyboards.
There is a possibility here, and not just for Detroit. The idea is that if a gentrification project encompasses more than a small area, at a particular point it is not just rebuilding, but revitalizing. That is a “new zone”, where the normal city rules no longer apply.
Imagine this: tear down all the old buildings in the zone. Completely new infrastructure, with the entire zone as part of the design—a zone oriented design, so that there is a harmonious whole in the zone, not just a bunch of different buildings clustered together.
The new zone would have lots more open space. Movement around it would be easier, as would maintenance. Trucks, buses, cars, bicycles, pedestrians would have different routes for their different purposes. Businesses and residences designed for best use of space, energy, communications, security, etc.
Such a zone would be inherently upscale, and also be a foundation on which to build smaller zones or more typical gentrification adjacent to it.
Not ironically, the best application for such a zone would be the entire area of Washington, D.C. In that case, turning it from a partially private ghetto into a federal reservation, revitalizing and turning it into a national showcase city.
What Detroit needs is Security Concepts and RoboCop. Tear down old Detroit and build a new Detroit.
LMAO it was filmed there.
Yes Detroit a graveyard of dead Industry and a warehouse of worthless people. see below what liberals can do to your city.
http://www.detroityes.com/home.htm
bookmark
But wait until after the Final Four.....let the National Champion team’s fans do the job.....
2) Make Michigan a Right-to-Work state.
The above two measures are the necessary and sufficient methods for saving Detroit and the state. But they are currently politically impossible.
http://www.detroityes.com/home.htm
What a shame the least Gifted destroy the work of the most Gifted!!
Never happen in Detroit, they turned hundreds of millions from a philanthropist who wanted to build private schools because the man was white.
Detroit is pretty much run by African Nationalist types who view race over everything else, they are sort of what Obamao would be if he was honest with himself and the public.
Gee, the design sounds just like L’Enfant's Plan.
Washington, D.C. is not disgrace because of it's urban planning. Washington D.C. is a disgrace because of the social pathology of the majority of it's inhabitants.
Do you know what you call a "Gentrification Zone" in the middle of Detroit?
Prey.
You wrote:
“Maybe it has something to do with having gone to Catholic schools in Chicago.”
Probably. Think about it: that ruined school used to be a thriving place filled with hard working, dedicated religious who taught the children of hard working, second and thrid generation Americans who helped make this country great. Now...it’s a little taste of urban hell. What a waste!
There is plenty of blame to go around, and that blame ought to focus on behavior, rather than mere membership in a group.
That is, if you want to be taken seriously...
Unbelievable.
Oh hay, you figured it out. It's not decades of institutional racism, Black Nationalist governance, dependence on a dying auto industry, nanny statism, corruption, poor education, drug abuse, mismanaged city services, or crime. It's teh muslims. Good job. I'm glad we can finally put that question to rest.
Hudson’s got demolished 2 million square feet that could have been Apartments because blacks only ran elevators there in the day.. This is dangerous thinking that is rife in the system right up to our current racist Government. When I was a kid Detroit was an Amazing place what a shame.
LOL, awesome.
The Muslims are not the ones who made Detroit into a cesspool.
I’m born, raised and raising hell in Florida. “People” in Mich-sh!tcan and Sh!tcago should stay in those Sh!tholes and be made to clean it up or die... Stay out of the other states!
There's a stock shot of Detroit in Robocop (1987), but it was filmed in Dallas. Unless you mean the Robocop TV series or the next movie...I don't know where they were/are being shot.
Detroit was a sh*thole before they showed up.
And thanks to the soon to be card check, coming to a town near you.
bump
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.