Posted on 08/15/2005 3:32:16 AM PDT by TimeLord
DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Rats or lead poisoning. When it comes to the threats from the broken down house next door, Dorothy Bates isn't sure which is worse.
"When it's lightening and thundering you can hear the bricks just falling," the 40-year-old nurse said as she looked at the smashed windows and garbage-strewn porch. "If you call and ask (the city) about it they say they don't have the funds to tear it down."
There are more than 12,000 abandoned homes in the Detroit area, a byproduct of decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the suburbs. And despite scores of attempts by government and civic leaders to set the city straight, the automobile capitol of the world seems trapped in a vicious cycle of urban decay.
Detroit has lost more than half its population since its heyday in the 1950's. The people who remain are mostly black -- 83 percent -- and mostly working class, with 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line according to the US Census Bureau.
The schools are bad. The roads are full of potholes. Crime is high and so are taxes. The city is in a budget crisis so deep it could end up being run by the state.
And it just got knocked off the list of the nation's ten largest cities.
"Detroit has become an icon of what's considered urban decline," said June Thomas, a professor of urban and regional planning at Michigan State University.
"The issue is not just getting people in the city. It's getting people in the city who can become property owners and stay property owners and pay taxes."
Perhaps the biggest challenge to luring the middle class from the area's swank suburbs is overcoming racial tensions, said Stephen Vogel, dean of the school of architecture at University of Detroit Mercy.
"Suburbanites are taking the bodies of their relatives out of cemeteries because they're afraid to come to the city," Vogel said. "There are about 400 to 500 hundred (being moved) a year which shows you the depth of racism and fear."
Most American cities have experienced a shift towards the suburbs.
What made Detroit's experience so stark was the lack of regional planning and the ease with which developments were able to incorporate into new cities in order to avoid sharing their tax revenue with the city, said Margaret Dewar, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
The fleeing businesses and homeowners left behind about 36 square miles (58 square kilometers) of vacant land. That's roughly the size of San Francisco and about a quarter of Detroit's total land mass.
While a decision by General Motors to build its new headquarters smack in the middle of downtown has helped lure young professionals and spark redevelopment in some of the more desirable neighborhoods, there is little hope the vacant land will be filled any time soon.
In his state of the city address, embattled mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said even if 10,000 new homes were built every year for the next 15 years "we wouldn't fill up our city."
And Detroit is still losing about 10,000 people every year.
One solution Vogel has proposed is to turn swaths of the city into farmland. In the four years since his students initiated a pilot project dozens of community gardens and small farms have popped up.
But first the city has to get rid of the crumbling buildings that haunt the streets, luring criminals, arsonists and wild animals and creating a general sense of hopelessness.
"It's partly a resource issue and it's partly a bureaucracy issue," said Eric Dueweke, the community partnership manager at the University of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
"It takes them forever to find the proper owners of the properties and serve them with the proper paperwork," he said. "They're tearing them down at the rate of 1,500 or 2,000 a year, so they're really not cutting into the backlog in any significant way because that's how many are coming on stream."
Dorothy Bates has been waiting three years for the crumbling house next door to be torn down. There are nine more on her short block along with several vacant lots that are overgrown with weeds.
Bates does her best to keep her five children away from the rat nests, but the lead creeping out of crumbling bricks and peeling paint drifts in through her windows.
The most frustrating part of it, says her neighbor Larry, is that so many of the abandoned houses could be repaired. The foundations are solid. The buildings are beautiful. Or at least, they were once.
The military probably could use some of them for urban warfare exercises.
I'd rather live in the ghetto than near those jokers.
I can buy some houses there for $5000.
Bob Seger's from Ann Arbor. Ted Nugent grew up in Redford and lived near Concord(Jackson County).
Southfield's still in decent shape once you get away from the Detroit border.
I some areas there they would need live ammo to get out alive. That and air support.
What I don't get is that people in Grand Rapids consider anything east of Lansing, Detroit. I'm 60 miles from downtown.
Forget Tibet,
save Detroit!!
Oh my.
I have no further comment!
The development has already spread to Fowlerville 80 miles away.
It's important for citizens of other large cities to see what happens when liberal ideas take over. And Detroit's the perfect example. It's the most liberal city in the nation, they've tried every liberal program, and they're reaping what they've sown. Disaster. Take notice.
Why would anyone want to open a coffin? What's the welfare/disability rate there? Are we paying for these animals?
I assume to strip the body of any jewelry or clothing.
I know of several "suburbanites" who have moved to Alpena!
While I am sure it was true of your family (as was true of my family who were from Newark), the fact remains that there were plenty of white racists in places like East New York. There was even an organization in East New York, connected to organized crime called SPONGE (the Society for the Prevention of Niggers Getting Everything). You can look it up in any news report at the time. Lower class whites in East New York, for the most part, had no desire to live with low-class blacks, and vice versa.
Now that the yuppies are pushing out of Williamsburg into Bushwick, who knows if they'll make it to East New York in my lifetime. I doubt it (too far of a commute into Manhattan, poor housing stock), but I must say that at least the Bangladeshis and Dominicans who have moved into East New York/Cypress Hill have brought legitimate commercial activity back to the nabe.
YOu might suggest that he head out west on M-14 and wander around Main St., Liberty St., and State St. in downtown Ann Arbor.
That's a mostly liberal town too, but much prettier. Great bookstores (the Mother Ship for Borders is there), fantastic restaurants and fun shopping.
Pinz
Don't worry, your Vikes aren't going anywhere.
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.