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.
"Let's sell Detroit to Canada. They should love that liberal hell hole. After all, Canadian liberals know how to "fix" our country...eh?"
Unfortunately as doc30 said in post 109, Detroit is held by Canadians as what's-bas-with-the-United-States. Of course little do they realize that it is an acute disease of Canadianism as applied in the US context.
I posted this on post 114 that US cities with socialism will run quicker into ruin than their non-US counterparts because of the higher degrees of local self-government. City-suburb difference is very sharp producing more incentives to move into suburbs when you get fed up with the city. By contrast with Detroit-Novi differences, here in Auckland there is no point of moving from Auckland City to Rodney District - policies are decided at Wellington and "councils coordinations" mean most local-level politics like picking up rubbish is uniform. As a result our ghetto is in the South Auckland suburbs like Mangere, Otahuhu rather than inner city.
Of course they are upset with the dead being removed from Detroit proper. That is one of the most loyal dim bases.
Actually, during the War of 1812, Detroit was occupied by the British and it was returned to the U.S. at the end of the war. Maybe Canada's forefathers saw into the future and saw Detroit as a really bad long term investment?
so asstute!
It is almost funny when you mispell on purpose instead of obvious ignorance.
This is the question that begs an answer.
My suggestion is that the black leaders don't give a rip about their brethren. The 83% that make up the city. I suspect the leaders' interest lie in lining their own pockets and blaming racism on the whitey and to get more funds from out-state.
bump for home
The smart thing for Detroit is to get rid of property taxes and implement a land-value tax. Also do some Guiliani-style policing.
Sounds like a wonderful place to have a Kwaanza celebration!
Downtown Stockton, California is a miniature of Detroit, with Fresno, California following close behind. It's really sad to see the forsaken streets and empty buildings.
I was in Grenada for a while in 1986.Blacks ran most everything except the larger businesses which were Chinese and Arab.
Wasn't a perfect place by any means but I saw no major dysfunctions there.
I used to teach next door to Desire project in New Orleans and ALL my kids were in the welfare trap.Most HATED it and wanted to escape mama's life of poverty.
Many did get out.I know some that never took a welfare check after high school.Working their behinds off.
On the downside,many of the young men are dead or in jail.Lots of the girls fell into "the baby trap"and ended up just like moms.
This story is too funny!!!God bless our government.
The nice areas in the metro are all outside Detroit proper. Even some of the suburbs are overrun with Muslims.
I laugh when I'm in places like DC or Boston, and I read about "affordable" housing starting in the 300's.
Because if they weren't racist, they wouldn't be afraid to visit the cemetery.
Or something. I'm not quite sure, myself.
And Robocop II was filmed in downtown Houston!
The abandoned hospital was our own Jeff Davis Hospital, demolished in 1999 (and now the site of a Federal Reserve building).
The auditorium where we first see the Cainbot (Robo Mark II) was our George R. Brown Convention Center.
The mayor's shouting press conference was held in front of Houston's City Hall building.
Finally, the Cainbot/Robo fight was filmed in the then-new Wortham Center downtown. (All damage is CGI.)
Wow, blast from the past. I think Detroit must be up to 15,000 abandoned homes by now.
Nick's on Thursday, anyone? :-D
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