Posted on 06/22/2014 11:26:02 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
DETROIT— Mike Duggan wants to do what no mayor of Detroit has done in more than half a century: attract more people than the city loses.
"The single standard a mayor should be defined on is whether the population of the city is going up or going down," Mr. Duggan said in an interview at his City Hall office six months after he was sworn in.
If he fails, he says he doesn't expect to run in 2017 and win—marking the boldness of his undertaking, considering the long odds he faces.
Other former industrial powerhouses including Cleveland and St. Louis have lost tens of thousands of residents since their midcentury heydays. But some have begun to stabilize their populations, including Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
Detroit is still one of the nation's 20 biggest cities, but its population generally has been falling the fastest among that group. It has dropped from a peak of 1.85 million in 1950, when Detroit was the fifth biggest U.S. city, to an estimated 688,000 today. In the 10 years before the 2010 census, the city lost one in four residents. And the once-mighty home of the U.S. auto industry is today fighting through the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy.
While Mr. Duggan's predecessor, Dave Bing, aimed at one time to consolidate the city, focusing on fewer, thriving neighborhoods and potentially cutting services to some areas, Mr. Duggan has big plans to revitalize the whole of Detroit. He aims to improve services, accelerate demolition of rundown homes, sell some vacant lots to next-door neighbors for $100 and do better in marketing homes in limbo to a new crop of Detroiters.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Hmm... Minor problem, long ago ran out of other people's money. Only piece left is the one held by the unions, and they aren't going to give up a penny. Guess he's a one term mayor. Wonder how much they give former mayors as a yearly retirement? (Hint: This might be part of the problem.)
Coleman Yount declared, and ensured, Detroit is a melanin mecca. Whites were to be exploited by vindictive racists in the Young administration. Guess what, they left. Unions drove out the rest of the productive society.
All he needs to do is build a wall like they had in Berlin.
How did Pittsburg recover??
Doesn’t he have a few abandoned buildings there that he can use to attract some Guatemalan kids to his city?
How about he make the place safer and more attractive to small and medium businesses who don’t want a handout or a foot on their throat?
Is Bombay his model?
How 'bout a racist fence?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3171077/posts
My thought: Sell the city for $1 to Fiat and the Italian government. Have them bring in Italian auto workers and carabinieri to pacify the natives and resettle the area. They could rename it “New Abyssinia.”
Paging Mike Rowe...got a dirty job for ya.
Have ICE fly the illegal immigrant children to Detroit. Problem solved.
The other thing that helped Pittsburgh is that there are a few Fortune 500 companies headquartered there, and a couple of world-class universities (University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon).
Republican or democrat? IF the latter, forget. Detroit is doomed. Chicago can’t be far.
Anything creative this guy does will have to be with the blessing of the unions and that ain’t going to happen.
I’m waiting, and in fact I’ve predicted, when the unions at GM and Chrysler strike. Since they are basically union owned companies it will be quite telling when they strike against themselves.
Would you live in Somalia?
The only difference between Detroit and there is that the citizens of Detroit are protected by politically correct laws.
Other than that, there is no difference.
If you’re not black, detroit is not safe for you.
If you’re not democrat (mind dead) detroit is not safe for you.
If you’re not union, detroit is not safe for you.
NO ONE will move to detroit unless they are EXACTLY the same sort of people who destroyed it in the first place.
Tear the whole thing down and restore it to farm land. It’s a failure as a city and cannot be rebuilt.
Not going to happen. Detroit is an open sewer except for a few well guarded areas down town. City has been in decline for over 50 years, looted and pillaged by currupt politicians and incompetant bureaucrats. Businesses are gone. Industry, except for union thugs is gone. All the blah, blah, blah in the world isn't going to change a thing. From Detroit, there is no place to go, but up.
Have to agree with that! A lot of people talk about importing normal human beings to Detroit to improve the city, but it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that anyone with a whit of common sense would leave once they realize that it really IS like Somalia!
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.