A while back, I was showing Will the Birds Eye Views of Detroit to show just how run-down that city has become. Large swaths of the city are empty now, blocks and blocks of empty and abandoned lots. The picture below is just one area where there was once a bustling neighborhood, but is now desolate.
Via Obsidian Wings, I found these two posts from Sweet Juniper about what happened to that school in the picture, which was amazingly in operation until 2007.
They should plant trees on those vacant lands. In 100 years, there’d be a thriving forest where those buildings stood.
Is the mayor of Detroit a Democrat or Republican? Are the people on the school board Democrats or Republicans? Did most of the students come from Democrat or Republican households?
Some say troll poses as a democrat while spewing lies.
Of course Detroit is a shithole, it’s been a shithole for at least 40 years. Keep electing corrupt Democrats (is there any other kind?) like Kwami Kilpatrick and expect more of the same.
Enjoy the commode formally known as Detroit. You get the government you deserve.
How very sad. It’s a beautiful school building, and it’s amazing that no one bothered to move all the materials and equipment out. What a shame.
It’s like Will Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue.
@4
Kilpatrick was an embarrassing mayor, but his predecessor, Dennis Archer, was actually half-way decent. Of course, the forces that have devastated Detroit have been much broader than simply the leadership of the city. It’s been happening for decades, and also have roots in places like Lansing and even Washington D.C. It’s been typical of how many other large cities with largely minority populations have been left behind and treated as second-class areas.
If you want to have a more in-depth conversation about what happened in that city (I lived in the Detroit area for 6 years), feel free to email me.
@6: Detroit has been in trouble south of 8 mile since 1967 and the riots (actually before then too).
1967 was just the manifestation of the slums that revolted. I went to inner city schools – not in Detroit. You could learn if you wanted to – but the other kids had 6 to a bedroom, no breakfast, no support at home and the allure of easy money, gangs and drugs.
The good teachers left and the schools went downhill in the 70’s. I was marginally Ok because I knew self-defense and was big – but the place was not safe. I know some people deserve what they get – but a lot of those kids are dead or in prison and had little chance in life to do better.
Gonna have to update that shot in a couple of years. With the automakers being in the shape they’re in, by the time this recession/depression blows over, that lone building will be gone as well.
Lee, big sis is still there in 2008. If anyone is interested, read about Coleman Young. He didn’t help Deeeeeetroit that much from what big sis tells me. Even Deeeeeetroit Basketball is down…
But I think Goldy took this Coleman Young quote to the max:
“Swearing is an art form. You can express yourself much more exactly, much more succinctly, with properly used curse words.”
Puddy remembers only the best!
See ya!
So in China they screw the pesants and feed the
party membersenteprenuers. In Michigan we screw auto workers to feed the hedge fundies.to be completely honest, the houses in that particular neighborhood were torn down to build an industrial park before the project stalled completely a couple years ago.
we have plenty of urban prairie though that’s not the result of concerted demolition. usually neighborhoods like that have a couple houses on each block.
it’s what happens when you lose more than half your population in 50 years, and the only people left are those too poor to leave!
Another post along the same lines.
http://www.lostmag.com/issue2/detroit.php
“…Detroit had become synonymous with destruction. Architect Dan Hoffman, ruminating on the disappearing city, put it most poignantly. “Unbuilding,” he said, “has surpassed building as the city’s major architectural activity. Between 1970 and 2000, more than 161,000 dwellings were demolished in Detroit”
Huh? Who elected the leaders for these largely minority population cities? That would be the minority populations,right? 20 years of corruption by Coleman Young set the stage for Detroit’s demise. Even when Archer was Mayor from 1993-2001, Young had so many entrenched allies in the government that Archer couldn’t get much of what he would have liked to do done. Tired of battling inside, he just didn’t run again in 2001 and the city went back to the corrupt leaders again (kilpatrick-soon to be prisoner # 3245334).
As I said at 4, you get the government you deserve, and Detroits population just hasn’t grown up enough to inject the type of leadership that has their city’s prosperity in front of the candidates personal aspirations.
I surfed the links. How bleak. I would everything I could to leave that world, if I lived there.
I know it’s not fair, but to me, is what you get from unregulated capitalism. You get that world. A land of corruption and decay. It doesn’t matter what party they belonged to. There is blame on all sides. IMHO, if we put Mr Cynical and the rest of the neo-conservatives proposals in place, we would get that world. It’s a modern day Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. One of the most horrible books I ever read. From Wiki “The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the “have-nots”, which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption on the part of the “haves”.” Sums it up pretty good.
IMHO, if we put Mr Cynical and the rest of the neo-conservatives proposals in place, we would get that world.
Detroit should be a cautionary tale to the rest of the country on how NOT to run a city and an economy.
Ummm….sorry to break the news, but Democrats have run this city into the shitter for 40 years, so blaming the neo-cons is not only completely misguided, it’s borderline retarded.
I don’t care. I’ll grant you it was run by corrupt Democrats. For me the key word is CORRUPT. I see the current neo cons being equally corrupt.
I don’t automatically hate conservatives. Conservatives have many strong values, that I personally admire and aspire to.
I do despise corruption and mis-management.
I can see, even if you don’t, the same mind set that brought down Detroit by the democrats in power, being applied to America by the republicans in power, that, left unchecked, would have made America like Detroit.
Oh, to be clear, I know NeoCons did not destroy Detroit. I think NeoCons would have made the US like Detroit if they are not stopped.
@ 16&17 ~ So you’re using the example of Detroit being run into the ground by Democrats as a cautionary tale of how the Neo-cons would do likewise to the country if they had the chance?
Wow, if that isn’t retarded logic, I don’t know what is.
There is no way I can think of, to help you understand what I’m trying to say. You cannot or will not, try to see my point. You are a lost cause.
@19 ~ that’s just it. You have no point. Maybe Lee can dumb it down enough for you to see how illogical your argument is that “neo-cons” are responsibile for the systemic, decades long decay of the city of Detroit. You make absolutely zero sense, so just quit while you’re behind.
Jobs.
The key to Detroit, the “motor city”, and home to “Motown Records”, was workers receiving a decent wage and having a likelihood of being able to have a lifetime career as auto worker or an associated industry. All the other industries in the town supported the auto manufacturers and those who supported the auto workers (hometown merchants).
The decline of the Big 3 matches the decline of Detroit. They started to go downhill in a big way in the mid-1970’s, and so did Detroit. The loss of heavy manufacturing jobs in the 1980’s also helped kill off lots of other big urban centers (thanks, Ronnie!!!!).
At that level of outflow of money and jobs, you can have the best city government in the world, either Democratic or Republican, and you are still going to be presiding over a significant decline in your city’s fortunes.
The same thing would happen here if Boeing, Paccar, Microsoft, and Amazon were to simultaniously begin a long, slow decline into oblivian.
There may have been attempts to try, but Detroit has failed to reinvent itself, its business community has failed to evolve over time. Since its founding, Seattle’s main business, its real reason for surviving, has evolved from fishing and forestry to aircraft, then to high-tech, to the point where Seattle has developed a fairly diverse base as a regional and global economic center. To be sure, the loss of one of the major pillars of that base would be tremendously damaging to the area, but not to the point of Detroit’s collapse. Detroit is cars, cars, and more cars, overspecializing to the point where it became a fatal weakness.
Another place where Darwin was right – cities, like species, must evolve or die.
@15: Little baby Ricky d. is back – talk about the pot calling the kettle black – little Ricky calling someone retarded is like getting advice from a republican to buy stocks right before the collapse – you can’t trust it and you know it will be wrong.
When has that wimp Rick D. been right on ANYTHING?
How was that election for ya’ Ricky? Where was the great McCain comeback you predicted?
How does it feel to be WRONG on everything and to have no one believe your lies and republican talking points?
Worst president EVER – and you supported him.
Worst economy since Hoover.
And don’t give us the BS that the democrats did this – your lies don’t go over here. Bush has presided over the dismantling of our country. He and his republican sycophantic (look it up moron) followers have practically destroyed our country. Illegal wiretaps, torture, corruption, Abramoff, incompetence, Katrina, Brownie, Gonzalez – the list goes on and on:
Duke Cunningham, Safavian, Norquist, Ralph Reed, Rumsfeld, DeLay, Larry Craig, Vitter, Bob Ney, Tom Foley. One corrupt and incompetent MINORITY party.
So, like everywhere, how do we attract and keep jobs that are better than McJobs. The paygrade of fast food and walmart are not enough to live on, yet is barely what that corporatists want to pay.
The days of good jobs for the uneducated are a thing of the past. When Obama starts punishing the productive (companies), they’ll have no other option than to reduce costs somewhere…..enter expanded outsourcing of unskilled labor and in some cases, Companies will simply relocate abroad where they can run their operation without oppressive Government excessive taxation.
Obama will usher in the new depression if he implement’s his vision of “spread the wealth” philosophy that he expressed during his campaign. Since he has zero experience in this area, my guess is that his handlers will wake him up to the reality along the way.
By year 3, he may be able to take off his training wheels and make some executive decisions on his own, but for now, he’s simply a whitehouse intern.
Uhh, where have you been for the last eight years? George II encouraged and rewarded corporations for taking jobs away from Americans and giving them to people overseas. That must’ve been that ‘great sucking sound’ Perot was talking about.
Sorry Puds, the bait-and-switch = EPIC FAIL.
Just like Your-President-Not-Mine.