Why hasn't Detroit ever owned up to its urban planning blunders?

[Detroitnerd]

Yes, you never said NYC had NO industry. You said NYC *NEVER* had a particularly large manufacturing or industrial base relative to other Northeastern or Midwestern cities. And that is a categorical statement. And it's nonsense. Never is what we call a Long Fucking Time, including every decade since the big bang. Can you say that New York wasn't a major manufacturer relative to other cities in the areas you designate ALWAYS? In the 1780s? Or the 1820s? Or the 1860s? You see where I'm going with this? History didn't begin in 1914, Jack.

Heck, even after World War I, New York was a major industrial center. You know what was on the shore of what's now called Williamsburg? Look at your old maps. You'll see it ringed with piers and rail lines, with the tanks of the Standard Oil company. You'll see tanks dotting the playfields and along Newton Creek. That is distinctly blue-collar. And the Brooklyn Navy Yard wasn't a big industrial installation. Naw, it just had a bunch of foundries, warehouses, machine shops, dry docks and shit like that. Really just sort of a big yacht club. And Camden Yards is obviously wrong [[good catch). I mean Hoboken.

Let's face facts: The white-collar, trade-oriented employment is a factor in New York, but the idea that New York NEVER was a center of manufacturing is silly. For many points in its history, Chicago didn't exist and Detroit was a tiny frontier town.

[bailey]

Let's face facts: The white-collar, trade-oriented employment is a factor in New York, but the idea that New York NEVER was a center of manufacturing is silly. For many points in its history, Chicago didn't exist and Detroit was a tiny frontier town.

How about we agree that at no time during Detroit's 60 year slide from functioning and prosperous city to what we have now, was New York City a "center of manufacturing"? Seems to me that was jist of the comment in the first place.

[Detroitnerd]

How about we agree that at no time during Detroit's 60 year slide from functioning and prosperous city to what we have now, was New York City a "center of manufacturing"? Seems to me that was jist of the comment in the first place.

Like I said, NEVER is a long time. I can't believe anybody would say that New York was NEVER a center of manufacturing. Their manufacturing tripled after they built the Erie Canal. Anyway, I'm so fucking sick of talking about New York.

[iheartthed]

How about we agree that at no time during Detroit's 60 year slide from functioning and prosperous city to what we have now, was New York City a "center of manufacturing"? Seems to me that was jist of the comment in the first place.

I wouldn't even say that much. When NYC was hemorrhaging population from the 1950s - 1970s, it was pretty much a direct result of manufacturing across the country was going down the tubes [[take note that this is also about the time that Detroit began to take on massive population losses). Areas like Park Slope, Brooklyn and Sunset Park, Brooklyn and Red Hook, Brooklyn took major hits and were also the areas where significant parts of the population were blue collar workers. These neighborhoods are only just recently recovering from this -- Park Slope a bit ahead of the others -- by replacing former blue collar residents with non-blue collar residents. And NYC, like everywhere else in the country, was scheming up urban renewal projects to reinvent itself. Some projects were just more misguided than others...