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

[Eric]

ON EISENHOWER'S INTERSTATE PLAN:
It is a gross oversimplification to say that the highway plan was passed by the will of the people. It was never up for a referendum. The representatives voted for it. And few people knew what it meant. Even Eisenhower didn't realize that they were intending to ram interstates THROUGH American cities. He thought they were supposed to be only from city to city. Anyway, who cares if it was passed with the will of the people, way back then, and most of them dead today? We are the ones who see what it has wrought, so we have just as much say. In a way, we're much better suited to decide if we will what it has wrought.

Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk addressed this in Suburban Nation- The Rise and Decline of the American Dream: “The Federal highway planners of the fifties actually knew better than to bring highways into center cites, but they were out-lobbied by the big-city mayors, who wanted the U.S. highway money spent in their jurisdictions.” As a result, over six thousand miles of urban highway was added to the Federal Highway Act. Unfortunately American cities [[not just Detroit) have not learned their lesson because this is still happening.