Root cause of problems?

[ASwede]

In my line of work I frequently use different techniques to find [[and hopefully eliminate) the root cause of a problem. Typically we tend to try to fix symptoms rather than the root cause. In doing so the problem will resurface and also, eliminating the root cause will often take away several symptoms.

Following the discussions on this forum from far, and not really in touch with Detroit any more, I got curious about the root causes [[there's probably more than one) of the problems you face and the reason why the city is in the shape it is. There are plenty of reasons to choose from, but they are often related, so which is the hen and which is the egg? Trick is to keep asking “Why is that?” until you have no more answers. You either found a root cause or – worse – a vicious cycle or re-enforcing loop.

Don’t have any answers and not really looking for a simple solution, but it would be interesting to hear some ideas. Just to name a few I found in various topics in this forum, in no particular order: crime, drugs, incompetent politicians, racism, the economy, poverty, unemployment, attitude, ….

Cheers!

[Lowell]

If I had to choose one root problem, it would be that the City of Detroit has become the de facto quarantine for the region's people with troubles, the poor, the beyond poor homeless, the insane, the felons and ex-felons.

This creates a downward spiral of municipal unsustainability. These poor souls cannot / do not pay taxes. Instead, they require great resources to cover their needs, create crime, drive up insurance rates and discourage the more fortunate from living or doing business in the city.

Until this unfair burden is shifted from the City of Detroit's shoulders, no EFM or miracle worker will succeed. The only way out is for the rest of the region and the state to pay the City of Detroit [and other older city's in similar straits] for the 'service' of keeping these problems cordoned off.

This could be done not by giving money to the city [too many politics for that] but by making it a state tax free zone and provide home owner's and automotive tax credits for insurance rates paid beyond the average for the region. Criminal justice must be bolstered via the State Police and all crimes, large and small, vigorously investigated and prosecuted.

[TKshreve]

Lowell,

Without this:

Criminal justice must be bolstered via the State Police and all crimes, large and small, vigorously investigated and prosecuted.

this will never make a difference:

making it a state tax free zone and provide home owner's and automotive tax credits for insurance rates paid beyond the average for the region.

Do you agree that one needs to come before the other?

[gnome]

If I had to choose one root problem, it would be that the City of Detroit has become the de facto quarantine for the region's people with troubles, the poor, the beyond poor homeless, the insane, the felons and ex-felons.

This creates a downward spiral of municipal unsustainability. These poor souls cannot / do not pay taxes. Instead, they require great resources to cover their needs, create crime, drive up insurance rates and discourage the more fortunate from living or doing business in the city.

Until this unfair burden is shifted from the City of Detroit's shoulders, no EFM or miracle worker will succeed. The only way out is for the rest of the region and the state to pay the City of Detroit [and other older city's in similar straits] for the 'service' of keeping these problems cordoned off.

This could be done not by giving money to the city [too many politics for that] but by making it a state tax free zone and provide home owner's and automotive tax credits for insurance rates paid beyond the average for the region. Criminal justice must be bolstered via the State Police and all crimes, large and small, vigorously investigated and prosecuted.

oh yeah, that's is freakin brilliant. Escape from New York style?

Who do you see playing the role of Mr. Goldie Hawn? jeeze man...

the poor ain't the problem, they are a symptom. A symptom of a failed system. Your go-to answer is to throw more money at a city that has more money thrown at it than a pole dancer during Ship Week.

[bailey]

oh yeah, that's is freakin brilliant. Escape from New York style?

Who do you see playing the role of Mr. Goldie Hawn? jeeze man...

the poor ain't the problem, they are a symptom. A symptom of a failed system. Your go-to answer is to throw more money at a city that has more money thrown at it than a pole dancer during Ship Week.

.."Fleet Week" is the term you're looking for.

[gnome]

thanks for the correction, it has been a while since I've been a pole dancer and forgot to forget everything.

[Detroitnerd]

I'd say if you could remove one problem and have the largest possible beneficial effect for metro Detroit, it would be racism.

[Ray1936]

The breakdown of the family unit was the cause. When half of the mothers in Detroit refer to the father of her child, it's always "my baby's daddy". I saw that problem in the inner city in the sixties, and it simply expanded out to Eight Mile Road.

[Gannon]

Since the basic problems of the city recur through wildly varied individuals over many hundreds of years' time, from the best of my ability to analyze, I recognize the roots as spiritual. The same stories basically pop up periodically throughout Detroit's history, with increasing ferocity each cycle. Which puts changing them out-of-reach of anyone who chooses not to believe in such things.

Of course, that makes the next fire in Detroit a whopper, but we might've done it in segments annually at the end of October. Basically appeasing whatever fire spirit or Nain Rouge that gets a tickle out of this hot destruction...until we introduced Angel's Night, so the appeasement account is likely running dry.

And we're overdue for the next race riot.

Had the bad, extra-ordinarily corrupt mayor, so we're due a Pingree.

As soon as drugs are legalized, our gangs will likely quit their public machine-gunning and get into other graft with less direct competition with the Feds. That is what seemed to happen when Prohibition ended.

There is more, but I need to get going. I read Detroit's history as a series of repeating spiritually-inspired events. Then again, to the mystic every problem seems etheric, not unlike the hammer seeing everything as nails.

Sincerely,
John

[bailey]

I'd say if you could remove one problem and have the largest possible beneficial effect for metro Detroit, it would be racism.

Yes, ending racism would really result in 25% higher employment, 50% reduction in functional illiteracy, violent crime would drop to 5 per 1000, Murders would drop to less than 10 a year, and there would be no incompetence or corruption in City government.

Look, various forms racism and institutional racist policies from generations past may have gotten on the road to get here, but in today's Detroit, "racism" is so far down on the list of things to fix, it's irrelevant.

[rb336]

If I had to choose one root problem, it would be that the City of Detroit has become the de facto quarantine for the region's people with troubles, the poor, the beyond poor homeless, the insane, the felons and ex-felons.

that part you can trace back at least to the shuttering of state mental health services - I don't recall if that happened under Blanchard or Jabba - and the criminalization of drug offenses - more specifically more focus on first-offenders doing actual prison time and longer sentences including the three strikes stuff

[iheartthed]

I'm not sure we could have a productive discussion about this without defining what exactly a Detroit-without-problem would be? A lot of the social problems being talked about so far in this thread exists in abundance in cities that most of us would say are functioning far better than Detroit. So how is it that in Detroit these problems have caused a near collapse of civilization?

[Detroitnerd]

Yes, ending racism would really result in 25% higher employment, 50% reduction in functional illiteracy, violent crime would drop to 5 per 1000, Murders would drop to less than 10 a year, and there would be no incompetence or corruption in City government.

Look, various forms racism and institutional racist policies from generations past may have gotten on the road to get here, but in today's Detroit, "racism" is so far down on the list of things to fix, it's irrelevant.

The "racism is over so what does it matter" school of thought. Yeah, sure. And we all send our daughters to the mixed-race debutante ball at 16. And if they brought home a suitor of *any* color we'd be cool with it. Suuuuure...

But think of it: What if the smug white people of suburban Detroit looked at the poor blacks of Detroit as their brothers? As being the same as them? If they didn't feel superior about the pathologies of "the other"? Search your heart. Deep down inside, don't you think your neighbor would behave differently if he woke up tomorrow and saw the whitest white and the darkest black as total social equals? Might even see the need to help his brother?

[oladub]

The political and corporate decision to build new auto plants in non-union states and import an ever higher percentage of autos meant fewer good paying jobs in Detroit. Nothing filled the vacuum in empty factories and wallets.

[Kevgoblue]

Look, various forms racism and institutional racist policies from generations past may have gotten on the road to get here, but in today's Detroit, "racism" is so far down on the list of things to fix, it's irrelevant.

Hence, the OP's commentary. We are attempting to fix the symptoms, and not the problem. You say that racism was a big contributing factor leading to the condition the city is in now, but after all these years, now it's irrelevant. ????

[Fiestamk1]

Hope, I was a young boy in Detroit when the riots occurred . We moved to the burbs and during my early years I would cut lawns, work at a local gas station, party store etc. Without hope for the young people, there is only crime, no where safe to work and play for the kids.

It will not ever matter how many Dan Gilbert's roll in and out of town, Detroits only hope is their youth, a place to live and be safe, a place to mow lawn for a few bucks. Sadly it is gone forever.

[Kevgoblue]

The political and corporate decision to build new auto plants in non-union states and import an ever higher percentage of autos meant fewer good paying jobs in Detroit. Nothing filled the vacuum in empty factories and wallets.

Can I modify this thought?

The decision to build new auto plants in non-union states and import an ever higher percentage of autos meant fewer good paying jobs in the region.

The decision to build new auto plants in the suburbs [[and the resulting move of employees to live close to their jobs) removed the tax base from the city of Detroit.

[Fiestamk1]

Can I modify this thought?

The decision to build new auto plants in non-union states and import an ever higher percentage of autos meant fewer good paying jobs in the region.

The decision to build new auto plants in the suburbs [[and the resulting move of employees to live close to their jobs) removed the tax base from the city of Detroit.

Finally some one who can admit the Unions and their unwillingness to bend sent us down the tubes! You build plants in labor friendly areas, do not take anything your union tells you at face value. They are the biggest road block in our area. I am a UAW member, not to be soon!

[Meddle]

The ROOT cause is one word. Greed.

People want what they don't have. Some earn it and get it legally. Others do it via fraud and corruption or legal wrangling [[aka big business). Others just go out and take it, by force if necessary.

Everything mentioned up-thread is a symptom of people doing whatever they feel they need to do to enable getting more of whatever they don't have.

[Shollin]

Detroitnerd and this racism again. The irony is the suburbs he demonizes are more racially diverse than the city of Detroit.

[gameguy56]

The ROOT cause is one word. Greed.

People want what they don't have. Some earn it and get it legally. Others do it via fraud and corruption or legal wrangling [[aka big business). Others just go out and take it, by force if necessary.

Everything mentioned up-thread is a symptom of people doing whatever they feel they need to do to enable getting more of whatever they don't have.

I think this is about as close to a correct answer as you can get. 'Greed is good' utterly destroyed Detroit. The race for lower taxes gutted the big cities and left a big hole. In other cities in the country though you still had a significant population that were dedicated, no matter the marginal $$ cost, to their cities and their institutions.

Detroit never had that. Very few people with any capital were committed south of 8 mile [[at least, historically). Nobody cared. Chrysler moved, LTU moved, hundreds of companies moved. Utopia was just a few mile roads away so who gives a damn.

[Cliffy]

Detroitnerd and this racism again. The irony is the suburbs he demonizes are more racially diverse than the city of Detroit.

Racism is all over the world. Chicago and Boston have way worse racism than us and they are doing ok.

[Dexlin]

Honestly, why not just ask someone to describe nuclear physics in a post, because that's basically what you're asking.

Detroit's been studied to death. Stop. You want to know "root causes"? Hell, go read one of the hundred books done on the subject. Stop this madness, already. You are doing no one any favors; not even yourself.

[steve from virginia]

[[Unknown photographer) Fairy-tale palaces for the well-to-do in the Paris of the Midwest, on Alfred Street in Brush Park in Detroit in 1881. It was all a fantastic dream, a stage-set for Victorian manners and unimaginable prosperity without end, a gilded age, the product of the settlement of the far West, of the overreaching railroads and steamships … and of millions of highly skilled immigrants from Europe.


Brush Park was a psychedelic dream-scape of hundreds of extravagant, gilded mansions, with hundreds more throughout the city: not so much an idea but an escape from the necessity of having to think about anything at all. It was as if the prosperity wasn’t real but needed physical manifestations, each more outlandish than the next … to reassure those with the most that most was indeed what they had.


______________________________

After the war, whites who could fled the city for the ballooning suburbs, a period of migration that lasted for decades. Cities are made and broken by flows of capital and human beings. Detroit originally grew and took form from the incoming tide of European immigrants who built in the manner and with the materials they were familiar. The craftsmen who built the fairy castles were replaced with unskilled agricultural workers looking to toil in the expanding automobile factories, these workers had no background or interest in city-building. They needed a paycheck, the city would take care of itself.



Instead, big business ‘took care’ of the city. Beginning in 1908 came the machines: the city was steadily made over as an auto habitat.

http://www.economic-undertow.com/2012/12/09/the-string-economy/


Detroit was doomed from the very beginning. It did have a heyday in the late 1900s, when the rest of the US was suffering through the 'Long Depression'. Afterward, the age of the craftsman ended leaving the age of chain link and asphalt.

[firstandten]

that part you can trace back at least to the shuttering of state mental health services - I don't recall if that happened under Blanchard or Jabba - and the criminalization of drug offenses - more specifically more focus on first-offenders doing actual prison time and longer sentences including the three strikes stuff

We have Jabba to thank for our lack of state mental health services. To get to the root cause we could use a variation of what the Japanese car manufacturers do. The Japanese car manufacturers use a technique call the 5 whys where when you see a problem in the manufacturing you keep asking why until once you get around the 5th why you should be getting to the root cause. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys . Of course if you apply this to Detroits problems you are most likely looking at 10 or 15 whys before you get to the root cause and we probably will discover that the root cause[[s) is too massive to get our arms around.