Detroit is never going to "come back"

[48009]

Unless you have solutions for all of the following:

[[i) Teach illiterate adults marketable skills jobs in 2013 require
[[ii) Make the unmotivated ambitious
[[iii) Prevent illiterate adults in poverty from having babies [[cyclical illiteracy and poverty)

Without solutions to these core issues, the city can't possibly "come back" or ever be much better than what it is currently.

[iheartthed]

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how cities operate if you think this has anything to do with making a city successful.

[drjeff]

"come back" to what? To a 1950s version with 2 million people? No, that will never happen. However, the core city is already orders of magnitude better than it was 15 years ago. The outlying neighborhoods are worse. But if the core strength leads to influx of people to strong neighborhoods, the city can build from the center as it did decades ago and become strong again. Some of the worst outer neighborhoods may never come back.

[48009]

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how cities operate if you think this has anything to do with making a city successful.

Please point me to a successful city where over 50% of working age adults are illiterate, 1 in 3 drop out of high school, 35% collecting food stamps. This isn't 1935, when you only needed a pulse and some grit to work in a good paying factory job. Detroit is so far removed from being a competitive landscape, I really don't think it can ever "come back."

[izzyindetroit]

Unless you have solutions for all of the following:

[[i) Teach illiterate adults marketable skills jobs in 2013 require
[[ii) Make the unmotivated ambitious
[[iii) Prevent illiterate adults in poverty from having babies [[cyclical illiteracy and poverty)

The city can't possibly "come back." I haven't heard anybody offer solutions to these three inescapable issues.

The solution is to force all those people who meet your requirement list to live somewhere else by bringing in people who are marketable, ambitious, and literate to displace them.

The ball is currently rolling.

[48009]

"come back" to what? To a 1950s version with 2 million people? No, that will never happen. However, the core city is already orders of magnitude better than it was 15 years ago. The outlying neighborhoods are worse. But if the core strength leads to influx of people to strong neighborhoods, the city can build from the center as it did decades ago and become strong again. Some of the worst outer neighborhoods may never come back.

How do you build up and maintain a strong core, with the hundreds of thousands of underemployed & illiterate adults in the outer boroughs draining your resources? You can shift people around the city, but they're still technically Detroit residents.

[grancan]

Most illiterate adults likely aren't interested in becoming "marketable'. "Just give me some assistance and I'll try to get by." Same with motivation.

But the kids are a different story. Many want better than what their parents have settled for and are willing to work for it. When this present generation passes perhaps the younger children will be willing to put some effort into shaping their future; with a decent city government, many things are possible.

[48009]

The solution is to force all those people who meet your requirement list to live somewhere else by bringing in people who are marketable, ambitious, and literate to displace them.

The ball is currently rolling.

Just how and where do motivate the 500k to migrate to? Even if you could [[and you really can't, since Detroit is so vast), they simply become Redford, Warren, Southfield's burden. Is that really progress? I don't think so.

[firstandten]

Gentrification in multiple neighborhoods around the city, is how the city will come back

[48009]

Most illiterate adults likely aren't interested in becoming "marketable'. "Just give me some assistance and I'll try to get by." Same with motivation.

But the kids are a different story. Many want better than what their parents have settled for and are willing to work for it. When this present generation passes perhaps the younger children will be willing to put some effort into shaping their future; with a decent city government, many things are possible.

Statistics tell a different story. Outlook for kids from single parent, no college degree parents is very bleak. Two parents with no diploma generally make troubled children.

[Detroitnerd]

I'd say that having hundreds of thousands of people who fear and loathe their central city is reason enough that Detroit is never going to "come back" ...

And yet it's coming back. How about that?

[DetroitPlanner]

And stop all of those crack and weed smokers too! I don't want em living next door to me!

[iheartthed]

Please point me to a successful city where over 50% of working age adults are illiterate, 1 in 3 drop out of high school, 35% collecting food stamps. This isn't 1935, when you only needed a pulse and some grit to work in a good paying factory job. Detroit is so far removed from being a competitive landscape, I really don't think it can ever "come back."

That's all beside the point. Detroit has those type of stats because it has not managed to attract any meaningful amount of immigrants to the city in over a half century. [[Same goes for Metro Detroit.) You're diagnosing symptoms as the disease.

[Ray1936]

I think it will come back some day in the future.

Unfortunately, I'm 77, and it won't be in my lifetime.

[professorscott]

I think it will come back some day in the future.

Unfortunately, I'm 77, and it won't be in my lifetime.

I would say, Ray, it's been coming back for a while. The difficulty has been that the political class has been so awful as to defy plausibility; if someone 100 years from now were to watch a documentary about Detroit in the early 21st century he would have to suspend disbelief.

If grownups remain in charge, marvelous things will happen and all boats will be lifted by the rising waters. A better Detroit makes Ferndale, Dearborn and Allen Park better as well.

Right now I'm optimistic; we'll see what happens.

By the way, attacking the poor and illiterate for their poverty and illiteracy is not only mean-spirited, but idiotic. You may as well blame short people for being short, or red-headed people for being red-headed. Nobody wakes up at, say, the age of five and says to himself "hey; I'm not going to learn to read and I'll make sure I don't ever learn any good, marketable skills". People are largely a product of their environment and they only know what they can see, and southeast Michigan has done an absolutely world class job of segregating people by class, so that the desperately poor generally see nothing but desperate poverty.

[313WX]

48009 does have a point.

The fact is, not many people want to live around folks who may shoot them to death because they looked at them wrong, because they asked them to quiet their music down, or visit retailers where seedy-looking people are lurking around all day.

Detroit is going to need a huge shift in its culture before people start moving back en masses. Unfortunately, it may have to take the cycling out of a generation, two or three of Detroiters before this at-large culture dissipates.

A big part of the reason folks are just now showing interest in downtown is because the above element has spread away from downtown into the outer neighborhoods. Thus, in a way, the folks downtown are SOMEWHAT insulated from the aforementioned culture of dysfunction.

[KJ5]

Just wait until people are having wars for fresh water. The Great Lakes and Detroit will be back in a big way then.

[313WX]

Just wait until people are having wars for fresh water. The Great Lakes and Detroit will be back in a big way then.

I'm thinking before that time even comes [[which may be at least decades away), we will have the technology to place to purify saltwater [[thus making that fantasy just a fantasy). But we will see.

[48009]

48009 does have a point.

The fact is, not many people want to live around folks who may shoot them to death because they looked at them wrong, because they asked them to quiet their music down, or visit retailers where seedy-looking people are lurking around all day.

NOBODY productive wants to live around illiterate, do-nothing, criminals. Perhaps the Chicago model of containing the crime and poverty to certain areas could work in Detroit but Chicago has a much larger population and an exponentially more robust economy to make up for the leeches and their costs.

[illwill]

48009,

Here's a great article you should read.
http://www.psmag.com/business-econom...detroit-65610/

[48009]

48009,

Here's a great article you should read.
http://www.psmag.com/business-econom...detroit-65610/

Done. What was your takeaway?

My thoughts:
- Katrina was a gift to New Orleans in the sense that it permanently displaced thousands of the people that made it a dangerous hell hole, while also creating a clean landscape for vagabonds to prosper. Imagine a storm that wiped away all of the vacant factories and homes in Detroit while also forcing the thugs and do-nothings to say South Bend, Indiana? Federal dollars to clean everything up. Katrina was basically mother natures way of "blowing up" the city.

- Detroit is so freaking far removed from competing against Chicago [[or Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati) that it's almost a joke to even consider them similar. We are CURRENTLY a national punchline for failure, crime, poverty, illiteracy and corruption. Unless one of those cities makes a serious stumble, which is possible but unlikely, how can Detroit possibly catch up to their turnarounds? Those cities are decades more advanced and exponentially more inviting.

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

Please point me to a successful city where over 50% of working age adults are illiterate, 1 in 3 drop out of high school, 35% collecting food stamps. This isn't 1935, when you only needed a pulse and some grit to work in a good paying factory job. Detroit is so far removed from being a competitive landscape, I really don't think it can ever "come back."

If you think it only took "grit" to get a good paying factory job in the middle of the depression, I'm going to discount your thoughts on Detroit's possibilities for a comeback.

[Hermod]

If you think it only took "grit" to get a good paying factory job in the middle of the depression, I'm going to discount your thoughts on Detroit's possibilities for a comeback.

It took World War II to make jobs plentiful.

[noise]

You're diagnosing symptoms as the disease.

This is exactly right.

[Richard]

I would say, Ray, it's been coming back for a while. The difficulty has been that the political class has been so awful as to defy plausibility; if someone 100 years from now were to watch a documentary about Detroit in the early 21st century he would have to suspend disbelief.

If grownups remain in charge, marvelous things will happen and all boats will be lifted by the rising waters. A better Detroit makes Ferndale, Dearborn and Allen Park better as well.

Right now I'm optimistic; we'll see what happens.

By the way, attacking the poor and illiterate for their poverty and illiteracy is not only mean-spirited, but idiotic. You may as well blame short people for being short, or red-headed people for being red-headed. Nobody wakes up at, say, the age of five and says to himself "hey; I'm not going to learn to read and I'll make sure I don't ever learn any good, marketable skills". People are largely a product of their environment and they only know what they can see, and southeast Michigan has done an absolutely world class job of segregating people by class, so that the desperately poor generally see nothing but desperate poverty.

Well said.

Attitude and politics.

The city is never coming back so shrink it,destroy the neighborhoods and push those that do not fit into the suburbs.

Or maybe revitalize the neighborhoods and encourage growth and education,giving hope instead of dispare .

If one goes back a few years it would be easy to say never,but the seeds are being planted for a better city and even though it does not seem like it yet,if you looked at the big picture of what is really happening in all corners of the city it is different by leaps and bounds comparatively.

In 1978 I bought a 6 story apartment building for a dollar from the city of St. Paul,I was 17 and a busboy,the area was haven to heroin addicts etc.Now it is a whole different story.

1980 downtown Orlando was vacant with closed up buildings and people sleeping on the benches,all of these cities started 30 years ago,so they are in no position to pass judgement.

The only blame per-sey is Detroit is a little late to the game,so it happened,you cannot turn back time so look at the future.

Late to the game but not out of it and most likely coming back stronger,faster and better then most.

Never say never, was first recorded by Charles Dickens's in 1837 and still holds true today,just as it is hard to judge a city based on yesterday as many are doing now.

Detroit today is different positively then it was yesterday every day it gets better.

Let go of never and see what is happening.