Is it too late to save Detroit?

[Stosh]

We don't want to attract people.

LOL. Sarcasm? [[I hope)

[majohnson]

Some of the pressures leading to urban sprawl are the forces that could revitalize Detroit.

So how can we save Detroit?
Do we need to paint over graffiti? Cut grass and clean lots, start patrols?

"Is it to late to save Detroit?"
The 'no' people don't surf DetroitYES.
So the better question is how can we save Detroit?
Get involved.
Organize something. Don't wait for someone else to create an effort, create one yourself.

[R8RBOB]

Some of the pressures leading to urban sprawl are the forces that could revitalize Detroit.

So how can we save Detroit?
Do we need to paint over graffiti? Cut grass and clean lots, start patrols?

"Is it to late to save Detroit?"
The 'no' people don't surf DetroitYES.
So the better question is how can we save Detroit?
Get involved.
Organize something. Don't wait for someone else to create an effort, create one yourself.

Why do people think we need to "save" Detroit? Save Detroit from what? A tidal wave? A "Deep Impact" situation? Invasion from aliens? What?

Detroit does not need saving. Detroit needs to start anew. We can't go back 50 years in the past hoping for that Detroit. That Detroit is gone. I want a new Detroit with opportunities, families, activities, positive attitudes. I don't want to save a Detroit with failed schools, failed families, broken neighborhoods, mistrust. Let that Detroit die and create a new Detroit.

[English]

Why do people think we need to "save" Detroit? Save Detroit from what? A tidal wave? A "Deep Impact" situation? Invasion from aliens? What?

Detroit does not need saving. Detroit needs to start anew. We can't go back 50 years in the past hoping for that Detroit. That Detroit is gone. I want a new Detroit with opportunities, families, activities, positive attitudes. I don't want to save a Detroit with failed schools, failed families, broken neighborhoods, mistrust. Let that Detroit die and create a new Detroit.

Totally agree with this post. The country of the early to mid twentieth century will never, ever be seen again. The entire world has changed. That era had its high points, but it also had a seamier side that never gets talked about much.

We look back upon Detroit of yesteryear and see it as utopia. But for whom was it Paradise, and for whom was that period hell?

As much as I love to hear stories of my grandparents' Detroit -- as much as I thrill to hear about those days of glory and grandeur -- as in love with history as I am -- I am so glad that I am alive now instead of back then.

I hope that my descendants will be able to say the same about our time.

[cman710]

R8RBOB and English, two very intelligent posts. Detroit needs to move in a positive direction, and that direction needs to be in a direction not like that which has occurred before. Detroit will not become a city again of 2 million people, at least not in our lifetimes. That being the case, we need to strategize how we can make Detroit a pleasant place to live that is fairly favorable towards business. These solutions will not come easily, given political, financial, and other restraints. Nonetheless, we must make efforts to make improvements, even if they come in the smallest ways. Nothing will get better easily, but it can be done.

[R8RBOB]

R8RBOB and English, two very intelligent posts. Detroit needs to move in a positive direction, and that direction needs to be in a direction not like that which has occurred before. Detroit will not become a city again of 2 million people, at least not in our lifetimes. That being the case, we need to strategize how we can make Detroit a pleasant place to live that is fairly favorable towards business. These solutions will not come easily, given political, financial, and other restraints. Nonetheless, we must make efforts to make improvements, even if they come in the smallest ways. Nothing will get better easily, but it can be done.

When Brooks say "its too late to save Detroit" what he is really saying is that we [[meaning the suburbs) waited too late to keep Detroit afloat. The same flawed Detroit that had failed schools, desolated neighborhoods and broken, broke families for years. As long as that Detroit remained the suburbs could flaunt how much better they are compared to Detroit.

For years, Brooks didn't give two shits about Detroit, but when the money men told him that if Detroit goes everyone goes with it and now it is about loving Detroit, to save Detroit. No, too many years have been wasted propping up that Detroit and it needs to cease to exist.

[cman710]

For many years, I think it was easy for some to discount Detroit's problems and ignore them because the suburbs did so well and what was happening in Detroit did not affect them much. The whole region nonetheless remained auto-dependent, and that is what has made things worse during this downturn, with the auto industry meeting such disaster. Going forward, it will be important to attract businesses other than the auto industry. Realistically, I think some businesses may choose to locate in the suburbs, and that is okay, so long as Detroit is no longer the dumping ground [[figuratively and literally) for problems the rest of the region wishes to ignore.

[R8RBOB]

For many years, I think it was easy for some to discount Detroit's problems and ignore them because the suburbs did so well and what was happening in Detroit did not affect them much. The whole region nonetheless remained auto-dependent, and that is what has made things worse during this downturn, with the auto industry meeting such disaster. Going forward, it will be important to attract businesses other than the auto industry. Realistically, I think some businesses may choose to locate in the suburbs, and that is okay, so long as Detroit is no longer the dumping ground [[figuratively and literally) for problems the rest of the region wishes to ignore.

Couldn't say it any better.

[majohnson]

Totally agree with this post. The country of the early to mid twentieth century will never, ever be seen again. The entire world has changed. That era had its high points, but it also had a seamier side that never gets talked about much.

We look back upon Detroit of yesteryear and see it as utopia. But for whom was it Paradise, and for whom was that period hell?

As much as I love to hear stories of my grandparents' Detroit -- as much as I thrill to hear about those days of glory and grandeur -- as in love with history as I am -- I am so glad that I am alive now instead of back then.

I hope that my descendants will be able to say the same about our time.

I never mentioned returning to the Detroit of the past!
How can we build the Detroit of the future?
It is not from scratch but with the foundation that is Detroit Today.

So the question remains. . .
What will you do to make Detroit at better place.
Will you simply take care of your home, not liter, not rob, and hope everything turns out okay?
Or will you address everyday problems you see in the City?

[R8RBOB]

I never mentioned returning to the Detroit of the past!
How can we build the Detroit of the future?
It is not from scratch but with the foundation that is Detroit Today.

So the question remains. . .
What will you do to make Detroit at better place.
Will you simply take care of your home, not liter, not rob, and hope everything turns out okay?
Or will you address everyday problems you see in the City?

No, you didn't say returning Detroit to its past but your quote:

So the better question is how can we save Detroit?

would imply that you would want to save or preserve Detroit which could mean going back to the past as a reference.

[majohnson]

Couldn't say it any better.

The auto industry is not Detroit's problem. Look at leading cities around the US, they have a variety of industries. People continually lose and gain jobs.

Auto jobs did not disappear and a good number of them remained in the US.
Detroit, Metro Detroit, and Michigan loses mobile jobs because we are not competitive and at other times are not seen as competitive.
That is a mixture of wages, attitudes, taxes, lack of regionalism, etc.

The underlying issue for most of those factors is mindset.
We need to be competitive. We need to create industries here. We need to work together as a region and revitalize our landscapes.
No one wants to move into a decayed region.

Detroit's decay casts a shadow on the entire region and state.
Detroit's decay casts a shadow on the Metro Detroit culture.
We are ignoring Detroit and it rightly makes us look uncaring or incapable.

[R8RBOB]

The auto industry is not Detroit's problem. Look at leading cities around the US, they have a variety of industries. People continually lose and gain jobs.

Auto jobs did not disappear and a good number of them remained in the US.
Detroit, Metro Detroit, and Michigan loses mobile jobs because we are not competitive and at other times are not seen as competitive.
That is a mixture of wages, attitudes, taxes, lack of regionalism, etc.

The underlying issue for most of those factors is mindset.
We need to be competitive. We need to create industries here. We need to work together as a region and revitalize our landscapes.
No one wants to move into a decayed region.

Detroit's decay casts a shadow on the entire region and state.
Detroit's decay casts a shadow on the Metro Detroit culture.
We are ignoring Detroit and it rightly makes us look uncaring or incapable.

You will not get an argument from me.

[ghettopalmetto]

The country of the early to mid twentieth century will never, ever be seen again. The entire world has changed.

What the hell does this mean, anyway? Could you be a little bit more vague???

Are you trying to say that Detroit can never look like a city again? Or that it can't have coherent stable neighborhoods, and the jobs and wealth that go with it?

Seems to me you have to identify something specific before you can write if off "just because".

[majohnson]

No, you didn't say returning Detroit to its past but your quote:

would imply that you would want to save or preserve Detroit which could mean going back to the past as a reference.

Save does not mean returning.
ex. 1.
more like what you mean by save
you are working on a microsoft word document, you use the save function, you type some more and make a few mistakes, you use the undo button to go return to a previous version

ex. 2.
you rehab an abandoned building, you don't fill it with a coal burning furnace, or old furniture, or start living the attitudes from a hundred years ago when you move in
you make a leed certified home, new furniture, and embody the progressive attitudes of the day

I think I better understand what you thought I meant by 'save' though.
Maybe revitalize is a better word.

Detroit can't be saved, shouldn't be saved.
Returning to the riots, racialized living restrictions, disdain for higher education, among the highest levels of crime in the nation?
That is not saving.
Coming together to revitalize? Oh yeah, I like that.

[R8RBOB]

Save does not mean returning.
ex. 1.
more like what you mean by save
you are working on a microsoft word document, you use the save function, you type some more and make a few mistakes, you use the undo button to go return to a previous version

ex. 2.
you rehab an abandoned building, you don't fill it with a coal burning furnace, or old furniture, or start living the attitudes from a hundred years ago when you move in
you make a leed certified home, new furniture, and embody the progressive attitudes of the day

I think I better understand what you thought I meant by 'save' though.
Maybe revitalize is a better word.

Detroit can't be saved, shouldn't be saved.
Returning to the riots, racialized living restrictions, disdain for higher education, among the highest levels of crime in the nation?
That is not saving.
Coming together to revitalize? Oh yeah, I like that.

See there....expressing our views helps. Revitalize is a good word to describe what Detroit needs.

[preserve]

I don't know where most of you live, but in my Detroit neighborhood, we have new folks moving in all the time, young and more mature, from out of state and from the suburbs. I see signs of life all the time. I guess unless you're here and are experiencing it, you wouldn't know what's going on. For years I thought LBP was saving "Pontiac", it was going to be Oakland County's "downtown" What's happened with that? Why is the Eats and Beats festival moving to Royal Oak? Sure Detroit probably does look worse from the outside, but watch, it's emerging.
l

[English]

What the hell does this mean, anyway? Could you be a little bit more vague???

Are you trying to say that Detroit can never look like a city again? Or that it can't have coherent stable neighborhoods, and the jobs and wealth that go with it?

Seems to me you have to identify something specific before you can write if off "just because".

No, that is emphatically not what "the hell I meant" when I noted that the Detroit of the mid-20th century will never return. A few points among many:

1) The postwar era left the United States in an unusual position. Much of the rest of the Western world was not viable for manufacturing, as they had to rebuild from one of the worst wars in human history. 70 years ago, Asia was not even close to competing with the United States in industrial capacity. That has all changed.

2) Due to these high-paying manufacturing jobs, families of the Greatest Generation [[those that raised the Boomers) had stay-at-home wives at a much greater rate than any generation since, and indeed, more than the two generations prior [[Lost Generation working class women come to mind). As a result, the Greatest Gen were able to invest tremendous social capital not only in their children, but into the very civic organizations that sustained neighborhood and community life.

3) During this period of American prosperity, there was an almost confiscatory tax rate. With the memory of the Great Depression still very near, the savings rate was high. Schools were excellent even in poor neighborhoods, and social services such as police, fire, etc. were generally reliable. It was a society with tremendous optimism about the future.

It is safe to say that...

...there will not be another world war that will reduce all our competitors to rubble and will leave us relatively unscathed;
...manufacturing jobs that pay enough to sustain an entire family on one income will not return;
...the confiscatory tax rates of the 1950s will not be accepted by US citizens again in the near future.

Not only will Detroit look different, the rest of the country will as well. It defies logic that the cities of 2050 should look much like the cities of 1950. Detroit in 1850 would be unrecognizable to the postwar city dwellers of our nostalgic dreams. It is right, fitting and proper that the Detroit of 2050 should be just as different. Time passes, the world around us changes, and as history proves, communities either adapt or they die.

My money is on Detroit. Unlike many other places, it has reinvented itself again and again. Some may point to ghost towns in the Great Plains states and Old West, but our destruction of the tallgrass prairie, along with our wholesale drainage of the Ogallala aquifer, have caused and will cause environmental collapse out West. The West is thirsty and growing thirstier. We have seen what climate change is doing to the Southeast, and continues to do. New Orleans yesterday, Nashville today, and we will see what will happen in the near future. Maybe I'm wrong and we'll drain the Great Lakes, and it's game over. I don't think so, though.

I don't think that the mid-20th century was the zenith of Detroit. The city's best days are ahead of it. Whether any of us will live to see the new and thriving Detroit of midcentury is the only question that remains.

That's "what the hell I meant", ghettopalmetto.

[English]

I never mentioned returning to the Detroit of the past!
How can we build the Detroit of the future?
It is not from scratch but with the foundation that is Detroit Today.

So the question remains. . .
What will you do to make Detroit at better place.
Will you simply take care of your home, not liter, not rob, and hope everything turns out okay?
Or will you address everyday problems you see in the City?

Sorry, I took you out of context, and I think that you did the same with my post. We have no quarrel... we're totally agreed.

I've been volunteering since I was a child growing up deep in the ghettohoods of Detroit, and have done so continuously for more than two decades. So yep, trying to address everyday problems as I am able, like many good people who love the city -- no one person can do everything-everywhere-with-every-organization, but we all can do something, especially those of us "to whom much is given."

I do think that Detroit is afflicted with a vision problem. Many wonderful souls are doing triage, which is good, fitting, and necessary, and many [[like me) take the long view. What we lack are leaders who can connect short term triage to plans for long term prosperity. "Stop the crime!" ""Fix the schools!" and suchlike are part of needed triage, but no one refuses a trip to New Orleans because of the crime, and no SWPLs move to New York, Chicago, or even San Francisco for the schools. We need to fix "the vision thing" or else others will define the city for us [[see: Hansen and Dateline).

[ghettopalmetto]

No, that is emphatically not what "the hell I meant" when I noted that the Detroit of the mid-20th century will never return. A few points among many:

1) The postwar era left the United States in an unusual position. Much of the rest of the Western world was not viable for manufacturing, as they had to rebuild from one of the worst wars in human history. 70 years ago, Asia was not even close to competing with the United States in industrial capacity. That has all changed.

2) Due to these high-paying manufacturing jobs, families of the Greatest Generation [[those that raised the Boomers) had stay-at-home wives at a much greater rate than any generation since, and indeed, more than the two generations prior [[Lost Generation working class women come to mind). As a result, the Greatest Gen were able to invest tremendous social capital not only in their children, but into the very civic organizations that sustained neighborhood and community life.

3) During this period of American prosperity, there was an almost confiscatory tax rate. With the memory of the Great Depression still very near, the savings rate was high. Schools were excellent even in poor neighborhoods, and social services such as police, fire, etc. were generally reliable. It was a society with tremendous optimism about the future.

I don't think anyone is calling for a return to these specific conditions, no matter how loaded your language [[I could, for example, illustrate dozens of ways in which the so-called "Greatest Generation" fucked our country real good when they got home, but that's a different thread entirely.)

After spending a week abroad in a nation where the per capita GDP is one-third of that of the United States, I see the major problem afflicting Detroit [[and the nation as a whole) is, succinctly:

WE HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY.

If we were a poorer nation, as we were in the first part of the 20th century, we'd spend our money a bit more wisely, and work to protect our investments. We'd make our buildings look respectable and worthy of the society in which they are constructed, instead of throwaway pieces of shit [[Ever notice how modern school buildings look not unlike prisons???) We'd not abandon our life-long neighborhoods and social bonds for the whimsy of plastic shacks on a quarter of an acre of fertilized fake pasture. We would invest, instead of trying to make a quick buck.

We get way too little in the way of results for how much money we throw around in this country. It's time to start demanding better.

[R8RBOB]

WE HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY.

Ghetto, where have you been? Too much money? We are broke. China could call in their markers and probably would own a good part of the United States. Too much money!! No, we have too many crooks. [[see: Madoff, Bernie)

[English]

I don't think anyone is calling for a return to these specific conditions, no matter how loaded your language [[I could, for example, illustrate dozens of ways in which the so-called "Greatest Generation" fucked our country real good when they got home, but that's a different thread entirely.)

If my language is loaded, chalk it up to my age. I'm too young to have direct memories of the Greatest. By the time I was born, they were senior citizens. So I've only heard about all the great stuff the "Greatest" did.

I don't know how old you are, but as someone who doesn't remember a thing before 1981, you have to know that younger generations are reared to view the Greatest Gen as the heroes of WWII, the world rebuilders, and the guys who put a man on the moon. The 1960s is when the country got messed up. I'd love to hear your point of view.

After spending a week abroad in a nation where the per capita GDP is one-third of that of the United States, I see the major problem afflicting Detroit [[and the nation as a whole) is, succinctly:

WE HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY.

If we were a poorer nation, as we were in the first part of the 20th century, we'd spend our money a bit more wisely, and work to protect our investments. We'd make our buildings look respectable and worthy of the society in which they are constructed, instead of throwaway pieces of shit [[Ever notice how modern school buildings look not unlike prisons???) We'd not abandon our life-long neighborhoods and social bonds for the whimsy of plastic shacks on a quarter of an acre of fertilized fake pasture. We would invest, instead of trying to make a quick buck.

We get way too little in the way of results for how much money we throw around in this country. It's time to start demanding better.

I agree with most of what you say above about preservation, except the problem is that most of the real money is in too few hands, and what most of us who are in the bottom 95% call "money" is debt. I am as liberal as they come, but I do agree that we ought to audit the Fed.

The anti-preservation thing seems to be pretty American, and a feature of the North, West, and New South. We value what's newer, greater, and bigger. We want brand new homes, cars, and cities.

[iheartthed]

Ghetto, where have you been? Too much money? We are broke. China could call in their markers and probably would own a good part of the United States. Too much money!! No, we have too many crooks. [[see: Madoff, Bernie)

We are not broke. The national debt is getting high, but it's nowhere near as much of GDP as countries like Japan and many of our European counterparts.

[Hermod]

so long as Detroit is no longer the dumping ground [[figuratively and literally) for problems the rest of the region wishes to ignore.

What exactly has been "dumped" on Detroit? Detroit's problems have been home grown and the people with solutions have been driven from the city by Detroit's home grown problems. What problem has been "moved" into the city by the suburbs or the state?