I already addressed this. A police state doesn’t necessarily make cities better. I repeat: would you rather live in Pyongyang with it’s strict law-and-order policy, or Amsterdam with its laissez-faire attitude?
Also in terms of land area Detroit is 55th in area. 138.8 sq miles is not big at all.
Detroit has lost less than a million people from it’s 50s peak. Chicago has lost just about the same in raw numbers (less proportionally).
The cities in the north tend to be in decline simply because of too many local governments. The cities of the South and West, tend to be much larger and have room to grow. Suburban businesses can easily take growth from core cities.
I read a history of Newark, NJ and it’s interesting to see, Newark one of the smallest cities in terms of area, by 1920 was already experiencing the effects of suburbs. History shows 25% of city workers lived OUTSIDE of Newark and 50% of all corporate managers of companies in the cities lived outside the city.
Newark was being filled with low level, uneducated people that came from all over to work in factories. This was great as long as there were jobs for such people. When those jobs started drying up, after WWII, decline set in hard.
Suburbs all to often can leech of the main cities cream and leave the main city with the problems. If there was a central planning authority where all cities in the area shared for a common good the solutions wouldn’t be so hard. Mayor Daley of Chicago, pointed this out when he said, “Chicago doesn’t want Walmart, so it goes a mile down the road and sets up a Walmart in a suburb.”
Taxes are only part of it. When a company comes to a new area they generally negotiate some kind of tax free or reduced tax status with the local government so that doesn’t often mean much.
An example in Illinois is the city of Harvey, IL. When the largest employer, Ingalls Hospital threatened to move, the mayor did a study and found out the hospital pays no tax and virtually none of the workers who made above minimum salaries lived in the city. He told them to “Go, you don’t help us much anyway.” Ingalls stayed when it found out how much it’d cost them to move.
America has a weird sense of living conditions now. For instance, the Colorado river is the only reason Phoenix can support a million plus people. Without the Colorado River it’s estimated that Los Angeles could only support about 4 million in the metro area. The metro area is around 14 million (metro not city limits).
Yet cities like Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, which are overloaded with water, continue to suffer. As resources get used up new solutions will have to be looked at to keep these thirsty cities alive. We’ve already seen issue with Atlanta, which has grown beyond it’s actual capacities.
The last thing to look at with Detroit is the strong union ethic. I’m not blaming unions for the decline of Detroit, but there is a strong stigma and association that makes businesses shy away from any place known for strong unions. Even when there is no cause for alarm, the stigma remains.
The company thinks, we can go in without a union in Detroit, but the people are used to the idea there, so after we spend money to get in there, they’ll change their minds. Better go with a place where the people are very anti-union and avoid the possibility.
Now even if the above isn’t true, it shows an example of the thinking when business choose to do their locating.
You make some good points-Boston is surrounded by tens of small cities and town-each with its own government-costly and stupid. Why not merge them together? THe reason you cited-people left thecities because of crowding and corrupt city machine governments.
My opinion is that Detroit would make some swell farmland.
Detroit is at war with the suburbs over control of the water. Detroit built and maintains the system. Some northern suburbs claim they should control it. It is yet another battle for Detroit to fight. It is a cash cow for Detroit. I fear the horrible economy in Detroit might result in their taking water money to run the city and the water system will fall in disrepair.
People always speak in terms of people “taking” things like jobs or businesses as if people or municipalities have some sort of God-given right to them. People and business move to where they think their best interests lie. If you miss them so badly, you should do more to keep them around.
Many of the problems with Northern cities can be traced back the invention of the automobile. The car enabled people to leave the cramped conditions of the city and move to little houses in the suburbs. This had the effect of anyone who could afford to leave the city, did. Cities were now left to provide the same amount of services but with less of a tax base.
The problem was compounded by the decline of heavy industry and manufacturing as a major source of employment. Information age companies don’t need to be near major waterways and transportation hubs.
What has happened in the past few decades is that cities have entered something of a resurgance. Companies are finding that there are advantages to having offices in NYC or Boston because the top talent wants to live there. This has actually led to a sort of reverse White Flght where wealthy people are returning to the cities and gentrifying what were once crime-ridden neighborhoods in Brookly, Queens, Harlem and even the Bronx. Many suburban communities OTOH are experiencing a rise in criminal activitiy and other issues as more affluent residents move out.
What you will notice as well is that newer cities in the South tend to be designed differently from those in the North. Cities like NYC and Boston were designed before the invention of the automobile (as is evident to anyone who ever drives in them). Their design consists of either a narrow street grid or an organic design that evolved over a few hundred years. Newer cities are designed in a sprawling “big block” pattern. Essentially, cities like Phoenix AZ or Dallas TX are designed on huge grids of 6 lane surface highways about a mile on a side. Each box is then filled in with office parks, malls and housing subdivisions. Maybe they sometimes have a central business district with all the office towers.
Newark has the misfortune of being too far away from Manhattan to enjoy the same wave of gentrification that has hit Hoboken, Jersey City and the rest of Hudson Country. And it is too close to Manhattan (only about 12 miles away) such that any large business that would move to Newark mind as well move to NYC.
And if there is no benefit to living in the city because of work or culture, why not live out in the burbs with more space?
It seems to me that this is a common problem for a lot of mid-sized cities. If you are going to do business, why would you pick Hartford or New Haven over Boston or NYC?
You are misrepresenting my position. The island nation/cityof Singapore is NOT a police state-it is just a place where people have respect for the rights of others and the common good. Which is why you can leave your coat at a restaurant table-and come back next day and get it.
Singapore executes drug dealers-they make that very clear. Anyone convicted of drug trafficking there will be executed.
Detroit is the ultimate result of tolerating antisocila and criminal behavior-look how well that worked!
I used to do the “obsolence analysis” on the idea of putting up a new factory in a place giving us tax benefits.
It went something like this.
It costs $XXM to build factory. We save $XM in tax breaks over the ten year life cycle. The state is going to give us $XM worth of incentives. We write of $XM in depreciation over that ten year period. It costs us $XM to lay everyone off when we close the plant. It will cost us $XXK in taxes for the years we don’t have the tax break. That factory (with its 30 year life) will be open 12 years. We will pay taxes for two, then pay severance. We knew the day we opened the factory and the mayor cut the ribbon talking about 400 new jobs in their small town that in twelve years we’d lay all those people off because the tax break would be gone and someone else would be offering us a deal to move to their small town.
Its even better when the IRS lets to accelerate depreciation - like they are if you invest currently! Sometimes, you are closing the factory without ever paying a dime in taxes into the local infrastructure.
This was the second job I had out of college and killed the idea that I’d ever be loyal to a company.
An interesting idea, but I would be wary of eating any plants that had been grown on formerly urban ground, at least until an extensive study of the chemical content of the soil had been performed.
You speak as if your “obsolence analysis” is a bad thing. Loyalty is just something people want when they want to take advantage of you. Wouldn’t you rather knowing someone is going to make economic and financial decisions based on an objective cost/benefit analysis rather than their whim, wishful thinking, gut instinct or whatever?
Detroit has almost transportation system. The buses are bad and run sporadically. They are reputed to be dangerous. Almost no suburbanites use them. You drive everywhere in Detroit.
The area gave huge tax breaks to corporations over the last few years. When the tax rates kicked in they left. None of them employed as many people as they promised to. They just took the money and ran.
Detroit has an educated work force. When the big 3 were up and running, we had tons of engineers, programmers and management people working there. There were many suppliers doing work for them.
The people of Detroit and the suburbs did not suddenly get stupid. There are lots of talented and educated people whose jobs left them.
They can not sell their homes to chase jobs. They are often very underwater on mortgages . You can not just walk from a mortgage. You still owe the money. Who can afford 2 mortgages? Especially when the Detroit area home was big and expensive. They bought the American dream and now it owns them.
Companies look at dozens factors when they are planning to relocate. Not just unions but infrastructure, crime, workforce quality, economics, local wages, cost of living, transportation hubs and pretty much everything else you could possibly think of.
It’s what they call a vicious circle. Business don’t want to move to Detroit because they have a weak economy. Detroit has a weak economy because they can’t attract businesses. How do convince top grads from the Ivy League or MIT to come to Detroit instead of NYC, Boston or Silicon Valley?
**gonzomax **- If you are from Detroit now I understand your shitty outlook on the US economy. Fortunately the entire country isn’t Detroit.
Plenty of guinea pigs already with some 875 gardens involved in the Garden Resource Program. Cheaper just to check if the cancer rates of people eating Detroit farm product is significantly higher than their neighbors. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were lower. Michigan people eat a lot of processed food IME.
There are areas in Detroit where the dirt has been tested extensively and is known to be contaminated with lead and other heavy metals. In your link, in both the draft of the Urban Agriculture Policy and the application for the Garden Resource Program there are references to the necessity of getting your soil tested. This isn’t an issue that’s being ignored. The handful of collective gardens I’ve visited in Detroit are all using raised beds with trucked-in soil.
Ah, but the problem the rest of the country should be asking is, is Detroit “just Detroit”, or is it the canary in the coal mine?
The usual saying is that when the US economy catches a cold, Detroit gets pneumonia.
The US economy will catch plenty of pneumonia soon enough. Detroit is full of people that business no longer needs. They have been abandoned .
The middle class is getting the same treatment now. They are not needed . Technical school students and college grads are next. The jobs are moving to a lower paying climate. They will not come back. Providing jobs to American workers is not part of a corporate plan. that is the reality.
Which should tell you it has nothing to do with politics at all. They are acting as they do because they can apparently get away with it. They are not competing with Repubs to get seats. They are competing with each other They are squabbling over the bones that are left. A council job is a great job in Detroit. The mayor has a license to steal.
Detroit has a large amount of land that runs along the river,. It has never been developed to beautify the city of to make it available for the public. Nope, most of it is industrial property or river front homes for the wealthy. Poor can drive by the water. Look quickly and they can actually see it in some places.
I beg to differ a bit on this one, gonzo. The southwest side of the city is all industrial, sure. But get up to Joe Louis arena, and there’s Hart Plaza and the (admittedly relatively new) Riverwalk. Then there’s all of Belle Isle, still free to the public. Northeast of Belle Isle bridge, there are public parks along the waterfront all the way to the Pointes. And if you think those are all high-end homes along there, you haven’t driven around the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood.
As an incidental note, this is why I see no plausible expectation of President Palin anytime soon. Her competition won’t be Democratcs, but other Republicans, who will eviscerate her in the lengthy primary process because they’ll be competing among themselves for the nomination, long before the actual election.
And I’m not sure why Detroit Democrats would be expected to behave like, say, Denver Democrats or Des Moines Democrats.
The mayor of Detroit makes over 176 thou a year. He gets to appoint lots of friends to lucrative positions. It is a great job. sadly, that is not enough. The mayors of Detroit have been involved in corruption and payoffs for a long time.
It just seems to be accepted by the voters.