borderline totalitarian rule.
Fastest growing, or faust-est growing? 
Many cities have hit bottom and come back. Detroit probably will because there’s nothing else that can be done with it. But this has little to do with my comment. When all of the money moves out, the options for those who remain are very, very limited.
that’s the thing. what kicked off Detroit’s decline wasn’t something they had much control over. What they could control was how they dealt with that, and in some cases they fucked up. Coleman Young pretty much subsisted on playing himself up as HMFIC and blaming Oakland County for all of the city’s woes. Dennis Archer seemed a decent guy (met him myself,) but gave up after one term. We all know what a corrupt shithead Kilpatrick is, and Dave Bing also seems a decent guy but has had the rug pulled out from under him. In fairness, the rug was beyond threadbare and probably tore while Snyder pulled it.
honestly, it’s really best to compare the City of Detroit to GM. Both built up their structures when they were living large and owned their little part of the world. Both agreed to obligations that must’ve seemed sensible at the time. Both have declined precipitously in the following decades after they no longer owned their little parts of the world. Both have been rendered bankrupt by their declines in the face of those obligations they agreed to decades ago. And for both, those obligations have limited their abilities to spend on what needs money now.
I’ve said that GM started going bankrupt in 1973. Similarly, Detroit’s bankruptcy has been decades in the making. Rick Wagoner didn’t destroy GM. Kwame Kilpatrick didn’t destroy Detroit. However, neither did anything to improve their respective charges. In both cases, pointing fingers and looking gift horses in their mouths isn’t going to get anything done.
Maybe, just maaaaybe, those of us that live in the Detroit area don’t find it very funny, what with the fact the situation directly impacts our lives and futures and all. Everyone else can gawk at it like a freak show or point and laugh because it’s not affecting them. So sorry we find the situation serious and worrisome instead of a barrel of laughs. :rolleyes:
I just saw this on Drudge-how come Detroit (surrounding area) never became a big aviation design and building area (like Seattle)?
The Ford-run Willow Run plant churned out over 9000 B-24 bombers-why didn’t they start making civilian planes after the war?
I’m missing something here…(BTW, I don’t care either way about the construction of a stadium, or Detroit, for that matter): If the Red Wings can’t bring in money, now, is it supposed to bring it in with a new stadium? It had better be a stadium with free beer, is all I can say.
So, I can see (though I don’t know if the arguments are true) where a city might give perks to bring a team to town, and that may generate income, but, how is building a new stadium going to help? Is there such a huge demand for Red Wing seats, and the current stadium running off customers? I don’t see the argument *for *the new stadium.
I have to retract something I said earlier. Joe Louis is apparently not currently intended to become part of Cobo Center. I guess that was an early proposal but isn’t in the plan anymore. That’s what I get for missing staff meetings.
Because there was more money to be made from cars.
With apologies to all Detroiters who think I’m rubbing salt in their wounds, you’d have to go a long ways to find a more perfect example of a city built on one industry that did not foresee [any chance of] the decline of that industry, and did not find effective ways to cope and regroup over the decades of continuing decline. It’s the kind of collapse due to shortsightedness that has no easy fix… and perhaps no real fix at all. I would not be surprised if, 100 years from now, there is no Detroit; it will be an area reformed into smaller, more manageable city/towns that can each sustain itself.
Still, you talk like some mysterious ineffable force has caused the decline of the auto industry in Detroit. I don’t want to go all Michael Moore here, but it’s pretty clear that auto industry executives chose to fuck Detroit over by moving those jobs elsewhere so they could increase their own paychecks by putting less of the billions of dollars their corporations make into the pockets of the people who live in Michigan.
It’s not like the soil just mysteriously quit growing Buicks and they couldn’t find the right combination of fertilizers to fix it.
Gary, IN.
My interest was about corruption. I read an article about the Austin team several years ago. The link I gave was just what turned up with Google: I didn’t study it, or look for better writing.
The point claimed in the article I saw years ago was that Bush and henchmen drove around Austin with almost carte blanche eminent domain authority, grabbing irrelevant property that looked good. Exaggerated? Probably.
And it wasn’t like they didn’t have plenty of warning-FORD was shutting down its ancient River Rouge plant in the 1950s-because it was obsolete (it was built to make Model T Fords). Why didn’t FORD build a new plant at that site, instead of moving out?
The UAW was a big reason.
Incidentally, the UAW’s stupid insistence upon industry-wide contracts and wage levels killed off the smaller auto plants, in short order. While GM and FORD could handle the wages/work rules, smaller firms like Studebaker, Packard, etc. could not-when you can spread costs over several million nits, the UAW wages could be handled…but when you are only making 200,000 cars a year, they were deadly.
In a similar fashion, the UAW killed manufactring in Detroit-the auto makers found they could build modern plants in newer ares, and that was essentially it for Detroit.
Uh, they did. It’s now Dearborn Truck Plant. I was just there yesterday, and I can assure you I saw many F-150s being built.
oh, and another thing:
Are you under the impression that the people working at plants they run in Illinois, Missouri, Cleveland, and Kentucky (among others) aren’t UAW-represented?
I can’t imagine how you’re reading that into my posts.
At least I’m not engaging in absurdist simplification.
I’m reading the part where you describe the driving force of what has happened to Detroit
and later the city’s inability to
The AM transistor radio business declined. The auto industry didn’t decline. It’s still making tons of money. To paraphrase Bobcat Goldthwait, Detroit didn’t lose it’s job. Detroit knows where it’s job is, it’s just that when Detroit goes to look, there’s just some other guy doing it now. The auto industry got very consciously taken away from Detroit and given to other places.
And I will grant that is simplification* to blame the executives of the auto industry for that, but it sure wasn’t a line worker who said to himself one day, “You know, I bet my job could be done a lot cheaper by someone in Kentucky or Korea. I should put that in the suggestion box.” Those decisions were ultimately made by guys wearing shoes that cost more than my car.
- It might surprise you to know, for instance, that I blame the unions for putting the corporate execs in the position of finding other options.
The industry certainly did decline in Detroit, which has continued to decline in almost every way… which is was what the discussion was about.
It takes real effort to read my words as referring to the decline of the industry overall. Even the slump in US automaking from 1975-85 was just that, a slump in one part of the entire well-thriving industry.
You mean Arlington, not Austin. Also, the article is more than exaggeration. It’s totally ludicrous.
The site of the new stadium is right next door to the old stadium. I mean it is literally located in the same area. Parking for the new stadium is located right where the old stadium stood. There was no driving around looking to steal land on the cheap. They built it exactly where the baseball stadium had existing since the 1960s.
There are cites, even from rightish think tanks:
Countercite? Or is random Internet guy saying “ludicrous” all you got?
There is plenty wrong with it.
Not the least of which is being located in downtown Detroit.