Detroit, 1950-2009
Time Magazine has an interesting article by Daniel Okrent about Detroit’s fate. What was once known as America’s Arsenal of Democracy and became the fourth largest city in the United States, shows signs of accelerated decay. Unemployment rate is almost 30%, business is all but (almost) shutdown, and the town of Robocop has nothing but a gloomy future. What is relevant in Okrent’s piece is his discussion on the political economy of Detroit’s failure. Populist politicians, overconfident automobile companies and pampered unionized workers intertwined to make of this Michigan city a urban disaster. Check out the pics of Detroit’s remains by Sean Hemmerle. They’re quite scary.
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Nice post — short and to the point with two good links.
The similarities between Detroit and Baltimore are becoming scarily similar. I wrote a short blog post about this and linked to this article on the Maryland Public Policy Institute’s blog, which will be up tomorrow morning (08/05/10) at 8 AM EST, in case you want to check it out.
http://www.mdpolicy.org/policyblog/detail/its-not-the-crime-its-the-fear-of-crime
Keep up the good work.