...Or possible Detroit is the first of many American cities to go through an as yet unpredictable transformation. Stories like this discount the potentially positive effect this kind of 'reset' can have on a city. Let's face it - Detroit had lost its way a long time before all this economic turmoil sent many of us in a tailspin.
But of course sensational headlines like this get the most attention.
Yeah, I heard a story this morning saying that Detroit now has enough empty space that some other large cities could fit inside it.
The first thing I thought was "what a great opportunity to create parks and greenways!" Even if they don't have the money to develop them right now, the land will be super cheap. Doing some of this and announcing plans for more would surely draw some business and development. "Look, you can have offices here, and workers can ride their bikes through a forest from their homes!"
I know you're trying to be positive here, but this is one of my biggest sticking points when talking about Detroit.
The collapse of detroit is a catastrophic failure in what is supposed to be a well-run country. There's no real consensus on what went wrong and how to fix it, and worse, most people don't really seem to care.
In some neighborhoods, house values have dropped to $300. "Enough empty space that some other large cities could fit inside it". With that kind of exodus and drop in value, you'd think there was a Chernobyl there, but there wasn't. Just a completely unexplained failure of management.
So yeah, parks and greenways are great, but don't overlook the massive failure that allowed that. Chernobyl is now an amazing wildlife preserve.
I don't think I'd be the only person outside the US to be thoroughly intrigued by the opportunities provided by $300 houses. I'm in Adelaide (AU) which is about as far from anywhere in the world as most places and house prices here are crippling.
I know a $300 house is going to be a shithole in the middle of nowhere but you could buy 1,500 of those shitholes for the land value alone of one place in a mid-range suburb here!
Does anyone else dream of buying up a suburb, fencing it off and creating a CoD Nuketown-style paintball arena?
Rent and utilities are only part of the story. I'm reminded of that old saw about what are the most important factors in real estate:
1. location
2. location
3. location
Location effects many important things, including the number and quality of neighbors, what sorts of things happen after dark, and generally what will be considered "normal" in the local culture. You can change a lot of things about a property after you buy it, do a lot of fixups, remodelling, heck even totally tear down and build up a new house on the land. But you'll have a much harder time changing the sorts of neighbors and larger community you'll have. Especially over the short/medium term.
I think it's more tricky than pure management failure. A heavily manufacturing based city such as Detroit was going to suffer this fate eventually; I think the biggest failing was ignoring the warning signs for so long. It's not like people didn't know that the bulk of manufacturing jobs were being shipped elsewhere.
And I don't think it's such a mystery either; as the big 3 go, so goes Detroit (or so it use to be). The hard economic times sped this collapse along probably sooner than people were ready to deal with.
Still I think this is an opportunity not just for Detroit but for our entire nation. Solving this problem is key to moving America back on track - this is not just an isolated problem of 'Detroit'.
If fact, for some time now I've wondered what happens when we automate all jobs out of existence. The writing is on the walls, really, it's not like you can't automate almost everything with enough technology and brainpower.I think in the long run we will become a nation of creative artists - and by that I don't mean purely 'art', but rather anything that needs to be made that others take pleasure in.
Think about it this way - we all have a nearly insatiable desire for new interesting things. And out of all the things we humans do, I think creativity is probably the only area that can't easily (or possibly ever) be automated.
What this means from an economic standpoint I have no clue, but it seems inevitable that we all end up out of 'work' at some point in the future.
I'm not saying things don't suck there; I just thought that was understood. But since they suck, hey look at this opportunity!
To your point about management: what do you mean? (I'm honestly asking.) Who should be in charge of making sure a town doesn't get lopsided with one industry, for example? And was that even a bad thing, considering how long things went well? Maybe in 20 years we'll look back and say "50 years of prosperity, 10 years of the dumps and now Detroit is doing great again. Not terrible."
I disagree strongly. Detroit's 30 glory years were the exception and they have long past (let's say 1940-1970). Now that so many countries have advanced industrial infrastructure, it's just another really cold place to live.
What kind of management alternatives would you suggest? I suppose a different policy regarding balance of trade might have been impactful but it's too late now.
Have you ever flown over Michigan? It's already a nature preserve. You don't really need one in the middle of Detroit.
Nature in Michigan is astonishingly boring anyhow. I am not kidding. We have very few native plants, very few native animals, very few native birds and frogs and so on. My wife majored in zoology at MSU and one of the assignments was to memorize all the names and sounds of frogs in Michigan, and the professor commented on how easy that was relative to most states. You can't even blame EVIL MAN, most of the state is basically untouched. A few of the larger mammals were driven extinct or chased away but most of the lack of biodiversity was here when we got here.
Michigan isn't the valley or the east coast. Dropping a nature preserve in the middle of Detroit isn't giving Michigan wildlife its last bastion against the advance of EVIL MAN, it's increasing the land left to Nature in Michigan by fractions of a percent.
But of course sensational headlines like this get the most attention.