Thread: Detroit MI. "Becoming a Ghost Town?"

"The Incredible Shrinking City: Detroit Is Becoming a Ghost Town"By Peter Gorenstein | Daily Ticker – Fri, Mar 25, 2011 9:52 AM EDT


The Motor City's engine is dying. Detroit's population shrank by more than 25% in the last decade, according to Census statistics reported in the New York Times. The city's population fell to 713,777 in 2010, a drop of almost 240,000 residents. That's 100,000 more than Katrina-ravaged New Orleans lost.

Detroit was obviously hit hard by the long-standing problems at the Big Three automakers and a general shift in the manufacturing base. But isn't the city making a comeback, as Chrysler's Eminem commercial would like you to believe?

It's true, industry is not dead in the Motor City. General Motors is profitable again and Chrysler's operations are improving. But as Daniel Gross points out in the accompanying clip, no matter how strong the auto recovery proves to be, jobs will never be as plentiful. In a cruel irony for citizens, Detroit has become too efficient for its own population.

The question is what to do with what's left of Detroit.

One answer: Tear it down. "With more than 20 percent of the lots in the 139-square-mile city vacant, the mayor is in the midst of a program to demolish 10,000 empty residential buildings. But for many, the city already seems hollowed out," the NYT reports.

Detroit is not the only place dealing with an oversupply of housing. The Census Bureau also shows that 18% of all Florida homes -- more than 1.6 million properties -- are vacant.

Beyond tearing down homes, Detroit might be better-served by attracting immigrants with the inticement of cheap housing and the chance at a better life.

What do you think? Is immigration the way to stop Detroit from shrinking?

watch video...

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... nt-4915667

Bringing in more immigrants will improve this????

What do they have that US Citizens don't have?

The ruins of detroit..... At the end of the XIXth Century, mankind was about to fulfill an old dream. The idea of a fast and autonomous means of displacement was slowly becoming a reality for engineers all over the world. Thanks to its ideal location on the Great Lakes Basin, the city of Detroit was about to generate its own industrial revolution. Visionary engineers and entrepreneurs flocked to its borders.

In 1913, up-and-coming car manufacturer Henry Ford perfected the first large-scale assembly line. Within few years, Detroit was about to become the world capital of automobile and the cradle of modern mass-production. For the first time of history, affluence was within the reach of the mass of people. Monumental skyscapers and fancy neighborhoods put the city’s wealth on display. Detroit became the dazzling beacon of the American Dream. Thousands of migrants came to find a job. By the 50's, its population rose to almost 2 million people. Detroit became the 4th largest city in the United States.

The automobile moved people faster and farther. Roads, freeways and parking lots forever reshaped the landscape. At the beginning of the 50's, plants were relocated in Detroit's periphery. The white middle-class began to leave the inner city and settled in new mass-produced suburban towns. Highways frayed the urban fabric. Deindustrialization and segregation increased. In 1967, social tensions exploded into one of the most violent urban riots in American history. The population exodus accelerated and whole neighbourhoods began to vanish. Outdated downtown buildings emptied. Within fifty years Detroit lost more than half of its population.
Detroit, industrial capital of the XXth Century, played a fundamental role shaping the modern world. The logic that created the city also destroyed it. Nowadays, unlike anywhere else, the city’s ruins are not isolated details in the urban environment. They have become a natural component of the landscape. Detroit presents all archetypal buildings of an American city in a state of mummification. Its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great Empire.

This work is thus the result of a five-year collaboration started in 2005.
http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

I recently read an article about "Several" Auto Manufacturing Plants here in the United States, that will be closing down "Temporarily" because get this... The Earthquake and Sunami in Japan has DISRUPTED some Parts...
I can remember the day when EVERY PART on a FORD, CHEVY, DODGE were manufactured right here in America.
And we wonder WHY we are NOT the Greatest Country in the World anymore?

I can remember hearing all the warning signs when automation and technology was first coming out.