Posted on 08/05/2009 10:07:51 AM PDT by canuck_conservative
Detroit was the Silicon Valley of the 1920s — the booming home of a glamorous new industry, a place where huge fortunes were conjured in years, sometimes months. But while the creators of the computer industry have as yet bequeathed very little to the built environment, the automobile industry piled up around it an astounding American city, in astoundingly little time.
The Detroit of 1910 was a thriving Midwestern milling and shipping entrepot, a bigger Minneapolis. The Detroit of 1930 had rebuilt itself as a grand metropolis of skyscrapers, mansions, movie palaces and frame cottages spreading northward beyond the line of sight, exceeding Philadelphia and St. Louis, rivaling Chicago and New York. I had a chance to tour central Detroit recently, my first visit to the downtown core in many, many years.
Some of the old visual magnificence remains, has even been improved. The Guardian tower displays again the blazing colors of its vaulted atrium, long covered up by dry wall. The marble adorning the Fisher building still glows. The Renaissance Center, once as walled and moated against the city as a medieval castle, has lowered its defenses, especially on the side facing the Detroit River. But for the most part, all is decay. Whole towers stand empty, waiting to join the long line of grand structures that have either been abandoned to pillage and ruin, like Detroit’s once magnificent neoclassical skyscraper of a train station, or else pulled down entirely, like the downtown Dayton Hudson department store, once the largest enclosed shopping space in the United States.
Detroit’s fall was as steep and rapid as its rise....
(Excerpt) Read more at network.nationalpost.com ...
Go to Google Images and search on something to the effect of “Detroit Michigan Central station.”
Frum managed to get in his inevitable gratuitous dig at Palin. Another Yaley who has fits at the notion that someone from a mere state school might presume to high government office. This is sickening.
Is that racist?/sarc.
Thanks for posting that link.
An interesting but truly sad look at a part of what our foolish politicians have taken from America.
He nailed the reason for its demise. The race riots in 1967, the subsequent take-over of the city by corrupt black officials, and widespread crime accelerated white flight and left Detroit in the hands of the criminal poor and the criminal politicians.
No it is because of corruption, not good intentions. I was there during Coleman Young, and again, during Kwame. If I could post a story that would not be deemed racist I would tell you.
It takes the drivers 15 hours or so to go from Livonia to the Dakotas, but they think they are entering another country.
Over the past couple years we have brought here 8-9 semi-loads of manufacturing equipment from Michigan. Our young machinists laugh derisively at the UAW labels on the older tools.
What manufacturing that remains in this country will be done in low tax open shop states like this one where people appreciate risk taking and wealth creation.
I have a different theory. More than any other city of the old industrial belt, Detroit was a massive "company town." Well, "companies" as in the auto companies. I wasn't there, but looking at the aftermath, one thing stands out--this city was abandoned by the powers who built it. I see no evidence that the auto companies showed any shred of civic responsibility to the city that hosted them during the good years.
The executive suites and their financiers appear to have sold out, folded up and left, or cocooned themselves in office enclaves, leaving their massive manufacturing plants to sit and rot untended, unmourned, and unreplaced.
The populace left had no capacity to salvage these cavernous hulks and do anything with them. How could a bunch of people with no management, planning or financial skills, no particular wealth and no capital, do anything but scratch around for a living in the shadow of the monster derelicts.
If you want to ask why this blight has persisted for so many years, and sunk so deep, then yes, look at the factors of demoralization, ignorance, race politics and corruption. But I think Detroit basically is a city whose commercial leaders just pulled the plug.
Good for you. Indeed - the unionization is a another very critical piece of the puzzle, and another piece that is on the table to be exported to the rest of the nation.
I’m a shop owner - or was. My little shop is just outside the city limits, and is in the process of being shut down. I’m trying to figure out how to store my beloved machine tools, because I refuse to give them away or scrap them after a life spent accumulating. We’ve not had enough work to maintain employees for a couple years, and have finally reached the point where the overhead is no longer being covered.
So why stay? Those elements that made us what we once were are still here - raw resources, land, transportation and most of the world’s fresh water. Politics can be changed. If we ever do recover from this disease that has swept our nation, Michigan will again be a viable place to run a business.
Until then, it’s grease and tarps for my iron.
If she runs for national office, I will support her 100%. I am tired of holding my nose to vote for the lesser of 2 evils.
If you would like to be added or dropped from the Michigan ping list, please freepmail me.
Guess I’ll have to see if the machine movers are looking for help, they seem to be they only ones working here in MI.
Wish I could put the /s on this post.
So????
Yours is the best take on this thread. Bravo.
unions
liberals
taxes
Well, it’s a small step in the right direction but yesterday Detroit picked the 18 candidates who will vie for the City Council in the Fall. Gone will be a lot of the deadwood from the current corrupt Council, such as Monica Conyers and Martha Reeves and a couple of others not seeking re-election. The Council will have a lot of new, young blood that is promising at least in the fact that they appear to be people of honor. The new mayor, Dave Bing, is a man of class as well with a business background.
Also, maybe most importantly, in November the voters will vote on whether to elect council members on a district basis, rather than city-wide as it stands now. This should go a long way towards making a single representative accountable for all areas of the city, and not just the downtown. There are glimmers of hope that the city of Detroit has reached rock bottom after the affairs of Kwame Kilpatrick and Monica Conyers and can begin to rise again on a modest scale.
Troll much ?
“Frum can’t resist skewering Palin in every thing he writes.”
Yes - that very nonsequitur makes me look more closely at his analysis - and it comes up wanting.
Sures, the race problem wrongly dealt with caused big trouble, and, yes, the unwillingness to preserve the relics of the past has contributed enormously to Detroit’s undesirability today.
But he doesn’t really put his finger on what caused Detroit to miss the rejuvenation boat. Why is it not a viable city? Boston Is. Chicago is. New Orleans i - - - now, here’s something that could throw light on our question!
How viable a city is New Orleans now? Did the hurricane do to New Orleans what the collapse of the American auto industry did to Detroit? Namely, expose a major and catostrophic political shortcoming?
If you're talking about David Frum, I read the article and found no specific reference at all to the '67 riots, which was the major turning point.
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