Especially when that abandoned city is in the middle of a sprawling urban metropolis...

That is the question plaguing Detroit.

Detroit proper once boasted a population of over 1.8 million people. Official tallies come in around 900,000, now. And, in reality, I'd be surprised if it was over 750,000 (some estimates are as low as 600,000). The 2010 census should be a fun exercise in politics, but that's another issue, entirely.

Anyhow, you have a very cash-strapped city with vast swaths of very low population density and even lower income. Do you try to consolidate? I can't see this going down very well. You can't just bring in the bulldozers like SimCity....

So what do you think? What WOULD you do? It's a question that may be facing more and more of the US as city populations thin and income dwindles.

I vote for a new prison. We could call it "Escape from Detroit"!

Anyone seen Snake Plisken?

Regards,
Ltstanfo

Well for starters, you should relocate the Red Wings to Winnipeg!

OY! That's low, my friend! You guys should just grab back your own team from Phoenix. No one except Wayne Gretzky would miss them. And maybe we could appease him by giving Brantford the Atlanta Thrashers! Sounds like a win/win/win to me.

Too expensive to bulldoze. Disconnect utilities and remove anything hazardous from the area. Maybe remove the doors from all the houses. That is it. Restrict access by blocking roads and let nature do it's business. Give it a couple hundred years and nothing will be left but wilderness.

Sadly, your question -- and the answer -- can only point to a place like Gary, Indiana which was home of all the steel industry in the early 20th century, now it's pretty much a ghost town complete with rotting buildings.

Rest assured though, Detroit and Gary are not alone.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/ ... 381&page=1

Not really, though. Gary's a city much more like Flint, MI. Flint built up around a giant GM facility, peaked at almost 200,000 population, and then sank back to the 110,000 or so they have, now. Both Flint and Gary have not been part of a major metropolis, and have a layout that can be somewhat sanely collapsed and condensed. I'm not as familiar with Gary, but Flint has condensed fairly successfully, and left a section of ghost town that is slowly being chipped down, while the rest is still somewhat sane.

Detroit suffered a similar % of population loss... But that is pretty much where the similarities end. People forget that at one point, Detroit was a major US city rivaling New York, Chicago, and LA. In 1950, Detroit was the 4th largest US city. Detroit proper is over 140 sq. miles. There are Major League sporting complexes, amazing old theaters, and Fortune 500 corporate headquarters scattered throughout this area. These things have a great value and you really can't relocate them. But you have huge swaths of largely unlivable urban residential between them and the people that attend the games, plays, and corporate conventions.

Detroit proper only has a population of about 750,000, but Detroit Metro has a population of over 4,500,000! So you have all the facilities of a big city, but contained inside a core of urban blight, which, in turn, is surrounded by the ring of "Metro Detroit" which contains all the actual income, all the middle to upper class housing, and then some of their own smaller sporting complexes, convention centers, and corporate headquarters. It's a complete mess! A completely 100% commuter city. The population of Detroit proper doesn't work at all, and the people that work in Detroit live in the suburbs.

So what do you do? You can't block off the core, because there are a lot of useful things in there. You can't bulldoze the residential because there's no money. And even if you had the money, you still couldn't do anything because there are _A_FEW_ people living there. Those are the people who either don't have the means to move, or would rather die than move; so good luck relocating them.

Just shrugging and turning a blind eye has been the strategy for the past 40 years, and it's not working out very well.

I watched a TV show last night about the Detroit music scene from Motown via the MC5 and the Stoogies to Eminem. It touched on this topic and it was quite alarming to see, even the brief glimpse covered on the programme.

Well, from the state of the city address yesterday, it looks like Detroit is at least considering attempting a consolidation plan. Of course, as they know, it could end up wildly unpopular...



(Complete Detroit News article here)

There was a pretty good documentary on the BBC the other week called Requiem for Detroit. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572190/

Thanks for that link. I hadn't heard about it. With Tyree Guyton (of Heidelberg Project) and Martha Reeves (ex-Vandella, now city council woman), it has to be an adventure in the absurd. I wonder if it'll make BBC America or if I can find a torrent of it. Any opinions formed by an outsider after meeting a cast like that have got to be interesting.

*sigh*....
What do you do with a city that is so full of self-caused tragedy?

So many tragedies in a city. So many kids born into families torn apart by drugs, neglect, and abuse. Even if you're lucky, and have a solid family and friends, you've still got streets full of prostitutes, pushers, and the insane. It's such a struggle to overcome being born and growing up in a city like Detroit, but this boy appeared to have been well on his way. Sadly, though, despite his family's efforts, it's all over after a senseless drive-by. Events like this one are just crushing, and all too common.



How do you fix a city, or even culture, where this is so prevalent?