Harbinger of the Future: Devastated Detroit
"The full significance of the financial crisis bedeviling the United States, and much of the rest of the developed world, is clearly apparent to those who dare seek to acquire an up close and personal view of the massive, full spectrum collapse underway in Detroit. The once prosperous city used to be one of the nation’s most prestigious industrial centers, providing well-paying jobs, and upward social mobility to residents throughout southeastern Michigan. But this is no longer the case. Detroit is collapsing, and the tragic, seemingly irreversible process, is destroying the dreams and financial viability of an entire region crucial to the nation’s overall economic health and well-being.
Taken as a whole, the scale of destruction and decline is unprecedented in U. S. history, excepting times of vicious, prolonged warfare. For this reason, and many others, more critical attention should be devoted to the manner in which forces such and de-industrialization and globalization are spreading hardship and chaos that may well eventually engender catastrophic collapse across the length and breadth of this still wealthy nation.
The scene shifts from troubled to disastrous as one rides into town along any of the major corridors leading into the downtown area where the big, gleaming gambling casinos sit in isolated splendor hard on the shores of the muscular Detroit River. The first signs of the massive decay underway in the heart of the city are the abandoned, boarded up businesses. Soon after one crosses the city’s perimeter, they appear on both sides of the street in growing numbers. For block after block, they are interspersed with greasy spoon restaurants, junk dealers, second hand stores and down market pawnshops. Garbage and trash line the streets in heaps that are frequently shoulder high. Weed-filled lots are so common, and so grossly overgrown, that it is difficult to reject the notion that much of the city is returning to bush of the sort associated with the African outback. Excepting stores whose primary product is “beer and wine,” there is no commercial presence in many neighborhoods.
Moreover, the distressing truth is that in virtually every section of town, burned out hulks of abandoned buildings dominates the setting. They come in all shapes and sizes, many of them old, and once distinguished. In a way, the burned out hulks that tens of thousands of people used to call home, have come to symbolize contemporary Detroit. Their smell of old, rotting, wood permeates the air in many neighborhoods. But it is not the most pervasive odor in Detroit’s neighborhoods. That dubious honor belongs to the sagging hulks of the abandoned, burned out homes that litter the city’s neighborhoods. The hulks of the abandoned homes have their own distinctive smell. It is a cloying, acrid, oily odor that clings to the insides of one’s nostrils in a nauseating manner, reminding one with every breadth of the terrible tragedy unfolding across the length and breadth of the once proud, confident city.
Detroit still contains streets that would be considered attractive in most major U.S. cities. But virtually all of them are located within two or three blocks from rat-infested neighborhoods that reek of human misery of the sort historically synonymous with abject Third World poverty. The two words most useful in describing the scene are abandonment and decay. Moreover, every indication is that the neighborhoods where most Detroiters subsist are experiencing an escalating rate of decline and deterioration, represented most dramatically in the form of collapsing homes, institutions and infrastructure. This thoroughly demoralizing process includes all of the social pillars that typically anchor communities, and channel their aspirations for personal and communal achievement.
For Sale for $1250People speak in slow, measured voices when they discuss the devastating forces of destruction that dominate their lives. This is particularly the case when they are reminded of the large number of schools, churches, businesses, and social service agencies that have been boarded up and abandoned during recent years. Their sense of abandonment is palpable, and it has come to dominate their troubled perspectives of the future. It is difficult to reject the strong impression that many Detroiters are victims of a municipal version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder of the sort associated with warfare. Given the plethora of financial, social and political crises they are enduring with no hope of substantive relief any time in the immediate future, it is relatively easy to understand why this might be the case.
In addition, Detroiters are experiencing substantial stress due to the large, and growing number of alcoholics and drug addicts moving into the tens of thousands of abandoned buildings located throughout the city. Down and out, with little or nothing to lose, members of these particularly desperate cohorts are frequent sources of deadly violence. As a result, many of the city’s beleaguered residents have become wary and withdrawn.
They have good reasons to be wary. Detroit consistently ranks as one of the highest crime rate cities in the U.S. For example, in 2007 Detroit was ranked sixth in the nation for violent crime in cities with populations exceeding 500,000 residents. There were 368 homicides in Detroit in 2008, making it the nation’s murder capital for cities with more than 500,000 residents.
Over the past quarter a century, the city has averaged approximately one murder per day. The fact that 65-70 percent of the city’s murders are associated with illegal drugs provides a rough sense of the death grip that narcotics have on residents. When two teenagers recently shot and wounded seven junior high school students waiting for a bus to take them home from summer school, none of the scores of people who witnessed the violent assault dared to publicly identify the perpetrators. Talking to the police about such matters can easily produce a street-level death sentence.
Much time, attention and fiscal resources have been devoted to upgrading the Detroit Police Department during the past two years, but to little avail. Detroit is still one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. Moreover, there is little indication that the situation will improve any time soon. Rape, robbery and burglary continue to be major problems in most sections of the city. Extremely violent drug syndicates dominate the streets and commons areas in many neighborhoods. And given the police department’s inadequate efforts to cope with the situation, citizens protect themselves, as best they can, in their homes behind bolted doors and barred windows.
Crime is, of course, only one of the myriad reasons why Detroit’s population is collapsing. Fed up with the danger and uncertainty engendered by the omnipresent threat of crime, hundreds of thousands of Detroiters have packed their belongings and decamped. This is particularly true of the city’s white residents, who have left in such large numbers that few of them are left. Nonetheless, it should be noted that whites are not alone in the abandonment of the city. Middle-class people from every racial group are participating in an escalating wave of out migration. Few subjects upset Detroiters more than the rate in which the city is hemorrhaging residents. In 1950, Detroit was booming and the future looked as if it would be endlessly bright.
At the time, Detroit had 1.9 million residents, making it the fourth largest city in the United States. But the postwar optimism, and booming economic progress engendered by the expanding automobile industry, began heading south by the onset of the 1960s. With the passage of each succeeding decade, conditions in the city worsened. The net result is that Detroit has lost more than half of its population. Current estimates indicate that the population is approximately 920,000. Approximately 1,200 residents per month are leaving, and Detroit is now the eleventh most populous city in the United States. Moreover, experts are predicting that the city will eventually lose at least 400,000 additional residents.
Given this, city and state official are preparing for the time in the not too distant future when Detroit is expected to collapse as a consolidated municipality. Some suggest that the city will shrink into a relatively small enclave centered on the downtown area. Others suggest that major portions of the city’s land will be returned to agriculture. As might be imagined, desperate future prospects of this sort are having a devastatingly depressive impact on property values. This past April, there were 6,259 foreclosures in the Detroit metropolitan area, one for every 303 housing units. Bank repossessed properties are being sold in bundles of 100 or more, with each house selling for less than $10,000. Seeking to profit from the city’s misery, buyers are flying in from afar to take advantage of perceived opportunities. They include newly wealthy entrepreneurs from and flush groups of buyers from locations as distant as California, Australia and China.
The city’s remaining residents know that they are enmeshed in the vortex of a collapsing financial system. More than one of every five municipal residents is unemployed. And tens of thousands more will lose their jobs in the immediate future due to the imploding automobile industry. Constrained by a precipitous downward trend in municipal revenues, largely due to the catastrophic exodus of tax paying residents, the municipal government is incapable of reversing the rate and scale of economic collapse. Although their finances are in somewhat better shape than Detroit’s, nearby county governments are incapable of providing appreciable financial assistance. And the state government is nearly bankrupt.
Although the Obama administration is providing financial assistance to the automobile industry, it has no plans to address the broad array of problems currently sucking life and vitality from Detroit, and the scores of nearby communities that depend on it for their own financial viability.
Most important, there are many good reasons to believe that Detroit’s decline will not prove to be unique. For example, two decades ago Michael Moore’s film “Roger and Me” focused attention on the desperate plight of residents in Flint, Michigan in the wake of the closure of local General Motor’s production plants. Flint has not recovered, and in the interim several other major Michigan cities have declined so precipitously that they are in danger of replicating Detroit’s tragic collapse.
Finally, there are many good reasons to believe that Detroit’s desperate plight will be replicated in other major industrial cities across the nation. While there is time to prepare, the nation’s leaders need to turn their attention to the endangered fate of urban, industrialized America. If nothing else, they need to understand that if they can’t save Detroit, and similarly situated American cities; there is little or no possibility that they will prove capable of saving far off targets of imperial hubris such as Baghdad and Kabul."
No comments:
Post a Comment