Marathon Pundit: The abandoned stores of Gary, Indiana

John Ruberry describes the former "city of the century" in the first paragraph of his recent post:

Gary is Indiana's reply to Detroit. After its population peaked at 175,000 in 1960, now only about 75,000 people live in what was once the Hoosier State's second largest city.

Palace Theater, Gary, IN

 In November 2017, when Ruberry returned from Motown - for those of you who don't know Detroit, Michigan - he made a stop in Gary. This post takes a look at the old commercial buildings along Broadway in Gary.  One of his pics shows the Palace Theater which are one of the buildings on Broadway that Ruberry documents:

Probably every town in America in the 1920s with 50,000 or more residents had a movie palace that doubled as a vaudeville theater. Gary's showplace was the Palace Theater, which opened in 1925. It closed in 1972. To be fair, many, perhaps most of these theaters went dark after television sets became the focal point of most living rooms, so Gary shouldn't be clobbered over the demise of the Palace.

But hang in there, I'll start slapping Gary around soon.

Donald Trump, when he was a real estate mogul, also owned the Miss USA pageant, which amazingly was held in Gary at the Genesis Convention Center in 2001 and 2002. For the latter beauty display, the future president fixed up the front of the Palace and placed "Jackson Five Tonite" on the marquee. The Jacksons of course were from Gary but moved away shortly after signing with Motown in the late 1960s. After Michael Jackson's death in 2009, according to Wikipedia, new placards declaring "Jackson Five Forever" were placed on the marquee. As you can see none of those signs remain.

I didn't know about our current President's forays into Gary in the early 2000s. He even tried to dress up Gary for one of his pageants.

As I've said Gary could be a very wonderful opportunity for someone with deep pockets and a good plan. If I was such a person my first concern would be issues with bad gov't. For example, would I get heavily taxed for my real estate  or would someone come out the woodworks and say I must hire from within Gary. I'm sure there are other roadblocks so to speak that could be contrived by a politician or an uscrupulous activist. Bottom line is Gary is a blank slate waiting for investment.

The future investment of Gary, Indiana could begin not only with the revitalization of Broadway it could certainly begin with capitalizing on it's connect with the Michael Jackson and the Jackson family. Of course in light of the "King of Pop" untimely demise this was the plan though it's hard to say what has come of those plans since then.

A few days ago I posted a documentary about Gary from 2013, if you're curious about what happened with Gary give it a watch. Certainly go read Ruberry's post about Gary's Broadway.

This man helped Chicago become easier to navigate

Every once in a while I've heard stories about how in some parts of the city some buildings have several numbers. It denoted different addresses over the years at least until the street numbering system had been standardized early in the 20th century. It didn't take a city planner to make this change but a grassroots person who was frustrated by this chaos.

Imagine what one person can do, although in his case he had family connections. You will see if you read this WBEZ article.

HuffPost: Black-Owned Businesses Are Quietly Powering Detroit's Resurgence, But No One's Talking About It

Today we're going to again visit the great American city of Detroit, Michigan. Apparently there's a story no one really discusses and apparently it doesn't only involve young white entrepreneurs:

The largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history has also stirred up interest in success stories. Though no one person will fix Detroit, some people have received well-deserved attention for their work to improve the city. A New York Times article last month highlighted hot spots in the Corktown neighborhood, and a story in the same paper earlier this year heralded small businesses.

But something's missing from those pieces, and from many other articles that examine the city's resurgence: black Detroiters, who make up 83 percent of the population.

Stories that claim entrepreneurs are building, revitalizing and even saving Detroit focus primarily on white professionals, often younger and new transplants to the city, a trend that's palpable and frustrating for locals. When journalists and readers criticized the Times for leaving blacks out of its Corktown story, the paper's public editor addressed the lack of diversity in a follow-up, and the writer said she regretted not including a black-owned business. (A more recent Times story takes a wider-ranging view.)

It's not difficult to find a black business owner to speak with, though. There are more than 32,000 in the city, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2007. Many, particularly those who have kept their businesses going on shoestring budgets, feel excluded from conversations about Detroit's revival and overlooked when it comes to getting access to funds and resources.

"I think, for the most part, black-owned businesses are not getting a piece of the pie," bookstore owner Janet Jones told The Huffington Post. "What about people who have been doing the hard work of living and working and having business in Detroit for the last 20 years?"

What do you think?

So Detroit had made a bid for the 1968 games

While it appears that the winter olympics is about to start in Sochi, Russia this year Curbed Detroit took a look at plans for the 1968 summer olympics in Detroit. Unfortunately it didn't happen for them, but it pays to dream I suppose. What would've been if the Motor City had gotten the games?

BTW, ultimately for the 1968 Summer Games Detroit had lost out to Mexico City. As noted by Curbed the Mexico City games were noted by the Black Power salute of medal winning members of the US Track & Field team.

On Tuesday, took a stroll near the United Center

Near Madison/Paulina

A day before the Stanley Cup Final series commenced between the Chicago Black Hawks and Boston Bruins, I decided to go by the United Center (UC). I took a number of photos on my phone near there and posted them to my instagram (@levois).

I was under the Paulina Connector that routes CTA Pink Line trains towards the Loop via Lake Street. Until recently it was a rarely used piece of antiquated rapid transit infrastructure until it was again commissioned into revenue service. It was once part of services once provided by the Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad.

There are some redevelopment plans by the primary tenants of the UC - who just so happen to be not only the owners of the Chicago Black Hawks, but the Bulls as well - which cause me to want to consider this piece of infrastructure under the Paulina Connector. There ought to be an L stop right here and CTA has been adding stops on the system recently a stop was added along the Lake Street Branch and one up on the Skokie Swift branch.

Currently you'd have to take a bus directly here for any events there. You'd probably could take a train and then switch for a bus that will take you here or otherwise be prepared for lots of walking. Back when the Paulina Connector was a much busier route there was a station there at Madison.

So if the need to redevelop this area with not only a training facility for the Chicago Bulls, but also a entertainment complex to contain retail and dining perhaps an L stop here wouldn't be a bad bet. There are no plans currently to do so, but let's hope that in light of these new plans CTA will fast track a future station here.

Another virtual trip to the great American city of Detroit

[VIDEO] It appears that the right-wing is talking about Detroit again the links and the video above I will share may be the tip of the iceberg. Needless to say Detroit, Michigan is a struggling metropolis.

Back in the summer of 2009, this was my summer excursion. There are some good things happening there but they still have a long way to go to become the great city they had been known as. The question is what would it take?

In the vid above Bill Whittle, Steve Green, and Michelle Fields on PJTV take aim at one-party rule and "blue state" policies. Namely not making Detroit a business friendly city and them being more of a union friendly city.

Also, I found these two articles over at Instapundit regarding Detroit. This column by Michael Barone was mentioned in the PJTV video above. This opens up another attack on not just a corrupt one-party union friendly government, but on the idea of "big unit" businesses. That is a major conglomerate or big business, big labor, or big government called all the shots.

I'm sure Detroit is the example of a one-industry town that now has to find its footing because the one-industry no longer remained in Detroit. We can still call that city "Motown", but what other identity can Detroit give itself. At least we still know them for their sports and for Barry Gordy's Motown Records. :P

Also, another unfortunate thing about Detroit is that they may have to view their cultural artifacts as assets that could be eyed for purchase to pay down debts. Painting, sculptures, etc could be bought out of Detroit although surely someone could come out of the woodworks to keep these items in Detroit.

Time will tell if this once great American city can once again become GREAT!

New Geography: Detroit future city

Today we're taking another virtual trip to the great American city of Detroit. Aaron Renn who writes for The Urbanophile wrote this column for New Geography about plans to redevelop Motown. Some of these plans we should know about already because it has gained attention in the past:

Recently the Detroit Works Project released their long awaited strategic plan for the city. This is the one led by Toni Griffin that produced a lot of public controversy because of suggestions it would result in the planned shrinkage or decommissioning (or even forced residential relocations) in sparsely populated neighborhoods.

Called “Detroit Future City,” this plan doesn’t shy away from facing the tough realities that face Detroit, but its recommendations are somewhat muted with regards to shrinkage. Nevertheless, the message is clear: in a broke, declining city, neighborhood triage is a must.

The full document is 184 pages. I perused it, but wasn’t able to review at the level of detail I normally like to. Partially this is because it was published in a hyper-annoying “cinemascope” type format that makes it almost impossible to read on screen without magnification and lots of horizontal scrolling. This aspect of the plan’s publication was an immediate knock against it in my view. However, it will share a few observations I gleaned.

Basically they're planning for a city around 600-800,000 people. Also what many should have heard about what to do about largely vacant neighborhoods. Of course in all this, the goal I'm sure is to find a way to reinvent Detroit.

So Detroit is making a comeback?

The hottest cities of the future includes Detroit included in the ranks of Portland, OR; Seattle,WA; Nashville, TN; Burlington, VT; even Raleigh, NC. Here's what the Business Insider had to say:

After years of neglect and devastation--sinking so low that the state of Michigan threatened to take over the city--Detroit is poised for a comeback.

According to a recent YPulse survey, more and more millennials are opting to live in small cities, like Detroit.

These young idealists are moving back to Detroit, breathing new life into the downtrodden city with their small businesses, many of which are socially and environmentally responsible. The Urban Innovation Exchange showcases Detroit’s growing social innovation movement, promoting small businesses, like Recycle Here! and Food Lab Detroit. This type of optimism and innovation makes Detroit a city to watch.

Check out the other cities of the future here!

Hat-tip Curbed Chicago!

Urbanophile: The Reasons Behind Detroit’s Decline by Pete Saunders

This evening we take another virtual trip to the great American city of Detroit, Michigan. The Urbanophile blog offers 9 reasons why Detroit fell as far as they had. One of those reasons was that unlike most other cities around the nation, Detroiters (?) didn't identify with a particular neighborhood. Different neighborhoods and their characters certainly could make any particular city unique.

I've always wondered why a city such as Detroit had fallen as hard as it had while other cities seem to be doing alright. Or in cities like sweet home Chicago, you can ask why some neighborhoods are doing worse than others. Here's an interesting reason why Detroit has declined:

Another unique, if indirectly related facet of Detroit is its current local government organization. Like most major American cities of the late 19th century, Detroit elected city council members from districts or wards across the city. And like most of those cities, Detroit experienced its share of graft and corruption in the political arena. But the Progressive Movement that pursued local government reform throughout the nation had perhaps its greatest achievement in Detroit. In 1918, a new city charter was established that led to the reorganization of local government to have Council members elected city-wide, instead of by wards. This governance system has been in place ever since, but is slated to end with the establishment of a new charter in 2013 that will now elect council members from seven districts and two at-large spots.

This has been a double-edged sword for Detroit. While it may have kept a lid on some of the possible corruption that could have happened, it likely created greater distance between residents and city government. I believe this led to two significant impacts. First, it allowed the influence of the auto industry to travel unfettered within local government through the first two-thirds of the 20th century, without the countervailing influence of local residents. Second, without representation and support, neighborhoods were unable to mature in Detroit as they had in other major cities. They never had champions at the local government level, as elected officials had to view the city in its entirety and abstractly, and not represent and develop a unique part of the city.

The seven reasons outlined above would be enough to hurt the future development prospects of most cities. However, the last two reasons I cite, which look at land use actions and policy decisions from more than 100 years ago, are what distinguishes Detroit from any other city in America.

 Detroit was dominated by the auto industry. And most of the reasons stated on the blog related to the auto industry. The auto industry lobbied Detroit government to dismantle their street car lines, the auto industry contributed to a poor public realm, and it's possible Detroit may have more freeway mileage than any other city in the nation!

It's safe to say Detroit didn't catch up to many cities in the nation. Now they must, but it'll be a very tough go of it. I've heard about how Detroit must contract and in this piece the city didn't plan very well for the territory they had annexed. Hopefully they will come up with a plan in the near future!

Raze the Roof: Cleveland Levels Vacant Homes to Revive Neighborhoods

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

I saw this story on PBS Newshour Tuesday night. I caught the part with the man who is seeking to use a vacant lot in Cleveland as a vineyard. Similar to something you should've seen on this blog from the past spring. Description:

Business correspondent Paul Solman reports from Cleveland on the economically troubled Ohio city's efforts to tear down thousands of empty foreclosed homes in hopes of putting eyesore and dangerous properties back to productive use -- perhaps as community gardens, new businesses or even a vineyard.

I would like to see something about this on The Urbanophile that takes a hardlook at urban development in America's Midwest region.

Oh and I almost forget that Detroit wants to do something similar decommissioning depopulated neighborhoods and finding another purpose for the land.

Rehabber wants to grow grapes, make wine in sweet home Chicago

 

[VIDEO] This is a fascinating idea. Turning an abandoned, boarded-up landmark home into an urban vineyard to grow grapes and make wine. In addition to teaching people how to make wine. I'm giving great credit to the young man well he's not so young any more who wants to make that a reality.

BTW, here's more about this historic landmark referred to as the Raber House located at 5760 S. Lafayette Ave.

Bill Lavicka's renovations have always been unusual. The veteran rehabber and owner of Historic Boulevard Services has trucked four buildings intact from one site to another, converted small churches into homes, remade entire Near West Side blocks and showcased his quirky aesthetic by topping spires and balusters with bowling balls.

But the next remodel he has his heart set on raises the bar on unusual. Lavicka wants to turn a boarded-up Washington Park mansion, one of the city's last surviving examples of a multiacre country estate, into a winery.

And he doesn't want to import the grapes.

He wants to plant about 5,000 vines in the yard — what's now three or so bombed-out-looking blocks along the Dan Ryan Expressway just south of Garfield Boulevard.

Complicating matters, the vacant land and long-neglected mansion are owned by the city of Chicago. For nearly two years, Lavicka, 66, has been trying to persuade the city to sell 40 to 50 lots that were once part of the John Raber estate to him for $1 each, plus commit to streetscape and road improvements, and subsidize part of the renovation in some way.

Ald. Willie Cochran said Wednesday that he is "confident this deal will get closed," saying the winery would be approved along with an adjacent urban farm and new park with a baseball field. But details remain to be ironed out, and those will have to wait for the new mayor's input, he said.

The project, Lavicka said, has taken longer to plan than it would take to remodel.

"I probably like the buildings more than wisdom would allow, or should allow," Lavicka said as tears began to fill his eyes. "I can take an old building and fix it up, and everybody else goes by for years and years saying knock it down."

I hope this can happen. I'm all for finding creative ways to revitalize urban areas. Just another plan for an urban farm in an area with land that well real estate developers haven't discovered yet.

Via Bill Baar!

The Black Middle Class Exodus from Detroit - By Henry Payne - The Corner - National Review Online

The Black Middle Class Exodus from Detroit - By Henry Payne - The Corner - National Review Online

I do like to blog about Detroit. Anyway, I'm sure many of you would reject this piece from the National Review. It is decidely conservative in many respect. And they do harp on the issues of fatherless children. Not that I disagree with mentioning that, however, I do wonder if for many people that issues just goes through one ear and out of the other.

What is certainly something that should catch people's ear is the fact that for whatever reason the Black middle-class is leaving the city of the Detroit for more suburban or Southeastern locales.

“This is the Motor City and this is what we do,” announced Eminem in this year’s iconic Super Bowl ad boasting that Detroit was back. That boast rings hollow this week after 2010 census figures revealed Detroit’s population is now just 713,000 — a breathtaking 25 percent decline from a decade ago.

This is the Motor City and this is what Democratic urban policy does.

Press reports lazily wrote the figure off to the “crumbling industrial base of the Midwest” (New York Times) and a victim of “the auto industry’s slump” (Associated Press). Sure Michigan as a whole was the only state to lose population due to car trouble and a hostile, anti-business union culture. But if Detroit is a victim of the Not-as-Big Three, how come the census found that all three counties bordering Detroit — all hammered by auto job layoffs — have increased in population?

What is driving down Detroit’s numbers is a black middle class in full retreat to the suburbs — fleeing the high-crime, high-illiteracy dysfunction that two generations of fatherless inner-city homes have bred. Detroit is America’s poster child for disastrous federal welfare policies that have gutted the black family and made inner cities everywhere unlivable.

Tuesday’s timely A1 USA Today story, “Black populations fall in major cities,” tells the tale. “The black population is declining in a growing number of major cities, fueled by distinct trends,” reports the paper. “Blacks — many in the middle or upper-middle class — (are) leaving cities for the suburbs.”

Trying to Ignite Spark of Revival in a Grim Gary

Let's hope this struggling Indiana city, a suburb of Chicago, can be revitalized by this man's efforts:

Anthony Broadnax clambered up the stairs of a vacant brick building in Gary, Ind., on Thursday, stepping through rubble left by thieves who had ransacked the structure for copper. The thick burgundy carpet was littered with trophies, microwave popcorn and plastic flowers.

Mr. Broadnax, 43, hopes to transform the building into the headquarters of a company that oversees revitalization projects. An engineer and Gary native who returned to the area from Houston four years ago eager to help transform his home town, he has big dreams: to turn an old library with a tree growing through its floor into a recycling center; to remake a towering apartment building with holes in its brick walls into a Hilton.

But the view from the building reveals the challenges that must be overcome. To the north are the belching smokestacks of U.S. Steel’s Gary Works, one of the few economic engines left in the city, but also a source of air pollution. Vacant lots and slumping abandoned houses line the road outside. The building itself was the headquarters of a company whose director pleaded guilty to 13 felony fraud-related counts, and stands as a symbol of the persistent corruption that is often blamed for failed efforts to revitalize the city.

Now, two unlikely partners — the Chicago-based Metropolitan Planning Council and The Times Media Company, publisher of the Northwest Indiana Times — have taken the lead in a planning process that they hope will ignite lasting changes and save Gary.

Another interesting piece about Gary can be found at Chicagoist. They basically take a look at this piece from a BBC reporter about how stimulus funds haven't benefitted Gary.

Boondoggle in the Motor City: Detroit's Train to Nowhere from Reason.tv

Today we take another trip to Detroit where Reason.tv examines a proposal to construct a light rail line from downtown Detroit to the edge of the suburbs along Woodward Avenue. Constuction is set to begin next with a price tag of $500 million.

This is how Reason describes Detroit:

Detroit has become a place Hollywood directors come for great wreckage shots. One quarter of the city's 140 square miles are deserted. Detroit public school students boast the nation’s worst reading scores, the products of a corruption-ridden school system that recently flirted with bankruptcy. Detroit bested Baltimore in 2009 to take the dreaded “murder capital” title. It may also be the worst place in the country to have a heart attack: prepare to wait half an hour for an ambulance.

In a town lacking essential services, what do local leaders and federal politicians have in mind for helping the city? What's needed to hoist Detroit back to its 1950 heyday, when it was America's fourth largest city, with more than double its current population?

Why, light rail, of course!

Since Detroit is no longer Americas 4th largest city and it's population is closer to a little over 900,000 (actually according to Wikipedia 910,920 was its 2009 population), the antagonists to this project sees this as another rail line to nowhere. Nowhere along the length of its 9.3 mile route! WOW!

They mention another rail line that is operating in Detroit, the People Mover, that operates at only 2.5% capacity.

I must say I'm a proponent of expaning transit systems. I even want to get started on getting that extension of the CTA Red Line from 95th to 130th street that you may have seen me writing about at The Sixth Ward. Then again Sam Staley (transportation expert for the Reason Foundation) makes a good point in saying when it was time to build the NYC Subway, the subway didn't build Manhattan but instead Manhattan built the subway.

Via Newsalert!

BTW, I would like to know from where they got those vintage documentary scenes of Detroit. Also the Reason Foundation runs Reason magazine and website as well.

A Detroit District Thrives by Building on the Past

Thanks to the NY Times we're taking another virtual trip to that great American city of Detroit. Of course depending on how you view Detroit it's not so great and it's no stretch to say that great city is struggling to find itself these days. Anyway, what about building on the past in this Detroit neighborhood:

In sharp contrast to the rest of the Detroit metropolitan area, an area known as Midtown just north of the central business district has been holding its own in the recession.

Much of the success of Midtown — as it was branded a decade ago — is a result of the strength of institutions like Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center, the Henry Ford Hospital and the Detroit Institute of Arts, all of which contribute students and employees as well as residents.

Another component of Midtown’s success is that its developers are refurbishing older buildings, using tax credits and public financing, as much as they are building from scratch.

“For a long time, there was a big effort to tear things down in Detroit,” said Michael Poris, a principal of the architecture firm McIntosh Poris Associates, which is restoring a former vaudeville house in Midtown for multiple uses. “But if we have all these great historic buildings here, why not take the historic tax credits and reuse them? Plus it’s a greener, more sustainable form of development.”

According to the CoStar Group, a real estate information company in Bethesda, Md., the vacancy rate for office space in Midtown — including an adjacent area called New Center, where the former headquarters of General Motors now houses state offices — stood at 8.2 percent in the second quarter of this year.
...
“We really have lost almost no businesses during the recession,” said Susan Mosey, the president of the University Cultural Center Association, an organization formed by several Midtown institutions that guides development in the area. “That isn’t to say that businesses haven’t had to reduce costs and become more efficient, but the neighborhood’s remained pretty stable.”

The housing market is thriving too, Ms. Mosey said. Many obsolete buildings in Midtown have been converted to rental housing in recent years, and the rental market has been strong. An association study found that 92 percent of the 4,295 rental units in the area were occupied last spring.

A handful of condominium projects begun right before the national housing market collapsed had to shift gears and become rental apartments. Those were leased quickly, Ms. Mosey said.
...
Preservationists had the foresight to get much of Midtown designated as historic in the 1990s, thus ensuring they would be eligible for tax credits, said Diane Van Buren, vice president of sustainable planning at Zachary & Associates, a property development and development consulting group.

Zachary & Associates, with several partners, is in the process of creating an area within Midtown called the Sugar Hill Arts District, in tribute to the traveling black jazz musicians who once played in clubs and stayed in stately homes in the neighborhood, Ms. Van Buren said.

Much of the district was destroyed in the urban renewal movement in the mid-20th century that displaced many African-American neighborhoods in Detroit and elsewhere, she said.

Several buildings and sites in Sugar Hill are being redeveloped, including 71 East Garfield Street — the former site of a hotel that was destroyed by fire — which has undergone a $6 million renovation into 22 live-work spaces for artists and eight commercial spaces.

I probably excerpted a lot more from this article than I should of, but this is an interesting article that is worth your time. Not all is bad in Detroit and there are people there - oustide of the political establishment - who are working to rebuild Detroit. Finding your groove of course takes lots of time.

Hat-tip Urbanophile which also has a post up about how Detroit can market itself.

Another virtual trip to Detroit

Take a look at this link from the Detroit Free Press. There are plenty of maps with proposals to reshape Detroit for the future. This sure fits in with any possible plans to shrink the city.

What that entails is closing some public schools, demolishing abandoned homes and buildings (even if it means demolishing entire neighborhoods), creating urban farms, and even building a new light rail line.

Check out the diagrams and text of what's going on up there here!

The Urbanophile takes a look at Detroit. We always look at what's wrong with Detroit, especially with an eye towards the decay in Detroit. That was something I saw when I was there last summer.

Urbanophile offers some positives for Detroit complete with some pictures of very nice homes there. Of course this is not to take away from those problems that may exist there, however, it's safe to say that Detroit may have something to work with up that way.

Deconstructionism in Detroit

Well after several days not blogging we're taking another trip to Detroit this Sunday. Well of course all we're doing is looking at what Detroit seeks to do as far as making for a better city today. One answer is to essentially shrink the city that is no longer home to a population of 2 million people as it once was around 1950.

You can read the article "Deconstruction: The Fate of America? - The Changing Landscape of America" over at New Geography. Of course Detroit is only one part of the argument of Deconstructionism.

There is no better example than the City of Detroit. Once the home of Henry Ford and the American automobile industry, Detroit has fallen on hard times. Its population has fallen from nearly 2 million residents to less than 900,000 today. With a budget deficit of $300 million per year, Detroit can no longer provide basic services to its own residents. There are 33,500 empty homes and 91,000 vacant residential lots. More than 300,000 buildings are vacant or in shambles. It is estimated that 40 square miles of Detroit lies abandoned.

Twelve years ago, British urban historian Sir Peter Hall wrote in “Cities in Civilization” that Detroit “has become an astonishing case of industrial dereliction; perhaps, before long, the first major industrial city in history to revert to farmland.” Hall may have been prescient. This week, Mayor David Bing released the “Neighborhood Revitalization Strategic Framework," a landmark document that suggests that vast sections of Detroit be razed and returned to farmland, open space and nature. The report suggests the first organized and orderly deconstruction of a major American city.

The report envisons replacing entire neighborhoods with “Naturescapes” (meadows), “Green Thoroughfares” and “Village Hubs” that require fewer city services. But, it will require hundreds of millions of federal aid to finance such a major transformation, money the federal government no longer has to give.

In an era of trillion dollar federal deficits, there are no longer easy solutions. The shift of tectonic plates caused by the Great Recession have exposed hopelessly unsustainable city and state budgets. Swollen payrolls, duplicative agencies and inefficient municipal services can no longer be afforded. The deconstruction of government services seems inevitable.

In five years, will Detroit remain a cratered landscape of vacant buildings, broken promises, and smashed dreams? Or will a smaller, safer, more efficient city evolve out of its ruins? If deconstruction is successful in Detroit, it could serve as a model for many other governments as well, from City Hall to state capitols and all the way to the most bloated disaster of all, Washington, DC.

You know I look forward to Reason taking a look at Cleveland hosted by Drew Carey (former star of The Drew Carey Show and host of The Price is Right). Carey is a Cleveland native so it may well be fitting that this production will have his imprint on it. It's certainly the story of many struggling cities in the land. The question is will stuggling major cities take the advice of a libertarian publication.

Detroit's Smaller Reality

Today, we're taking another trip to Detroit. Another look at struggling MoTown. This article I found in a comment at YoChicago talks about the impending shrinkage of Detroit. Especially in terms of population, land area, and a reduction in city services.

The mayor [Dave Bing] is looking to the diminished tally, down from 951,270 in 2000, as a benchmark in his bid to reshape Detroit's government, finances and perhaps even its geography to reflect its smaller population and tax base. That means, in part, cutting city services and laying off workers.

His approach to the census is a product of not only budget constraints but also a new, more modest view of the city's prospects. "We've got to pick those core communities, those core neighborhoods" to sustain and preserve, he said at a recent public appearance, adding: "That's something that's possible here in Detroit."

Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Bing, a Democrat first elected last year to finish the term of disgraced former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, hasn't touted big development plans or talked of a "renaissance." Instead, he is trying to prepare residents for a new reality: that Detroit—like the auto industry that propelled it for a century—will have to get smaller before it gets bigger again.
...
Soon after being elected to a full term in November, Mr. Bing began cutting back on city services such as buses and laying off hundreds of municipal workers. The mayor is now making plans to shutter or consolidate city departments and tear down 10,000 vacant buildings. And Mr. Bing is supporting efforts to shrink the capacity of the city's school system by half.

Along with the mayor, a number of academics and philanthropic groups are sketching visions of a different Detroit. One such vision has urban farms and park spaces filling the acres of barren patches where people once lived and worked. In a city of roughly 140 square miles, vacant residential and commercial property accounts for an estimated 40 square miles, an area larger than the city of Miami.

"The potential of this open space is enormous," said Dan Pitera, an architect at the University of Detroit Mercy who has done land-use studies on the city.
...
Long-term declines triggered by suburban sprawl, home-loan bias and racial strife have accelerated in recent years as home foreclosures and auto-industry cutbacks tear through even more stable, wealthy neighborhoods. Meanwhile, declining home values in Detroit's better-off suburbs have made them more accessible to the city's poorer residents, fueling the flight.

The city is counting on nonprofit partners to take the lead on the census this year, rather than funding efforts itself. But with a population that is widely dispersed and largely poor and minority—two segments traditionally disinclined to fill out government paperwork—Detroit is already difficult to count. In the last census, just 62% of Detroiters responded, compared with an average of 71% statewide.

"That's why I keep telling the city, 'you are in trouble,' " said Kurt Metzger, director of Data Driven Detroit, an organization founded by large local philanthropies that want to help the city collect accurate demographic, housing, economic and other information. "Unfortunately, they don't have the resources."

Take a look at that graphic up top. Detroit has a larger area of vacant land than three other cities. Not sure what to say about that, other than to say that it's great to see Detroit finding ways to utilize this land as urban farms.

I'm always nervous about tearing down buildings. Especially if the buildings are viable. I can certainly understand if these buildings just were not salvageable. Perhaps some neighborhoods must be razed and others preserved.

Then again I'm not exactly an urban planner so I need to know more about whatever plans are available to revitalize Detroit in terms of adhering to its potential shrinkage.

Marathon Pundit: The emptying of Detroit and HelpmeleaveDetroit.com

Briefly today we're going back to Detroit thanks to John Ruberry over at Marathon Pundit. His recent post focuses on the depopulation of Detroit that is only exasperated by current economic conditions. Even worse a website @ http://www.helpmeleavedetroit.com/ is about an unemployed skilled pipefitter who is seeking to leave Detroit and using his website to beg. How unfortunate!

Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great City from Time Magazine

Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great City

Today let's go back to Detroit. Well I won't be going back physically, but Time magazine gives us a picture of today's Detroit. A city that is in Ruins although I can't say I had too much of a picture of that during my one night stay there in July. Even then, however, downtown Detroit wasn't looking that great unfortunately. Just couldn't offer an opinion on the neighborhoods.

You know let's focus on who the author of this article blames for the condition Detroit is in today:

Most of us thought Detroit was pretty wonderful back in the '50s and early '60s, its mighty industrial engine humming in top gear, filling America's roads with the nation's signifying product and the city's houses and streets with nearly 2 million people. Of course, if you were black, it was substantially less wonderful, its neighborhoods as segregated as any in America. On the northwest side, not far from where I grew up, a homebuilder had in the 1940s erected a six-foot-high concrete wall, nearly half a mile long, to separate his development from an adjacent black neighborhood. Still, white Detroit believed that the riots that ravaged Los Angeles in 1965 and a number of other cities the following summer would never burn across our town. Black people in Detroit, enlightened whites believed, had jobs and homes, and even if those homes were on the other side of an apartheid wall, their owners had a stake in the city.

Some did, but too many others, invisible to white Detroit, did not. The riots that scorched the city in July 1967, leaving 43 people dead, were the product of an unarticulated racism that few had acknowledged, and a self-deceiving blindness that had made it possible for even the best-intentioned whites to ignore the straitjacket of segregation that had crippled black neighborhoods, ill served the equally divided schools and enabled the casual brutality of a police force that was too white and too loosely supervised.

The '67 riots sent thousands of white Detroiters fleeing for the suburbs. Even if black Detroiters with financial resources wished to follow, they could not: the de facto segregation was virtually de jure in most Detroit suburbs. One suburban mayor boasted, "They can't get in here. Every time we hear of a Negro moving in ... we respond quicker than you do to a fire."

Soon Detroit became a majority-black city, and in 1973 it elected its first black mayor. Coleman Young was a talented politician who spent much of his 20 years in office devoting his talents to the politics of revenge. He called himself the "MFIC" — the IC stood for "in charge," the MF for exactly what you think. Young was at first fairly effective, when he wasn't insulting suburban political leaders and alienating most of the city's remaining white residents with a posture that could have been summed up in the phrase Now it's our turn. But by his third term, Young was governing more by rhetoric than by action. These were the years of a local phenomenon known as Devil's Night, a nihilistic orgy of arson that in one especially explosive year saw 800 houses burn to the ground in 72 hours. Violent crime soared under Young. The school system began to cave in on itself. When jobs disappeared with the small businesses boarding up their doors and abandoning the city, the mayor seemed to find it more useful to bid the business owners good riddance than to address the job losses. Detroit was dying, and its mayor chose to preside over the funeral rather than find a way to work with the suburban and state officials who now detested him every bit as much as he had demonized them.

When Young finally left office in 1993, he bragged that Detroit had achieved a "level of autonomy ... that no other city can match." He apparently didn't care that it was the autonomy of a man in a rowboat, in the middle of the ocean, without oars.

But Young isn't the only politician to blame. In 1956, when I was 8 years old, my Congressman was John D. Dingell. There are people in southeastern Michigan who are still represented by Dingell, the longest-serving member in the history of the House of Representatives. "The working men and women of Michigan and their families have always been Congressman Dingell's top priority," his website declares, and I suppose he thinks he has served them well — by resisting, in succession, tougher safety regulations, more-stringent mileage standards, relaxed trade restrictions and virtually any other measure that might have forced the American automobile industry to make cars that could stand up to foreign competition.


By so ably satisfying the wishes of the auto industry — by encouraging southeastern Michigan's reliance on this single, lumbering mastodon — Dingell has in fact played a signal role in destroying Detroit. He was hardly alone; if you wanted to get elected in southeastern Michigan, you had to support the party line dictated by the Big Four — GM, Ford, Chrysler and their co-conspirator the United Auto Workers. Anything that might limit the industry's income was bad for the auto industry, and anything bad for the auto industry was deemed dangerous to Detroit.

The UAW had once been the most visionary of American unions. As early as the 1940s, UAW president Walter Reuther was urging the auto companies to produce small, inexpensive cars for the average American. In 1947 and '48 the union even offered to cut wages if the Big Three would reduce the price of their cars. But by the early 1980s, the UAW had entered into a nakedly self-interested pact with the auto companies. After the union's president joined GM's chief congressional lobbyist to defeat a tougher mileage standard in 1990, the lobbyist declared that "we would not have won without the UAW." It was, he said, "one of the proudest days of my life."

The union really can't be blamed for pushing for fabulous wages and lush benefits for its members — that game required two players, and the automakers knew only how to say yes. But the union leadership's fatal mistake was insisting that workers with comparable skills and comparable seniority be paid comparable wages, irrespective of who employed them. If a machinist at a prosperous GM deserved $25 an hour, so did a machinist who worked for a barely profitable Chrysler or for a just-holding-its-own supplier plant that made axles or wheels or windshield wipers.

This defiant inattention to market reality not only placed the less healthy firms in peril, but by pricing labor so uniformly high, it also closed off Detroit to any possible diversification of its industrial base. When the automakers' inattention to engineering, style and quality caused them to crash into a wall of consumer indifference, there was no other industry that could step forward and employ workers who would have been thrilled to make even a fraction of what they once earned. Now nearly 1 in 3 Detroit residents is out of work — and not many of the unemployed have a prayer of finding a job anytime soon.

 I saw this earlier in the article and it infuriates me!

The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership.

Infuriating! If any quote shows who is only in it for themselves it's this quote. And you know what the section on blame that I posted above that quote are probably just as potent an example as this one!

GO READ THE WHOLE THING! The conclusion is worth a read for certain!