Richard Longworth has a good post on Detroit. Aaron Renn also has an interesting take.
Neither of them go the cartoonish two dimensional villain route. Like Longworth points out:
Detroit’s bankruptcy has created a playing field for pundits, each of whom has a preferred villain (Democrats, car companies, unions, globalization, feckless government, heedless suburbs, the black politicians who ran the city, the white residents who fled it). All guilty as charged, and then some.
And Renn points out:
What’s most surprising about Detroit’s bankruptcy is not that it happened, but how long it took to get there. In authorizing the bankruptcy filing Gov. Rick Snyder talked about “60 years of decline.” He’s not joking. It’s been widely known that Detroit has been in trouble for a very long time.
It remains to be seen whether the bankruptcy represents rock bottom for Detroit or just a step along the continuing path to decline. A lot of that is going to depend on whether it can come up with a new economic raison d’etre. Because manufacturing cars is no longer sufficient.
Perfect fit to follow yesterday’s lead story, too. Seems to me that the whole Old Northwest has problems, but mostly of a specific nature. Detroit, however, has them all, combined and simultaneously.
In my opinion, the only future it has is to clear half the blocks in the city and farm them. It could become a model for the future — food, grown by its own people. Making it profitable for all is the key, and unfortunately, that hasn’t been address as much as actually growing and distributing the food, but I think that could solved pretty quickly with a good application of, not just manure, but also brain power.
Steve, lets put wind mills in those corn and soy bean fields. Detroit could use the revenue from the sale of energy.
Yes!