How Detroit manages its vast empty spaces is of interest. The city is in a phase where managers are trying to consolidate the population into a few areas that are still viable. They are entering a phase where the city is rehabbing some houses in the more viable neighborhoods in order to attract people from the less viable neighborhoods.
Detroit is a real estate bargain at the moment. Housing is very cheap but then you are faced with crime and low employment opportunity.
What will come out of the ashes...
CS Monitor: Detroit's next step to combat blight: buy and rehab vacant homes
During the auto industry's golden years, the city boasted nearly 2 million people. Now the population is not even half that.
...estimating the remaining population at below 775,000.
The consolidation projects are “unprecedented” in the US in their scale and ambition...
...some residents living far from the city center have bought up their neighbors' properties and expanded them into mini ranches.
3 comments:
Detroit is the rest of Industrial America's future. America's once mighty Industrial economy is a huge rusting hulk creeping along on it's last few drops of imported gasoline and late on it's monthly rent payment to it's Chinese loan shark. More and more cities are heading for this fate or worse. Next will be the malls , many are going bankrupt because cheap credit is a thing of the past and the consumer kultur is the next thing to die.
It could be that Detroit is the spear head. I will look into the mall default zone. Its not like that up here as far as I can see. There's one mall Crossgates that's raging activity. They do call it the rust belt though. We know Michigan has been in tough shape for a while, some real poverty and desolation.
That's the real strangeness about this Depression it's not everywhere equally. Some zones are realitively untouched for various reasons specific to that locale and other areas are flat on their back. Stats show that many more are flat on their back then prosperous. Depending on where your located makes all the difference. I live in a dead and dying zone economically. But, here's the rub even in these zones are pockets of relative wealth and prosperity.
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