Welcome to Detroit.
This is what happens when a nation loses its manufacturing base.
This is what happens when corrupt politicians put their interests ahead of the people's.
This is what happens when nobody wants the houses.
This is what will happen to neighborhoods and cities across America, unless we make some drastic and urgent changes.
Detroit - coming to America.
(thanks hp'ers for the vid)
January 31, 2008
I think people in the "third world" countries around the world would be amazed that parts of America are even worse off. Welcome to Detroit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
76 comments:
This is where I live! well, actually I live about 45 minutes north in the suburbs.
It is pretty sad though because even though the suburbs have a great deal of wealth and look as nice as those in California, Arizona, or Florida most of the houses are for sale or are foreclosed due to the auto industry and people leaving the state.
It is a pretty depressing place to live
Get the daisy cutters ready.
To show the third-world model, this video would need to show the oblivious rich cavorting in gated communities in the same city.
History is repeating itself.
Yo Yo Yo:
Mad props to HP from the Dtown!
What has happened in Detroit is one of the great untold stories in America. Detroit has lost 2/3 to 3/4 of it's population from it's peak. I have read that up to 80% of it's population has received some form of government assistance in the past year.
Every time I go back home, it looks worse and worse. Last time I went home in October, Gratiot Ave. looked like something from "Mad Max".
Detroit is what you get when the population relies on the government. Sad and shocking. God help those who are still left.
I need an explanation on this. How does a house go from foreclosure to being unlivable and condemned? Why does the bank or whoever owns the foreclosed property not just lower the price until it sells?
THIS AREA IS INHABITITED 100% BY DEMOCRAT VOTERS.
THERE ARE NO REPUBLICAN AREAS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS.
KEEP VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS AND GET MORE DETROIT.
I lived in Detroit, the real reason why the city fell is spoken by the old timers that still live there - Unions (greed) and the influx of blacks (non-compatible culture). No one wants to say it but these are the facts and reality doesnt lie.
Yesterday, In response to a poorly written article about the loser soon-to-be-proved serial liar Clinton-esque sexual philanderer posing as a "Mayor" of the once-great and proud city of Detroit, MI, currently a turd-world ghetto which was "lifted" from another source and reprinted in my local daily paper (the worst ever printed IMHO - San Jose Mercury (Murky) - News) I pasted the url of this video for proof and support of my comments.
It was up for a few minutes and removed.
Isn't censorship in America wonderful?
Maybe the Shakedown Twins the Most Rev. Jesse and Al have something to say about THAT.
Counting the DAYS until stupid Bush can slither back under a rock in Texas and go back to cutting brush in Crawford.
They deserve him.
Google: Urban Decay Detroit
Be prepared to cringe!
Welcome to the future of America.
Wow, so much went wrong in Detroit it hard to know where to start. I worked in Detroit for years, and now in our neighborhood, which is considered nice, about 40 miles from Detroit, I get really upset at the vacant homes. That's never good to see. Our streets are quieter, the stores are emptier, I am often first in line places, the slowdown is just kind of freaky sometimes.
I often tell the story that one day last fall I called three different service people and all were immediately available. I called the piano tuner, and he said he could come that day. I then called the heating company to service the furnace and they said they could send someone by noon. Needing some electrical work done, I called the electrician and he could be there that day too.
Checks were cashed within 24 hours.
How does an economy stay afloat with so little work?
Kind of freaky.
Just viewed the video. So whats the big deal, seriously, this is natural evolution of a city of Africans. Growing up near Detroit I can tell you with out malice or racism - this is what Africa looks like and has looked like for 50,000 years.
Nope. Man has no impact whatsoever on the environment.
What are those enviro-greens so worried about?
Per Malcom:
"It it’s anything like what Detroit has gone through in the last 30 years, it will be a “death of a thousand cuts”.
We’ll have people talking about “turning the corner”, but no corner will be turned. We’ll have the blame passed back and forth. Lots of talk, but no real action.
Hope comes from the fact that there’s still enough left in the country to bail out the troubled spots; as long as they don’t pass the blame and go on and on about “turning the corner.”
Its an amazing place to live, and not in a good way. If Detroit is the canary in the mineshaft for the USA then there will be some rude awakenings for all parties involved.
I will give a quick metaphor. Think of the economy as a car (we're talking Motorcity after all), and the coming recession a cliff. Once that car rolls off the cliff, there is no bringing it back. So no matter what the Fed does, the President says or candidates promise, if the US is in a recession that is just the way it is and they will not be able to change that.
And there is no bringing back Detroit to its former glory. Its a sewer...
Are you sure this isn't St. Louis MO? It sure looks like St. Louis ( and the surrounding areas- East St. Louis, Granite City, Cahokia, Madison, Brooklyn, etc.
Damn. Crack is wack!
Looks a little like some of the towns in suburban Philadelphia, like Chester and Darby.
Detroit is a horrible city, yet walk across the street in north east Detroit and where are you? You are in Grosse Pointe.
Grosse Pointe, in contrast to most of Detroit, has numerous multi million dollar houses/estates.
"Grosse Pointe City is a waterfront community nestled along the shores of Lake St. Clair...in Wayne County, SE Michigan. Excellent schools"
I spent the first half of my life growing up around the Detroit area and there are parts that are worse than this video shows.
Detroit is also home to some of Americas most breathtaking turn of the century renaissance architecture.
www.forgottendetroit.com/
Detroit has also declined under some of the most racist and thuggish mayors in America. Their leadership has caused further degradation and is absolutely plagued with corruption and lies. Here is Kwames' (The so called first "hip hop" mayor of America) latest scandal (in a long, long line of them).
http://tinyurl.com/23byz8
It never ends.
This is what happens when we elect republicans and follow conservative fiscal policies for 30 years.
PS. If any place is going to be destroyed by "daisy cutters" it should be Vegas. That shithole embodies everything that is wrong with this awful country. Greed, superficiality, shallowness. Start with the strip.
When Detroit comes out with the cars worth buying, then the jobs will come back. Otherwise, I'll keep buying Hondas/Toyotas.
I have a neighbor who recently lost his job here in Central Ohio. He found a similar job in Michigan. Wife is pisssed - doesn't want to move or sell the McMansion. Can you say career/family suicide?
in the bad parts of chicago, south & west side black ghettos, the buildings are removed when they get that bad. in some areas all that remain are a few boarded up brownstones surrounded by empty lots.
Very Sad
The big ironi is that Detroit actually dont have the historically important city-growing factors working against it (mainly meteological and agricultural). If this can happen to a city founded near the great lakes (good water-communications, good rainfall, surrounded by farmland) - what can one expect from even larger and potentially more unsustainable cities founded in all US desert-regions, ones economical depression and peak oil/water) finally kicks in?
how many guns do you think those guys have in that car??
That only happens in the ghettos, trailer parks, and barrios. It's a good case for forced sterilization.
its too late. its going to happen. they are going to allow it to happen. now on those streets you do see a relative calm....for now....
having grown up in mississippi...that's nothing.
"people actually live in those houses?"
- yankee girlfriend from longmeadow, MA
For more incredible views of today's burned-out, abandoned Detroit, try this classic site:
http://detroityes.com/home.htm
Future anthropologists will marvel at our tragic cluelessness!
On that note, here's Obama's base:
http://tinyurl.com/yoqmao
long past neo-okie
Reminds me of the former Yugoslavia during their civil war in the 1990's. some areas looked like they had been bombed. BTW. Would have been nice to have some narrative explaining where in Detroit these neighborhoods were, rather than the rap music.
Forbes: Detroit atop misery list
Flint lands 3rd in the rankings
January 31, 2008
By JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
In yet another slap from the national media, Forbes magazine has ranked Detroit America's Most Miserable City in a list released Wednesday.
The magazine known for its lists of rich people ranked America's 150 largest cities on six criteria: unemployment, personal tax rates, commute time, weather, crime and the presence of toxic cleanup sites.
Advertisement
Detroit's 150th place in the crime rankings and 149th in unemployment rates helped give it an overall Misery Measure of 696, bad enough to edge out Stockton, Calif., for the "Most Miserable" tag. Flint ranked third.
But Detroit had a lot of surprising company. With weather and commute times weighing against older northern cities, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago all joined Detroit in the top 10 of misery.
So did Los Angeles on the strength (or weakness) of commute times and toxic sites, and even Sunbelt star Charlotte, N.C., where a worrisome crime rate helped make it ninth-most miserable overall.
Other cities on the list are Modesto, Calif., and Providence, R.I.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080131/BUSINESS04/801310366/-1/PRINT
I thought that I saw Suzanne in one of the frames. She was standing on top of a large pile of junk with her bullhorn shouting, "Now is the best time to buy!".
I have to admit I enjoyed living in the outer suburbs until the worm began to turn in like 2002-2004. The response of people to these economic challenges started to begin to seem rather toxic. and made me feel like I could explore another place to live. Let me tell you - the official unemployment rate is bogus- Detroit is the underemployment capital of the USA- and that isn't reliably measured inthe economic stats.
Underemploymet is where unemployed engineers and tech types are waiting tables to make ends meet. College kids had to compete with this crap to get a summer job. And unemployed realtors are table dancing / pole dancing.
Oh- and with economic anxiety the 30-something single women were all into sniffing your wallet with very direct questions on the first or 2nd date. Damn- like they were going after what's important! And divorces over what seemed like just money matters. When I asked = detailed questions there were unbelieveable levels of CC & house & consumer debt. It seemed out of porportion to other towns.
But I digress... Except to point out that I don't think the rest of the region can entirely escape Detroit's reality.
Word to you Chris- I too had to sell a SE Michigan Royal Oak) house at a big discount.
KEEFER,
WOULD YOU BE SHOCKED TO KNOW THAT PARTS OF WASHINGTON, D.C AND THE MARYLAND SUBURBS LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME AS THAT VIDEO?
and before every right winger starts blaming "them union scum"....
Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi are all made in high wage countries, by high-wage unionized workers.
You are an awful fear monger Keith. I have visited a Third World Country (India to be more precise) and let me tell you, people in Third World Countries have it much worse than we do. America won't decline because the world needs us. We are the engine that pulls the rest of the world upwards. If we catch a cold, then the rest of the world will catch the flu.
Lost our manufacturing base? Is that why we have record exports?
Wow. I kept expecting a crowd of zombies to come running out of one of those buildings and start chasing the car.
I grew up in Lansing, Michigan, so i'm very familiar with the state and Detroit. It's not just Detroit that looks like this, it's Flint, parts of Kalamazoo, Cleveland, OH. A lot of cities in the Midwest and East are not looking so good due to the decline of manufacturing. Also one should consider that places like Florida and Arizona, the economy is largely contributed to by retirees from the manufacturing era. What is going to happen to these economic promised lands when the retirees with all the money begin to die off. Where will our economy come from then. I believe in the years to come we are going to see a lot more Detroit coming to a town near you. Our economy cannot sustain with purchasing goods from overseas and racking up the debt daily. Unfortunately the majority of America is not ready to listen, and their still out shopping for Chinese goods at Wal-Mart, driving in their Hyundai, and putting it all on the credit card.
Here's a site that actually keeps track of what's happened to Detroit.
http://www.detroitiscrap.com/
I That is pretty bad. I have lived in third world countries and most were not that run-down... It is said that Detroit used to be one of the most amazing cities in the country. Parts of the old warehouse districts in Chicago look bad, but no where near what this video shows.
Did you see just before the 9-minute mark of the video...the traffic light shows both red and green at the same time. Nice.
I see there's a "Part 2" of the video on YouTube as well.
That's not really a look at the future of the USA as a whole. That's a depressed BLACK area.
Whites don't have the tendency to destroy houses and make areas unlivable just because they are poor.
Look to the Ozarks for depressed white areas.
Detroit used to have nearly 2M people. Now it has less than 1M. Detroit's ruins are what happens when the houses, factories, and offices for 1M people become superfluous.
Michigan is in a death spiral and the state is only accelerating their demise by raising taxes on businesses.
Hopefully other states will be smarter and reduce the cost of doing business in their confines.
Yes, it is the time to pay the Piper for that Wild-Wild-West Housing Bubble Party last night. Add in the maxed out CC debt, the home equity extract, the spend-like-there-is-no-tomorrow mentality of the Americano, the oversize SUV, the run-down-the-cow F350 pickup truck and the Americano is now having a handful of shits and hangover to deal with. But worry not, my dear fat-ass buckteeth Americano, Dubya Shrub will lead you through the dark, ominous, pee-in-the-pant time. He has to, he has no choice, since the dim nitwit Americano voted for him 2 terms in a row. Yes, it is fittingly beautiful: "The head turkey leads the horde of fat, blind turkey down the gutter...".
Now, a little verse from the "Man With The White Beard" to cheer things up for the horde of Snapper Turtle and Porpoise.
Psalm 23:4
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the Housing Bubble,
I will fear no foreclosure:
for Dubya Shrub & Penis Shooter art with me:
thy bail-out and thy rebate-check, they comfort me."
what were all those boats about no one in the "ghetto" is worried about boats. So I assume this is a former white owned neighborhood and these are their foreclosures. HA HA HA
I left the DTW area 6 years ago. It's worse now that when I left.
NAFTA and the unions killed MI.
When the average dumbass who works the line makes more money than college graduates and thinks they DESERVE a guaranteed job forever more, you can't be competitive building anything. Detroit burned in 68 and it continues to do so now.
Welcome to the future....as a debtor nation history demonstrates that this will be our destination. Make no mistake...this is a CLASS war...the RICH laugh as we struggle over petty things like Jerry Springer rejects. READ Peter Schiff book! When we wake up..a revolution!
Detroit makes your average Mexican shanty town look like an great place to live.
Not even Mad Max conjured worse images.
What's really weird is how close to downtown the whole hell hole is.
This is just amazing. I'm dumbstruck!
I could show you worse in West Baltimore. At least people still live in most of those places. In Baltimore there is block after block of burnt out shells of row homes. These went up during the riots in the 60's. The city to fight crime has cinder blocked the brick facades, doors, and windows. There is no way in and no way out. They made giant empty tombs. It has a rather strange post apocalyptic feel to it. They gave up a long ago. Ammo is the currency for the new Millennium.
Burn Baby Burn
Looks like Bosnia or Chechnya.
RE: ...what happens when nobody wants the houses...
A friend of mine insists that real estate is a much safer investment than stocks, because unlike stocks, real estate values never drop to zero.
Wanna bet?
V.L.
raze it all, burn it down, bulldoze it. It wouldnt be so ugly if it was just empty lots with trees or grass. The people will eventualy come back. Ive seen it in DC, Ive seen it in Columbus, Im seeing it now in Denver. Its an economic fact: the infasructure is in place, if redevelopment is going to happen, its going to be close to the available municipal resources....the city, interstate, bus lines etc....
sad that American cars arent what they used to be....thats what made that city.....
From Kentucky Fried Movie:
"Take 'em to Detroit!!!!!!"
MAD MAX....BOOM BOOM!!! OUT GO THE LIGHTS
Low density and greenspace reclaim the urban core. Miraculous, really.
I do public services activities in Detroit. It is very bad in so many areas. Sad when pondering the solid community it was back in Henry Ford's days.
Looks like a bomb hit the place. Wow, pretty sad.
And for those who comment “I’ve seen worse in XXX”, keep in mind: this isn’t a “slum section” of the city; it’s nearly the WHOLE city that’s like this.
And it wasn’t the republicans who did this. It was the democrats.
It was the following vicious cycle:
1. People move out
2. This causes a decline in tax $ and city services
3. #2 causes more business to leave
4. #3 causes a further decline in tax $
5. Repeat at step 3
They keep talking about tearing down the abandoned buildings, but there’s not enough money to keep the street lights on.
They keep trying to get businesses to come to the city; but the few they get are just payoffs – and they only come in because they get massive tax breaks; which defeats the purpose of their being there in the first place.
Detroit used to be called “the Paris of the Midwest” (I kid you not)
They had a mass transportation system (streetcars), which they TORE OUT; to later replace with buses that they can’t afford to run anymore.
Given that tomorrow is Ayn Rand’s Birthday, I would say that Detroit is like Atlas Shrugged, with John Galt having been kicked out of the city for being a smart-a*s.
Detroit can, however, be used as a test tube for my “cash is king” rant. If you go to Detroit with $100 in cash, there’s no limit to what you can get on the street.
Yo Yo Yo:
Mad props to HP from the Dtown!
What has happened in Detroit is one of the great untold stories in America. Detroit has lost 2/3 to 3/4 of it's population from it's peak. I have read that up to 80% of it's population has received some form of government assistance in the past year.
Every time I go back home, it looks worse and worse. Last time I went home in October, Gratiot Ave. looked like something from "Mad Max".
Detroit is what you get when the population relies on the government. Sad and shocking. God help those who are still left.
January 31, 2008 11:06 AM
Wrong, Detroit today is the result of 40 years of post industrial policy imposed on this country after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Take a look suckers--the old industrial cities of the US have just been torn to pieces. The power shifted to a financier style confederacy of the New South-- Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Dallas etc.
Detroit is the result of the welfare state. Nobody owns anything, so nobody cares. Even in an apartment complexe run for profit, the owner has to keep up the area in order to attract new tenants. When the government runs housing projects, they don't care if they have tenants or not. Then the tenants don't care about it because it's not their property.
Third world countries are much worse off.
>THIS AREA IS INHABITITED 100% BY >DEMOCRAT VOTERS.
>THERE ARE NO REPUBLICAN AREAS THAT >LOOK LIKE THIS.
>KEEP VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS AND GET >MORE DETROIT.
You must be the greatest fool to come across this blog, your up there with Dopes!
This is what you get when you have 7 years of Republican rule!
With the Greater Depression coming, I believe the Republicans have lost the presidency for the next 25 years. Amen!
Anonymous said...
I lived in Detroit, the real reason why the city fell is spoken by the old timers that still live there - Unions (greed) and the influx of blacks (non-compatible culture). No one wants to say it but these are the facts and reality doesnt lie.
Agree wholeheartedly about the damn unions, but you better be careful when you talk about the protected classes.
Remember, if its the truth,then its RACIST!
Wow. I kept expecting a crowd of zombies to come running out of one of those buildings and start chasing the car.
LOL...and then babe Milla Jovovich would show up flying and blasting the zombies' heads with a shotgun and karate kicks...
THE 10 POOREST STATES IN AMERICA (ALL RED STATES, REPUBLICAN, CONSERVATIVE, "CHRISTIAN", AS OF 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION)
The states with the lowest median household income
State Income
Montana $40,627
Tennessee $40,315
Kentucky $39,372
Louisiana $39,337
Alabama $38,783
Oklahoma $38,770
Arkansas $36,599
West Virginia $35,059
Mississippi $34,473
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Thank god for blue states that carry the entire country on their backs.
>and then babe Milla Jovovich
>would show up flying and blasting
>the zombies' heads with a shotgun
>and karate kicks...
I have a standing rule that Milla can kick my a*s any day. (I'm a sucker for the eastern-bloc women)
Now, if she could get Jolene Blalock to help her, I'd die with a smile on my face.
(oh baby, leave the ears on)
Looks like Afghanistan only worse!
THE 10 POOREST STATES IN AMERICA (ALL RED STATES, REPUBLICAN, CONSERVATIVE, "CHRISTIAN", AS OF 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION)
First, they're not poor, you moron. They have a much lower cost of living, therefore they don't need as much income.
Second, I notice none of them have a housing bubble unlike Clownifornia and the rest of the blue states.
Now since you blue morons are always claiming that rich places like Detroit and Baltimore pay more in taxes, why do you idiots always oppose tax cuts for the rich? If all the poor places are red states and rich places are blue states, then you idiots should be in favor of less welfare and lower taxes.
THE HIGHEST WELFARE, MOST CRIME RIDDEN VIOLENT CITIES IN THE COUNTRY (ALL BLUE CITIES, DEMOCRAT, LIBERALS, "ATHIEST", AS OF 2004 ELECTION)
1. DETROIT
2. BALTIMORE
3. NEW ORLEANS
4. WASHINGTON DC
5. CLEVELAND
6. BUFFALO
7. YOUNGSTOWN
8. EAST ST LOUIS
9. NEWARK
10. ATLANTA
The Bay Area Center for Voting Research also found Detroit to be the most liberal large city in America.
Wrong, Detroit today is the result of 40 years of post industrial policy imposed on this country after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Take a look suckers--the old industrial cities of the US have just been torn to pieces. The power shifted to a financier style confederacy of the New South-- Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Dallas etc.
Yeah, it was all a conspiracy. People were forced to commit crimes and wreck their homes. Have you idiots ever heard of personal responsibility? I suppose you feel sorry for the flippers and FB's too. Maybe Tangelo is also a victim of The Man.
This is what you get when you have 7 years of Republican rule!
Hey moron, Detroit has been like that since the 1970's.
Come on now- we all know what Detroit's problem is. Everyone's pussy fotting around it...
lots of places have "lost their manufacturing base" and they dont look like that..
This is what you get when you have 7 years of Republican rule!
With the Greater Depression coming, I believe the Republicans have lost the presidency for the next 25 years. Amen!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Why does everyone BLAME every problem on whoever the president is at the present time? I thought we were an intellegent group of people in this nation, and after reading most of these rants I am being proven otherwise. For those of you who are a little slow, it takes years to see the affects of new policies and practices in government. I have lived in Michigan all of my life and I can tell you Detroit was just as bad when Clinton basked in the glory of leading a nation with a "great economy". The problem with this nation is that we LOVE to blame the government (especially when the President is not representing our party or views), but yet we all expect the government to make our lives better and have the magical "wizard of oz" solutions to all of our problems, after all it's our right to have the government hand us everything we need, and the list of what we "need" gets longer every day. WAKE UP AMERICA! DO for YOURSELVES!! You want to know why we our nation is going in the toilet? Because we can't just work for a decent wage, take responsibility to educate ourselves, or live by a modest budget. NO!!! We need unions to protect us so that no one who might work harder could have our job-- even if we are not working since we're on the picket lines demanding that our health insurance not go up $50 a month. We need someone to give us free money to go to college because we can't work and go to school at the same time or "my mommy can't afford to send me to college". We have become a nation of spoiled brats who expect EVERYTHING and do NOTHING. We are insulting our own intelligence here! Stop with the sense of entitlement and constant blame, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELVES. Find a way! There are people who start with nothing and work their asses off until they make their lives better. It can be done, but you have to work for it, you have to be willing to make sacrifices.
Post a Comment