City of Detroit = City of Struggles

The New York Times ran an interesting story on 9/20/09 titled: “The Media Equation Investment in a City of Struggles.” To read the article, go to http://bit.ly/j8qU2.

I’ve included a few quotes pulled from the article below:

“Detroit has room for two million people, but there are only about 900,000 left.”

“Detroit is like a prism on any story you want — social, economic, health care, race, education — it is all there. And it is all there in extremis.”

“Mr. Ghosh described Detroit as a “cautionary tale for urban planners, for social workers, for the rest of us. Everything that is happening elsewhere because of the economy started here a long time ago. It’s like a petri dish of all the things that have gone wrong.”

“We are here because we think Detroit stories, about recovery and the failure to recover, have resonance nationally because of the recession.”

I will stay if…

Great Lakes Urban Exchange (GLUE) has a cool web page showing people, of all demographics, from around the Detroit area holding up signs that express what would make them stay in Detroit. Click on the individual photos and they will enlarge enough for you to read them.

Some of the signs say:

I will stay if they fix up abandoned homes.
I will stay if I could get a job here.
I am staying because I care.
I will stay if we can learn from the past without living in it.
I’m staying because you can’t take my city away from me.
I will stay if better transportation (several others similar to this).
I will stay if Detroit straightens out its government.
I will stay if I can find assistance for my small business idea.
I will stay if Detroit preserves its historic buildings.
We’ll stay in Detroit if income taxes go down (or preferably, were eliminated).

http://gluespace.org/iwillstayif/index.php?/project/detroit/