July 24, 2008

Happy Birthday, Detroit




Fern Driscoll said...

"I don't think anyone has ever really even tried to answer those questions."

I'd like to think that Young, Archer and Kilpatrick have given the matter some thought... not to mention Obama, but perhaps I'm naive. Detroit is surely a prime example of the dangers of a single-industry economy.

Burt Likko said...

Respectfully, I disagree but perhaps I'm not as aware of all of the dimensions of their efforts as I should have been before commenting on the issue.

My larger point is that not only is a single-industry economy a dangerous way to build a city, but pervasive and extensive big-government intervention within the social and economic structure of a city can go very, very wrong. Detroit is a symbol for the failure of so many well-intentioned efforts to make the city better, and it seems any time anyone tries to do something else, it just gets worse.