Article on Detroit filled with inaccuracies
it's from 2011, but I just spotted it in a waiting room.
http://www.onearth.org/article/motown-revival
The effect on the city’s physical landscape has been profound. Detroit occupies 139 square miles, and its infrastructure was built for a population, and a tax base, more than double its current size. All told, almost 20 square miles of Detroit’s land area -- nearly the size of the entire city of San Francisco -- has been abandoned, leaving a vast patchwork of blight spread across the cityscape. It is difficult to provide even basic services like police, fire, water, and sanitation to a population spread so thin.
As all San Franciscans know, The City is "49 square miles completely surrounded by reality".
(actually closer to 47 1/2, but it is seven miles across and seven up and down)
And let's check those density calculations, shall we? 713,000 people spread out over 139 square miles equals 5129.5 people per square mile. That's slightly above the accepted standard of 5000 per square mile for an urbanized are.
This post comes to you from San Jose. We have a larger population, 984,000, but an even larger area of 180 square miles. That works out to 5359 per square mile. So not only are the two cities rivals in the NHL's Western Conference
, they're similar in terms of density. Yet San Jose has no problems "providing even basic services like police, fire, water, and sanitation to a population spread so thin". (or wouldn't if our DINO mayor weren't so hell-bent on busting the public employee unions 
)
The real issue is tax base. San Jose has companies like Adobe, eBay, Cisco, and the West Coast HQ of IBM. Detroit wouldn't even have GM if it hadn't been for the bailout. And how many people does it actually employ in Detroit underneath that shiny GM sign on the Ren Center?
The density argument is spurious. Many cities in the Sunbelt hover around 5000 per square mile. In fact, Detroit could reinvent itself as the only Northern city with room to spread out and build things like huge factories. It could, for instance, have rapid bus lines like L.A. has, which stop only at major transfer points along a route.
= new reply since forum marked as read
notably marmar. Thank you.
I have been following the events in the D with interest and dismay. If anyone believes this fascist takeover is going to stop at 8 Mile, I have a bridge I'd like to show them, and it isn't the privately owned Ambassador.
Since no other city in the area is Detroit. No other has such historic exposure. Who would care if Ferndale went broke except maybe Eminem -- on second thought I guess that would be Warren, Michigan -- another Detroit pretender who lived north of Eight Mile.
Us Detroiters tend to be a bit protective of our legacy and do not like it to be co-opted by non-residents whether they be emergency managers or pop culture celebrities. Just ask Stevie Wonder about that, or Aretha Franklin, for that matter.
And it really pisses me off to see my home town being destroyed like it is. How many cities Detroit's size have lost over a million residents in so short a time? Well over 50%!! I know of only one. In WWII, it was called the Arsenal of Democracy. Now, the city is a shamble.
It brings tears to my eyes.
Thanks for your kind response.
that's what ALEC and the Koch Brothers do. They used Katrina to replace New Orleans public schools with charters. Now it's happening in Chicago. I could easily see, for instance, Walker and his teabagger sycophants passing an emergency manager law (twice if they had to ) and using it to take over Milwaukee.