10:55 am
Failed State
Every summer, Molly and I vacation in Michigan, where I was born and she spent her childhood. Our main reason for coming back is that we still have family here, mostly in the thumb area. Each time we leave, I’m sorry to go. It’s a great place, with many wonderful people. And the northern half of the Lower Peninsula, along with the Upper Peninsula, includes some of the most beautiful and unspoiled places in the continental United States. We always make sure to spend at least a few days exploring it.
But sadly, much of Michigan is beginning to resemble a failed state. Its primary economic engine, the Big Three automakers, is in free fall. The mayor of its largest city, Detroit, is under multiple indictments and recently seems to be having a difficult time avoiding jail.
Last Wednesday, The Detroit News ran the following story:
One dollar can get you a large soda at McDonald’s, a used VHS movie at 7-Eleven or a house in Detroit.
The fact that a home on the city’s east side was listed for $1 recently shows how depressed the real estate market has become in one of America’s poorest big cities.
And it still took 19 days to find a buyer.
In fairness, the house was abandoned, foreclosed, and then gutted by looters. But according to the story, two years ago it was the “nicest house on the block.”
One of the things I collect on Flickr are photos of Detroit’s current perilous state. What follows are a few of the most striking and depressing ones. All are via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. Photographers identified under each pic.
Detroit Book Depository (tedguy49)
Tiger Stadium (Derek Farr)
Lee Plaza Hotel (Derek Farr)
Michigan Central Train Station (Derek Farr)
American Beauty Electric Irons (Derek Farr)
New Employee Entrance, Packard Plant (Derek Farr)
There are many, many more — abandoned Detroit is a popular topic on Flickr — I urge you to explore the subject further.
I know that I am guilty of parachute journalism here — I haven’t lived in Michigan (except for a year in college) since 1976 — and that I’m being somewhat skewed in my choice of photos. I could just as easily have shown the Renaissance Building and other structures in the few blocks of downtown Detroit that are coming back. But given the widespread devastation, those are more Potemkin Village than progress.
People have no idea just how much of a shell Detroit is these days. The city is still staggering from the ‘67 riots, which led to one of the worst white flights anywhere and decimated the economic base. There are good people trying to make things better, but there are also lots of not-so-good people profiting from its misery. Sadly, one, Kwame Kilpatrick, is the current Mayor. That’s a tragedy, because when he first took office, it looked like he would start turning things around. But in fairness to Kilpatrick, it’s not clear that he could have made a difference even if he had avoided getting in trouble. With a rapidly shrinking tax base (although not many homes sell for a dollar, there are quite a few available for less than $500) and the Big Three in decline (and even if they survive, it’s likely not to be in Michigan), it’s going to be hard for anyone to succeed.
But it’s not just Detroit. Michigan’s rural areas have some of the worst poverty north of the Mason-Dixon line (and just happen to be the only part of the United States outside the Appalachian corridor where Hillary got more than 60 percent of the white vote). Some of its cities — Flint, Saginaw, Benton Harbor, Ypsilanti, Pontiac — are little more than rusted hulks. In fact, with the exception of Grand Rapids, East Lansing/Lansing, Ann Arbor, Traverse City and perhaps Bay City and a few Detroit suburbs, most of the larger cities are a mess.
When I was a kid, my dad was the editor of The Saginaw News. When we moved there (the summer of 1966), Saginaw was still a fairly prosperous city, with two major plants — Saginaw Steering Gear and Gray Iron Foundry (later Central Foundry) — providing a large number of people the chance to live a middle-class existence. It was a tradition that everybody worked in one or the other at some point. My brother spent several summers working at one, and my then-brother-in-law started on the line and eventually ended up as an executive after GM helped put him through college.
But the automakers weren’t the only source of prosperity: Wickes Lumber, a legacy of the years when Saginaw was one of the great lumber processing towns, remained a major employer, and several other large companies contributed as well. The downtown was in fairly good shape, with several large department stores, including Morley Brothers and Heavenrich’s, as well as the Saginaw Hotel and the newspaper, serving as anchors.
By the time we moved to Ann Arbor (August 1973), the rot already was evident There were multiple causes: the 1967 Detroit riots (and 1968 riots elsewhere) caused many whites in the city to flee to the surrounding township; the first mall (Fashion Square) opened outside the city, leading many businesses to move out of downtown and leading those that tried to stay to fail; Wickes consolidated its offices elsewhere; and, of course, the energy crisis, which, combined with competition from Japan, began the Big Three’s long, slow decline (Central Foundry relocated in 1977).
Today, downtown is almost completely empty, most industries are gone, and only the continued presence of Saginaw Steering Gear keeps the city going. That’s only one story. Despite its occasional exaggerations, Michael Moore’s Roger and Me is a fairly accurate picture of Flint’s decline. And there are far too many others.
Is there hope? I don’t know. Grand Rapids is prosperous thanks to a thriving office furniture industry (Steelcase, Herman Miller, etc.), and Ann Arbor remains not only a great college town, but also a burgeoning tech center. Northern Michigan has some of the more prosperous areas in the state — Petoskey, Traverse City, Charlevoix, and Mackinac and Les Cheneaux Islands. But those are mainly summer playgrounds for what’s left of the state’s super-rich. Much more common are towns like Three Rivers, where the largest employer recently offered buyouts and relocation incentives in an attempt to significantly reduce its workforce.
There’s an old truism that if you want to know what the rest of America will be like in ten years, go to California.
But what if the real answer today is that you should instead visit Michigan?
Photo at top: Derek Farr via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license
Loading ...