{"id":1172,"date":"2009-02-15T19:14:28","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T00:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2009-02-15T19:14:28","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T00:14:28","slug":"researcher-predicts-detroit-may-become-a-ghost-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/researcher-predicts-detroit-may-become-a-ghost-town","title":{"rendered":"Researcher predicts Detroit may become ‘a ghost town’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Richard Florida is\u00a0Director of the\u00a0Martin Prosperity Institute<\/a>\u00a0and Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. According to his website<\/a>, Dr. Florida “is one of the world\u2019s leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation.”<\/p>\n

In a recent essay in the March 2009 issue of The Atlantic<\/a>, Florida makes the following observation:<\/p>\n

Perhaps no major city in the U.S. today looks more beleaguered than Detroit, where in October the average home price was $18,513, and some 45,000 properties were in some form of foreclosure. A recent listing of tax foreclosures in Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit, ran to 137 pages in the\u00a0Detroit Free Press<\/em>. The city\u2019s public school system, facing a budget deficit of $408 million, was taken over by the state in December; dozens of schools have been closed since 2005 because of declining enrollment. Just 10 percent of Detroit\u2019s adult residents are college graduates, and in December the city\u2019s jobless rate was 21 percent.<\/p>\n

To say the least, Detroit is not well positioned to absorb fresh blows. The city has of course been declining for a long time. But if the area\u2019s auto headquarters, parts manufacturers, and remaining auto-manufacturing jobs should vanish, it\u2019s hard to imagine anything replacing them.<\/p>\n

When work disappears, city populations don\u2019t always decline as fast as you might expect. Detroit, astonishingly, is still the 11th-largest city in the U.S. \u201cIf you no longer can sell your property, how can you move elsewhere?\u201d said Robin Boyle, an urban-planning professor at Wayne State University, in\u00a0a December Associated Press article<\/a>. But then he answered his own question: \u201cSome people just switch out the lights and leave\u2014property values have gone so low, walking away is no longer such a difficult option.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps Detroit has reached a tipping point, and will become a ghost town.<\/em><\/strong> I\u2019d certainly expect it to shrink faster in the next few years than it has in the past few. But more than likely, many people will stay\u2014those with no means and few obvious prospects elsewhere, those with close family ties nearby, some number of young professionals and creative types looking to take advantage of the city\u2019s low housing prices. Still, as its population density dips further, the city\u2019s struggle to provide services and prevent blight across an ever-emptier landscape will only intensify.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr. Florida’s recommendations for how the government might reshape the economic landscape in response to this present crisis are just as startling. Among them, “the removal of homeownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy.” He recommends replacing the American Dream with “a bigger, healthier rental market” with the objective of making mobility a viable option for workers and making “the economy as a whole more flexible and responsive.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Richard Florida is\u00a0Director of the\u00a0Martin Prosperity Institute\u00a0and Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. According to his website, Dr. Florida “is one of the world\u2019s leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[609,530,531],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-detroit","tag-richard-florida","tag-the-atlantic"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1173,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}