What killed Detroit?

[bailey]

I did not find it very insightful or informed. I'm not surprised his former boss hired him.

"The second factor in Detroit’s decline is the city’s defiant rejection of education and the arts." Really? Because he doesn't think the DIA is as good as some other museums is a sign that Detroit rejects the art? And our huge theatre district... how does that show our rejection?

Well, who primarily supports the DIA? Detroiters or suburbanites?

And can we please stop with the Detroit has a huge theater district crap? I love the claim that we are second to Broadway...lovely. Let's look at how ridiculous that claim is. We have 12 Theaters of over 500 seats...apparently that is the qualifier. "Broadway" has 40 and that isnt even counting "off broadway" venues.

So, tonight I'd like to go to a show in Detroit's 'second only to New York' Theatre district....what's playing? Fox has Jamie Fox... Masonic? Dark. City Theater? Some comedy jam. Opera house? closed for the season...see ya in october. Oh, I can go get hammered at the Filmore and the 93.1 riverfest concert.. Fisher nothing, but--..ooooh CATS IN 2010 sign me up!! Music Hall? Jazz cafe stuff [[which is kinda cool....you should go). Gem or Centtury? nothing. All I want to do is see Avenue Q...shouldnt I be able to do that in the 'second largest theater district in the country"?

Lets see about NYC ---- 31 different shows on and off Broadway tonight at 730 or 8. Weekends? add the matinees.

We have a few big theaters...yes. We rate a mid week stop on the national tour of most acts. Okay. A "theater district" "second only to Broadway"? no.

[EastsideAl]

I normally abhor David Frum, and pretty much everything he stands for, but I have to say that some of this commentary is spot on. Especially when he talks about preservation of our city's history and built urban fabric. It's strange to me that one of the few things that recent African-American city administrations seem to have carried over from their white predecessors is a very outmoded mid-20th century view of how to deal with the past - i.e., tear it down and replace it with something new, even if that new thing is something clearly inferior, like a parking lot or yet another soon-to-be-empty strip mall. Or, since the old thing, any old thing, is useless anyway and will be torn down eventually, expend no resources trying to preserve it and just leave it there to rot and be pillaged.

Frum is also right about the nasty racial divide that holds this area back so badly, but his discussion of it seems way off the mark to me. He makes it sound like black people moved here specifically to steal the jobs of good, hard working, virtuous white people, or to get them some welfare, instead of coming here for exactly the same reason as white people - in an attempt to improve their lot in life. Also, like far too many white right-wing commentators, he essentially holds whites blameless for what happened when they got here. And act as if decades of outright discrimination in public treatment, employment, housing, public accommodation, law enforcement, lending, and so many other things didn't happen, or as if it was perpetrated by someone other than whites. And also to act like it shouldn't have been expected, like it was a surprise, that this pervasive, and often vicious, discrimination would cause a certain amount of anger, resentment, suspicion, and an opposite reaction to separate on the part of those subjected to it.

I also think he's more than a little off the mark when he talks about education and the arts. Perhaps because he doesn't fully understand our history. For instance, he sees the DIA in its present state and doesn't grasp the depth of its collections [[at least as good as Cleveland's). The arts, theater, and certainly education, once had a seriuos foothold here, but like so many other things the economic decline, the population decline, the racial divide, and the drain of money and the monied classes from the city have taken their toll.

The Detroit Public Schools were for many decades a model for the entire country as to how to educate masses of children from working class backgrounds. And what's now Wayne State, and was once Wayne University [[and part of the Detroit Public Schools) was very much a part of that story. Detroit stood second only to New York and its City University system in providing higher education to the children of manual workers. Much of the middle and upper middle class in this area, and indeed throughout the country, are products or the children and grandchildren of the products of that system. In fact, it could be, and has been, argued that the success of that system created some of the basis for its downfall, as the children of workers became educated and wealthier, and either moved out of the working class city to its suburbs or left the area altogether.