This weekends Financial Times gave an analysis on the plight and bankruptcy of Detroit in an article titled Descent into despair. I would of gave a link pointing to the website page version, but the hassle of signing up to the website bothered me!

But in responce to what was written, which when you break it down to the basics wasn’t that much. Poor city planning was one of the reasons they gave. Corruption and the way of life it is today. But they didn’t pick up on, what my title says… too many eggs in one basket.

You can’t have a whole city dependant on one industry alone, it’s failier to diversify lead it to the path to which it became. Even in the 80s some scifi writers predicted things were going in the wrong direction. Why else was RoboCop set in Detriot?

Detriot needs to look for new contracts and industries that can help re-establish itself. For instance they want to bulldoze 139 square miles and start again, I am sure they can save money if they can recycle some of those buildings. Or even the recycling industry could move into the Detroit area. Low land value can make that one alternative, but do you really want to turn a dieing city into a US dumping ground?

They really want to stay away from large scale projects and start with all the basic comdeties and business types and build up from there. A diverse city is a successful city.