Maleficarum
10-25-2008, 12:37 PM
Imagine living in a city with the country's highest rate for violent crime and the second-highest unemployment rate. As an added kicker you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up contaminated toxic waste sites than just about any other metro.
Unfortunately, this nightmare is a reality for the residents of Detroit. The Motor City grabs the top spot on Forbes' inaugural list of America's Most Miserable Cities.
Neglect and abuse continue to reduce much of Detroit’s infrastructure to a more advanced state of decay with each passing year. Like a patient with a chronic life-threatening illness, but dressed up in a nice suit, having well-polished shoes and clean fingernails, the development in Detroit’s city center is held up as evidence of progress while the day of the wrecking ball and bulldozer approaches for the blighted neighborhoods and moribund manufacturing complexes which cover large tracts of the city.
This decay followed the rapid demographic transformation of Detroit from a prosperous majority-European American city into a crime-ridden and poverty-stricken majority African-American city propped up by government handouts, and charitable donations from corporations.
Michigan Central Station used to be the state's main railway station. Today it is a vast multi-story ruin. It stands as an eerie monument to a previous grand city: now an unused wreck, possibly one of the greatest signs of the destruction of this once great city.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/29/detroit-stockton-flint-biz-cz_kb_0130miserable.html
Unfortunately, this nightmare is a reality for the residents of Detroit. The Motor City grabs the top spot on Forbes' inaugural list of America's Most Miserable Cities.
Neglect and abuse continue to reduce much of Detroit’s infrastructure to a more advanced state of decay with each passing year. Like a patient with a chronic life-threatening illness, but dressed up in a nice suit, having well-polished shoes and clean fingernails, the development in Detroit’s city center is held up as evidence of progress while the day of the wrecking ball and bulldozer approaches for the blighted neighborhoods and moribund manufacturing complexes which cover large tracts of the city.
This decay followed the rapid demographic transformation of Detroit from a prosperous majority-European American city into a crime-ridden and poverty-stricken majority African-American city propped up by government handouts, and charitable donations from corporations.
Michigan Central Station used to be the state's main railway station. Today it is a vast multi-story ruin. It stands as an eerie monument to a previous grand city: now an unused wreck, possibly one of the greatest signs of the destruction of this once great city.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/29/detroit-stockton-flint-biz-cz_kb_0130miserable.html