That Sinking Feeling (Detroit version)

Our take at reframe Detroit is optimism with a heavy dose of realism. I believe that the business leaders wrote their report up at a very pessimistic time over the last year. Frankly, if they were writing that report now, it probably would have been different due to the strong rebound in the domestic auto industry. Who would ever have believed that GM and Ford could collectively make $2.9 billion in a quarter or that Chrysler could become profitable in 2010? Michigan is probably going to gain relative to other state economies as manufacturing outperforms other industries.

The challenge for Michigan, once the nation gets out of the economic malaise we find ourselves in, will be Detroit. Frankly, the social fabric of the community has been torn and nobody has come up a way to stitch this fabric back together. For 50 years, traditional urban renewal techniques of buildings, roads, infrastructure have failed to produce gains. Again, Detroiters are looking at "urban renewal" in the form of new mass transit systems to spark a renaissance. Alternatively, We at reframe DETROIT believe we may have a medium to long-term solution based, not on buildings, but on improving people, one brain at a time. We propose to flip "urban renewal" on its head by concentrating on "people renewal." Through marketing and community engagement, reframe DETROIT is going to challenge Detroiters to take personal responsibility over their path in life, as it is their path that determines the future of their life, their family, and their community. We believe the solutions to the problems of Detroit lies from within.

Michael Beaton
Founder and CEO, reframe Detroit
web: http://reframedetroit.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/reframedetroit

Sickening isn't it.

Nothing like tough biz talk.

The biz leaders are going to save us...

Yeah, gimme a break.

Ever since Tony Athos taught the "Killer Instinct" at Harvard Business School (according to Time Magazine) the "killer instinct" has been killing us.

Slowly at first, but then it has been accelerating faster and faster and the business leaders have been reveling about laying off people because the new tech has made them obsolete and irrelevant... until faster and faster it goes and we all become irrelevant... simply lambs being led to slaughter...

And with the Republican Leaders in charge led by Rush Limbaugh you can hear the furnaces being started up off in the distance.

I mean, why feed the bastards, they're really not worth anything...

Right?

The sinkhole in Detroit or the sinkhole that is Detroit?

For decades I have defended Detroit against all of the many detractors I have met who rip on this city. Often I have been critical of the biased, one sided, destructive slams on Detroit by TIME, The Weekly Standard, The New York Times and NBC's Dateline. And I have long held the belief that Detroit's decline was largely due to a California conspiracy to weaken Detroit's Big 3 in an effort to move the center of the auto industry from Detroit to California and claim it as their own. I still hold that belief and I can support it.

But now, not that it will matter to anyone, I am ready to throw in the towel. I keep looking for the bottom of Detroit's decline and just when I think we've reached it, a 7 year old child is killed in a bungled police raid ... and A&E television is there to film it. It will be shown on TV to the Nation, and probably to the rest of the world as well. This whole tragedy was precipitated by the killing of a 17 year old just because the victim looked at his killer wrong.

And there were two stolen cars in the backyard of the killers home.

And Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson are coming to town .. again.

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that there is no bottom - not for Detroit. Detroit continues to dig the hole deeper and deeper and while all of the new sports arenas, mass transit and urban farm plans sound promising, they are not going to save this city. To me, the problem is simple and basic. But the solution is next to impossible.

As of 2008, 75% of the births in Detroit were illegitimate. Single moms on welfare raising, in many cases, several kids with no father in sight. It has become an accepted way of life. Not only the facts, but common sense should tell you that that is why Detroit is 40% illiterate and 30% unemployed. Doesn't anybody see the connection why, out of the 18 largest U.S. cities, Detroit's 4th and 8th graders scored dead last in reading? Not just dead last - WORST SCORES EVER RECORDED! Same exact result for math!

Education has little or no value to Detroiters. Too many are content to live on welfare. Again, it has become an accepted way of life. Too many contribute nothing to their own existence and take no responsibility for their own situation let alone that of their offspring. And their offspring drop out of school just as their parent(s) and peers have done. Unemployable, they wander the streets only to find gangs, drugs and guns.

And so it continues.

Detroit eats Pollyannas, optimists, and hope for breakfast. For lunch, it has a sandwich made of children's dreams (sliced thin) between two wedges of altruism, and washes it down with the tears of social reformers.

Dinner is a rump roast of charity (blood rare) marinated in tax dollars, with a side salad of inventive solutions simply drowned in futility dressing. The wine is actual human blood, aged for centuries, bringing out strong notes of bigotry and ignorance.

And if you're living there, it sneaks a slice of your soul every night as you sleep.

Get. Out. I did.

I think it's very simple: Michigan can not survive without a thriving major *urban* city and Metro Detroit can not survive without a vibrant and dense urban core. Metro Detroit and the entire state will continue to decline until there is a transformation of the urban center much more drastic and much faster than the slow decline we have seen over the past 60 years.

How to accomplish this is not as simple, but I think regional and state cooperation is essential. Borders and walls of separation have to be torn down. The region must be connected, through rail transit, and by high-speed rail to the rest of the state and country and east into Canada. Perhaps forming a regional government for Metro Detroit. Whatever the structure, something needs to replace the current situation of competition between communities. We all have to work together to rebuild Detroit and Michigan.