Wow. Irony is like soooo ironic sometimes. As chance would have it, I had occassion to travel to Detroit and Windsor yesterday on business.
I never thought I would say that Windsor, Ontario is delightful-but compared to Detroit-it's paradise.
Believe me when I say that there is precious little to celebrate about Motown.
When one crosses the border from Windsor, one is immediately confronted by a mess of ugly bridges and crumbling infrastructure.
The highway toll is paid, yet the roads are littered with massive pot holes and chunks of ice on highway exit and entry ramps.
Formerly glorious buildings have no windows and graffiti.
Another striking thing I noticed was the almost complete absence of vehicular and pedestrian traffic in the downtown area. People had either no reason to be downtown, or no jobs downtown. Certainly, there were many vacated stores along the main streets.
My companion and I noticed that almost without exception, all the literature that we were given from the various businesses and other professional contacts that we met with, contained nostalgic references to Detroit's art deco glory days of the 1920s and 1930s.
It was really pathetic and reminded me of an old show girl, tarted up in clothes she may have worn in her youth, with the same hair and make-up, refusing to believe that she has grown old and unattractive.
One downtown hotel has been gloriously restored to it's former beauty, with spectacular moldings and exquisitely high ceilings. One can almost picture the social scene at the time-men in tux and tails, women in pearls and gloves, the full-piece orchestras and formalities of dance cards.
But it is just a vision-a dream.
The people in the service industries must feel damned lucky to have their jobs. They are pleasant, jovial and determined.
Also interesting was the admission to me by a black venue manager that the unions are killing what is left of the cultural scene in Detroit. I received a quotation for a work project in which almost 25% of the budget was for union labourers.
I was aghast. He was embarrassed to have had to include this, but confessed that he had no choice.
Since when do Americans have no choice in America? This depresses the hell out of me.
I believe there are always choices. I told the manager that Michigan will be the next Wisconsin, because the unions have finally spent all of other people's money.
There is nowhere else to go.
He agreed.
As we happily left the city, heading back to Windsor, I asked my companion if she could actually envision a revitalized Detroit. She could not. It is hard, if not almost impossible to imagine an enterprise of this magnitude. Detroit requires a revitalization of the declining spiritual nature its people, and the grey, dark, dilapidated infrastructural bones that surround it.
3 comments:
Detroit is the first installment in the transmogrification of American cities into physical ruins. The forest has already begun to take over large sectors of the city (which has lost about half the population it had before the race riots of 1967). Wildlife of all sorts, including large predators--coyotes, black bears, and cougars have all been caught on video within the city limits over the last several years--has invaded this formerly highly urbanized domain. Packs of feral dogs roam abandoned or semi-abandoned neighborhoods, sometimes attacking unwary pedestrians. In many ways, Detroit is replicating the process of ruination of the great pre-Columbian Mayan cities, albeit in a temperate setting. In a few centuries, I have no doubt that archaeologists (from China, perhaps?) will pore over the physical remains of Detroit and other former American industrial powerhouses, speculating on what could have brought such great metropolises to ruin. If somebody had predicted this future for the great cities of industrial America when I was a child, I would have thought them mad.
Detroit was a mess the first time I hauled a load there and it went steadily downhill thereafter. I do not think it can be rebuilt or vitalized. It should be bulldozed down and started all over again. Hopefully without all the corruption and leftist ideals that caused its demise.
A total mess. It was depressing.
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