The process that is unfolding in Detroit is occurring in the formerly manufacturing, sister cities of Detroit: Buffalo, New York; Chicago, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; Cleveland, Ohio; and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Detroitowes its early development, in large measure, to those who exploited amagnificent natural-geographic setting, and improved it rationally byconstructing a superb network-grid of ports, railroads, andinfrastructure, and settling within and around the grid factories,homes, and community facilities.
Inthe stark days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated inNovember 1963, President Roosevelt’s persisting policy principles werereplaced by an entirely different ordering principle: that of thepolicy of post-industrial society. This launched and governed the1964-2004 trajectory of decimation of what is now euphemistically labeled “the Rust Belt.”
Detroitwent from the most manufacturing-dense city in the world, to a formercity on the path to extinction. In this, as a microcosm of the UnitedStates, it accurately shows the pathway that America is traveling. Itoffers a warning: Unless these policies are stopped, there will be noUnited States, just as there will soon be no Detroit.
