What Could Save ‘Ruin Porn’ Detroit From The Ashes?

Financial woes caused a major shift in what was once one of America’s largest major cities

More than a decade prior to the infamous disaster at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, Detroit faced its own catastrophe when a nearby facility had a partial meltdown. When he became aware of the far lesser known event, the late spoken-word pioneer Gil Scott-Heron wrote the song, “We Almost Lost Detroit,” for which he gave a seminal performance at the 1979 “No Nukes” concert in Madison Square Garden.

“No one stops to think about the babies, or how they will survive,” Scott-Heron lamented. “It stands out like a creature from another time. We almost lost Detroit, this time.”

Thirty years later, a city which was once the nation’s fourth largest and called itself the “Paris of the Midwest,” is facing yet another crisis, this one decidedly man-made but seemingly unavoidable. For much of 2012, the city was on the brink of a financial takeover by the state of Michigan and, in December, it moved closer to the appointment of a financial manager by Republican governor Rick Snyder and the state legislature.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has repeatedly laid out plans toward increasing revenue and lowering expenses, among other things, these include increased income tax collection, decreasing pay to unionized workers, cutting of certain city services provided, and the sale of commercially viable buildings. If Detroit is ultimately forced to accept the appointment of an emergency financial manager by Michigan, it could constitute the largest bankruptcy of a major city in American history. Its long-term debts remain in excess of $12 billion.

In 1950, Detroit had two million residents, and today it’s down to 750,000. That level of population exodus is unprecedented, but the financial meltdown it is facing isn’t.

“There have been major cities and counties which have gone bankrupt before,“ said David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.

“In a place like Detroit, it’s hard to disentangle race for what’s happened,” Bositis continued. “One of the reasons the city declined so much is because whites left the city in such large numbers. Detroit is predominantly urban and black, but it’s hard to separate the race factor from partisanship at the state level, with a Republican-led state legislature and government. It’s not like there’s any love lost between the state government and the city, so if the state government believes there’s some advantage for them to financially take over Detroit, then they’ll do it.”