Model City

The decay of Detroit is well documented on-line, parts of the city border on post-apocalyptic in appearance. What stands out for me are the number of magnificent buildings which have been abandoned and left to rot. The following site has galleries depicting a number of these- www.forgottendetroit.com.

Fascinating and tragic.

Check this one out as well:

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089,00.html

FYI the polar bear scene shown in the video preview is Hastings Street in Vancouver, about 1/2 block West of Burrard. I know this has nothing to do with Crowder's excellent video but I wanted to point it out!

Toronto, 2020

It's good to know that if we want our farm land back we just have to vote "lefty".

Not that it takes much brain power to figure out, but the irony of the lefts complaining that the right is too greedy.

Toronto in ruins like Detroit by 2020 langmann? Nonsense! Piffle I say!

2015 is more like it.

I read this article after it came out - it made me realize that the USA was done

http://detnews.com/article/20090128/METRO08/901280491/Frozen-in-indifference--Life-goes-on-around-body-found-in-vacant-warehouse

I saw "The Road" , I had wondered during it if it had been filmed in Detroit.However, only Pennsylvania and Oregon where mentioned in the credits.

was that "what happens to detroit as a whole?" or
"what happens to detroit as a HOLE?"

May be we've been doing it right? Using Google Map tis easy to see all the vacant blocks in Detroit whereas across the river in Windsor, the vacant areas are parks.

The capitalist in me sees all that empty land with all the services (power, water, sewage etc) right there and ready to go.

Just gotta have way more imagination than me to figure out what to put on it!

AtlanticJim, does it matter how much infrastructure there is, if the ruling gov't in that jurisdiction simply taxes away any competitve advantage that the infrastructure might give you?

Understood Banachek. I had a thought to that point and then got distracted and forgot to put it in.

PS, I loved the show!!

Good presentation except for the very end, where the speaker asserts that "the citizens of Detroit have been robbed of the American dream". Not so. Those "citizens" wanted something for nothing and voted their desires. After the sensible ones left, the others got what they deserved: nothing for something. That is not tragedy. It's justice.

The Laws of the Harvest demonstrated:

Galatians 6

7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

I seem to remember that a couple decades ago that even if you wanted to open a business or buy a house in Detroit that you couldn't get insurance. Banks won't lend you money if you can't insure your business. I'm sure there were lots of factors that helped speed up the downward spiral.

If you have anytime on your hands you should watch the city council meetings from Detroit on Youtube. Very disturbing.

Great video and I'm a huge Crowder fan, and I hate liberals but, its unfare to blame it all on liberals. A lot of it has to do with changing technology.

I live in Oshawa and there are great swaths of vacant land in the old part of the city that used to be car plants. There are two newer assembly plants here but they employ a fraction of the people that the old ones did. Thousands of jobs that that used to be done by people ar now done by robots. Robots don't need houses, schools and malls. Oshawa would be a derelict city, building as many cars as it ever did if it wasn't for cheap housing and a relatively short commute to other places.

I was working as an electrician at the Chrysler plant in Brampton. Its been there long enough that it used to be an American Motors plant. It was going full tilt building the very popular 300 model. One thing that struck me about the place was that of the four big cafeterias in the plant, they only needed to run one of them to service the people who still worked there. Even the forklifts in that place didn't need people to run them.

The only people they need now are millwrights, electricians and someone to lock the door.

The Phantom: "Toronto in ruins like Detroit by 2020 langmann? Nonsense! Piffle I say! 2015 is more like it."

I lived in a Caribbean sinkhole for a few years, then close to Detroit. In both cases, the decay, the abandonment, the brazen carelessness were the same.

Good G*d, then I return to my hometown, Toronto -- which used to be called "Toronto, the Good" when I was growing up, for good reason; it was clean, parks were pristine, there was no garbage in the streets, law and order reigned; sure, it was boring, but people weren't shot on street corners and at movie theatres every day -- and I get a nose- and eye-full of the same rot and decay.

The piffle, spoken with pride by morons like David Miller -- who, BTW, lives in High Park, far above the madding crowed -- about Toronto being "the most culturally diverse city in the world" has actually become this city's death knell. 'Too many new immigrants expecting something -- heck, everything -- for nothing, no cultural homogeneity, no historical attachment to this city -- in fact, contempt for the European immigrants who built Toronto -- no respect for law and order. I'm waiting to find out who was shot last night outside a movie theatre in Scarborough, and I'll bet his name's not John Smith.

"Multiculturalism," the way it's practised here in Hogtown -- where all cultures except the British/Judeo-Christian host culture are swell, and where shootings, killings, gang wars, bloated welfare rolls are de rigeur -- is destroying this once-lovely, law-abiding city.

But, hey, "it's all good," as the barbarians in my classes like to say when they've been called on their insubordinate behaviour.

No longer Toronto, the Good but Toronto: It's all good!

Uh, huh.

Having recently read 'Atlas Shrugged', and then looking at th pictures of the Michigan Central Depot, I can imagine that building as the Taggart Terminal, with Dagney Taggert in her offices in the top floors, and John Galt working away in the train sheds down below.

Detroit today is the New York of 'Atlas Shrugged'.

Minuteman, I had worked in the IT business all my career and watched the same thing happen in that field. People were cheap in the 60s and 70s and there were not that many around in this growing computer field yet the equipment we used was expensive and labour intensive. Think of those spinning computer tape cabinets and large mainframes like the IBM 360s that required 3 shifts 24/7 to run them.

We were getting raises every 3 months, most people in the company, particularly management, had no idea what we did but knew it was increasingly vital to the company's survival.

As our labour costs rose it became mission critical to reduce the cost of the machines and their peripherals, for example data entry with keypunch operators so as we see today the equipment got smaller, faster, easier to use and not as many people were needed to run and maintain them. My VP boss could type his own letters on his personal computer and send it via the WAN to our other divisions and no longer needed a secretary to do this.

The labour force became more flexible in our food company and logistics allowed the yearly array of food you see in the supermarkets.

One area that didn't change, as in the car industry was the unions, the Teamsters, UFCW etc. all resisted this flexiblity and continue their demand for more wages and benefits.

The domestic car industry with their intractible unions were destined to die except this recession and our government stupid bailouts saved this bloated industry...for a while. Their automation impact was blunted by their unions. Just compare their $130k package with the public union TTC ticket takers making $100k.

Life is good when I watched this video on Detroit..Unions and the greatest cancer in the free world. Canada is so rich that everyone in this country should be a millionaire. There is only one thing holding us back and that is the liberal media, liberal politians and socialist, lazy union members. Half of the country work hard and the other half suck their energy. My next vehicle will be one that was not produced in Canada or the USA. I wish to do my part to crush the UAW.

Mike L:

Ford didn't accept a single cent in government bailouts. They did get significant concessions from the UAW, which Crowder (although it was a good report overall) mistakenly said didn't happen. New hires now get half the rate of pay of existing workers, and many of their workers are older and set to retire. So Ford should enjoy competitive labour costs in the future, and indeed, they expect to return to profitability in 2010. So why wouldn't you consider a Ford, instead of sending your money overseas?

Atlantic Jim:

The big issue in Detroit, as Crowder pointed out, is safety. If I won the lottery, I'd buy a tract of land just south of 8 Mile (that's the bad side, believe me!), demolish the shacks that are there (hey, I'm creating employment!), and build a new, gated community (hey, I'm creating employment and restoring the tax base!), with one proviso from the city: that they put one of their mini police stations in the centre. I know a lot of people blame blacks for drugs and crime, but there are a lot of hardworking, decent black people in Detroit who live in constant fear of some crackhead busting into their home and robbing (or worse, shooting) them. Chance of city council agreeing to this: zero.

I agree with the phantom and langman - the video is of Toronto by 2020. Was in TO in 2006 for business and was appalled at the poor quality of the roads - My father from Vancouver was right - what TO needs is a "good case of fire"!

Toronto in ruins like Detroit by 2020. Nonsense! Piffle I say!

Phantom "2015 is more like it."

This is what they get for voting in lefty mayors and giving the unions too much power. The citizenry are just getting what they asked for. Trouble for the rest of us is that these socialists want the rest of the country to look like that.

minuteman

ah, yes those damn robots

they don't even pay any union dues