1000 Detroiters duped thinking they were getting a free home

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Blue Shift

What Detroit needs to do is reinvent itself, but they didn't do that. Hard to reinvent when your best ideas are to give your library janitors business cards.

Successful cities have to constantly find ways to make themselves new. The things that made Detroit an attractive place for the auto industry would make Detroit an attractive place for other industries, but the city has to adapt itself to lure those new industries in.

They didn't do it, so they're a shell of their former self.

Jesus H Christ, Ket, you have to draw businesses IN before you can convince them your town can be reinvented with their employment help. That whole "Yeah? What's in it for us?" thing comes into play. If other areas of the state dangle a better carrot, guess who loses?
That "reinvention" can take more than a couple of decades if somewhere falls into a deep blight like Detroit did, and it's going to be a very slow crawl of a pace.

a reply to: wantsome

That is just awful.

I have to say, some of the utterly heartless responses in this thread are beyond callous. Its as if some people around here do not know what it is to be desperate, and that leads me to believe that maybe their lives have not been hard enough. I pray that those people never have to be desperate, but at the same time, perhaps they could use some life lessons, particularly how not to take such pride that they bind themselves to a fallen fate.