The follow article is posted in today’s New York Times.
Yes, Detroit is an extreme case due to its total financial failure. But to a lesser degree, just about the same can be said of the conditions in most of our ‘Rust Belt’ cities, including nearby Philadelphia and Baltimore.
The country has not only failed to invest in future development, it has lived off an aging infrastructure which is now both dated and run down.
Instead of investing in growth and improvements as do other advanced nations, we waste an extra 8% of its Gross National Product on a dysfunctional health care system and an extra 2% to 3% in military expenditures on questionable wars abroad.
Hence, we have no money to invest in the maintenance let alone approval of our own nation. In infrastructures, we have already sunk to a second class world standards.
NEW YORK TIMES: A task force convened by the Obama administration issued the most detailed study yet of blight in Detroit on Tuesday and recommended that the city spend at least $850 million to quickly tear down about 40,000 dilapidated buildings, demolish or restore tens of thousands more, and clear thousands of trash-packed lots.
It also said that the hulking remains of factories that dot Detroit, crumbling reminders of the city’s manufacturing prowess, must be salvaged or demolished, which could cost as much as $1 billion more.
If carried out, the recommendations by the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force would drastically alter the face of the nation’s largest bankrupt city. They would also cost significantly more than the approximately $450 million that the city already plans to spend on blight, raising questions about the feasibility of the vast cleanup effort, which is part of its larger campaign to emerge from bankruptcy by fall and begin remaking itself… (more)
