Detroit - can the once proud Motor City be saved?

[emilyg]

GM headquarters stands tall behind ruins in Detroit – Click above for high-res image gallery

Once upon a time, Detroit was a city to be envied. Its inhabitants were highly-skilled workers that earned solid wages and lived in nice homes that made up good neighborhoods. So alluring was the promise of Detroit that the city grew sixfold throughout the first half of the previous century. In fact, at its peak in 1950, Detroit was the fourth largest city in the United States and looked to all the world as if its boundaries would do nothing but increase over the next few decades. Suffice it to say, this didn't happen.

Nearly a million people in the last 60 years have left the city, meaning that Detroit has literally thousands of empty office buildings, theaters, houses and hotels. In the once bustling Downtown area alone, there are more than 200 abandoned buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Some of them can be seen in our high-res image gallery below. But how did it get this way, and is there no hope for The Motor City? Read on past the break for the rest of the story.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/23/detroit-can-the-once-proud-motor-city-be-saved/?icid=main|htmlws-main-n|dl10|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.autoblog.com%2F2010%2F04%2F23%2Fdetroit-can-the-once-proud-motor-city-be-saved%2F

[RB TexLa]

1. Did they try to expand their economic base in the last 50 years or just try to protect

auto jobs and recording royalties?

[emilyg]

2. Good question. No answer.