The sad story of Detroit, which not all that long ago was one of America's great cities, gets sadder still. Having lost 60% of its population since 1950, the one-time industrial giant is now a hollowed-out shell of its former self. According to the city's estimates, over a quarter of its land area is abandoned — and Detroit is a geographically large city, so that's a hell of a lot of uninhabited space. My last visit to the city a few years ago had me zipping around on various freeways that run through it, looking around in amazement as I passed from a clean, beautiful downtown through what looked like a bombed-out war zone before suddenly finding myself in attractive suburbs. It's surreal.
As the people have fled, abandoning whole tracts of Detroit to nature and the criminal element, the city's tax base has vapourized. Empty houses contribute no property taxes to city coffers, and depress land values among the homes still holding families in the area. A new plan to save the city, down to barely 700,000 residents (from a height of 2,000,000), will see large areas of Detroit effectively officially abandoned. And a part of that plan will be turning out the street lights.
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