This has seemed inevitable for a while, yet it still comes as a shock - Motor City was once the flourishing hub of US auto manufacturing: "Detroit, the cradle of the automobile assembly line and a symbol of industrial might, filed the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy after decades of decline left it too poor to pay billions of dollars owed bondholders, retired cops and current city workers. .. Kevyn Orr, the city’s emergency manager, said the debt is $18 billion. .. Its population, which peaked at 1.85 million in 1950, has declined to about 700,000, according to U.S. Census data. Manufacturing jobs fell from about 296,000 in 1950 to fewer than 27,000 in 2011. About 60,000 properties in the city, or 15 percent of all parcels, were barren and at least 78,000 buildings were vacant, including 38,000 deemed potentially dangerous .. Median household income was less than $28,000, compared with $49,000 statewide, and more than 36 percent of residents lived in poverty, 2011 Census data show. The median home value of $71,000 was barely half the $137,000 value statewide. .. Detroit is the home of General Motors Co. (GM), while Ford Motor Co. (F) is in nearby Dearborn and Chrysler Group LLC is based in suburban Auburn Hills. GM and Chrysler both went through their own bankruptcies in 2009 and are thriving again. Job losses at U.S. automakers intensified a decline that began in the 1950s, when white homeowners began moving to the suburbs, Scott Martelle, author of “Detroit: A Biography,” said in an e-mail before the filing. “As the tax base eroded, basic city services eroded, too,” he said. Detroit “is too big geographically -- 140 square miles -- for its dwindling and impoverished tax base to support.”
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 05:16:07 +0000
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