Has my old home town of Detroit gone down so far, as I have suggested in a recent blogpost, that it has nowhere to go but up. That’s the view of blogger Aaron Renne (the Urbanophile), who does see a positive future for Detroit—although a future that looks very different from the city’s storied past. He quotes one writer who describes Detroit as “a vast enormous empty canvass,” and he calls for “urban shrinkage.” Interestingly, he argues that the ineffectiveness of Detroit’s current city government is an advantge—people who buy a home for $1,900 can do pretty much anything with it they want, and at least some of those things are positive. In Chicago, with its army of precinct committeemen and licensing requirements for just about everything (all the better to keep you dependent on City Hall) you can’t spruce up your neighborhood the way you want. In Detroit, with a toothless city government, you can. Read the whole thing, and also take a look at two of Renne’s earlier posts on Detroit
