Read This, Not That

Letter From Detroit

Ingrid Norton, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, offers a fresh perspective on the Motor City’s struggles, and the efforts at revitalization:

Over the last 60 years, the city has lost 1.3 million residents from its 1950 peak of 2 million. The continual bleed of people moving to suburbs and other regions of the country means that Detroit’s current population is as low as it has been since 1910. The massive abandonment has invidious, far-reaching effects for the Detroiters who remain. Over the last year, there have been an average of 35 major fires a day in the city. A lack of maintenance funds and property abandonment mean it is not uncommon for power lines to hang low over the empty houses and cracked sidewalks. Last September, a combination of dry weather, high winds, and downed power lines caused 85 fires to break out in one 24-hour period. Five suburban fire departments were called in to help Detroit’s department combat the blazes. Whole blocks were incinerated. Louvenia Wallace, a hair stylist and mother of three whose east side duplex burned, told a reporter from the Detroit Free Press: “It was like blankets of smoke were everywhere, and the next thing I knew everybody’s house was on fire … My kids couldn’t sleep because it smells like smoke … My daughter is asthmatic, so she can’t be around here, no way … I don’t have the money to just move.”

Read the full article here.