You may have heard about the collapse of Detroit. This slide show makes it real:

Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline

As does this video:

This article goes through the history of growth and collapse in Detroit:

Death of Detroit: Harbinger of Collapse of Deindustrialized America

From the article:

As a result, the population imploded. Figure 4 portrays Detroit city’s population since 1930. Under the impetus of Roosevelt’s policies, people flocked to Detroit for the manufacturing employment, its living standard, and the city’s competent functioning. Detroit’s population reached a peak of 1.85 million people in 1950. Over the next ten years, it declined, but largely as workers moved to areas just outside Detroit’s borders to live, while still working in the city.

However, starting in 1960, many residents left the city and did not come back to work, because the jobs had disappeared. This swelled the population living in suburbia, shown in Figure 4. Detroit city’s population started careening downward at an accelerating rate. By 2000, it had dropped to 951,270 people, a level that was an incredible 43% below the level of 1960, and 48% below that of 1950. The depopulation has continued: The U.S. Department of Commerce projected last year that by March 2004, Detroit’s population would have further declined to 914,000 people. Detroit’s population has been reduced by 50%. For a city that started out with a population of 1 million or more, such a halving had never happened in the history of the United States.

The recession has only made it worse since 2004.

But there could be a silver lining, maybe. Things have gotten so bad in Detroit that people are starting to smell opportunity. It is, after all, a full scale American city providing complete infrastructure, sports teams, cultural venues, etc. So we are seeing more and more stuff like this (you can skip the first 40 seconds):

And this:

Make Detroit the next retirement community

I recently wrote about the new average home price in Detroit: a whopping $6,035. I’m skeptical about it being a good investment because of the city’s soaring vacancy rates and abysmal long-term outlook. But then I thought about it some more and had an idea: Detroit could be the new Florida.

So maybe Detroit will recreate itself. We will see.

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