In a story headlined "Detroit Is Now a Charity Case for Carmakers," The New York Times on Monday underscores the gap between the surging automakers and their bankrupt and impoverished hometown, the Motor City.
"Perhaps nowhere in America does the view from the corner office differ so vividly from the city streets, where abandoned homes and deserted factories are a daily reminder of Detroit’s descent into the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history," writes Bill Vlasic in The Times.
"It is a striking juxtaposition of corporate wealth and success in a city that cannot provide adequate police protection or keep the streetlights on. And while the car companies have donated millions to the city and community groups to ease their financial pain, city officials and industry executives realize that the Big Three can no longer provide what Detroit really needs: more good-paying jobs."
In the 1960s, the auto companies and their suppliers generated an estimated 300,000 jobs in the city. Now the number has shrunk to less than one-tenth of that, Vlasic writes.
He notes how General Motors shut down its Fleetwood and Clark Street factories in the late 1980s; they had anchored two sides of southwest Detroit.
Closing those plants also decimated surrounding commercial districts, leaving whole blocks of stores and restaurants vacant.
“The decay left behind was not good,” Mark Reuss, head of GM's North American operations told Vlasic. “But those plants were obsolete. Part of our problem was we hung on to them too long in the first place.”
