Detroit is a failed city. It was not always so. Nor did it have to become a failed city. So how did it happen?

The following piece explains both Detroit’s former glory and deterioration. It may foreshadow what is happening to our entire country.

Detroit: The Once Great Shining City Upon a Hill
07/03/2010

Detroit was the nation’s fourth largest city in the 1950s—The Motor City: rich, prosperous, and growing.

The fire of 1805 burned the city of Detroit to the ground, leaving little more than ashes and broken dreams. Detroit’s motto, Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus (“We hope for better things, it will rise from the ashes”) was crafted in reaction to this terrible disaster.

And Detroit did, indeed, rise again. It became known as the Paris of the Midwest in the early days of the 20th Century owing to the beauty of its homes and buildings and tree-lined boulevards. In the 1930s, the success of its sports teams led to a reputation as the City of Champions. In the Forties, the United Auto Workers set aside labor concerns to focus on the manufacture of planes, tanks and other war materials which garnered Detroit the name “Arsenal of Democracy.” And, of course, the whole world was enthralled by the beat of the Motown sound through the Sixties and Seventies.

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