Urban success stories ... and Detroit

The shorter original story may have first appeared in Fortune Magazine. It can be found online here: "Back from the Dead" (CNN.Money.com, March 26, 2008). I first had the version with the appended ending about Detroit referred to me by a friend in an email, but with no Internet URL. Then I found it at InTouchRadio.net (August 13, 2008), and that's the version that interests me here. Anyway, here it is:

1). Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

This former steel city is remodeling itself into a high-tech player. Manufacturing giant Bethlehem Steel, once one of the largest steel producers in the U.S., employed as many as 167,000 people in its heyday. By the mid-`80s that number had plummeted to 35,000 as the cost of doing business and competition from foreign producers took their toll. The company shut down its Bethlehem plant in 1995 and closed for good in 2003.

The town has since transitioned to a tech-based economy, nurtured by the presence of major hospitals and colleges. The state aggressively courts new businesses via programs like Ben Franklin Technology Partners, which helps start-ups find funding and qualified staff. Meanwhile, the old Bethlehem Steel property is being converted into a luxury entertainment complex that will feature shopping, dining, a hotel and casino.







2). Worcester, Mass.

New England's second-largest city, Worcester was known in its previous economic incarnation as a manufacturing powerhouse, producing everything from textiles to machine parts. Although the city has made an effort to preserve its manufacturing capabilities, it's best known now as a hub of biotechnology.

The founding of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Park in 1985 by the city's development corporation and the presence of 15 area colleges and universities fostered this new industry; Worcester is now home to more than a hundred biotech companies. The city strives to blend the green space and affordable housing options of a small town with the arts and culture of a big city: Worcester's well-known museums and libraries include the Higgins Armory Museum and the American Antiquarian Society.

3). Bend, Oregon

Situated among central Oregon's lush forests, lakes, rivers, and mountains, Bend's economy thrives on outdoor recreation. Bend was once a logging town, but decades of unsustainable harvesting eventually depleted the timberland, driving the lumber companies out of business. Brooks-Scanlon, at one time a major employer, closed its doors in 1994.

Since then, the city has become a tourist town, although smaller mills continue to produce some wood products. Mt. Bachelor, a popular ski destination, is Bend's second-largest employer. Tourists and the rapidly growing local population also enjoy kayaking, hiking, fishing, and rock climbing.

4). Manchester, N.H.



The largest city in New Hampshire, Manchester was a pioneer in the Industrial Revolution, home to Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, at one time the world's largest textile manufacturer. Other factories in town produced a variety of goods such as cigars, sewing machines, and rifles.

As cheaper foreign goods became more readily available in the `60s and `70s, the city's manufacturing industry declined - replaced by high-tech fields such as telecommunications and software development. Verizon is one of the city's largest employers, but small businesses make their homes here, too. While property taxes are high, there's no income tax and no sales tax; affordable real estate options range from modern lofts to elegant Victorians. Locals enjoy close proximity to ski trails, beaches, and nearby Boston.

5). Durham, N.C.

Once a robust tobacco town, Durham's economic outlook began to decline as people started smoking less. At the height of its popularity in 1947, local companies produced 50 million pounds of tobacco; in 1986, the number decreased to just 4 million.

To fill the void, the city, along with its neighbors Raleigh and Chapel Hill, established Research Triangle Park, a commercial complex that now houses more than 130 tech and healthcare businesses. Nearby universities share resources and provide a highly educated workforce. Downtown Durham boasts a growing entertainment district. The historic American Tobacco factory, which closed in 1987, has been converted into luxury housing, restaurants, and retail stores, sandwiched between a new performing arts center and the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.


6). Winston-Salem, N.C.

Faced with a declining tobacco market, Winston-Salem, like Durham, made a deliberate effort to cultivate tech industries such as biotech and software development. RJ Reynolds, the country's second-largest tobacco company, is still headquartered in Winston-Salem, but it's no longer the city's leading employer: Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center now occupies that role.

In the early 1990s, the Chamber of Commerce's Technology Council spearheaded the foundation of Piedmont Triad Research Park to encourage the development of high-tech businesses, drawing on the well-educated labor pool generated by nearby colleges and universities.




[Here is where the original article apparently ends, and someone added the following, edited here for content and relative brevity.]




7). Detroit

Once the automobile capital of the world, this city drew population (once numbering 2.4 million strong) from throughout the United States and led the nation into prosperity. With the decline in manufaturing occurring over the last 3 decades, Detroit was hard hit.

Through the ingenuity of Detroit Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick (son of State Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick), the hard working City Council, and various and sundry other educational, gambling and other sanctified greed lobbies, the work was completed of replacing the city's former manufacturing glory with a new culture of nepotism, crime, poverty, drugs, learned helplessness, law suits and other new whitewashed municipal adventures in venture capital. Thanks to their hard work, the city has been stripped bare, like a car stripped to its chassis and abandoned to rust by the side of the road. Welcome to new Defreckin'troit.... Detroit has MANY beautiful neighborhoods. This really concentrates on the bad parts -- and there are bad parts. But first, here's the Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick's Chamber of Commerce wants you to see, the pleasant skyline of the Paris of the Midwest as seen from across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario. It almost looks like a real city:



Then there's this:























For those of you that think these pictures are just of selected areas, guess again. This is what the great majority of Detroit is. There a few areas (very few) that are not like this. Notice all the empty space where there at one time was solid houses. [I will add that on several occasions I have taken the back streets across this urban blight of Detroit and have been utterly devastated by the unspeakable vastness of it. It is mile upon mile of urban wreckage, caved in upon itself with human beings eeking out an existence amidst drug deals and prostitution and children playing in the abandoned buildings. It is almost physically painful to behold. "How can this happen in America?" I ask myself. Newt Gingrich is right: Detroit should be, though it will not be, a major political talking point of this Fall's presidential campaign. It is emblematic of what is wrong with the country at its core.]

Now below is a picture of Bagdad , Iraq after 4 years of war... a little ragged, but not nearly as bad as Detroit ......

Of related interest:

• E. Michael Jones, The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing (St. Augustine's Press, 2003), 700 pages -- a massive tome with a controversial and fascinating thesis, a book certain to provoke, and from which you're certain to learn a great deal of American history (recommended by a reader).

[Acknowledgement: I have had to change all of the pictures of Detroit from the originals since those from the received email would not work online. Some of the images I found were the same, and the overall impression, certainly, is overwhelmingly identical.]