Detroit

City of unintended consequences!

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Illustration: Peter Bagge

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Illustration: Peter Bagge

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Illustration: Peter Bagge

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Illustration: Peter Bagge

Comments

[AlmightyJB]

Detroit is a total shithole. They really should flatten it and start over. Or maybe not start over.

[Libertarius]

Detroit is worse than you can probably imagine. The guy who got punched by the union punks (Andrew Somethingoranother) did a good walkthrough video in Detroit a couple years ago.

To find another city as hell-horribly bad as Detroit, you're talking on the level of Bratislava and Chernobyl. Much of the city is deserted, with only coyotes and feral dogs remaining to vote for democrats.

[CharlotteHaze]

You mean Steven Crowder, I think. Here's his Detroit video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhJ_49leBw

[dcx10music]

I don't know what's worse:

1) Everything that Crowder says/shows is 100% true.

2) The comments are littered with "insight" from Tony-esque idiots who say things like "America is too lazy to run a truly great Socialist state" and "there's a reason why the Soviet Union beat America getting to space."

[Trespassers W]

Bratislava? Are you kidding me? Have you been there?

[GILMORE]

Uh, I think he just threw out something sounding sorta post-soviet, when actually Brats is teh awesome. i would have said newark, or something in Bangladesh.

[Briggie]

He probably should have gone with Bucharest. Bratislava is actually pretty nice from what I have heard. I have been to Bucharest and it is a shithole. Pretty much the Mexico City of Europe. Rest of the country is generally pretty nice though. (Especially Transylvania)

[schwapj]

Camden, NJ. With its hundreds of burned out tenements, the legislature in Trenton would rather let rotting underground oil tanks leak a drop at a time into the aquifers then let someone with a bulldozer--but who isn't licensed, bonded, and regulated by the state--go in and fix the problem in a week. I could buy a ten story building in Camden for ten thousand dollars, which would then cost me ten million dollars in remediation costs. No thanks.

[CharlotteHaze]

Love Pete Bagge but hate small, hand-rendered type. How about an "enlarge" feature, for us old-bats?

[PapayaSF]

Yes, please.

[Joshua]

Concur

[Rob]

In the mean time "Ctrl +" or Ctrl and your mouse's scroll wheel can be used to zoom the webpage.

This works in Google Chrome; your mileage may vary with other browsers.

[CharlotteHaze]

Ctrl while manipulating the scroll wheel works just fine on Firefox, thanks for the suggestion.

[Carston]

Hold control, scroll your mouse, that should enlarge or shrink it depending on which direction you scroll.

[StackOfCoins]

Detroit has some wonderful architecture. Too bad it's all rotting.

[db]

Can someone point out the areas where Detroit is abandoned? I hear about all these trackless wastes going back to Mother Nature but Google Maps satellite images seem to show an awful lot of buildings. What specifically are the areas that are disused and abandoned?

[BakedPenguin]

Near the airport, you can see nearly empty blocks that used to be full of houses.

[BakedPenguin]

Look just west of the airport.

[BakedPenguin]

Look west of the airport.

[Brian]

Taking the cartoon as inspiration, I pulled up Detroit and found the Packard plant. Then, looked around at the surrounding area.

It can be hard to see from satellite view, signs of abandonment. A roof is a roof. Some of the giveaway signs I look for are empty parking lots. Why is there this massive building, with a huge parking lot, and absolutely no cars in it?

If you zoom in close enough in google maps, you can see a "side view" shot of buildings, and that's when the missing walls and trash start showing up.

As another example, google "gilbo avenue, detroit" in maps and satellite view. It looks like a green sparse neighborhood. Then, you realize, "Hey: there used to be houses where all that green is." Then, you also note, "Hey, there are no cars parked at a lot of these houses. Weird." Then have fun plopping down in street view, moving around, and counting the abandoned houses with broken windows and loose doors, between vast empty spaces of green overgrown sidewalks in what used to be a community.

[NealAppeal]

Do the streetview, then you can virtually travel down the street without putting yourself in danger.

[Brian]

And count the breaks in the sidewalk for driveways that lead to nowhere. Eerie.

[trshmnstr]

If you follow the street view for long enough down the street, you can watch the google car get carjacked by Detroit's "upstanding citizenry".

[/sarc]

[GILMORE]

I just tried that and google earth got the shit kicked out of it in an alley, and now the little 'street view' icon has an arm sling and no shoes

[SweatingGin]

They didn't actually get the car, just aimed at it.

[Brandon]

The buildings are what is abandoned. They are still there, for now, but they are largely uninhabited, and unfit for habitation due to being abandoned and unmaintained for so long.

[Copernicus]

Reminds me of a Talking Heads song.

[cavalier973]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3t5nmgRVMs

[Tim]

Fuck it.

[The Dude]

Put a wall around it, and make "vice and crime highly endorsed" zone.

Roaches go in, but they dont come out.

[AlmightyJB]

Then let them kidnap the president.

[Canman]

Excellent work as usual, but the RenCen should have round surrounding towers. You seem to be able to make elbows round.

[Tim]

Can somebody explain the costumed woman in the last panel and what her butt has to do with the story??

[SIV]

I'm guessing Bagge did a comic book store signing tour and she is a typical "suburban Detroit woman" if you only visit comics shops.

[SIV]

Bagge is at a comics convention. See earlier panels.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Ass on the Internet

[SIV]

I wish they still built Packards.Cars would be much cheaper and cooler without all those damn regs throwing up an insurmountable barrier to entry.

[Kaptious Kristen]

The only time I have been in Detroit was in the mid-80's when I was a tween. Even then, I remarked aloud that the Ren Center seemed to be the only thing in downtown - it was surrounded by rot and abandonment. Cleveland was a thriving urban experience by comparison (grandma lived in the Western 'burbs, so we spent many a holiday in and around Cleveland).

[Red Rocks Rockin]

This seems appropriate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY

[Tim]

In 1942 Detroit alone probably produced more guns, tanks and planes than all of Nazi Germany. Now some sixty years later Germany is rebuilt and Detroit is in ruins.

[albo]

Because besides the Marshall Plan, Germany is full of Germans. If Detroit were full of Germans, it would look like Stuttgart.

[SIV]

/RACIST

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

That's because Stuttgart didn't have German flight.

[Lady Bertrum]

Here are some great photos of Detroit's abandoned school book depository. Note the thousands of abandoned books - because the residents of Detroit are so literate they don't need to stinking books.

http://www.artificialowl.net/2.....-book.html

[Raston Bot]

No Fed subsidies. Simple fix. You're welcome. Let them figure it out.

[LTC(ret) John]

So Payne and Bok are fired, and we will see the Friday Funnies from Bagge now too?

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

I find most of Bagge's work to be more depressing than funny. Not that he's not funny, but his choice of subject matter.

[Free Society]

Bok and Payne are fired all the while Steve Chapman still works here? fuckin' universe, how does it work?

[Corning]

Need more double headed Ron Paul with exasperation sweat flying everywhere.

[Romulus Augustus]

Over the holidays I clicked upon a show called "Hardcore Porn."
Check it out if you want to see Detroit lowlifes and consider that
everyone of them probably cancels out your vote, not to mention being a drain on your pocketbook.

[Romulus Augustus]

Oops - the tv show is called "Hardcore Pawn." Where's my brain today huh.

[Corning]

everyone of them probably cancels out your vote

Nah...the population of Detroit is pretty small..plus they don't vote like suburban voters vote.

Middle class white women are the "problem" not pawn shop dregs of Detroit.

[Corning]

Should also point out Obama got like 9 million less votes in 2012.

Perhaps Mittens should be blamed for sucking so bad.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

No, he didn't. BO only lost 3.7M votes between elections. And MR got 1M more votes than McCain.

[Libertarius]

No. Obozo lost 9 million votes, and Romney got less than McCain.

This election was not a "mandate"; it was a failure of the right to come out and vote, which amazes me in light of the Tea Parties and all the outrage we've seen since 08.

[Rob]

Hardcore Pawn doesn't represent all of Detroit.

In the last 10 years there have been some signs of life. Compuware moved their HQ into the downtown area in 2003, and Quicken Loans moved into the same area around 2010. The Fillmore Theater has some of the best shows in the state (Sigur Ros 9/23/2008 was amazing).

Admittedly, the best growth prospects in the state are north and west of Detroit (e.g., Ann Arbor, Livonia, Troy). It's not a complete shit hole down there.

Now Saginaw, that place is a shit hole.

[Invisible Finger]

Detroit needs to change its name to West North Korea.

[dk12345]

Wow...making fun of Detroit. That's original.

[Libertarius]

It's an original, realistic way of depicting what collectivism does to people (and civilization).

Leftists always promise utopia, but always deliver hell on earth. Detroit is America's laboratory for the real effects of collectivism (gives civilization back to the jungle)--that's why Detroit is rotting and all we hear from the lamestream media is crickets.

[dk12345]

Crickets? There have probably been 20 articles and a half dozen documentaries made about what a shit hole detroit is over the last few years. I guess now we have it in comic form.

The horse is dead, you can stop beating it.

Here is another take: http://www.urbanophile.com/201.....f-detroit/

[dk12345]

I linked the wrong article:

http://www.newgeography.com/co.....n-frontier

[Dweebston]

"The other take" is yet another bulldozing and relocation scheme implemented from on high?

[Stephdumas]

That reminds me, there's one guy on the City-Data forums posted a interesting thread in April 2012 titled "Detroit: A Libertarian's Paradise"
http://www.city-data.com/forum.....adise.html

I think Reason should do a "Reason Saves Detroit" videos series like they did with Cleveland.

[GILMORE]

Detroit: A Libertarian's Paradise

If he means a place that progressive urban politics and unions have destroyed so badly that the only remaining options are to *do the opposite*, then I guess...

[Libertarius]

It's the libertarians' fault...because Detroit has a long history of libertarian leadership...

[Stephdumas]

It's not the 1st time, in the movie "Kentucky Fried Movie" where the vilain, Dr. Klahn ordonned to take the prisonner (a CIA agent) to Detroit.

Also, the Detroit Riots of 1967 hitted Detroit very hard (and it was one week after the riots of Newark) and it's not fully recovered from the damage.
http://www.detroityes.com/mb/s.....post359746

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Round up every single politician and high-level functionary involved in Detroit's government at any time in the last thirty years, and deep-fat fry them on pay-per-view. Air-drop the proceeds as loose $1 bills over central Detroit, and you will do more good than all the government bail-outs of the last three decades.

[h3k86qc35923]

There's no inherent value in a city. We shouldn't mourn the collapse of Detroit. If we distributed all of the people, crimes and feral dogs across the rest of the country, razed the city and let nature take over then it wouldn't be an issue. The fact that people are sentimentally attached to the Detroit of the 60s is irrelevant.

[Alan]

Motor City ... do ya think this might be connected?

http://www.motherjones.com/env.....k-gasoline

[Thomas O.]

So... let me get this straight... light rail doesn't count as "rail-based transit"? Dallas has the largest light-rail network in the country, and it's getting half-decent usage.

[Coach Panto]

The Rand prophecy fulfilled. The city's destruction is a result of destruction of contractualist morality. The people came to believe that trade is theft, and that the only rational thing to do is exact reparations from the evil rich. Fackin idiots. Now 4 generations later, these fecebags cannot hunt or gather for themselves. They are like zoo-born animals who cannot be released into the wild (the free market) or they would die from ignorance of what to do. We have a Federal Zoo program with 40 million animals (in welfare and bureaucratic govt jobs) who have no clue how to survive by merit.

Fack 'em. Let them eat the dung that their brains have become. I'll never employ a statist. When hyperinflation hits, they will turn to robbery, and wary meritors will move in groups and defend with deadly force. There will be a reckoning, and many statists will die, some trying to disarm the meritors.

[Allens]

As bad as all this sounds, things are looking up, if even in small ways. As a previous commenter mentioned, a couple of large high-tech companies have moved in, and this has spawned a bevy of start-ups. Young 20-something's are flocking to the business district and snapping up lofts. This is how the city will eventually revitalize.

They are demanding services, and they are starting to appear. Do you know that the city does not currently have a single supermarket!!!! But two are scheduled to open soon to accommodate the influx of young hipsters. These are the FIRST real signs of improvement I've seen in my 53 years in the city.

Hopefully they will stay, raise family's and vote for real politicians, not the criminals that the current residents seem to favor. The real estate is too valuable. The city will turn around eventually.

[nannasin28]

it did a good walkthrough video in Detroit a couple years ago.PT2272

[uythsb]

Happy New Year,NBA ,NFL 2013

[Mr.Shelton]

Thanks Peter for telling the truth about Detroit.

[????? ??????]

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