Some time next year, I hope to take a vacation through the Midwest which includes a stop in Detroit. Detroit, it is said, lives and dies with the auto industry. Detroit is also said to have the largest inventory of pre-Depression skyscrapers after New York and Chicago. Today, many of these buildings stand vacant. Some have been converted into residential uses and a few have been upgraded into modern office space. But it seems unlikely that there is enough demand for office, living, and retail space to revitalize all of these buildings. In fact, journalist Camilo Jose Vergara has proposed to make a part of downtown Detroit into a kind of ruins museum. After all, he argues, Rome still has the Colloseum and other vestiges of the Roman Empire. Of course, if they aren't preserved as some kind of ghost town, they risk being razed. Such is the case with the Lafayette Building: [link]

The Renaissance Center was built with hopes of turning around downtown Detroit. Unfortunately, this “city within a city” gave tenants and employees little reason to wander outside what was something like a gated community. In the end, all it did was mainly siphon existing businesses and workers from older buildings. The more recently built Comerica tower which is located in the established business district does much better.

See Detroit.com photos are predominantly of blighted sights, but vibrant structures like the new stadium are sometimes shown too. [link]

And what about Detroit ’s future? The good feelings brought about by the Red Wings' hockey dynasty are all fine and dandy. But the Red Wings can't bring about what the Detroit area really needs: Business and job creation. At the rate things are going, only one of the Big Three automakers is likely to survive. Therefore, Michigan will have to find new direction to take its economy or its precipitous decline will continue. Thoughts?