Detroit’s half-century of steady decline - The Washington Post

Detroit’s half-century of steady decline - The Washington Post
"Once known as the “Paris of the West” and home to America’s bustling auto industry, Detroit filed for bankruptcy after fighting steady decline for half a century.
In the 1950s, Detroit, known worldwide as the Motor City, had one of the highest per capita incomes in the country when auto plants were hiring wholesale. Now it has the highest rate of violent crime among the nation’s big cities. Average police response time is almost an hour. Nearly 80,000 buildings are abandoned or seriously blighted, and 40 percent of the city’s streetlights do not work. The jobless rate is above 18 percent, more than twice the national rate."