Detroit

Detroit is a city in southeastern Michigan, U.S. It is located on the Detroit River (connecting Lakes Erie and St. Clair) opposite Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1701 by a French trader, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who built a fort on the river and named it Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in honour of his patron (the French word détroit meaning “strait”); later the British called it simply Detroit. In the 20th century the city’s name became synonymous with the American automotive industry.

The expansion of the auto industry fueled a growth spurt that made Detroit the fourth-largest city in the country by 1920, a place it held until 1950, when the population peaked at almost two million. In 1970, it was 1.5 million and the city lost further 300,000 by 1980. The population fell to 713,777 in 2010. Detroit is the only city in the United States where the population has climbed above one million but also fallen below one million.

Voluntary efforts

As Detroit’s budget crisis drags on and the city government is unable to provide the most basic of services, residents have started a number of experiments in spontaneous order.

• a self-dubbed "Mower Gang" mows neighborhood parks after they've finished their own yards
• a church group is boarding up vacant houses in the Brightmoor neighborhood, one of the city's most distressed, to keep criminals out. And several neighborhoods are now hiring security to patrol their streets, supplementing an undermanned police department.
• On the wealthier side, the philanthropic Krege Foundation coordinated with automakers and local businesses to purchase 23 new ambulances and 100 new police cars.
• Using reclaimed wood from demolished homes, the initiative Sit On It Detroit started building bus stop benches, equipped with bookshelves to hold reading material to help pass the time for riders as they wait. The idea is to put these at bus stops used by local high school students to encourage literacy. They were told by the Detroit Department of Transportation that they couldn't because they didn't meet the city's standards. A public outcry over it and a meeting with city officials allowed Sit On It Detroit to get the city's blessing.
• The Detroit Bus Company is a private bus service that uses beautiful vehicles with graffiti-laden exterior designs that match the heart of the Motor City. There are no standard bus routes; riders can load up the route on any smartphone and see the buses in real time.
• Some residents, tired of waiting for permission or a plan, have repurposed vacant land. The Greening of Detroit, a nonprofit group that works with local growers, estimates that there were more than 1,000 family, school and community gardens in the city in 2011. The gardens operate as small, nonprofit, volunteer-based plots on which residents grow fruits and vegetables. In most cases, the food is donated to food banks, given away to neighborhoods or consumed by the growers themselves. In emptier parts of Detroit, some residents have fenced in the vacant lots next to their houses to create suburban-size parcels. They create gardens, children's playgrounds, parking for cars, toolsheds or other structures.

Private policing

In Detroit, the violent crime rate is one of the highest in the country. There is a spike in murders and an increase in justifiable homicides. Citizens are taking the law into their own hands, arming themselves with guns and guard dogs to fend off criminals. Residents in wealthier areas also often hire private security firms to patrol their streets in armored trucks. Business owners at Threat Management Group and Recon Security, which patrol neighborhoods, said business is booming.

The city is bolstering its police department by having unarmed citizens patrol the streets in a program that costs less than annual salaries and benefits for three officers. Neighborhood patrols document break-ins, vandalism, suspected drug dens and "strippers" who rip metal from homes to sell as scrap. They’re to call 911 if they see a crime in progress.

Citizen patrols aren’t the only effort to bolster the force. One business district will in 2013 pay about $200,000 to hire off-duty officers, armed and using city cruisers, to guard a main thoroughfare.

Links

• With Detroit’s Bankruptcy, Anarchists Have Begun Project "Free Detroit" – Starting a Community by Ezra Van Auken, August 2013
• This is What Budget Cuts Have Done to Detroit ... And It's Freaking Awesome by Robert Taylor, May 2013
• "Declare Detroit a Free City" by Patrick Barron, July 2013
• The First Step to a Free Detroit–Let Them Work! by Patrick Barron, August 2013; updated version from September 2013
• Austrian Detroit? by Mark Spitznagel, August 2013
• The Local Focus: Free Detroit Series - Threat Management (video), part 2: part Fireweed Universe City (video)
• What's Up With Detroit? (video) with John Stossel, July 2013
• Bleak Photos Capture The Fall Of Detroit by Kamelia Angelova, October 2012
• "Uncivil War: Detroit Blames the South" by Karen De Coster, December 2008
• Anarcho-Farming in Detroit by Karen De Coster, August 2012
• Detroit’s Anarcho-Parking Garage? by Karen De Coster, February 2013
• Detroit’s Amazing Pop-Up Anarchy by Karen De Coster, August 2013
• Detroit: From Rust to Riches a blog by Karen DeCoster about Detroit
• Health Care and Detroit: Killed By Government by Gary North, March 2010
• "Millions for Billions: Bailout Rewards Detroit’s Big Three" by Richard Ebeling, November 2008
• "The Privatization of Public Services" by John L. Chapman, February 2008
• "Can Government Build Cities?" by Clifford F. Thies, September 2005
• Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis by Chris McGreal, March 2010
• Foodies Fight to Save Detroit With Job Hopes Pinned on Arugula by Alan Bjerga, August 2013
• Detroit's Flirtation with Economic Suicide by Lawrence W. Reed, March 2005
• A Tribute to the Jitney by Lawrence W. Reed, January 2000
• Henderson’s Iron Law of Government Intervention: The 1967 Detroit Riot, by David R. Henderson, October 2011
• How Detroit Drives Out Motor City Entrepreneurs by Dana Berliner, 1997
• The Post-Post-Apocalyptic Detroit by Ben Austen, July 2014
• Detroit at Wikipedia