Recovering One Of The Midwest’s Best Ideas
Our guest author today is Dr. Conor P. Williams, a proud product of Michigan’s public schools, and currently a Senior Researcher in the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative. Follow him on Twitter: @conorpwilliams
President Obama sent a veritable drawerful of his cabinet to Detroit last fall (and Vice President Joe Biden led a similar visit last month). While the Tigers were headed for the postseason, the big shots weren’t in town for a glimpse of quality baseball. Attorney General Eric Holder, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx were in the Motor City to brainstorm with state and local leaders on ways to use federal resources to spark — and hopefully speed — Detroit’s economic recovery.
While there are flickers of economic revival in the city, it’s hard to imagine that this conversation was wide-ranging enough to break the spiral. Is there an easy long-term recovery to be found in Detroit—or are its considerable problems the product of a fatally flawed economic development plan? There’s ample evidence for the latter.
Changing the city’s course will require much more than budgetary tweaks. It’s going to take a comprehensive rethinking of the area’s approach to education and economic opportunities. It’s going to require starting with the youngest Detroiters—and building a lasting foundation for economic growth.
It’s not enough to invest more resources in Detroit’s current model. With its tumbling population, crumbling infrastructure, shrinking tax base, and moribund economy, Detroit looks a prime contender for serial bankruptcy. Think US Airways. Think Donald Trump. Without a fundamental rethinking of the region’s economic situation, we risk throwing good money after bad.
Gloomy as this sounds, it’s not just a problem for Detroit and its surrounding environs. The Motor City’s (most) recent implosion isn’t just the product of local idiosyncrasies. Sadly, it’s symptomatic of big, structural challenges facing the entire Midwest. Detroit is just a sagging anchor on a sinking ship. Things are only marginally better in other Midwestern cities: the 2010 census showed that Detroit surrendered 25% of its population in just a decade. Cleveland lost 17%. Even Chicago, the Midwest’s cultural and economic capital, lost 7% of its population.
Without a substantive jolt, the Midwest’s future looks a lot like Detroit’s present. Changing that path is going to take