No, I don’t have a link. It’s in the papers. The biggest unknown is what city assets will have to be liquidated (zoo? art in the museum? Belle Isle?) or whether they’ll be protected in some legal or extra-legal fashion (that is, in the same way as the UAW’s stake in the automakers was protected while senior creditors lost everything).
Detroit just doesn’t have much of a way forward. Fundamental problems with its economy and workforce (reportedly, nearly half of its adults are functionally illiterate — google “Detroit” “functionally illiterate”) combined with decades of mismanagement and corruption in city government have seen to that. Areas that maybe a decade or two ago were reported to be gentrifying (the historic district of Brush Park, with grand houses) are now being stripped for copper, demolished, or otherwise just disappearing. Detroit’s flagship department store, Hudsons (google Detroit Hudsons building), was demolished in 1998. I hate to say it, but Robocop was prophetic.
Detroit will not — for a good long time, at the least — be able to be an independent city. No matter how much money is saved by good government, Detroit will be like the intellectually disabled man wiping down tables at McDonald’s, doing his best, but still needing subsidies and life in a group home, not able to live independently. That’s really harsh, but what else is there to say? — and I say that as someone who grew up in suburban Detroit and whose parents still live in the area.
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