Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Employment Rate for Detroit in the Past Decade






















The graph above is brought to us by an article in The Economist. The article itself discussed different economist’s options about Detroit and debates Detroit’s potential for economic growth. I am interested in knowing what everyone thinks about the graph.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/02/urban_economics

12 comments:

  1. This is just a sad graph to look at. To think Detroit has declined so much in so little time is just sad.

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  2. In addition to unemployment, it also shows the degradation of population. The population in 1/10 is not the same as in 1/00, so it could be the same percentage as before. It's still a bummer, but the glass is at least a little bit full?

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  3. It's even more sad that we can see the unemployment is going down but no serious effort is being taken to improve it. The small peaks indicate that short term policy has been used to raise employment but what Detroit needs is long term planning, then only we can see this graph going up instead of going down.

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  4. Detroit needs realize that this is the twenty-first century. As the article mentioned, clinging to the auto industry is only a temporary fix. Instead, Detroit needs to focus on developing an efficient public transportation system (more highways for Chevy trucks doesn't count) and investing in technology and education to make the city a more appealing (and practical) place for firms to do business. Unfortunately, such things cost money which, given the current state of the economy, is going to be rather hard to come by.

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  6. My suggestion is to sell a suburb or two to Canada.

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  7. Haha.

    I think that although Detroit has had a rough time over the past decade, the changes being made now to avoid future city decline will hopefully continue to look to long-lerm improvement. Detroit has become a model of "What not to do." Although it's been bad, I think it might also remind other states: "Avoid segregating neighborhoods and racists systems of public transportation," and "Provide equitable education systems."

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  8. Detroit can't go back to what it was, like the article pointed out about the auto industry. It has to move forward in new directions if it wants to prosper again, and Toni's points are very good starting ideas, along with a concrete sense of exactly what industry's the city and Michigan as a whole should be pursuing.

    Also we could just lease it to Canada for 10 years and buy cheap drugs from it.

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  9. Where is the corresponding text? It does seem to drop drastically, but look at the scale... not as big of a deal guys.

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  10. Laura I agree with you, it seems to be a huge drop but once you look at the scale, not so much. Although it is declining, I'm really not surprised...

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  11. I think this graph is a great example of how much a city can suffer when it doesnt diversify. Detroit was build around one industry as we all know and now they are paying the price.

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  12. I agree. Detroit can no longer cling to the auto industry for its success. It needs to diversify and discover new and growing industries .

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