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Comment by masterleep | Hacker News Reader

Detroit is more or less a smoking crater at the moment, and Chicago is a smoking crater to come. For that you can thank the wise, forward-thinking stewardship of the Democrats.

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Oh please. Democrats dominate those areas because the Republican party has made the conscious decision to not engage city dwellers[1]. Instead, they're used as a foil against suburban voters- who, incidentally, are demanding more "urban-like" amenities from their local government (Like robust walkable downtowns, bike paths/lanes, green space, and non-chain stores)

As for rural voters... they have no national platform, with both parties disengaged. It's really a battle between the city and the suburbs.

[1] "New York Values" is a pejorative yet "Small Town Values" denotes virtue.

"New York Values" is a dogwhistle for Jewishness. Similarly "urban" has been used to mean "black" so much that it's hard to just talk about cities.

oh come on

It's actually about values: guns, abortion, God, gays...

Jewishness is but a teeny tiny part of that, and this mostly because of things that aren't directly related to the faith. We don't see too many Jews protesting outside abortion clinics and complaining about gay marriage.

That's a simplistic interpretation of the facts. Detroit is a burned out shell of a city for a wide variety of reasons; very few of those reasons have much to do with local politicians. Trade agreements at the national level probably tell as much of the story as any individual element. But, strategic failures of US car makers also plays a role. And, a rapidly evolving global economic environment also plays a role.

Certainly there has been mismanagement of the city of Detroit, sometimes on an absurd and possibly criminal scale. But, to chalk it all of to "Democrats did this" is...well, it leaves a whole lot of the story out.

Note that I'm not a Democrat and not defending politicians in any general case. But, I do think it's silly to make the claim that local Democrats caused Detroit's decline, when there are clearly so many other factors in the story.

Okay, but isn't it fair to say that making the unions too powerful was a key part of the story? That ultimately greatly damaged Detroit's ability to compete on the world stage.

Not to say that the automakers weren't also badly run -- they were. There's an NPR piece about NUMMI that puts some great color on the situation -- ah, here it is [0]. See especially "Act Two", where GM completely muffs bringing the NUMMI success to the rest of the company.

[0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/561/t...

That's true, because if mismanagement caused a city to collapse, then San Francisco would be a ghost town by now. There are stinky things in city hall.

In Chicago and it's far from a smoking crater to come. The university system is great and let's not forget that Ruby on Rails was born here.

DHH lived in Denmark when he created the first version of Rails. He didn't move to the US until the end of 2005. He was employed by a Chicago-based company, though.

He still is but he lives in Spain now.

By "was" I meant "was at the time" (in regards to when Rails was created). Interesting that he left for Spain. I did not know that!

Let's hope the universities don't shut down, then. That certainly wouldn't bode well for the surging homicide rate.

That 70-story high rise apartment building being built across the street is certainly a harbinger of doom. Chicago has its problems, but it has one of the most vibrant downtown's in the country (and unlike NYC, Boston, DC, or SF, it's affordable to the middle class)

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