Will the City of Detroit Become Atlantis?

Just because a city existed at one time in history doesn’t mean it always will.

Just ask historians of Pompei, which has been wiped out in several volcanic eruptions, or climb the Aztec or Mayan pyramids and wonder, “what happened to those civilizations?”

Will future historians one day be asking, “what happened in this place called Detroit?”

Many Detroit-area bloggers, and some journalists, are now addressing the question of nature “reclaiming” the city land.

From the Detroit News:

Detroit was once home to nearly 2 million people but has shrunk to a population of perhaps less than 900,000. It is estimated that a city the size of San Francisco could fit neatly within its empty lots. As nature abhors a vacuum, wildlife has moved in.

A beaver was spotted recently in the Detroit River. Wild fox skulk the 15th hole at the Palmer Park golf course. There is bald eagle, hawk and falcon that roam the city skies. Wild Turkeys roam the grasses. A coyote was snared two years ago roaming the Federal Court House downtown.

Vegetation is taking over abandoned houses, factories and apartment buildings, obscuring the ruins that are on the property. If we wait long enough, the earth will swallow these structures much the same way it swallowed the Central and South American pyramids- lost in the jungle for hundreds of years.

What does this say for the future of Detroit?

Should neighborhoods be bulldozed and therefore lost forever to history?

Does a city have a “right” to exist if citizens no longer find it attractive?

For the last few decades, population has been shifting from the industrial Midwest to the South and West as air conditioning (and jobs) have made other climates more hospitable.

Maybe it’s fighting a losing battle to try and “keep” people in Detroit.

In a global economy, some cities are going to be winners and others will not.

Detroit, however, gave it a great run. For decades, Detroit hummed as the center of the auto industry and brought with it high powered jobs, pensions and good lives. I know children of the auto workers who benefited in the heyday of the car companies.

But none of them still live there.

The city is losing its future generations and its talent.

Maybe it’s fitting that the animals are coming back in. Nature finds a way.