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Adam
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Although this article is very negatie, I find the end very striking. If you read it carefully it gives hints at possible solutions to some of the economic problems we are facing such as cheap housing like we currently have, improving our schools and rebuilding downtown which we are slowly doing. In addition we do still have our airport and what I feel is one of the most underutilized infrastructures in the nation. We also have at least 4 or 5 colleges/universities already in place. I feel we could also have the ability to move foreign jobs from overseas to Flint which would be great for me.
[urlhttp://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060325/AUTO01/603250386/1148[/url]
FLINT, Mich. -- It was here, 70 years ago, that an epic union showdown with General Motors Corp. laid the groundwork for the job-for-life economic arrangement American autoworkers have lived under ever since.
It is here, today, that one can see most vividly the end of that era, in the form of block after block of leveled factories and boarded-up storefronts. Now, city leaders and Flint residents are left to weigh what future there could be for a city so deeply tied to an industry in decline.
No city has had its fortunes more closely track the auto industry than this once-lonely outpost 50 miles from Detroit. By the 1960s, Flint, founded by fur traders, had become a prosperous mid-size city of nearly 200,000 residents, largely on the strength of "Generous Motors," as the auto giant was sometimes known for its excellent pay and benefits. But in the past three decades, as GM lost market share to more cost-efficient competitors, the gray skies and forlorn streets of Flint have become a universal metaphor for the decline of American industry.
With news this week that GM and parts supplier Delphi Corp. will offer a buyout to all their unionized workers, the people of Flint are asking a deeper question. What is the second act for a city built on a single, disappearing industry? Is there a second act at all?
In the bars of Flint, there is little optimism, as if decades of headlines about the decline of their city have made residents expect the worst.
"This place is going to be a ghost town," said Len Posio, a 60-year-old GM retiree sitting at Patrick's Pub on Wednesday evening, as a woman in a leopard-print top and black jeans sang "In the Still of the Night."
One of Posio's daughters has been trying to sell her house in Flint for eight months. Only two people have even looked at it. One of his granddaughters recently graduated from Michigan State University and asked for advice on where to pursue a career. "I told her to get out of here," he said. "There's nothing here."
Business and civic leaders have bigger hopes. Flint has a growing health-care sector, they say, and many retired autoworkers are starting companies of their own. Darryl E. Buchanan, president of the Flint City Council, said this week the city is recruiting newer industries, such as a 100-person engineering firm now moving downtown.
Those pockets of strength, though, have done little to affect overall employment. The number of jobs in the metro area has dropped 16 percent since 1979, according to federal data. The drop in wealth has been even sharper than those numbers might suggest, as many of the lucrative manufacturing jobs that have disappeared in Flint have been replaced by service jobs that pay a third as much.
"My dad makes $24 an hour on the assembly line," said Glynn Wilson, 22, waiting in a white van at 6 a.m. to pick up his father, who was getting off work from a Delphi plant. "To make that kind of money and those benefits? Shoot, yeah."
With such jobs unavailable, Wilson shovels snow in the winter and cuts grass in the summer.
Nonetheless, Flint could position itself for an economic renaissance, said Paul Wenstrom, a Merrill Lynch vice president in Flint. GM has already shrunk its presence so much, particularly with the closing in 1999 of the 235-acre Buick City plant that once employed 28,000 people, that it doesn't have much left to shut. But the city still has the roads, airport and schools of a larger city.
"I think businesses will realize this is a community with a terrific infrastructure in place," said Wenstrom. "They might see this is an opportunity that's unmatched if you want a lot of land and a nice residence for not too much money."
If Flint is poised to rebound, it will be an exception to the rule. Few cities built on a single industry have recovered from the demise of that industry, said Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. When they have, it has often been because they have some other great assets -- a charming downtown, a desirable climate, first-rate educational institutions.
Fiat closed plants in Turin, Italy, in the 1970s, causing large-scale economic dislocation. Turin rebounded, taking advantage of its proximity to Milan to build a newer industrial base and developing tourism that reached its pinnacle with the Winter Olympics.
Pittsburgh has had some success developing a more diverse economy amid the shrinking of the U.S. steel industry. The city has growing health-care and financial services sectors, but its relative prosperity results in large part from the presence of Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University. Its continued success is far from assured, said Katz.
"It's a major challenge facing Flint, and it's a challenge shared throughout the broader Midwest region," he said. |
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Sat Mar 25, 2006 10:37 am |
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