“SPERAMUS meliora resurget cinerbus”: the Latin incantation, offered by a French Catholic priest after a fire nearly destroyed the city in 1805, is Detroit’s motto—“We hope that better things may rise from the ashes”. The once-great city, the “arsenal of democracy” during the second world war and home of the world’s most innovative manufacturers, has almost been ruined a second time. National interest in Detroit has waned since its bankruptcy proceedings, brought on by decades of mismanagement, ended in December 2014. Most tales of the city now take one of two tacks. Either Detroit remains mired in poverty and unemployment, its doom merely forestalled by a few years. Or the hipsters flooding in are, with each overwrought coffee contraption and jam-jar cocktail, returning the city to something like its former glory.
What both accounts miss is that Detroit seems on the point of doing something remarkable: re-electing a mayor whose singular achievement has...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2y1mRR4
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