Letters | 2 July 2015

How to fix Detroit

Sir: When I last flew over my native Detroit five years ago, vast tracts of it still resembled Machu Picchu. From the ground, it was little better; in what had been a prosperous Italian-American neighbourhood when I lived there in 1964, there were only five houses left standing. Stephen Bayley (Arts, 27 June) marvels that ‘You could buy an entire house for $10,000’ — but in truth the taxes needed to support Detroit’s notoriously corrupt governments are so high that you can’t give them away unless they are in one of the few islands colonised by the middle classes. Indeed, the city filed for bankruptcy in 2013, with debts estimated at around $20 billion.

I have no problem with gentrification, and I’ve done a fair bit of it myself. However, Bayley is naive if he thinks that this will solve Detroit’s problems, or that Burnley and Bradford can be rescued by Audis, Ocado and fashionable architects. For a much better understanding of the systemic ills of urban governance, I recommend The Wealth of Cities by John Norquist, the former mayor of Milwaukee. Rather than using federal funds to finance prestige projects, he slashed public spending and eliminated oppressive regulation. At the same time, he reformed public services and introduced school choice. This has attracted an impressive array of new investment, and Milwaukee is now home to a disproportionate number of Fortune 500 companies and sunrise industries. By all accounts, it is also a very civilised place to live for all social classes.
Prof. Tom Burkard
Easton, Norfolk

Choose heroes carefully

Sir: The problem with hypocrisy, particularly when it is exhibited by a ‘hero’, is that it leaves one feeling cheated — (‘Champions of hypocrisy’, 27 June). It isn’t only sports people who are guilty.