Dave Bing on Fixing Detroit
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The only way to fix this city is to deal with reality. We are not fiscally sound. Anybody who could get out is gone, for the most part. In 2000 we had more than 900,000 people. In the last census we had just over 713,000. Anytime you go under 750,000, you lose some financial support at the federal and state level.
Detroit was built over time for 2 million people, and we now have an infrastructure we can't support. We can't service the same landscape with a third of the people. We don't have the taxes. We can't pay for buses all over the city. We have to reform the pensions and fix the schools. We don't have the density in certain communities to create safety.