Detroit is now, officially, bankrupt, and it’s time, again, in telling the history of this once great city of Detroit — home to the automobile as well as to The Supremes — to remind of the book, “Ruins of Detroit,” by two young French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.
Their photos tell the tragic story better than any words of how Detroit’s decline has created a city of poverty and neglect and decay — an urban tragedy.
And then, it’s time, again, to ask the question – how could America let this happen?
Random notes on America 
Detroit-born, now a Minnesotan, I, too, cannot understand how public and private leaders let this happen to a once-thriving city. When I left the city in 1959, burgeoning white-flight already indicated that no one was going to invest other than in the outer-ring suburbs. Still beautiful in places, people struggle to preserve any fragment of neighborhoods I once knew and loved, against all odds.
Thanks for sharing my sentiments.