Detroit: the Reverse Donut

Detroit is a Global Leader - of shrinking cities losing their populations. 

Since the 1990s, I've called it a Reverse Donut: an identifiable center surrounded by a ring of emptiness.

Detroit the Reverse Donut is not alone in this regard: cities world wide are shrinking in size. 

The Economist magazine has the story online.  PB
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From the Economist.com:

Shrinking cities can be found in the post-industrial rustbelts of the American Midwest, eastern Europe and northern England...

In 2008 the UN estimated that one in ten emerging-world cities were losing people.

The only part of the world where shrinking cities are almost unknown is sub-Saharan Africa. But that too will change.

A city can lose some people and barely notice.

It might even have to build more homes, since in many countries more people are living alone.

But persistent decline is harmful, especially if the population is ageing as well as shrinking. As factories and homes are abandoned, the local economy can spiral downward.

Detroit, which has lost more than half its population since 1950, provides a terrible warning.

The city filed for bankruptcy in 2013, having failed to raise enough taxes from its diminished workforce to pay its debts and support an army of retired teachers and cops.

It has become a husk, plagued by violence and hopeless schools.

Its once-vibrant shopping streets have been reduced to selling what George Galster, an urbanist at Wayne State University, calls “lotto, liquor and the Lord”...
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Link: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21652314-growing-number-cities-will-have-plan-drastically-smaller-populations-rus