For decades, Las Vegas, ripe with new construction and economic development, burgeoned into a shimmering urban carnival. Detroit, once the fulcrum of American industry, sagged and rusted under its own weight.
These days, it’s the worst of times for both.
Las Vegas edged Detroit for the title of America’s most abandoned city. Atlanta came in third, followed by Greensboro, N.C., and Dayton, Ohio. Our rankings, a combination of rental and homeowner vacancy rates for the 75 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, are based on fourth-quarter data released Feb. 3 by the Census Bureau. Each was ranked on rental vacancies and housing vacancies; the final ranking is an average of the two.
What makes this piece of information significant? It can be found in the fact that Detroit is the capital of industrial America, and Las Vegas is the capital of postindustrial America. And in the way that the decline of Detroit marked the decline of the industrial base (Fordist production) and its related superstructure (disciplinary society), the decline of Las Vegas marks the decline of the postindustrial base (service economy) and its related superstructure (control society). We can now stop learning from Las Vegas, which has its terminal point in Dubai.
Charles, Detroit and Las Vegas were never much more than glorified company towns. No, it was never the case that they were controlled by exactly one company, but they have always been defined by a particular product, not by a diversified economic base. And, like company towns in general, they were developed by these industries because the land was cheap, unused and otherwise undesirable location-wise.
If you look at the real metropoles of the economies you speak of, they are hurting in the recession, but not nearly as bad as Vegas and Detroit. Chicago (which lays much more claim to being an “industrial capital” than Detroit) was never relied on a single market for its income, and as such has held up remarkably well as demand has shifted.
Likewise Los Angeles, a better bellwether than Vegas for trends in retail, entertainment and other pure service industries, is hurting, but there is no stampede out of it.
So, either you mean something peculiar by “capital” (which you should probably explain), or this thought is in dire need of revision.
@1
I think he means capital idealogically, which is spot on. Neither city was ever the true driving engine of the era they symbolize, as you point out, they were instead the mythologized capital of all that their era could and should be. The totemic capital, held out as the great american dream of their economoy.
@charles
I love this post so very much. A beautiful, depressing and incredibly thought-provoking lense on the world’s current madness. The implications of the metaphor, of what america’s mass subconscious created in each capital are fascinating.
Charles,
I agree with you. Detroit may be in permanent decline. It is indeed a symbol of America’s industrial age. We’re no longer a producing nation but a consuming one. And as for Las Vegas, I don’t like it because it is an unaesthetically (if there is such a word) pleasing city and a symbol of only a consumption class. I don’t desire to visit either city again.
@2: Okay, so both cities were kind of flat caricatures of their respective industries (or “totems,” as you say), but I think that says something else: they were both the product of shortsighted land grabs with an eye to exploiting explosive growth industries.
My point is that this fact says very little about those industries themselves. It mainly speaks to the weakness of economies built upon short-sighted land grabs.
Instead of symbolism, I see mystification. Ascribing symbolic importance to these cities is irresponsible insofar as we are careless about understanding what they actually symbolize.
When did Vegas become the symbol of anything but debauchery? New York and Los Angeles have always had more of a claim to being the capital of the post-industrial economy, both symbolically and in terms of actual contribution to the service industries like entertainment, law, and finance.
@4
I don’t think charles is saying the cities say anything about the industries, he’s saying they symbolize a great deal about the socio-political concepts embodied in the “economies”.
Detroit symbolizes the time’s focus on mass homogeneity, land ownership, raising of children in “ideal” environments, the application of an invigorated post-war populace to productive industry that would bring a simple form of “attainment” to large numbers of people.
To me, Las Vegas symbolizes the belief in consumption as the be all and end all, that as long as money is being spent, money is being made, that in a post-industrial economy it is enough to have massive amounts of money splashing around, no matter where that money is coming from, or if it is being used in a self-sustaining way.
Very interesting and thought-provoking post! Thanks!
@6: No. He says that these cities reflect the decline of industrial and service economies, respectively, as well as their allegedly related superstructures.
And my response is that this is half-baked pablum that borrows a few words from Marx and Foucault, and then proceeds to mystify an event in the guise of explaining it. Detroit and Las Vegas are certainly important in terms of both economic history and American political ideology, but saying that they “reflect the decline of xyz industry” is a wordy way of nothing.
What I am objecting to, to get specific, is the broad brush stroke. Saying that Detroit’s abandonment “reflects” industrialism’s decline is like saying that the failure of North Korea’s economy (and it is in terrible shape) reflects the decline of socialism. It confuses world-historical trends with local problems.
Of course, talking about world historical trends might make you sound more important, but I prefer accuracy to self-aggrandizement. We all know where Charles’ preferences in that regard lie.
The Vegas/Dubai connection is right on — especially given that Dubai’s rotting may be beating both Detroit and Vegas right now. Dubai pretty much symbolizes to me the globalization bubble of the past few decades, and what has happened.
Dont’t know as much about Vegas but as others have pointed out, Detroit was always overdependent on one industry, and an industry that suffers the most during hard times. Racism and geography also made Detroit into the model of white flight–in pancake flat southeastern Michigan there was plenty of room for suburban sprawl as whites with good jobs took their tax money and left after blacks moved into the city neighborhoods. Some believe the city never recovered from the 1967 riots. According to my uncle the neighborhood where he and my mom grew up is now uninhabitable. My mother, who left for Ontario when she and my dad married, never wants to see Detroit again, preferring to remember it as it used to be. Its decline has been going on for decades.
Detroit for me symbolizes what has happened to the American worker in the second half of the 20th century. My grandfather was a gardener on the Ford family estate in the 1930’s when my mother and uncle were children. When the war came he went to the assembly line and stayed there for another thirty years. He wasn’t rich but could afford to buy a house, be the sole breadwinner for a family of four and retire on his sixty fifth birthday. Between Medicare and his retirement health plan from Ford his lengthy battle with the lung cancer that ended his life did not force him into bankruptcy. Later when my grandmother died she was still able to leave something to her two children. How many blue collar families today can do any of that? Detroit was once a city that promised a better life to those who came. Today it’s on its way to becoming a ghost town. Very sad for those of us with connections to it.
In what alternate universe was Las Vegas the capital of post-industrial America? Try New York, or maybe SFO/Bay Area in the last 2 decades.
Forbes seems to be aiming for a US Magazine style of reporting lately. Chicago the third most “miserable” city in the country, the most abandoned, as if Atlanta was ghost town. Headlines that are there to incite, nothing more. Atlanta has had a surplus and quite the vacancy rate. Not all that surprising.
Vegas may be a metaphor, but it’s no capital.
Are we expected to believe that dog ownership has nothing to do with this? Or should we just draw our own conclusions?
The new Detroit will be Seattle.
From mud it emerged.
To mud it will return.
(Some downtown apartments already on sale at bargain rents).
why is everyone misspelling capitol? Or are you all trying to say that Detriot/Vegas were initial investments toward a future of dominance in their respective areas of influence and economic power, visa vis land grabs and explosive population growth being considered human capital?
Aren’t blacks and Mexicans awesome????!!!???
Celebrate divershitty!!!!
@16 – http://www.50states.com/tools/use.htm
Atlanta should have been abandoned decades agao (i used to live there). What is striking about Vegas, Phoenix, et al. is that they have no natural resources (other than land), no history of inventing anything (Vegas imported gambling and nightclubs), and have traded on being low cost, low wage places. The low cost–not so much anymore (although abandoned housing will help) , but the low skill environments and the lack of an economic base beyond development and hustling is a problem. Smoggy, sprawling places filled with cheap housing lose their lustre pretty quickly. The decline of these places also coincides with the decline of the kind of “libertarian meets Bible Belt” ideology that flowed from a lot of sunbelt places. The ideas stopped working (if they ever did) and the places will have to figure out how to reinvent themselves.
Atlanta is another great example of the awesome benefits of divershitty.
wait till we take an ax to the DoD – then you’ll see small & mid-size towns abandoned.
imagine ft. lewis emptied. where would the 16 year old tacoma girls go?