Sic Transit Gloria Urbis

Detroit is a model for urban failure in the US, likely just the first of many more to come. The list of cities that will have to shrink to fiscally survive grows by leaps and bounds, while empty houses are now being targeted for bulldozing. Not a pretty picture, and not a place one would want to be, or even be near. Yet it is in the vast megalopoli that much of the world's population can be found, at least for the present.

One wonders for how much longer this will be so.

There could be a trigger even that collapses a city overnight, but a more likely scenario is slow and steady deterioration combined with increasing distribution difficulties in essential services, plus widespread unemployment and rising crime that make large parts of cities no longer viable as communities.

One thinks of Robocop when one thinks of private corporations taking over control of city services, of cities themselves, as is apparently becoming the case in Detroit.

Born in NYC, I no longer enjoy visits to even small cities, never mind the megalopoli (NY, Sevilla, Rabat) in which I once lived. The time of the great cities is passing, and may end with a bang rather than a whimper.