Economy

CityLab Daily: Can Poletown Come Back After GM?

Also today: How corporate tax incentives rob school budgets, and how cities design themselves.
As late as the 1990s, several of the old businesses remained in nearby areas GM had left untouched. But today, the area is little more than a grid of streets laid over a barren landscape that on some blocks feels almost rural.Library of Congress

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Motor City shuffle: Last month, General Motors announced plans to shut down its Detroit-Hamtramck plant, one of only two remaining auto plants in the Motor City, named for its location straddling the border of the two cities. Much to GM’s annoyance, almost everyone else has always called the plant “GM Poletown,” after the Detroit neighborhood that was bulldozed using eminent domain to build the facility. That’s a legacy that the automaker might be happy to forget. But Detroiters old enough to remember are asking once again whether the destruction of Poletown was worth it.