The past few years have not been kind to Detroit, most evident in the fact that its unemployment rate sits at 28.9%—the highest in the country. That figure, along with a government full of corruption, doesn't give Detroiters a lot to brag about. The city has become the brunt of many jokes in the media and its reputation as a graveyard to those outside the city seems to have spread.
So where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
Detroit is looking to become the epicenter of the green job revolution. The Green Jobs Initiative, as it is being called, will invest $6 million into training for jobs that can be classified as energy efficient. However, unlike the energy sources this initiative promotes, green jobs themselves have yet to be proven sustainable in our economy.
Still yet, Ford recently posted a surprise third-quarter profit of $997 million, its first profitable quarter in North America in more than four years.
Finally, Forbes recently released a study that places Detroit as the 12th safest city in the U.S., ahead of Chicago and Pittsburgh among others. This announcement comes just six months after the magazine named the Motor City the most dangerous city in the United States. For a place that used to have the highest rate of violent crime in the country, that ain't too shabby.
Detroiters have always been a proud and hard-working people, and this attitude continues to shine through in the face of adversity. Detroit is still the beating heart of the auto-industry, the birthplace of techno, and Hockeytown.
The next time someone makes an unwarranted comment about my city, I may have to call up the boys down on 8 Mile and Gratiot to pay them a visit.
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