Monday, December 7, 2009

Flint and Detroit Achieve Developing Nation Status

I've often complained about Flint showing up in the endless negative lists that populate the online universe, but even Forbes has never described the Vehicle city as a "third-world country." This gratuitous insult is courtesy of SMXL, an outfit that "creates new products and services, new ways to communicate, new ways to create consumer communities and new ways to win their advocacy, and how to successfully derive revenues from those interactions."

"The Packard Plant in Detroit, a 35-acre site, that once was considered to be state of the art engineering, lies derelict, its workers long gone. Today, Detroit and Flint Michigan are the equivalent of a third world country in a first world one. You cannot be nimble when you scale big. But it does not have to be this way, we need to discard the baggage of a linear way of doing things and embrace a No Straight Line approach to the networked society. Then we are ready to not only survive but, thrive in a non linear world. To do nothing means ultimately the costs of maintaining the status quo will inevitably exceed the cost to change – Detroit and Flint Michigan are testament to that."


1 comment:

  1. Packard circa twenties-thirties. State of the art. Studebaker circa thirties-forties. State of the art. You can keep on going with this. What's her point? She's mixing apples and oranges. The fruit bowl of another era is not comparable to today's commerce and industrial fruit bowl. Hersey Pa. state of the art candy operation circa early 19th century. Still state of the art,but turned upside down in today's competition to survive. I guess I missed the thrust of the lady's meaning in her article. Somebody help. JWilly where are you?

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.