Apocolypse Now

Al Martin relates an account told by a friend about his visit to Detroit:

My friend told me that you go down the street and you see this barbed wire fence and right across the street is the border of a very wealthy area. You see all of the private security that the wealthy people have hired and the searchlights that are monitoring activity in the neighborhood. It’s similar to South America where you see the barrio or favela come right up next to a wealthy neighborhood. As foreclosures mount and government resources diminish, these Urban Wasteland Zones (UMZs) are expanding. Now these companies also hire themselves out to provide security for the remaining wealthy areas, so they have their own security patrols going up and down the street. In some cases it’s only one street that separates where the barbed wire fence stands and what they call “no man’s land” near the wealthy area.

This is evidently going on in cities all across the United States, just on a smaller and less organized scale. Now as foreclosures mount, this will become more prevalent in other cities. Detroit then is a template of what America’s future cities will look like.

Detroit is probably the most advanced of our cities on the road to ruin, but I expect that California cities, especially valley towns, will soon be catching up. The Governator has convinced the Dems that this is the wave of the future, why not try to catch it?
(h/t cryptogon)