That happened near me as well. Government couldn't afford to pay to renovate all the playgrounds. And they had fallen into such disrepair that they were dangerous and taping them off isn't exactly foolproof. They used the remaining funds they did have not to fix some of them, but to demolish.

Yeah fucked....

That said it was the best cost effective solution, as in after demolishing there isn't more costs and the demolishing part is covered by the donations. So it was efficient for sure.

Not useful for those who wanted a library that's for sure 😅. But for those that wanted to reduce costs it probably was.

Once the Big A rears its ugly face...

Clearly you skipped over the Coleman Young Era of leadership in Detroit. Plagued by crime and rampant corruption, White flight started after a series of race riots in 1967, but continued through the 70s and 80s. Young succeeded in integrating the police department and reducing brutality complaints, but the murder rate never dipped below 50 per 100k residents and the city lost about half a million residents during his ~20 years of leadership.

Then of course you had later convicted crooks like Kwambe Kilpatrick run the city into bankruptcy. Auto companies, mainly GM and Chrysler, left, but that was only part of the problem. Years of fiscal mismanagement and crime deteriorated the city.

I wouldn't say auto companies ruined the place, environmentally yes, but Detroit was a center of racist activities combined with a huge migrant black workforce from the south. In a similar way the Republicans are trying to destroy democracy today, the leaders and racist individuals decided to create separate laws for "certain people". They prevented these people from integration into the city, from getting loans or mortgages like white people could get. Then they stole what property they did have like black bottom and used the police as their agents of mayhem, killing innocent black Americans and driving them to riot to get justice. Unlike today, no one back then supported them that could make a difference. The racists would rather destroy a beautiful city to hurt black people then to lift them up as equals. Detroit was abandoned by it's government, leading citizens, the state and the nation.