Detroit is planning on reducing the number of street lights from 88,000 to 46,000 street lights, according to a recent report by Bloomberg News. Its residents are already learning how to live with less street lighting, since about 40 percent of the street lights in Detroit are broken.
And Detroit is not the only city saving money by cutting back on street lighting. Rockford, Illinois; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Santa Rosa, California are among the American cities that have also reduced street lighting.
In a way, turning off the lights to save money is highly symbolic. Traditionally, turning off the lights means the party is over. Is the party over for America? If we continue down the road of economic self-destruction, the party will be surely over for our once-prosperous country.
And Detroit could be the “poster child” for what awaits America as it enters the post-industrial age. Detroit became prosperous as the US became an industrial powerhouse. And now Detroit and its citizens are clearly suffering the aftermath of having sent our factories and well-paying jobs to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China.
We have traded prosperity for poverty. Jobs were once plentiful, and people had hope for a bright future. Now people are jobless, and despair has replaced hope. Compare American cities like Detroit to the cities in China’s booming economy. Chinese cities have new airports, new expressway roads, and new high speed trains. And our cities cannot afford street lights.
(Read entire article: Half of Detroit’s Streetlights May Go Out as City Shrinks by Chris Christoff, Bloomberg News)