In an age of individualism and consumption, making things that last is counterproductive to consumption. Ironically, we can no longer produce the American Dream, when many are still chasing for it.

Reliance on one industry is a significant risk for any city.  Detroit was built on automobiles and is being destroyed by the same industry's demise.  American auto makers lost their monopoly in the American market and foreign manufacturers moved in, building plants in the right to work states in the South.  That's ironic since much of the work force in Detroit following World War II came from the South.  The sons and grandsons of those people have now come back home.

   Thanks for your comments. Here's another interesting article I found about it, though not nearly as in-depth:

How Detroit Became The World Capital of Staring At Abandoned Old Buildings

    I really want to tour the ruins some day.

Been there and done that, it's no Rome

Method, it is possible to rebuild Detroit, even though unnlikely. A massive conversion of the plants towards other things can happen. Look at world war II and the massive reindustrialization of the flagging auto industry. If Americans have the will Detroit can rise again.

Hmm, maybe the fact that Detroit kept building crap gas guzzling cars that nobody wanted because the corporate management was shockingly lazy and lacking in vision and just assumed things would continue as they always had done and so they needn't bother their tiny heads about those funny foreigners making their silly little cars because Detroit is and always will be best - "because it's American stoopid!" - therefore Americans will just keep on buying the Detroit product.  A crying shame those fat complacent incompetent jerks didn't have one tenth of the vision of Henry Ford. Or maybe you should finger the business schools who failed to equip them with the one basic lesson even a barrow boy understands - the customer is always right!