ONCE a humming industrial city in America’s north, Detroit — nicknamed the ‘Motor City’ — is now the starkest reminder of how hard the Global Financial Crisis shook the world.

After the slump first hit in 2008, the repercussions are still affecting countries more than six years on.

DETROIT: An unlikely inspiration

One of the city’s judges Steven Rhodes, a bankruptcy judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, said of the bankrupt city back in December: “The city of Detroit was once a hardworking, diverse, vital city, the home of the car industry, proud of its nickname the Motor City,”

But since the collapse of the auto industry and the GFC it has been hit hard: “Double-digit unemployment, ‘catastrophic’ debt deals, thousands of vacant homes, dilapidated public safety vehicles and waves of population loss.”

Nothing quite expresses how much the city has changed quite like these Google street views, compiled by Redditor Scarbane, to show how much the city has changed in just five years.

They show homes that were once in good condition as nothing more than wrecks.

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Reports just released in the US say that the city must tear down 78,506 buildings, or 30 per cent of the city’s structures, are dilapidated or at risk of becoming so.

An additional 114,000 parcels of land stand empty.

But while there is a lot of blight to be cleared there is scope for renewal as many small-scale businesses are moving to Detroit due to dirt-cheap rents. The city has already started to put plans in motion for a better, more sustainable future.

Originally published as Going, going, gone: City in ruins