A Large Writing Project for This Year. Detroit, Fallen Cities and the US Macro Economy.

I have finally begin to "ink" some ideas that I have for a large writing project this summer.
These preliminary ideas have a long way to go and I would happily receive comments thoughts from my readers.

My work will be threefold.

1. I will need to write a summary of the coinciding economic histories of the city of Detroit (housing patterns, taxes, etc.) and the corporations that dominate the auto industry (mostly GM, but also Ford and Chrysler) as they relate to Wayne county Michigan.  Numbers such as populations, employment numbers, etc. This is essentially to establish statistical correlation between these corporations and the county that houses them.  This will be an important aspect as it will (hopefully) numerically demonstrate how the people involved and the enterprises symbiotically both built and destroyed a major urban area.  Included will be analysis of both the corporations, but also public services etc. offered by local governments to their employees. 

2. I plan to update the Marxian conception of the corporation.  The generation of surplus labor takes place not only within the settings of the corporate environment, but also within a certain geographic area. I hope to contribute to the Marxist corporate literature from this perspective.  Topics such as type of labor available, as well as surplus generating policies of the enterprise need to be updated to discuss the relationship with the communities in which the enterprises are contained.  Surplus is generated by real people and they have to exist within a geographic area, this dynamic is not adequately discussed in Marxian economics or geography.  This section will also include an analysis of labor relations, relative bargaining power of the workers of these companies over time, union actions, etc.  Basically wage/labor relations history stuff, but in the context of these things affecting both the enterprise and the community (something new as far as I know>)

3. Finally, and this is vague still...I want to be able to say something meaningful about municipal policy, certainly as it relates to "fallen" cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Holyoke, etc. and how they should attempt to use the resources/factories that they have to stimulate recovery (with or without the gentrification pattern that is being followed in many American cities), but also, the future of other American urban areas that rely upon manufacturing today, as well as possibly some contributions on positives/negatives to the broader idea of the moving away from "real" production into the service sector that the American macro economy as a whole has experienced.

Comments very welcome!