Robocop & Detroit - Fiction meets Reality

Did the 1987 movie predict the future of Detroit?

I have been following the problems in Detroit. It is a fact that they are filing for bankruptcy and the fact that the city is broke! Detroit used to be the highest median household incomes and now ranks 66th out of 68. There used to be over 2 million people living in Detroit at the height of the cities population; now, the population has declined severely and is around 700,000. There are abandoned neighborhoods, houses in shambles, and abandoned skyscrapers. I have included several videos to show the truth and the comparison to the movie. It is sad times in Detroit Motor City!

Police ignore calls to the abandoned neighborhoods. The abandoned neighborhoods have lost several homes and fields replaced the once home and property.  This is just one example, there are many more.

Detroit is a city that is dying on the vine. Home prices less that $500 is common place. One home is only $50. The lowest price a home sold was for $1. Yes, $1 dollar. The abandoned skyscrapers that once had bustling businesses.

Detroit had 5000 Police officers and now have less than 2800. They are stretched to the limits of breaking. There are promises of a "Pot of money", but no one can find it.



Detroit also has the most crime and highest murder rate in the nation. It is as if Detroit has become a third-world city in the heart of America.




Plot:
In the near future (freaky 1987 to 2013 = a mere 26 years), Detroit, Michigan is on the verge of collapse due to financial ruin and unchecked crime (both of which are happening today!). The mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) enters into a contract with the city to run the police force. OCP plans to demolish "Old Detroit" and redevelop it as a high-end utopia called "Delta City." To address the city's crime, OCP tests several projects to engineer robotic law enforcement. During a presentation of a project spearheaded by the senior president, Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), the ED-209 enforcement droid malfunctions and kills a junior executive. With Delta City's construction scheduled to begin within months, the OCP Chairman (Dan O'Herlihy) immediately advances an alternative put forth by an ambitious, middle-ranking executive named Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer). Morton calls his cyborg project "RoboCop."

Now onto the comparison to the 1987 Robocop movie and some clips from the franchise.The Robocop trailer.

Crime running rampant in the streets and not a single cop to be found.

Robocop scene when Detroit went bankrupt in the movie (Robocop 2).



Was the 1987 movie Robocop a foreshadowing to the future of Detroit? Is the movie's fictional tale of crime, abandoned area, and bankruptcy becoming a reality? Will a Robocop Detroit be a reality and not a fictional movie? You decide.

interregnum

interregnum

\ in-tuhr-REG-nuhm \  , noun;

plural interregnums  \-nuhmz\ or interregna  \-nuh\

1. The interval between two reigns; any period when a state is left without a ruler.

 

2. A period of freedom from authority or during which government functions are suspended. 

3. Any breach of continuity in an order; a lapse or interval in a continuity.

 

Quotes:

Forewarned by his equations that the Galactic Empire is about to collapse, Seldon hopes to shorten the inevitable interregnum  from a predicted 30,000 years of bloody anarchy to a mere thousand.

-- Gerald Jonas, review of Foundation's Fear , by Gregory Benford, New York Times , April 6, 1997

They were at the moment enjoying a sort of interregnum  from Roman authority.

-- Frederic William Farrar, Life of St. Paul

Architecture Culture presents 74 essays, speeches and magazine articles from the postwar era, a period Ms. Ockman describes as an interregnum  between modernism and post-modernism.

-- Herbert Muschamp, "The Creative Ferment Behind the Glass Boxes", New York Times , June 13, 1993

Origin:

Interregnum  is from the Latin, from inter , "between" + regnum , "dominion, reign, rule," from rex , "king."