In recent weeks the once proud city of Detroit has been subject to a barrage of embarrassing media reports. The state takeover of the city’s finances and Kwame “The Hip-Hop Mayor” Kilpatrick’s prison sentence have played out on the national stage, bringing bad PR to a city desperately trying to improve its brand. In reality the city has been embarrassing itself for quite some time. This three part blog series seeks to lay out the history behind the epic failure that is Detroit.