At its origin, a settlement at Flint made absolute sense because it was at an ideal halfway point[1] between Detroit and Saginaw on the Saginaw Trail[2] in an e

At its origin, a settlement at Flint made absolute sense because it was at an ideal halfway point[1] between Detroit and Saginaw on the Saginaw Trail[2] in an era where traveling between the two port cities took multiple days. It also had the added bonus of being on the Flint river which made it an ideal focal point for the burgeoning logging industry. The eventual industrialization made it a good location for an automotive plant later on. However, once cars became commonplace and travel between Saginaw and Detroit only took a couple hours, Flint was no longer needed as a stopping location, and ended up primarily existing as a company town for the auto plants, which made it too dependent on the welfare of the auto industry. So once the plants shut down, so did any kind of economic draw to the city. The lesson being that any city needs a healthy economic ecosystem representing multiple industries in order to sustainably survive, or else it will share Flint's fate. On a more human side, I worked briefly with some of the people in Flint's startup community and was massively impressed with the optimism and attitude of the people there in the face of their economic situation. It was very inspiring, and I sincerely hope that the state of Michigan is able to manage that city better and leverage what strengths it has and will have in the future. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan 2: https://thumbwind.com/2018/12/07/saginaw-trail/ https://thumbwind.com/2018/12/07/saginaw-trail/