Originally Posted by hudkina
Detroit has a lot of abandoned working-class neighborhoods and industrial ruins. It also has a disparately high crime and poverty rate for a U.S. city. Because of these two factors, many people on this forum and in the nation in general have a particularly negative opinion of the city. (Especially those from what are generally considered prosperous Southern and Western metropolitan areas.) People in the Industrial Midwest and Northeast as well as international cities, tend to have a more reasonable viewpoint of the city.
There are two stories to Detroit. One deals with industrial globalization and the other deals with race and class warfare. Both go hand in hand. In the early part of the 20th century, Detroit went from being a typical midsize Great Lakes industrial center, to being arguably one of the largest and most important urban centers in North America after New York and Chicago thanks to the automobile. Within a few decades the city population ballooned from a few hundred thousand to about 2 million.
Everything was generally fine up until the early post-WWII era. Up until that time anybody who wanted a job could find one. Many of the largest auto plants had upwards of 10,000 workers. During WWII, when much of the city's workforce was off fighting, many of the jobs in Detroit were picked up by women as well as black southerners. Up until the 1920's, Detroit didn't have a black population to speak of. However, through the 30's and 40's, southern blacks migrated into the city so that by the end of WWII the black population of the city was relatively high. During the war, many blacks were able to find work, but once the mostly white WWII fighters returned home, jobs for blacks became scarce. Despite this, southern blacks continued to stream into the city looking for work.
During the 50's, many white city residents began moving to the new suburban neighborhoods popping up just outside the city boundaries, thanks largely to the GI bill. It is also during this time, that many automakers were finding their factories to be outdated for modern auto manufacturing. Because the city lacked the available space for their massive new factories, they too started moving to the suburban fringe. This practice drew Detroit's economic center away from the core.
The decade of the 50's is also well-known for racial strife, and the early rumblings of the civil rights movement. Tensions between whites and blacks were rising, particularly over jobs. When whites returned home from the war, they took back a lot of jobs that blacks had filled during the war. Because of this, black unemployment and poverty skyrocketed. This was especially severe in Detroit thanks to the automation that occurred in the modern auto plants. A modern post-war factory could produce the same number of vehicles with just a few thousand workers, instead of the 10,000+ workers that was the pre-war norm.
By the 60's, most whites began moving to the suburbs to be closer to the new factories that were popping up in cities like Warren, Sterling Heights, Livonia, etc. For the most part, blacks were excluded from moving to the suburbs, and as job opportunities continued to dry up in the city, emotions started boiling over. In 1967, there was a major race riot in the city as blacks rebelled against their status as 2nd-class citizens. While the city's white population had been steadily declining since the early post-war era. The riot as well as the government efforts to redress the racial strife (i.e. forced busing) had the effect of driving even more whites to the suburbs.
By the 70's, the white population made up less than half the population of the city. While many industrial jobs had migrated to the suburbs as early as the 50's, the 70's began seeing downtown corporate jobs head north as well. The 70's also saw a dramatic rise in crime (nationally as well as within the city) due to the economic turmoil and lack of urban job opportunities.
The drug epidemic of the 80's didn't help things, and it is this decade that the city began seeing entire neighborhoods abandoned. Up until the 80's, the inflow of blacks from the south was high enough to stem much of the outflow of whites to the suburbs. However, as economic opportunities in the south rose, and economic turmoil in the north continued, the stream of southern blacks basically stopped. By the 90's, the condition of the city, particularly the early pre-war working-class neighborhoods, was rough. It is also during this decade that the city government began to struggle with providing even the most basic services like public safety, lighting, etc.
The urban revival that began in a lot of cities in the 90's, did have a somewhat positive effect on the city. As the drug epidemic that began in the 80's subsided, crime rates began falling through the early 2000's. However, the continued loss of jobs to both mechanization and globalization ensured that the city continued to lose people. When the Great Recession hit the U.S. and the housing bubble collapsed, many urban blacks that had been excluded from the suburbs (at first due to good old fashioned racism and later housing prices) began seeing a real opportunity to move out of the city. This caused another major collapse in the city population, as while white flight had completely decimated the population of the city, the new phenomenon of black flight heightened the erosion.
The city that had been struggling for decades to stay afloat, basically collapsed as the middle-class black population that had remained loyal to the city moved on to greener suburban pastures. Because of this, as well as the economic effects of the recession, the city became bankrupt and even the traditionally middle-class neighborhoods started seeing blight creep in.
However, while the continued economic downward spiral continues to plague the city to this date, the urban revival that slowly started in the late 90's has allowed the downtown core to see a new light. While the Great Recession caused a few bumps in the road, things have been turning around, particularly in the last five years. While the ravages of the past five decades will continue to haunt the city for decades to come, there is a glimmer of hope for the city that hasn't been felt in decades.
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