by Jane Briggs-Bunting
Poor Detroit. Still reeling from a decade when the three auto companies, formerly known collectively as the Big Three, imploded with two of them taking federal loans to survive, the Motor City lost almost 25 percent of its residents, according to U.S. Census figures released this week.
In its heyday in the mid-20th Century, Detroit was the fourth largest city in the nation. Now it languishes at 18th.The new population count by the census folks is 713,777, the lowest in a century. One in every four residents left the city during the past decade. Michigan, as well, was the only state to lose population despite an increase in the U.S. population during the past decade.
The implications are harrowing for a city with huge deficits, a school system with a state appointed fiscal manager, decaying neighborhoods and vast swaths of empty lots. Downtown, a vibrant retail area in the 1950s and 1960s which once boasted three major department stores along its main artery, Woodward Avenue, now has none. In the old neighborhoods where small clusters of houses remain, selling prices, if there are buyers, are in just the four and five figures.
And to add insult, it looks like ABC will cancel the show Detroit 187 after just one season. How much more of a battering can the city take?
Pizza moguls Mike and Marian Ilitch have done their best to revitalize the center city with their historic Fox Theatre and the Tiger’s Comerica Park. The woeful Lions have Ford Field, and the Ilitch’s Red Wings play in the Joe Lewis Arena. GM is back in the RenCen, once considered a lightning rod for Detroit resurgence four decades ago. Three casinos do business in the city. Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center anchor what is described as a mid-town center.
The city has also suffered at the hands of a scandal-plagued former mayor, now in prison for perjury and facing a raft of federal criminal charges.
The current mayor, Dave Bing, the former NBA star and business executive, pledges to challenge the count in hopes of raising the census numbers by 40,000. Each new resident could net $10,000 to the city in the form of federal funds.
Detroit can have its renaissance, but it will not return to its former stature. The suburbs surrounding it have become the financial heartbeat of the region. The schools are better, the governments more efficiently run, even in an era when the dominant automotive industry shed almost half its workforce.
Detroit should strive to remake itself as a model “urban suburb,” preserve its historic buildings, consolidate its populations as Mayor Bing has championed, turn its vacant land into urban farms, in many ways returning to its roots. When the French founded Detroit, they created a system of ribbon farms, 200-400 foot strips of land bordering the Detroit River and extending north around three miles.
Other cities have experienced similar falls from their glory days and remade themselves. Detroit was the 20th Century rags-to-riches story. Down on its luck now, don’t count the Motor City out just yet.
First off Detroit 187 was/is a terrible show. Second there’s only one person/robot who can save Detroit, RoboCop
http://www.freep.com/article/20110217/NEWS01/102170475/RoboCop-statue-campaign-lesson-saving-Detroit
The last census is merely the cherry on the sundae. Detroit has lost over a million people from its peak in 1950, 60% of its population. The problem, flat out, is the decline in manufacturing. GM makes only 19% of its vehicles in the US. It makes more vehicles in China and it sells more vehicles in China. Obama made a tragic move. He saved the company and screwed the workers, the retirees, and a big part of the midwest. The union was hoodwinked in giving away concession after concession to avoid bankruptcy. Instead of the workers getting 50% of the company and creditors 10% the positions were nearly reversed. It was the predator vultures who benefited most from the meager bailout.
I have said for years now that SAC needs to be moved from Omaha (Ben Nelson) to Michigan. Of course, Obama is unlikely to do anything to support mainstream Democrats because he’s too busy playing the bi-partisan sucker .
The suburbs are where the people and personal wealth certainly are, but once you look close those aren’t so rosy either.
There are lessons to be learned from the Metro Detroit area, but nobody’s teaching them…nor would anyone else listen. The first might be that the auto industry lost an unfair fight to the Japanese. We all know about the recent loan/bailout scheme (and there have been others), but the US government let those three companies fend for themselves against Japanese companies backed heavily by the Japanese government. Mercantilism vs. “Free Market”, and Mercantilism will always win.
The D’s residents deserve a great deal of blame, but so do the suburbanites who left it to rot while complaining that it was rotting. All those talks about public transport networks shot down by veiled arguments from the suburbs that amounted to fear that Chocolate City would be able to enter the vanilla suburbs. One could make a pretty long list of borderline racist policy like that.
It will never be what it was, but it may point the way to the future for the second time in two centuries. For all its decay, there are some pretty good things happening in the shitty. Many of those good things are the result of the decay and the wide-open environment to do whatever you want.
Real urban agriculture is most advanced in Detroit and will probably remain so, though the dream of returning the outer portions of the city to their rural roots is plagued by contaminated ground…even just residential areas converted to farmland means heavy metals and whatnot.
I’m sure that Snyder will do what he can to kill Detroit while the rest of America catches up quickly to the situation they’ve been looking down their noses at for decades. The world is a ghetto. Detroit was just foreshadowing.
To the first poster, Detroit 187 was wonderful, not sure why you disliked it, perhaps you didn’t watch enough of it, as it really blossomed.
DW: Basically this show had all the cliches and stereo typical characters of every cop show ever invented, nothing original. I only watched a few episodes, but it was enough. I bet at some point during the series an officer (usually the cranky,divorced, alcoholic) went into the commanders office had a screaming match after he/she didn’t use police protocol and had to place his/her badge and gun on the desk, only to later solve or assist solving the crime. I’m also pretty sure that at some point the old grizzly veteran approaching retirement has said to his new younger apprentice “I’m getting too old for this”. I can also bet that there was a sassy minority who always has an attitude issue, and was always smarter then everyone else, becasue he/she grew up in a rough neighborhood. Everyone piles on reality TV, but I’d rather the networks make 100 more Jersey Shores then see another Cop, Lawyer, or hospital drama.
Classic JBB. Just like sitting in the living room having a conversation with the author.