Root Causes of Detroit’s Decline Should Not Go Ignored Recently Detroit, under orders from a state-appointed emergency manager, became the largest U.S. city to go bankrupt. This stirred predictable media speculation about why the city, which at 1.8 million was once America’s 5th-largest, declined in the first place. Much of the coverage simply listed Detroit’s longtime problems rather than explaining their causes. For example a Huffington Post article asserted that it was because of “racial strife,” the loss of “good-paying [sic] assembly line jobs,” and a population who fled “to pursue new dreams in the suburbs.” But a closer look suggests that Detroit’s problems, which include 16% unemployment, 36% poverty, and 60% population decline, were self-inflicted by a half-century of government excess. The foremost measure would be addressing taxes. Detroit could also help its cause with a business climate that better encouraged entrepreneurship. These regulations have emanated from Detroit’s vast, union-controlled public bureaucracy.
25 Facts About The Fall Of Detroit That Will Leave You Shaking Your Head By Michael Snyder, on July 20th, 2013 It is so sad to watch one of America’s greatest cities die a horrible death. Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teeming metropolis of 1.8 million people and it had the highest per capita income in the United States. Now it is a rotting, decaying hellhole of about 700,000 people that the rest of the world makes jokes about. On Thursday, we learned that the decision had been made for the city of Detroit to formally file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. 1) At this point, the city of Detroit owes money to more than 100,000 creditors. 2) Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities. 3) Back in 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation. 4) In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit. 5) Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost. 14) There are 70 “Superfund” hazardous waste sites in Detroit.
Anatomy of Detroit’s Decline - Interactive Feature Mayor Coleman A. Young of Detroit at an event in 1980. Richard Sheinwald/Associated Press The financial crisis facing Detroit was decades in the making, caused in part by a trail of missteps, suspected corruption and inaction. Charles E. Edward Jeffries, who served as mayor from 1940 to 1948, developed the Detroit Plan, which involved razing 100 blighted acres and preparing the land for redevelopment. Albert Cobo was considered a candidate of the wealthy and of the white during his tenure from 1950 to 1957. Coleman A. Kwame M. Dave Bing, a former professional basketball star, took office in 2009 pledging to solve Detroit’s fiscal problems, which by then were already overwhelming. Related National Review Online It took only six decades of “progressive” policies to bring a great city to its knees. By the time Detroit declared bankruptcy, Americans were so inured to the throbbing dirge of Motown’s Greatest Hits — 40 percent of its streetlamps don’t work; 210 of its 317 public parks have been permanently closed; it takes an hour for police to respond to a 9-1-1 call; only a third of its ambulances are driveable; one-third of the city has been abandoned; the local realtor offers houses on sale for a buck and still finds no takers; etc., etc. — Americans were so inured that the formal confirmation of a great city’s downfall was greeted with little more than a fatalistic shrug. But it shouldn’t be. So, late on Friday, some genius jurist struck down the bankruptcy filing. So a bankrupt ruin unable to declare bankruptcy is now back to selling off its few remaining valuables, as I learned from a Detroit News story headlined “Howdy Doody May Test Limits of Protecting Detroit Assets.”
Detroit Is an Example of Everything That Is Wrong with Our Nation Back on July 18, 2013 the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Detroit is now seeing a little life, but the city is far from where it once was. Once the wealthiest city in America, known as the “arsenal of democracy,” Detroit was the fourth largest city in the U.S. in the 1960s with a population of two million. Now it has become an example of everything that is wrong with the American economy, Detroit has become nothing more than a devastated landscape of urban decay with a current population of 714,000 whose unemployment rate at the height of the recession was as high as 29 percent, and has only decreased due to the rapidly decreasing population. Visiting Detroit is the closest Americans can come to viewing what appears to be a war-torn city without leaving the U.S. Unfortunately, Detroit is not alone. Now the city is debt-ridden and forced to cut many of its beleaguered services like transportation and street lighting.
Six grueling demographic indicators of Detroit’s decline (and some pictures) You don’t have to be an expert on the collapse of Detroit, which I’m not, to know it’s really bad. In fact, does modern world history include any other city once this big (1.87 million at its peak) losing two-thirds of its population? And you don’t have to be an expert in social policy, which I’m not, to know that the United States wouldn’t let this happen if it cared. Detroit’s condition has bobbed into the national news now and then. There was a flurry of reporting on the infant mortality rate, which hit 15 per 1,000 live births in 2012, higher than any other U.S. city, according to Kids Count. Here are six more demographic indicators of the condition of Detroit, from data collected by the Census Bureau*, and then a few pictures. 1. This is it, in a nutshell: A drop in population of 64% since 1950, during which time the city’s population shifted from 16% Black to more than 80% Black. Of course, Detroit isn’t the only city to fall on hard times. 2, 3. 4, 5. 6. In pictures Site 1 Site 2
Vanishing City: The Story Behind Detroit’s Shocking Population Decline The news this week that Detroit’s population plunged more than 25% to just 714,000 in the last decade shouldn’t be surprising. The city’s collapse is as well-documented as it is astonishing – the population peaked at nearly 2 million in the 1950s, driven in part by a post-World War II auto industry boom now long gone. (More on TIME.com: See tilt-shift photography of Detroit) Predictably, Detroit officials have vowed to challenge the Census Bureau’s report. “I don’t believe the number is accurate,” the mayor, Dave Bing, said in a hastily scheduled news conference Tuesday. Bing’s response is understandable. But there is another story behind these numbers. (More on TIME.com: See Detroit school kids’ dreams for the future) Simply put, Detroit is at a crossroads. But for all the talk of Detroit’s revival aspirations, this week’s numbers are sobering. (More on TIME.com: See pictures of a Detroit food bank)
Detroit population drops again but loss is slowing | Detroit Sun Times American households are making more money today than they did three decades ago—in some places, a lot more. In order to find out which places have seen the greatest increase in household income, we turned to the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), which uses historical reports from the decennial Census and the American Community Survey to track median income over time. Research site MooseRoots then adjusted all the data to 2015 dollars to filter out the effects of inflation. On the whole, households in northeastern states have seen the largest income increase since 1980, with New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont ranking among the top five. South Dakota and the District of Columbia round out the top list. In each case, household income has risen over 30% in just 30 years. Only a handful of states have seen median household incomes actually decrease since 1980—and several of them are in the Midwest. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 5. 4. 3.
The Downfall of Detroit: White Flight and the 1967 Race Riots | husseinbazzi The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan that began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount streets on the city’s Near West Side. Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit’s 1943 race riot, which occurred 24 years earlier. The events of 1967 were not spontaneous; they had substance for both blacks and whites. The result of “white flight” around America was the unequal social conditions and relative disparities between races, particularly in communities of color such as Detroit. Works Cited Blakeslee, Jan. “”White Flight” to the Suburbs: Demographic Approach.”