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I just moved here from Ann Arbor, so I've been to Detroit a few times.

If you sit in the upper deck at Comerica park and watch the Tigers play, you get the most amazing, beautiful view of the city skyline. But then you realize that almost all of those lovely buildings are deserted. I've heard rumors that the city is paying people to put lights on in those buildings during the super bowl to make it look like they are still in use.

After the game, you might want to walk to Greektown. It's a long 5 block walk past empy buildings and homeless people. Greektown is about 2 blocks long, and thriving, and the building that once housed artist space is now a casino. It's popular, but I thought the art stuff was cooler. Buses bring in the tourists, who stay in the casino, then leave, so there's no help for the local economy.

You walk back to your car past empty blocks, where all the houses have been razed. Here and there a few townhouse developments have sprung up, a la Midtown, but they are few and far between. Many of the neighborhoods were wrecked during the race riots in the 60's, then finished off in the Devil's night burnings in the 80's.

The city government is incredibly corrupt, all the wealth moved to the suburbs, and the populace is too poor to have any real clout. Oh, and don't forget that Ford is now laying off 30,000 employees.

I don't think it's ever coming back.

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What's the dynamic where a New York or Chicago can come back (because both of the cities struggled mightily in the 70s and 80s with crime, white flight, decay, etc) and not Detroit? Is it because there is no desire for whites to return, like they did in NYC and Chicago? Or is it because of the industry that is so unpredictable? Both?

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What's the dynamic where a New York or Chicago can come back (because both of the cities struggled mightily in the 70s and 80s with crime, white flight, decay, etc) and not Detroit? Is it because there is no desire for whites to return, like they did in NYC and Chicago? Or is it because of the industry that is so unpredictable? Both?

In a word? THEATER! :D

(...and probably some tax restructuring and ousting corrupt politicians didn't hurt, either)

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Back in the 1960's this city was the fourth largest city. :lol:

at 1,420,000.

As now looking at the city becoming the 11th largest

as the population decreases :(

Will Detroit gonna continue to drop to the 800,000's

what would be the population in 2020

Detroit was ~1.9million in the 1950s. I believe at the time the square mileage of Detroit was about 1/4th of Houston today. It is now in danger of dropping down to 12th from Jacksonville (already lost the 10 spot to San Jose). Really that is a certainty, but it will take a while. The population has already dropped into the 800s by the way, the question is if it will stay there or go up/down?

Jason

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Detroit was ~1.9million in the 1950s. I believe at the time the square mileage of Detroit was about 1/4th of Houston today. It is now in danger of dropping down to 12th from Jacksonville (already lost the 10 stop to San Jose). Really that is a certainty, but it will take a while. The population has already dropped into the 800s by the way, the question is if it will stay there or go up/down?

Jason

Still is. Land area is either 138 or 140 square miles, to Houston's 633.

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To the previous post about the need of whites to come back to the city to save it, why is it that they have to be the savior? Atlanta is a prime example of a city with black leadership and a majority black population that is doing just fine without the savior of whites who feel the need to flee to the suburbs. A before the argument is made that crime was responsible for white flight, let's remember that when the flight began in the early to mid 60's before the riots, that flight was more the result of whites fleeing integration and the inevitable loss of power in city government due to the overwhelming black majority soon to take that power after being shut out for so long. Let's also remember that although people love to play up Detroit's crime rate, Dallas is now the murder capital of the country.

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Let's also remember that although people love to play up Detroit's crime rate, Dallas is now the murder capital of the country.

Detroit, a smaller city than Dallas, had over 375 murders last year to 198 in Dallas. Can you explain how it's the murder capital of the country? Usually Dallas is ranked 15th to 20th in murders, but it varies.

Jason

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Dallas is consistently said to have the highest crime rate, but like all statistics, this one is massaged by someone with an agenda to make Dallas appear worse than it is. Petty theft is by far the highest number of crimes committed in any city, accounting for some 70% or more of all crimes committed. Theft, while annoying, is not violent. Theft accompanied by violence is robbery. The rate of violent crime is a much better indicator of a city's crime rate, and Dallas' is more in line with most Southern big cities.

Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans before Katrina, and up until last year, Chicago are the most violent big cities.

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What's the dynamic where a New York or Chicago can come back (because both of the cities struggled mightily in the 70s and 80s with crime, white flight, decay, etc) and not Detroit? Is it because there is no desire for whites to return, like they did in NYC and Chicago? Or is it because of the industry that is so unpredictable? Both?

Remember how Houston had to recover in the 80s because of trouble in the oil industry? I think Detroit probably was thriving in automobiles (one industry) and had a crash in revenue in that department, whereas New York and Chicago have many different areas of business to depend on. You won't see New York or Chicago in major trouble unless the entire stock market crashes (where you might see most of America recovering with them as well)

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

Photographs have been removed from this thread because of a legal threat received from the owner of the images and filed with Pair Networks, the HAIF hosting company.

The specific complaint follows:

June 7, 2006

DMCA Notice to Pair Networks

To whom it may concern,

I am the owner of www.midwestwebsites.com.

My Contact Information:

Mr. Jonathan Krueger

Midwest Websites, LLC

W223 N4994 Eastview Dr

262-442-0882

The copyrighted work being infringed upon includes use of the Detroit

skyline photo used on the main page of our website through the use of

illegal hotlinking of the image. I am requesting that this material be

disabled.

The web page containing the infringed image via illegal hotlinking is:

http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...36511bc940aa19-

405bca3c64b82df4&showtopic=4724&pid=72971&st=0&

The photo in dispute is the first image (the image of the Detroit

skyline). As you can see by rightclicking the image on

houstonarchitecture.info, they are directly linking to the image on

our server. We use this image on the main page of our website

http://www.midwestwebsites.com Although we did not take the photo

ourselves, we did purchase the rights to use it on our website from a

stock photo website.

The information in this notice is accurate, under penalty of perjury.

Jonathan Krueger Date: 6/7/2006

For those of you wondering what "W223 N4994" means in an address, it is "fire coordinates" used to denote an address for someone living in extreme rural Wisconsin. You wouldn't know this from the complaint filed by Mr. Krueger because he did not send Pair Networks his complete address. Possibly because he's ashamed of where he lives. The phone number he lists is a Verizon Wireless cell phone he bought in a suburb of Milwaukee, but the address he lists doesn't match up to anything in that area, so one could theorize that he's some college kid who bought a phone while at school, and is now at home working on his business.

Anyway, just a reminder -- it is a violation of our terms of service to post copyrighted information on HAIF. Link away, but posting is a legal problem for us.

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I will admit to not reading any of this thread, but I read the topic and will give my opinion.

I was in Detroit last summer for a wedding. Actually the wedding was in the burbs at a country club that was very nice. Not really sure which one, I was drunk most of the time.

But on Friday night before the wedding I gathered up 15 people and we hit a Tigers game at the new park. (I have been to 22 of the 30 parks in MLB so I had to go). At any rate, we got a driver and a van to take us to and from the game. As we drove into town I was amazed at the burned out look of the city. Downtown has a long ways to go before it resembles most Urban centers of todya.

The stadium itself was OK. For a new stadium I thought it left a lot to be desired. To make matters worse the CO2 system went out in the whole stadium and the beer was not flowing at all. We were pissed, but managed. There were a few stands that still had flowage. We spent much of our experience looking for beer rather than watching the game. I felt like the Stadium was very cavernous. Not the intimate feeling you get from other stadiums (new and old).

After the game our van picked up and we were in dyer need of beer. I asked the driver to pull over and I went into the first C-Store we saw. WOW, this place was scary. My wife asked my not to go in. Being the adventerous person I am I went for it. There was a very urban crowd with your typical junkies, drunks, and gang banger wannabes. It was no different than a few of the C-Stores I have hit in Houston beforem but I was out of my element.

At any rate. We really never experienced much more that what I told you. The city is light years behind a Houston in terms of revitialization. I think they have had a lot of problems with their major industries downsizing. It was sort of depressing, but we had a good time.

Sorry if I hyjacked this thread. B)

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If you read the book American Pharaoh, about Mayor Richard J. Daley, you will get a possible explanation of how Chicago avoided Detroit's fate.

Daley, who was mayor in the 60's and early 70's, controlled a vast machine that allowed him near dictatorial powers over city government. Chicago, like every other Midwestern city at this time, was witnessing the displacement of middle class white populations in large swaths of the city with impoverished black populations that had migrated north during the 1930's and 1940's. This demographic shift, for whatever reason, coincided with a dramatic rise in crime and the blighting of commercial districts.

In a pattern familiar to many major cities in the 60's, once an area of the city became blighted, that area grew and grew: like a cancer, it did not get smaller or stay the same. This was most noticeably the case with the "Bronzeville" area on Chicago's South Side that began in an area along 16th St. in the 1930's and extended south, then east, then west, until by the late 60's almost the entire South Side was undergoing a major shift. The major problem at this point was not how to save the South Side - that seemed like a lost cause - but how to protect downtown from the crime wave that was gutting the downtown districts of other Midwestern cities.

Enter Mayor Daley. As downtown business owners hollered mightily for help, Daley conceived a plan whereby to place a blockade on the south end of the downtown area that would protect the district from the encroaching blight. In other words, Daley wanted to prevent black people from filling the neighborhoods adjacent to downtown. He had to find a way to ensure that property values would not fall to the point where lower income people could move in, and the answer he came up with was a university.

The University of Illinois had long been planning a Chicago campus, but the conventional wisdom at this point was that it would go somewhere in the suburbs. Daley's influence on the planning boards brought about an abrupt change in this plan; to the dismay of the neighborhood that was hoping to be the lucky bride, and to the surprise of most people involved in planning the university, the University of Illinois at Chicago was soon set to be built in the Taylor St. area southwest of downtown. Like a chess piece, an enormous public project was maneuvered so as to protect Daley's city.

This stabilized property values on the south end of the business district, but what about the north and west sides? These were predominantly well-off, white areas, but a looming danger was the large wave of public housing projects planned for the city. Federal laws dictated that these be scattered across the city, a fact that could jeopardize existing neighborhoods.

Daley did fail to prevent one such project, Cabrini Green, from being built on the North Side, but through various political machinations he succeeded in forcing all the rest to be built in the already poor South Side area, especially along State Street. He then used his leverage to position the planned Dan Ryan Expressway, largest freeway in the world, so that it would run just to the west of all these projects, forming a barrier between their residents and all the neighborhoods to the west (including the one he grew up in). He could not control the presence of impoverished, crime-prone residents in his city, but he was able to alter where they lived and what communities they influenced.

One last coup by the mayor, and on a somewhat brighter note, was the building of a new headquarters by Sears, Roebuck, & Co. Long a mainstay on the West Side, Sears was at first thinking of following the trend of most major corporations and relocating to the suburbs. A nice campus of low rise buildings in a park-like setting was envisioned. Daley latched on to another option - that the company concentrate all its offices in a single building downtown. It would be the tallest building in the world. As the Mayor's office raced to come up with a location for it, one block seemed a good candidate, but it had a street running across the middle of it. In no time the street was wiped off the map, and the offer was made to Sears. The company accepted, and their soaring tower became an emblem of the fact that, whereas other cities were fleeing their downtowns in favor of sprawl, Chicago was going to take the opposite approach.

Like the pharaohs of old, Mayor Daley used his near-autocratic power to build a palatial city on the suffering backs of its poor. Today, Chicago is one of America's most stunning cities, but is also its most segregated.

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Huh, that sounds like an interesting book. Detroit might have turned out differently if the University of Michigan had located there instead of Ann Arbor (that was a possibility).

Trophy Property, I see you have the same opinion of the new Tigers stadium (Comerica Park) that I do. It's just too big. And no tap beer? Just criminal. Minute Maid is a way better place to see a game. Plus you can actually hang out downtown after the game.

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H-Town Man

the way you wrote the summary of this book ~ sounds kinda heartless/materialistic to me. heh -

In his defense, that's how the subject of the book, Richard J. Daley, was.

Now his son is in office, and weilding much the same power.

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H-Town Man

the way you wrote the summary of this book ~ sounds kinda heartless/materialistic to me. heh -

much of history is.

sounds like an interesting book. thanks h-townman for taking the time

to summarize some of chicago's history. i am going there briefly at the

end of the month and as i go about, i will certainly look at the city in a

different way. it's always interesting to see how different cities evolved

and where their character originated --- for better or worse.

i'm still reading up on the texas history i inquired about a few months ago

and it is pretty wild how so many different/personal agendas combine to

form something unique.

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much of history is.

sounds like an interesting book. thanks h-townman for taking the time

to summarize some of chicago's history. i am going there briefly at the

end of the month and as i go about, i will certainly look at the city in a

different way. it's always interesting to see how different cities evolved

and where their character originated --- for better or worse.

i'm still reading up on the texas history i inquired about a few months ago

and it is pretty wild how so many different/personal agendas combine to

form something unique.

Make sure when you go you visit Hyde Park, Chicago's greatest neighborhood of contrasts. This is where the University of Chicago decided to make a stand to protect its area from the blight that was affecting the rest of the South Side. Under the threat of leaving the city, they got politicians to leverage city, state, and federal dollars into the most massive concentration of urban renewal projects anywhere in America. The issue of race, of course, was paramount.

The result? Today it is an island of wealth and culture in a sea of poverty, with little softening of feelings from the blacks who managed to move in. I should know; I lived there for three years.

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If detroit is dying, it only makes sense for the automobile industry to move down to houston.

-the weather is perfect

-the Port (2nd biggest in the US) is expanding

-Houston could provide man power for less

-Automobile Industry + Energy capital of the world -> with the gas prices as they are, what could be better then to have both industries in the same city coordinating with each other?

hoping against hope :)

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If detroit is dying, it only makes sense for the automobile industry to move down to houston.

-the weather is perfect

-the Port (2nd biggest in the US) is expanding

-Houston could provide man power for less

-Automobile Industry + Energy capital of the world -> with the gas prices as they are, what could be better then to have both industries in the same city coordinating with each other?

hoping against hope :)

Why would it make sense for the automobile industry to concentrate itself in one city if it doesn't need to? For the last few decades, the industry has been building plants all across the country, in low cost places like Tennessee, Georgia, and San Antonio.

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If detroit is dying, it only makes sense for the automobile industry to move down to houston.

-the weather is perfect

-the Port (2nd biggest in the US) is expanding

-Houston could provide man power for less

-Automobile Industry + Energy capital of the world -> with the gas prices as they are, what could be better then to have both industries in the same city coordinating with each other?

hoping against hope :)

I would disagree about the weather. It is damn hot and I just goy my May Energy Bill. $324.. OUCH.

Totally off topic.. Sorry.

Back to Detroit.

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  • 4 months later...

There are some very interesting posts on this thread. At one time Detroit was an extremely vibrant city.

The architecture of the City of Detroit was rivaled only by that of New York City. I believe that Detroit's problems are many fold including a lack of sustainable industry. Detroit and Houston, as pointed out by others, have similarities. One thing that really hurt Detroit was the riot in 1967 in which over thirty people were killed. Houston was much more fortunate in that leaders of the black and white communities got together and managed to keep the same thing from happening here. It is my hope that Detroit will rebound

but, unlike some other posters, I believe that it will take more than just one group to acheive this.

Detroit needs a mix of sustainable industries and technical and service sector jobs. Detroit also needs massive toxic waste cleanup and much lower taxes. Just my two cents.

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Detroit's issues are complex, bedevilling and multi-faceted. Upon my travels there as well as through vast conversations with friends and relatives who are from there or who still live in the city and area, the city is faced with these issues:

1) A city hall that's had a history of being run by people whose belief in city revitalization is always tempered by political bickering and posturing that also leads to some self-serving tomfoolery, the likes of which distracts the city from doing its job of serving its citizenry.

2) White flight has come and gone. It's done. It's now 2006 and the problem Detroit is facing today is that black Detroiters, like white Detroiters, desire a safe city with at least decent schools and adequate city services. Since Detroit provides very little of any of this, blacks are moving to Oakland and Macomb Counties, too.

3) A diminishing tax base (read, citizen flight) leads to a greater strain on city services and the city's ability to pay for them. That leads to layoffs which leads to a spike in the city's unemployment rate, which leads to yet another group of people who will eventually decide that they need to move in order to survive.

4) Developers and City Hall have been at odds for decades. African American leaders at city hall and throughout the community rightfully want to see new development in a city that's nearly 90% African-American consider thosee very people who live and work there. They want greater opportunities for minority contractors, designers, laborers etc, but there is also a sort of disconnect among city leaders as to how to go about this, and the developers who might consider coming in to revitalize A or B are less inclined to take on this potential controversy. Further, because the tax base is strained, big time developers don't get the same tax incentives or breaks that they might get here in Houston or in an Atlanta, Dallas or Denver.

5) A shift in industries from blue collar automotive to technical and financial, which has gutted the city's longtime tax and job generator. Not only is the former dying a quick death in terms of its presence in the city but the newer more white collar industry isn't setting up shop in downtown offices but in the Southfields and Dearborns of the world. Imagine the effect that Plano and Addison have had on the city of Dallas over the last 20 years or so and then magnify that by about five or six.

6) National image. Detroit's viewed as a hard city with hard people--obstinate, bitter people who are resistent to change. A hard city with hard edges. An unwelcoming city that threatens you from a distance and then assaults you up close. A city that is at constant odds with the world. A city with hope, care or concern. Now, this is probably an unfair image--grossly so, in fact--but it makes it that much more difficult to promote the city and its resources.

7) Ill-conceived revitaliation efforts. The city has invested in some rather ambitious projects (Ren Center in 1975 under Coleman Young, for example) but the most troubling of these, based on the numbers, is the city's effort to intice the gambling industry. The casinos in downtown (MGM, Greek) are merely okay and are certainly not stimulating the uptick in the ecomony that the city said it would. If nothing else, the city is enjoying some small benefit that those casinos are paying in public taxes, but the citizens certainly aren't benefitting job and income wise. Plus, is Detroit really a tourist destination? Wouldn't the majority of people serving those casinos (and thus losing their money in staggering numbers) be Detroiters and the very people who least need to be losing their money?

The Census Bureau estimates that Detroit will fall to just 750,000 residents by 2025. That's just 38% of its 1949 high of 2,000,000. That's a loss of 1,250,000 residents. So essentially, we will have lost the equivalent of the city of Dallas in the span of 75 years or so due to economic and social relocation. Kind of creepy when you look at it that way.

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