A broken link?
And those two things—flight and taxes—go hand in hand.
As whites started to flee the city, causing a decline in population, the city raised taxes to maintain necessary revenue. Of course, those tax increases simply added one more reason to leave the city, causing further flight. Which again leads to more tax increases to make up revenue shortfalls. And so on.
Baltimore is in a similar situation. It’s a poor city, with large areas of urban blight, a poor public school system, and inadequate services, yet its tax rates are higher than those of the wealthy neighboring counties.
Looking at pictures of Detroit always reminds me of the time I attempted to play SimCity 2000 without reading the manual.
Michigan Central Station, as seen from Michigan Ave. Rotate the camera 180° and you’ll see what appears to be an abandoned bank.
And I imagine that a city with a smaller population trying to maintain an infrastructure scaled for a population twice the size might have a few problems as well. I can see a case for an organized ‘retreat’ from depopulated areas, and even a case for rezoning and moving people, but I suspect that almost no-one would want to be the first to suggest that officially. Also, how do you get people to move?
While I am mindful of the abuses eminent domain has been put to in the past, this could be a legitimate use of it - if we were to be rezoning an area nonresidential and cutting off water, power and sewage, you don’t want people there.
It isn’t as if there aren’t other places in the city to move to.
Part of the trouble is that the Detroit Metro Area is shaped like half a doughnut. (It would be a whole doughnut if it weren’t for the international boundary on the Detroit River: south-east of the border, Windsor looks quite different). The city has lost population, and is now predominantly poor black people. The middle class (black and white) has moved out to the suburbs.
Yep, that’s it. I’ve lived in the 'burbs my entire life, and it’s not even like I can say “My parents used to shop/work/hang out downtown.” it’s my grandparents, and I’m nearing 40. The endless plans and promises of urban renewal and bringing the city back are just background noise I’ve heard my entire life, half our sports franchises aren’t even in the city anymore.
It was astonishing when I started traveling as an adult and saw what normal large cities look like.
I grew up on the west side of Detroit before my family moved to Chicago, and it wasn’t pretty. While the metro area is full of people, most of what you hear about the area’s dependency on the auto industry is true. Every single member of my family has worked for them, in some capacity, at some point in their lives. Right now, all my relatives fear for their jobs.
It’s a tragic shame. It was a beautiful city with a long history. If one day it turns itself around, and it doesn’t become the first major American city to truly die, it will have to be radically different from the Detroit that came before.
As a Michigander who used to work and volunteer in the Metro area, this breaks my heart.
[tangent]
So, in no particular order:
-
Detroit, MI.
-
Gary, IN (scroll down for images)
http://www.forbidden-places.net/urban-exploration-gary-indiana-ghost-town
- New Orleans, LA: Must be the same kinda thing. Wikipedia said in 2000, it had nearly 485K; now it’s 288K.
I wonder how many other cities will be in these straits and what the magic solution(s) will be. Cities with less diversification are at risk, e.g. if Airbus beats up on Boeing, what happens to Seattle?
[/tangent]
I grew up in Whitby and Oshawa. I know what it’s like to live in a town dominated by one industry. I’m just trying to imagine a city the size of Toronto dominated that way. If Chrysler pulls out of Canada, that will be bad indeed for Brampton in the Greater Toronto Area, but it won;t pull the whole city down.
Radical recreation would seem to be the only way out. What would it take to make the City of Detroit a place that people run away to?
That railway station breaks my heart too. 
I started a thread a while back inquiring about the relative decline of Detroit compared to Chicago and Toronto, two cities I chose as having comparable climate and location. I was wondering about rail service there. That station is not the answer I wanted.
Looking at the streetview map link, I was astonished to see how near downtown it is. That makes sense, I suppose, but the road (Michigan Ave?) in the link looks outer-suburban in its spaciousness and lack of buildings.
Sounds like standard practice among Bangkok bar owners. When customers start staying away from a bar for whatever reason, the usual strategy here is to raise the drink prices to make up for the eduction in clientele.
As I said, I’ve never been to Detroit, but I always had a rather “hip” image of it, kind of a 1920s gangster hip even. Motown, music scene, all that. This is all rather disappointing.
My maternal grandmother and at least one of her sisters actually did move up to Detroit from Arkansas in the 1920s to work on the assembly lines for a few years before returning home. My grandmother would have been late teens, early 20s then, her sister in her 20s; I wonder what Detroit was like back then.
What a damn shame. In my opinion the era in which most of these things were built was a remarkably creative and innovative one architecturally. The abandoned schoolroom here is an amazing example of upper Midwestern/turn of the century/Frank Lloyd Wright-ish architecture.
(Instead of rasising taxes)?
-Cut property taxes in the inner city
-enforced draconian laws against violent crime
-hired excellent school teachers and enforced disciplne in the schools
-made the city friendly to business
-provided good infrastructure services (lke water, power, sewage).
Guess what? The auto industry would not have moved to Tennessee, M
Alabama, etc. But this would have made too much sense-it would have been like Singapore, today.
Instead, etroit allowed the worst elements to drive out the best elements.
Thanks for the pick-me-up!
When you are surrounded by decay and depressing atmosphere, it sinks in and eventually you cannot escape it. Detroit is a classic example of enviromental/situation depression. Kinda like Eeyore saying, " What’s the point of trying, it is too big to even start. No one will help. It’s useless."
Chicago, downtown, is a wonderful example of what a nice city should look like. Cleveland downtown is 100% nicer than Detroit. That surprised me.
There is ( or use to be) a rather nice section called Palmer Park. Been to a couple homes there and just went WOW! Really cool old houses that were kept in beautiful condition.
I used to live in Detroit, now I live about 60 miles north of there, and have no reason to go down there, except rarely for a concert. Off the top of my head, these are the live spots of Detroit: Eastern Market, like a super farmer’s market; Greektown; Cobo Arena; the casinos MGM Grand is one, there are others I can’t think of; lots of little neighborhood bars with fantastic music; the Detroit Institute of Arts is fabulous; Hart Plaza has free events all summer; the Detroit Opera House and the other theaters that have live performances, like the Gem. I’ve heard too that people were moving back into the city, renovating lofts and so on. I don’t have any numbers, but the city’s not on its last gasp yet. It’s also hard to say where Detroit stops and the burbs pick up. There’s Brick Town and Mexican Village down by the river, there’s Hamtramck and the East side and downriver, it’s just massive.
I remember from a documentary something about when they built one of the freeways they cut neighborhoods in half and that had a bad effect along with other factors, hadn’t seen anyone mention that.
Also, one of the richest counties in the country is just 40 miles north of Detroit - Oakland County. That’s where the people and the tax money and the school children went.
Back to address the op. It is sad to see all these great buildings deserted and crumbling. The links to the pics are great. I wish I was brave enough to go exploring myself, glad others are taking pictures for us.