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Detroit is Dying… Quickly
- jeffepp 16y agoThere has never been a better time to invest in Detroit. I believe we have hit bottom. Billionaires are investing in the city again and we have competent leadership for the first time in decades.... Detroit is within 90 miles of about 6 major Universities, the lack of talent argument is lame.
- tjsnyder 16y agoI'm not sure. There are sparks happening right now in Detroit but it's going to take a lot more entrepreneurs and businesses than Slows to revitalize Detroit. SE Michigan does have one of the highest rates of engineers in the country. It's great for manufacturing but Michigan needs more business sectors. As it stands, Ann Arbor is the only tech hub in the state and even then, plenty of talent is leaving for Silicon Valley.
- jeffepp 16y agoThere is a lot going on in the West Side of the State. There is an incubator http://momentum-mi.com http://momentum-mi.com and we are having a Lean Startup Conference (http://leanstartupmi.com http://leanstartupmi.com) there as well. In Detroit, I am helping with FutureMidwest (http://FutureMidwest.com http://FutureMidwest.com) and FundedByNight (http://fundedbynight.com http://fundedbynight.com). There are a lot of Michigan ex-pats so to speak, it's a matter of showing them we can create a tech community (that unites AA + Detroit) and get then pool our resources.
- evo_9 16y ago...Or possible Detroit is the first of many American cities to go through an as yet unpredictable transformation. Stories like this discount the potentially positive effect this kind of 'reset' can have on a city. Let's face it - Detroit had lost its way a long time before all this economic turmoil sent many of us in a tailspin. But of course sensational headlines like this get the most attention.
- billybob 16y agoYeah, I heard a story this morning saying that Detroit now has enough empty space that some other large cities could fit inside it. The first thing I thought was "what a great opportunity to create parks and greenways!" Even if they don't have the money to develop them right now, the land will be super cheap. Doing some of this and announcing plans for more would surely draw some business and development. "Look, you can have offices here, and workers can ride their bikes through a forest from their homes!"
- arohner 16y agoI know you're trying to be positive here, but this is one of my biggest sticking points when talking about Detroit. The collapse of detroit is a catastrophic failure in what is supposed to be a well-run country. There's no real consensus on what went wrong and how to fix it, and worse, most people don't really seem to care. In some neighborhoods, house values have dropped to $300. "Enough empty space that some other large cities could fit inside it". With that kind of exodus and drop in value, you'd think there was a Chernobyl there, but there wasn't. Just a completely unexplained failure of management. So yeah, parks and greenways are great, but don't overlook the massive failure that allowed that. Chernobyl is now an amazing wildlife preserve.
- evo_9 16y agoI think it's more tricky than pure management failure. A heavily manufacturing based city such as Detroit was going to suffer this fate eventually; I think the biggest failing was ignoring the warning signs for so long. It's not like people didn't know that the bulk of manufacturing jobs were being shipped elsewhere. And I don't think it's such a mystery either; as the big 3 go, so goes Detroit (or so it use to be). The hard economic times sped this collapse along probably sooner than people were ready to deal with. Still I think this is an opportunity not just for Detroit but for our entire nation. Solving this problem is key to moving America back on track - this is not just an isolated problem of 'Detroit'. If fact, for some time now I've wondered what happens when we automate all jobs out of existence. The writing is on the walls, really, it's not like you can't automate almost everything with enough technology and brainpower.I think in the long run we will become a nation of creative artists - and by that I don't mean purely 'art', but rather anything that needs to be made that others take pleasure in. Think about it this way - we all have a nearly insatiable desire for new interesting things. And out of all the things we humans do, I think creativity is probably the only area that can't easily (or possibly ever) be automated. What this means from an economic standpoint I have no clue, but it seems inevitable that we all end up out of 'work' at some point in the future.
- Ainab 16y agolook the trend Detroit, Cleveland, ... this is the result of shipping jobs to china. I bet, bay area will loose 10% of its population by 2020.
- mikepmalai 16y agoActually those jobs in Detroit/Rust Belt are moving to the southeast. Southern states are offering tax breaks, state funding to train workers, low cost labor pool, low rates of unionization, etc.
- _delirium 16y agoAs an explanation for the rust-belt as a whole that seems inaccurate; the south today is not nearly as industrialized as the northeast was in its heydey. Certainly the steel industry, one of the dominant industrial sectors, has not moved to the southeast, which has almost no steel industry; it's done a mixture of just shutting down entirely, and moving to China. The automotive industry is closer to being accurate, though I don't think the number of automotive jobs created in the southeast is actually particularly large, certainly nothing on the order of the change in Detroit's population.
- shasta 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_profile_of_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_profile_of_Detroit
- mkr-hn 16y agoI'm not sure what this is supposed to say. Can you put a comment with your link?
- honm 16y agoThe original article says that Detroit has gone through economic changes and he is just pointing out that it has gone through demographic changes as well. I don't think he needs to add any comments to it, the link speaks for itself
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- mkr-hn 16y agoChanges in age and education levels might be interesting, but that article only covers race. What value does it add to the conversation?
- bugsy 16y agoReading this thread, the historical demographic trends were very interesting. Do you think they are irrelevant? If so, please explain why. Very interesting that from at least the 1850s right up until the 1930s more than a third of the population were immigrants. I would say most of these were from Canada, based on my own study of immigration patterns and knowing it was extremely easy to immigrate from Canada to the US during that period. Also very interesting that population peaked in the 1950s even though the American auto industry did not go into decline until the 1960s.
- RickHull 16y ago
- kenjackson 16y agoIn 1960, it had the highest per-capita income in the U.S. That's striking. It's almost hard to imagine that the city could have been so strong in the past.
- jeffepp 16y agoWhy? The city was HQ to the 3 auto companies. Oakland County, in the "Metro Detroit Area" is still one of the nicest + wealthiest counties in the Country. It was in the top 5 a few years back, I am sure it's gone down a few spots since then. Check out this video, pretty cool referencing the rise and fall (and rise again): http://vimeo.com/11021663 http://vimeo.com/11021663
- baguasquirrel 16y agoDoes anyone else here this and then think about Silicon Valley? Maybe it's just paranoia...
- VladRussian 16y agobust is the natural stage in the boom town life cycle. What can be worse scenario for the Valley? People leaving it for high-tech jobs in some new Silicon Valley in China or India? I.e. mostly salaried employees will leave and founders/investors or just rich people will have the Valley for themselves and will plot apricots on the emptied lands, ...
- rmason 16y agoI've long maintained that Detroit was the Silicon Valley of the first half of the twentieth century. It was where enterpreneurs that wanted to make things settled. My dad tells me stories of when he was a little boy in the twenties when the city was the best place on the planet to start a company and it was just bristling with entrepreneurs. Sadly the city lost its way but it's starting to get it back. The destruction of Detroit is the easy story for the media however and the city's rise isn't being widely reported.
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- markkat 16y agoGreat link-bait headline, but nothing more than the census numbers. I'm in Detroit. I just ate lunch at Slows, which was packed as usual. Detroit goes as does manufacturing, and the last decade was harsh. However, the city has increasingly more to offer, and it is coming back in bioscience, tech, the arts, and manufacturing, automotive and non-automotive. The city might look like rock-bottom to outsiders, but something is brewing. In 5 years, the headline will be 'is Detroit making a comeback?'.
- blhack 16y agoI actually think Detroit is about to see a huge resurgence. From what I understand, there are a lot of young, artist-type people moving there right now, which is exactly the type of people I think Detroit should be trying to attract.
- jeffepp 16y agoThis is true, many college grads and creatives are moving into the city. In addition, Quicken is moving their entire company downtown. There are also some great incentives to live in the Midtown area, which is home to Wayne State University.
- invisiblefunnel 16y ago"Detroit Lives" http://www.palladiumboots.com/exploration/detroit#ooid=5qamlwMTrY0vUEPg88yBWEJWxvuRKTLo http://www.palladiumboots.com/exploration/detroit#ooid=5qaml...
- blhack 16y agoHere is an awesome documentary about Detroit that was made really recently. http://www.palladiumboots.com/explorations http://www.palladiumboots.com/explorations It made me want to move there. It also plugged omnicorp, which is a pretty cool hackerspace located there.
- saidulislam 16y agoI wouldn't say it's "dying". It has been bad but it's time to get more efficient and maybe that's what the city is trying to do. Also, not all of Detroit is that bad
- cschmidt 16y agoThere's a beautiful photography book called the "Ruins of Detroit" that conveys this: http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html
- billybob 16y agoWow. That is really cool.
- BenSS 16y ago'Consolidating' is probably a more apt descriptor. Much of the outer sections are sparse and neglected, but other people have noted it still has an active core.
- ssharp 16y agoAs a lifelong resident of the Rust Belt, stories detailing its deterioration are hardly new, sadly, so these stories aren't of particular interest to me. What I do find interesting are the people who are sticking around, trying to rebuild the city they grew up in. Although these stories are rarer (and riddled with narcissistic entreporn fodder for INC magazine and its ilk), they do offer some hope. This article mentions that Pittsburgh has also seen significant decreases in population over this decade. Pittsburgh is often used as the model city for rust belt rebirth. They were the big player in steel, lost the steel industry, and were able to rebrand themselves. They are considered by most to be the most tech-friendly city in the rust belt. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that Pittsburgh did a better job in attracting businesses outside of steel when they still had the luxury of steel. Having Carnegie Mellon doesn't hurt either. Most cities in the Rust Belt cannot worry about attracting talent because they are hemorrhaging talent. Instead these cities have to focus their attention and resources on retention. With CMU, Pittsburgh gets the benefit of bringing in some quality students who may stay within the community after graduation.
- mfarris 16y agoThe US Census version of "Detroit" is the area within the city limits. It has been "dying" since since the '68 riots, due to a combination of white flight, decline of manufacturing, and subsequent decline in retail, services, and civic engagement. All of which leads to more people leaving -- often going just 5-20 miles, into the suburbs. In real life, to most southeast Michiganders, "Detroit" is a much larger area encompassing dozens of neighboring suburbs. That Detroit continued growing into the late '90s. The effects of the economic downturn were visible there long before the big 2008 crash (mostly in housing prices and boarded-up storefronts on suburban main streets), but its overall population decline has been much less dramatic than 25% in 10 years. The "dying" talk is overblown. Cities ebb and flow. Manhattan in the 1970's, anyone? This is a very low ebb for the Detroit area, but it'll come back. All the way? Probably not -- being the central hub of a world industry was a bit of a historical fluke. But there's a foundation of engineers, designers, and other educated white-collar types -- along with the vestiges of a blue-collar middle class -- to build upon. When I moved to Los Angeles ten years ago, the Hollywood area was a wasteland. So was downtown. Old Town Pasadena was gang territory. Echo Park is where you went to get shot. Now all of those areas -- and many dozens more -- are bustling and in various stages of gentrification.
- detst 16y agoI was going to make the same basic point. I think people on the outside will look at things like this and say "dying" when things are mostly moving across 8 mile. "Detroit" [e.g. Metro Detroit] is very spread out and this is just a trend, like you say, that has been happening since the 60s. Being spread out, there are many great places to live that happen to be outside of the city limits. It's not as if all of those people are leaving the area entirely (although that is happening to some extent, too).
- arepb 16y agoIt's overblown until we get the 2010 data for the tri-county Metro Detroit area. In 2000 that pop was 3.9M. If it rose in the last 10 years I would be very surprised. BTW I am a former Oakland County resident.
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- olalonde 16y agoWow! I had no idea Detroit was only 10.61% white. Is this an exception case in the U.S. or is this kind of ethnic disproportion common across cities?
- minus1 16y agoThis can be somewhat misleading for someone who isn't familiar with Detroit. When people say 'Detroit', they often mean the sprawling metropolitan area of the city of Detroit and the surrounding suburbs. The Detroit metro area has 4.4 million residents. The city of Detroit has only 700k. This article refers only to the city. And yes, the city has very few white residents. It is overwhelmingly poor and black. It's not unusual, in the U.S., for urban centers to have a high minority concentration, but I believe this is much higher than most major cities.
- DilipJ 16y agoDetroit is the extreme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_large_African-American_populations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_large_...
- bravura 16y agoAccording to friends, you can buy beautiful houses in Detroit for $100 a pop. It's the Warren Buffet strategy. Buy long.
- jerf 16y agoWhat concerns me (and I would appreciate comments from people who may know) is that I might be buying something with a great deal more than $100 in liabilities for cleanup or something. There's no fun in buying ten houses for $100 each if in five years you incurs thousands of dollars of obligations each to bring them up to some code or become liable because someone trespassed and died there or something. Even for a house in Detroit this is ringing my "too good to be true" bells; if it were just a fun thing to buy and see increase in value I gotta think it wouldn't have been that cheap in the first place.