7 ms·

As a Detroiter I'm curios to hear why you think Detroit went the way it did.

seppin 6y ago
It lost all it's industry
Kalium 6y ago
Over-dependency on a single industry, unwillingness to diversify, and an arrogant assumption that the same work could never be done elsewhere. Add in highways, commuting, and an infrastructure maintenance death spiral as domestic car production lost its major advantages. Rising crime added to the death spiral, as people who could moved out and the general deprivation of Detroit grew. Many of the suburbs developed their own economies, which further encouraged people to move there instead of Detroit proper. Lots of racism played its part in various ways. Lots of room to debate the precise degree, though the debate is probably not helpful at this point. These days the high taxes (property and income) and auto insurance rates are big problems. Only a few of these really apply to SF. Though the arrogance of assuming the good times will roll on forever seems accurate.
- mcguire 6y ago
  "Over-dependency on a single industry, unwillingness to diversify, and an arrogant assumption that the same work could never be done elsewhere." Like San Francisco?
  - Kalium 6y ago
    Only to the extent that San Francisco is over-dependent on tourism. "Tech" is both not really a single industry in the way that auto mfg is and far less dominant than one might guess. Though if you can convince me that Salesforce and Autodesk are meaningfully in the same industry as Spring and LendingClub, I'm all ears.
    - mcguire 6y ago
      There seems to be an awful lot of overlap between the positions they are looking for in San Francisco: Salesforce: https://salesforce.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/2/refreshFacet/318c8bb6f553100021d223d9780d30be?d=cta-hm-sjb-1 https://salesforce.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Sit... Autodesk: https://autodesk.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Ext/2/refreshFacet/318c8bb6f553100021d223d9780d30be https://autodesk.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Ext/2/refreshFacet/31... VMWare (which owns Spring): https://careers.vmware.com/main/jobs?page=1&country=USA&state=California&city=San%20Francisco&tags=No https://careers.vmware.com/main/jobs?page=1&country=USA&stat... LendingClub: https://lendingclub.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/0/refreshFacet/318c8bb6f553100021d223d9780d30be https://lendingclub.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/0/refresh... Sr. Release Engineer/Build Engineer, Director of Data Initiatives, Sr Staff Engineer Cloud/Saas Security, Sr Product Designer... If everyone is doing web/mobile development and they suddenly realize that web/mobile development doesn't need to be done in a 2-square-mile area...
      - Kalium 6y ago
        You're absolutely right! The companies I mentioned do hire many people with similar skills. Do you think it's possible that this might not be quite the same as being in the same market and thus being a direct commercial competitor for a company's offerings? Otherwise every company is in the Human Resources and Accounting industries. Perhaps the companies in question are not in commercial competition with one another, and only competing for a certain set of skilled technicians? Do you think the point imtringued made about downstream suppliers might be relevant? Again, you're completely right. There genuinely is a lot of overlap in titles and skills sought! It just might perhaps be possible that this is not quite the same as all companies concerned being in the same industry. Or perhaps I am wildly wrong! Can you help me with where I might have erred? The question of how one chooses to define an industry quite aside, the degree to which San Francisco's employment depends on "tech" is easy to overstate. Based on news and this website, you would think it was a third to a half of SF jobs. While an easy and completely understandable conclusion to draw, this would be a dramatic overstatement.
        6y ago
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Car manufacturing needs lots of downstream suppliers that usually have expertise in nothing but automotive parts. The end result is cars and nothing else. You can build tech for car manufacturers, you can build tech for taxi companies, you can build tech for restaurants, you can build tech for any industry.
  - maya24 6y ago
    San Francisco is still a major financial hub by the way.
imtringued 6y ago
According to this talk [0] the reason is that the newly established car industry encouraged a massively unsustainable development pattern that eventually led to the bankruptcy of the city and since its the first city to be built with this pattern it was also the first to fail. Lots of other cities are suffering the same fate. New low density development at the edge of town at the expense of the self sustaining downtown core and then at some point the maintenance costs exceed the tax income and you get a city wide decline. [0] https://youtu.be/Em7nqDqQ8oM https://youtu.be/Em7nqDqQ8oM

It lost all it's industry

Over-dependency on a single industry, unwillingness to diversify, and an arrogant assumption that the same work could never be done elsewhere. Add in highways, commuting, and an infrastructure maintenance death spiral as domestic car production lost its major advantages. Rising crime added to the death spiral, as people who could moved out and the general deprivation of Detroit grew. Many of the suburbs developed their own economies, which further encouraged people to move there instead of Detroit proper. Lots of racism played its part in various ways. Lots of room to debate the precise degree, though the debate is probably not helpful at this point. These days the high taxes (property and income) and auto insurance rates are big problems. Only a few of these really apply to SF. Though the arrogance of assuming the good times will roll on forever seems accurate.

mcguire 6y ago
"Over-dependency on a single industry, unwillingness to diversify, and an arrogant assumption that the same work could never be done elsewhere." Like San Francisco?
- Kalium 6y ago
  Only to the extent that San Francisco is over-dependent on tourism. "Tech" is both not really a single industry in the way that auto mfg is and far less dominant than one might guess. Though if you can convince me that Salesforce and Autodesk are meaningfully in the same industry as Spring and LendingClub, I'm all ears.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    There seems to be an awful lot of overlap between the positions they are looking for in San Francisco: Salesforce: https://salesforce.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/2/refreshFacet/318c8bb6f553100021d223d9780d30be?d=cta-hm-sjb-1 https://salesforce.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Sit... Autodesk: https://autodesk.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Ext/2/refreshFacet/318c8bb6f553100021d223d9780d30be https://autodesk.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Ext/2/refreshFacet/31... VMWare (which owns Spring): https://careers.vmware.com/main/jobs?page=1&country=USA&state=California&city=San%20Francisco&tags=No https://careers.vmware.com/main/jobs?page=1&country=USA&stat... LendingClub: https://lendingclub.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/0/refreshFacet/318c8bb6f553100021d223d9780d30be https://lendingclub.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/0/refresh... Sr. Release Engineer/Build Engineer, Director of Data Initiatives, Sr Staff Engineer Cloud/Saas Security, Sr Product Designer... If everyone is doing web/mobile development and they suddenly realize that web/mobile development doesn't need to be done in a 2-square-mile area...
    - Kalium 6y ago
      You're absolutely right! The companies I mentioned do hire many people with similar skills. Do you think it's possible that this might not be quite the same as being in the same market and thus being a direct commercial competitor for a company's offerings? Otherwise every company is in the Human Resources and Accounting industries. Perhaps the companies in question are not in commercial competition with one another, and only competing for a certain set of skilled technicians? Do you think the point imtringued made about downstream suppliers might be relevant? Again, you're completely right. There genuinely is a lot of overlap in titles and skills sought! It just might perhaps be possible that this is not quite the same as all companies concerned being in the same industry. Or perhaps I am wildly wrong! Can you help me with where I might have erred? The question of how one chooses to define an industry quite aside, the degree to which San Francisco's employment depends on "tech" is easy to overstate. Based on news and this website, you would think it was a third to a half of SF jobs. While an easy and completely understandable conclusion to draw, this would be a dramatic overstatement.
      - 6y ago
- imtringued 6y ago
  Car manufacturing needs lots of downstream suppliers that usually have expertise in nothing but automotive parts. The end result is cars and nothing else. You can build tech for car manufacturers, you can build tech for taxi companies, you can build tech for restaurants, you can build tech for any industry.
- maya24 6y ago
  San Francisco is still a major financial hub by the way.

imtringued 6y ago

According to this talk [0] the reason is that the newly established car industry encouraged a massively unsustainable development pattern that eventually led to the bankruptcy of the city and since its the first city to be built with this pattern it was also the first to fail. Lots of other cities are suffering the same fate. New low density development at the edge of town at the expense of the self sustaining downtown core and then at some point the maintenance costs exceed the tax income and you get a city wide decline. [0] https://youtu.be/Em7nqDqQ8oM https://youtu.be/Em7nqDqQ8oM