4 ms·

Apparently, one of the major reasons for bankruptcy has been population loss. Detroit has lost 250,000 people in the last decade. What has particularly happened

Apparently, one of the major reasons for bankruptcy has been population loss. Detroit has lost 250,000 people in the last decade. What has particularly happened in Detroit that has led to migration of population?

HarryHirsch 13y ago
The 1967 Detroit riot happened.
- denzil_correa 13y ago
  How is that related to population migration between 2000-10?
  - jbooth 13y ago
    It's a somewhat racist simplification of things. The 67 riots were a big part of what provoked 'white flight' from detroit to the burbs. Of course, detroit was already losing population before that and the trend didn't speed up overall until much later, when the car companies started struggling. As always, it's more about economics than it is about race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit
    - mgkimsal 13y ago
      "The 67 riots were a big part of what provoked 'white flight' from detroit to the burbs." Coleman Young did his best to keep it going a decade later.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      The only thing racist about attributing Detroit's decline to "white flight" is the name "white flight", since black families were also very much a part of white flight.
      - jbooth 13y ago
        Lots of cities had race riots in the 60s. Lots of cities were rough during the crack epidemic, too. Most are doing great these days. Looking past the collapse of the auto industry (which coincided with the greatest population decline in 2000-2010), to riots 50 (!) years ago as the sole reason for decline strikes me as having the answer in mind before hearing the question. YMMV.
        554594bc 13y ago
        >Lots of cities had race riots in the 60s. Lots of cities were rough during the crack epidemic, too. Not a lot of cities have had black mayors continuously since 1974.
        13b9f227ecf0 13y ago
        "A Prayer for the City" follows Ed Rendell's mayorship of Philadelphia. When Rendell succeeded Wilson Goode the city was on the verge of a financial meltdown. The government was literally not capable of producing a balance sheet and had no projections. Philadelphia would have melted down into total disaster if events had gone slightly differently.
        tptacek 13y ago
        Were any of those cities of Detroit's size, and did they too lose double digit percentages of their majority white populations?
    - rayiner 13y ago
      > It's a somewhat racist simplification of things. Housing and education are the two remaining bastions of socially acceptable racism and classism in American society. Middle class white families don't want to move into a city that's 80% black and 30% below the poverty line. There is a lot of talk about the revitalization of downtown Detroit. Take a look at this demographic map (blue = blacks, red = whites) and see if you can guess what neighborhoods those yuppies are moving into: http://media.mlive.com/news/detroit_impact/photo/detroit-race-ethnicityjpg-22460d870367ecf8.jpg http://media.mlive.com/news/detroit_impact/photo/detroit-rac....
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Middle class black families don't want to (really: won't) move into a city with high crime and low employment prospects. We attribute a racial dynamic to Detroit because of the label "white flight", but it's the label that's racist; the dynamic transcends race. You see the same thing in Oak Park, on the outskirts of the West Side of Chicago, where I live. If you can get out of Humboldt Park and North Lawndale, you do: the schools are better and the neighborhood is safer. And the move from Lawndale to Oak Park doesn't even change your employability, unlike a move out of Detroit.
        jordanb 13y ago
        You're obviously right that anyone with means will try to leave a high crime neighborhood. But "white flight" was absolutely a thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
        rayiner 13y ago
        That's also true, but on the flip side I think what we're seeing in Chicago is that the middle class black folks are more reluctant to leave for the suburbs and try to stick it out longer in those neighborhoods than the middle class white folks.
        angersock 13y ago
        Had family who lived in that area during the late 60s--do you have any thoughts on why Chicago bounced back and Detroit did not? My hunch would be being less invested in the auto industry and more in general trade and banking.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    There's a generational aspect. As throngs left Detroit in the 60s through 80s, they started families, but not in Detroit. As people died off in Detroit, there was no younger population to keep the numbers up. It's not all that, but some people moving out in the 2000s (me, for one) made the % drop larger. Had there still been 2 million in Detroit like years past, a 10% drop would have hurt but not that much (and just given the economies around a population that large, it probably wouldn't have even dropped that much).
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Detroit has been in continual (statistical) decline since the riots. In the decades following the riots, the middle class black population followed the white population into the suburbs. At the same time, the industrial economy of the rust belt collapsed. Then the auto industry collapsed. Any one of these things could set in motion a vicious circle (people leave, local services become underfunded, crime increases, property values decline, more people leave) but Detroit got hit continuously for ~4 decades.
    - dennisgorelik 13y ago
      It's not that auto industry collapsed, it's auto industry dumped these cities for poor performance.
- rorrr2 13y ago
  Actually Detroit population started declining in the 50's, and the riot didn't really accelerate the decline: http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/detroit-population.png http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/detroi...
bagels 13y ago
Let's try: Chronic unemployment?
toomuchtodo 13y ago
The decline in businesses/industry that said population could be employed at.
rayiner 13y ago
Detroit's de-population is a tremendously sad story. The city peaked in the heyday of the U.S. auto industry at 1.8 million people, and is now around 700,000. The decline of the U.S. auto industry meant jobs left the city, and along with those jobs most of the middle class people. This was compounded by white flight in the 1960's and 1970's (and as a result the city proper is 80% black even though the overall Detroit metro area is 70% white). Fully a third of households in the city are below the poverty line.
- djKianoosh 13y ago
  Did the bailout help?
  - rayiner 13y ago
    It probably stopped the city from collapsing entirely into the dust, which would have been sad. Detroit was a symbol of what was great about America in the 1950's and 1960's. In 1960, it had the highest per-capita income in the U.S. It was built on American technology and American manufacturing prowess and an industry that brought wealth and good jobs to ordinary Americans, not just the top 1% (either financially or intellectually).
    - denzil_correa 13y ago
      Is there a chance to revive the automobile industry?
    - pravda 13y ago
      Oh no. No no no. It was built on the auto cartel, which robbed consumers all across the country to keep the Grosse Point estates of the automobile executives well appointed and manicured.
  - sghill 13y ago
    It'd be interesting to see some research on that. Most of the plants I'm aware of aren't actually in Detroit proper, but the metro area. A quick glance over the list of GM factories[1] shows just one assembly plant in the city. Chrysler has a bit more going on[2] in Detroit. Of course, this doesn't take into account all of the suppliers, which is a huge omission. In my experience growing up in the area, it wasn't so uncommon for someone to be working for a company whose sole customer was one of the Big Three. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_General_Motors_factories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_General_Motors_factorie... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chrysler_factories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chrysler_factories
wmil 13y ago
It's extremely politically incorrect to talk about, but Detroit never really recovered from the 1967 riots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot Things got bad. The insurrection act was invoked. The US military was sent in. Black-white relations have been awful since. Detroit has faced white flight like no other city. From 1.5 million in 1950 to 75 thousand in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit
- hampelm 13y ago
  The riots are part of the story, but absolutely not the start. Population was significant declining before the riots. A number of choices, including a long history of racial segregation in housing before the 60s combined with US housing policy (the GI Bill) to create strong incentives for people to build new houses outside of the city. That, combined with a lack of dense housing in the city, created cascading problems that are difficult to recover from. A good source on this topic is Thomas Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis".
paulfedory 13y ago
One thing to note is that many people moved outside of the city limits into the suburbs, which including Detroit has a population of something like 4 million people (ie. Wayne, Oakland, Macomb counties). The population of the city of Detroit proper is much less than that, like 750,000. Michigan has a very strong "home rule" law which concerns the annexing of these suburbs which prevents Detroit from amalgamating these suburbs, which has led to decline in tax revenue for the city proper. As people move out to the suburbs, the city can't sustain itself due to declining tax revenue. Many other cities have amalgamated recently. Toronto, for example. Here's an interesting read: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/dont-shrink-detroit-super-size-it/73165/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/dont-shr...

HarryHirsch 13y ago

The 1967 Detroit riot happened.

denzil_correa 13y ago
How is that related to population migration between 2000-10?
- jbooth 13y ago
  It's a somewhat racist simplification of things. The 67 riots were a big part of what provoked 'white flight' from detroit to the burbs. Of course, detroit was already losing population before that and the trend didn't speed up overall until much later, when the car companies started struggling. As always, it's more about economics than it is about race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    "The 67 riots were a big part of what provoked 'white flight' from detroit to the burbs." Coleman Young did his best to keep it going a decade later.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The only thing racist about attributing Detroit's decline to "white flight" is the name "white flight", since black families were also very much a part of white flight.
    - jbooth 13y ago
      Lots of cities had race riots in the 60s. Lots of cities were rough during the crack epidemic, too. Most are doing great these days. Looking past the collapse of the auto industry (which coincided with the greatest population decline in 2000-2010), to riots 50 (!) years ago as the sole reason for decline strikes me as having the answer in mind before hearing the question. YMMV.
      - 554594bc 13y ago
        >Lots of cities had race riots in the 60s. Lots of cities were rough during the crack epidemic, too. Not a lot of cities have had black mayors continuously since 1974.
        13b9f227ecf0 13y ago
        "A Prayer for the City" follows Ed Rendell's mayorship of Philadelphia. When Rendell succeeded Wilson Goode the city was on the verge of a financial meltdown. The government was literally not capable of producing a balance sheet and had no projections. Philadelphia would have melted down into total disaster if events had gone slightly differently.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Were any of those cities of Detroit's size, and did they too lose double digit percentages of their majority white populations?
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > It's a somewhat racist simplification of things. Housing and education are the two remaining bastions of socially acceptable racism and classism in American society. Middle class white families don't want to move into a city that's 80% black and 30% below the poverty line. There is a lot of talk about the revitalization of downtown Detroit. Take a look at this demographic map (blue = blacks, red = whites) and see if you can guess what neighborhoods those yuppies are moving into: http://media.mlive.com/news/detroit_impact/photo/detroit-race-ethnicityjpg-22460d870367ecf8.jpg http://media.mlive.com/news/detroit_impact/photo/detroit-rac....
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Middle class black families don't want to (really: won't) move into a city with high crime and low employment prospects. We attribute a racial dynamic to Detroit because of the label "white flight", but it's the label that's racist; the dynamic transcends race. You see the same thing in Oak Park, on the outskirts of the West Side of Chicago, where I live. If you can get out of Humboldt Park and North Lawndale, you do: the schools are better and the neighborhood is safer. And the move from Lawndale to Oak Park doesn't even change your employability, unlike a move out of Detroit.
      - jordanb 13y ago
        You're obviously right that anyone with means will try to leave a high crime neighborhood. But "white flight" was absolutely a thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
      - rayiner 13y ago
        That's also true, but on the flip side I think what we're seeing in Chicago is that the middle class black folks are more reluctant to leave for the suburbs and try to stick it out longer in those neighborhoods than the middle class white folks.
      - angersock 13y ago
        Had family who lived in that area during the late 60s--do you have any thoughts on why Chicago bounced back and Detroit did not? My hunch would be being less invested in the auto industry and more in general trade and banking.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  There's a generational aspect. As throngs left Detroit in the 60s through 80s, they started families, but not in Detroit. As people died off in Detroit, there was no younger population to keep the numbers up. It's not all that, but some people moving out in the 2000s (me, for one) made the % drop larger. Had there still been 2 million in Detroit like years past, a 10% drop would have hurt but not that much (and just given the economies around a population that large, it probably wouldn't have even dropped that much).
- tptacek 13y ago
  Detroit has been in continual (statistical) decline since the riots. In the decades following the riots, the middle class black population followed the white population into the suburbs. At the same time, the industrial economy of the rust belt collapsed. Then the auto industry collapsed. Any one of these things could set in motion a vicious circle (people leave, local services become underfunded, crime increases, property values decline, more people leave) but Detroit got hit continuously for ~4 decades.
  - dennisgorelik 13y ago
    It's not that auto industry collapsed, it's auto industry dumped these cities for poor performance.
rorrr2 13y ago
Actually Detroit population started declining in the 50's, and the riot didn't really accelerate the decline: http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/detroit-population.png http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/detroi...

bagels 13y ago

Let's try: Chronic unemployment?

toomuchtodo 13y ago

The decline in businesses/industry that said population could be employed at.

rayiner 13y ago

Detroit's de-population is a tremendously sad story. The city peaked in the heyday of the U.S. auto industry at 1.8 million people, and is now around 700,000. The decline of the U.S. auto industry meant jobs left the city, and along with those jobs most of the middle class people. This was compounded by white flight in the 1960's and 1970's (and as a result the city proper is 80% black even though the overall Detroit metro area is 70% white). Fully a third of households in the city are below the poverty line.

djKianoosh 13y ago
Did the bailout help?
- rayiner 13y ago
  It probably stopped the city from collapsing entirely into the dust, which would have been sad. Detroit was a symbol of what was great about America in the 1950's and 1960's. In 1960, it had the highest per-capita income in the U.S. It was built on American technology and American manufacturing prowess and an industry that brought wealth and good jobs to ordinary Americans, not just the top 1% (either financially or intellectually).
  - denzil_correa 13y ago
    Is there a chance to revive the automobile industry?
  - pravda 13y ago
    Oh no. No no no. It was built on the auto cartel, which robbed consumers all across the country to keep the Grosse Point estates of the automobile executives well appointed and manicured.
- sghill 13y ago
  It'd be interesting to see some research on that. Most of the plants I'm aware of aren't actually in Detroit proper, but the metro area. A quick glance over the list of GM factories[1] shows just one assembly plant in the city. Chrysler has a bit more going on[2] in Detroit. Of course, this doesn't take into account all of the suppliers, which is a huge omission. In my experience growing up in the area, it wasn't so uncommon for someone to be working for a company whose sole customer was one of the Big Three. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_General_Motors_factories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_General_Motors_factorie... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chrysler_factories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chrysler_factories

wmil 13y ago

It's extremely politically incorrect to talk about, but Detroit never really recovered from the 1967 riots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot Things got bad. The insurrection act was invoked. The US military was sent in. Black-white relations have been awful since. Detroit has faced white flight like no other city. From 1.5 million in 1950 to 75 thousand in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit

hampelm 13y ago
The riots are part of the story, but absolutely not the start. Population was significant declining before the riots. A number of choices, including a long history of racial segregation in housing before the 60s combined with US housing policy (the GI Bill) to create strong incentives for people to build new houses outside of the city. That, combined with a lack of dense housing in the city, created cascading problems that are difficult to recover from. A good source on this topic is Thomas Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis".

paulfedory 13y ago

One thing to note is that many people moved outside of the city limits into the suburbs, which including Detroit has a population of something like 4 million people (ie. Wayne, Oakland, Macomb counties). The population of the city of Detroit proper is much less than that, like 750,000. Michigan has a very strong "home rule" law which concerns the annexing of these suburbs which prevents Detroit from amalgamating these suburbs, which has led to decline in tax revenue for the city proper. As people move out to the suburbs, the city can't sustain itself due to declining tax revenue. Many other cities have amalgamated recently. Toronto, for example. Here's an interesting read: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/dont-shrink-detroit-super-size-it/73165/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/dont-shr...