OT- Is Detroit really dying?

Submitted by Steve in PA on

I read this article today and I was amazed at the numbers being put out. I C&P'd most of the article since it's not behind a paywall. I'd like to hear from people closer to the situation of these things are true, because as someone living far away it's amazing.

Please, no political rants...just facts and first-hand observations please.

Mod edit: Added the link and parsed down the summary to avoid plagarism. Free or not, copy & paste of full articles isn't the best policy. --ed.

Link to Article (HT: User PitchAndCatch)

The Wall Street Journal recently ran one of the most creative stories I have seen in years. The journalist told the story of the history of a 5-bedroom home in Detroit, from the land purchase to its recent sale. It was built by one of the most influential man you have never heard of, Clarence Avery. Avery was on the Ford Motor Company team that conceived of implementing an assembly line for Ford's factory. He copied the idea from a hog-slaughtering operation.

His home was a very nice home for the time. The journalist located his daughter, now age 91. She said that she always thought the home was the best home she ever lived in.

As recently as 2005, the home sold for $250,000. It was purchased by a woman who was lent $200,000 to buy it. It was financed by a subprime loan. The asking price was $189,000. Where the other $61,000 went, the woman has no idea. She defaulted.

The deteriorating house was bought by a Christian organization that is renovating it. The house sold for $10,000. [...]

This is the sign of a dying city. This does not happen in a normal environment. Even with the mania created by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in conjunction with Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve, nothing like this has happened anywhere else.

ToledoBlue

March 24th, 2010 at 11:21 AM ^

Either Detroit gets a new mayor who has his shit together to do whatever he can, or they start rolling out the ED-209's. When he says drop your weapon you better drop your damn weapon.

Wow I never would have guessed my first negs on MGoBlog would come after a Robocop reference hehe

His Dudeness

March 24th, 2010 at 10:04 AM ^

I was just in Detroit last weekend. It is truly in a bad situation. Nobody lives there. The outskirts are all abandoned houses with broken windows and boarded up doors. Even in Grosse Pointe one of the most wealthy areas in America, is abandoned, but you wouldn't realize it because the lawns are still kept up and the police patrol day and night. The houses are all empty though.

I went out in Grosse Point on Friday night and the street was empty, no cars, no people. I walked into a bar called the Rustic Cabin and there was a single bartender with no patrons. The city is quite literally a wasteland. All weekend I did not see a single grocery store. It is sad. I wish I knew of a way to revitalize the city, but I fear it would take a team of people and the incentives in doing so would be more charitable at this point than for profit.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

March 24th, 2010 at 10:15 AM ^

Even in Grosse Pointe one of the most wealthy areas in America, is abandoned, but you wouldn't realize it because the lawns are still kept up and the police patrol day and night. The houses are all empty though.

Good Lord. No they're not. Are you quite sure you were in GP? I go back there all the time. I grew up there and my parents live there, and there's a very significant chance I move back there this year. The houses are not empty, the town is not abandoned, and yes, there are grocery stores - the Rustic Cabins is literally a stone's throw from one. The bar is empty because GP is one of the furthest places you'll ever see from a nightclub hotspot.

The "city of Detroit" itself is doing very, very badly, but it's totally inaccurate and unfair to say the metropolis is dying.

His Dudeness

March 24th, 2010 at 10:28 AM ^

I walked the streets. There were no cars in the driveways... the houses all looked vacant. I can only tell you what I saw. I am also speaking of the houses near the water. It is possible those old money folks don't live in the city during the winter. It was surprising to me to see not only the very poor, but also the very rich were not living in the city.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

March 24th, 2010 at 10:40 AM ^

There were no cars in the driveways because they were probably in garages. Or, in that neighborhood, there are back alleys, where you'll also find most of the cars. Believe me: the houses are not vacant, unless you wandered your way across Alter Road. But you'd know the difference instantly if you did.

And the houses near the water mostly aren't "old money folks" in that area (and you certainly walked a long way if you were near the water). At least not "old money" in the usual meaning. I or my parents know some of the people that live down that way and they work at jobs like the rest of us and don't migrate to Florida in the winter.

ypsituckyboy

March 24th, 2010 at 11:25 AM ^

Have to disagree with you on that one. A number of the people that live on Lakeshore have old money. I've asked a number of people who are members at the GP Yacht club about it/who live on Lakeshore, and they confirmed that. It might not be all old Detroit money (although some of it is), but there are plenty of people with inherited money that live there.

Wolverine318

March 24th, 2010 at 10:33 AM ^

I agree with this. The suburbs of Detroit are surviving but it is the city itself that is rotting from within. My wife works in Downriver Detroit and that area is doing just fine. However, drive a 10 or so miles northeast of Lincoln Park and it is desolate wasteland in the actual city of Detroit. With a corrupt and incompetent city government, a poor public educational system, and a deep history of racial tensions, I am not surprised this happened. The city government is finally getting clean up after the mess Kwame created. However, I don't think anyone has a clue what can be done to help revive the city. I love Detroit and it is breaking my heart to witness it dying.

panthera leo fututio

March 24th, 2010 at 10:37 AM ^

Based on the use of the phrases 'politically incorrect' and 'Powers that Be', the implication that the etiology of Detroits woes is obvious and simple, and the fact that whatever 8th grader wrote this based his entire analysis on the re-sale price of foreclosed properties, I'm guessing that the provision of an actual source would be a bit embarrasing.

Steve in PA

March 24th, 2010 at 11:19 AM ^

I was trying to see if what was mentioned was true or not. Sometimes when you put the source first people spend too much time attacking the source instead of discussing the issue. I find truth and fiction in many places, but this one seemed quite extreme.

There's a lot of the article I don't agree with and that's why I only posted the non-political portion. Glad you are such a good google detective.

Boo-erns

March 24th, 2010 at 10:25 AM ^

is totally backwards from what should be happening. Which is people moving into cities, easing the environmental burden of increased transportation and land use...Detroit is dying. And i fear that the move to suburbs and rural areas is unsustainable, especially if gas prices go up and transportation becomes a major cost issue.

It will also be interesting to see the 2010 census data for Michigan and Detroit. I suspect that the current exodus estimates are very understated...

VectorVictor05

March 24th, 2010 at 10:53 AM ^

I would agree when discussing most other major cities, but not with Metro Detroit. The shift in population out of the City of Detroit has been going on so long that the amount of businesses and corporate headquarters in the suburbs can easily sustain the surrounding populations. I know plenty of people living in the Farmington, Troy, Rochester, or Novi areas that don't drive downtown for work.

VectorVictor05

March 24th, 2010 at 11:16 AM ^

Are you referring to scale advantages like entertainment and restaurant options, parks, bars, etc. that are more densely congregated in a large downtown?

In that sense I would totally agree. The times I find myself driving 30 minutes or more to a bar on the other side of town because all of my friends are spread out through the burbs are too many to count.

Touche in that sense, but I wonder whether that necessarily effects the standard 4-person, 1 dog family who only needs the quaint downtown options of Birmingham, Northville, etc.

Boo-erns

March 24th, 2010 at 11:33 AM ^

but higher density reduces transportation costs, people live closer to grocery stores etc. Higher density areas can take advantage of economies of scale with water and waste infrastructure also, which is important.

There are, of course, social/life stile advantages to living in the suburbs. But the environmental/economic (energy consumption and land use) issues that accompany them are significant.

I love the city, I love the country...but suburbs sure do suck.

(ps. im a latte drinking liberal jackass)

Noahdb

March 24th, 2010 at 10:25 AM ^

"We have never seen anything like this in American history. It is happening under our noses, but the media refuse to discuss it."

1) It's happened plenty of times.
2) It's patently absurd to say the "media refuse to discuss it."

The town of Huntington, WV had something like 150,000 people living in it at the end of WWII. It's down to about 40,000 now. Youngstown, Ohio, the towns of the Lehigh Valley in PA, Scranton, PA.

There were plently of mill towns in New England that evaporated when people figured out that it was cheaper to run them in the South. Likewise, it's cheaper to build cars in Alabama and South Carolina and Tennessee.

This is the way free markets are supposed to work. Competition forces industries to compete and evolve. After WWII, Germany and Japan's steel industry had to completely rebuild...since we blew up their factories. As a result, they were able to modern steel companies that were more efficient. Plus, they were able to ramp up production and compete with England and the US. Steel prices dropped and companies like US Steel had to evolve. I think they're mostly a chemical company now, aren't they?

Bethlehem Steel was the second-largest producer and they ended up going bankrupt and got eaten by a new company, International Steel Group. ISG ended up merging with Arcelor and Mittal, two European companies.

All of those mill towns, BTW, ended up evaporating in the South after NAFTA was passed. The theory is that it's a waste of American worker productivity to have them doing mindless textile work. Those jobs have been replaced with tech companies like Red Hat, pharmaceutical companies like Abbot Labs and whatever the hell Burroughs Welcome and Glaxo and the rest merged into, and industries like Cree.

The Great Lakes region has water and cheap land. Eventually, someone will figure out how to utilize those two resources and the next chapter will start. Economies, like rivers, are very messy and destructive when they run backwards.

And to say that the media isn't covering it...it's just absurd. There have been countless articles on the urban farming in Detroit, the de-annexation of neighborhoods, and the struggles people have as they get left behind.

tdumich

March 24th, 2010 at 10:37 AM ^

the population loss has occurred in several rust belt cities (pittsburg, cleveland, st. louis to name a few). however, the sheer size and emptiness of detroit is far beyond anything you'll find anywhere else. it's needed a strong mayor, new leader of education and a weeding out of the corrupt political culture. these three things appear to have happened. now let's see if some changes occur over the next five to ten years.

Clarence Beeks

March 24th, 2010 at 11:22 AM ^

Pittsburgh really isn't the best example. The population of the city has declined, but the population of the county has expanded significantly. Pittsburgh has a very small geographic footprint and up until the mid-90s there was no interstate that flowed into downtown from where the north suburbs are today (which is in the county, not the city, and which is where the population has exploded in the last 15 years). Pittsburgh has actually gained quite a bit of population over the last several years, which coincides with being named the most livable city two years in a row.

tdumich

March 24th, 2010 at 11:37 AM ^

but the scenario you explain is exactly what happened in metro detroit over the last 50 years. oakland county, just north of the D, was one of the wealthiest counties in the country up until about 2004.

i realize pittsburgh is much smaller and in much better shape than detroit hence the mention of the sheer emptiness of detroit. however, both of their populations are half what they were in the 1950's.

Clarence Beeks

March 24th, 2010 at 11:47 AM ^

I get what you are saying, but it's not exactly what I was saying. The population of both cities is about half of what it was in the 1950s, but Pittsburgh's metro area (i.e. city population + the rest of Allegheny County's population) has actually grown substantially since the 1950s. I don't know the numbers for metro Detroit, but it's my understanding that the population of the Detroit metro area is such that the entire Detroit metro area has seen a decline in population since the 1950s.

tdumich

March 24th, 2010 at 12:16 PM ^

the population of Allegheny County peaked in 1960 at 1.6M. It is now at 1.2M. Metro Detroit (tri-county area including wayne, oakland and macomb) peaked in 1970 at 4.5M and is now sitting at about 4.4M. the source is wikipedia fwiw. this is somewhat comparing apples to oranges as i'm sure other counties surrounding pitts maybe have seen an increase. besides, now that pittsburgh has cindy crosby that will surely drive people away that can't tolerate his incessant whining.

enough arguing. go blue.

The Nicker

March 24th, 2010 at 12:20 PM ^

While I agree with you that Pittsburgh and Detroit are not comparable, the "donut" issue of expansion and development in Detroit is similar to that of Pittsburgh.

http://www.demographia.com/dm-usmet-fr50.htm

As the link shows:

Detroit metro pop in 1950: 3.4 million
Detroit metro pop in 1990: 5.1 million
The census bureau's current estimate was 4.4 million in 2008, so metro shrinkage is a relatively new phenomenon, FYI.

jmblue

March 24th, 2010 at 11:22 AM ^

It is true, though, that we've never had a city this huge suffer such population loss in U.S. history. Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States. Furthermore, what's striking is that the metro area itself has maintained its population (and until recently, was even growing in size). There are areas of other big cities that are deeply impoverished (think South Central, the Bronx or Chicago's South Side) but these areas have still managed to attract poor immigrants to keep their population numbers up. Detroit is just hemmoraging people, and yet it's part of a metro area that (in spite of recent difficulties) that is large and on the whole, is not doing that badly. There is not much precedent for this.

willywill9

March 24th, 2010 at 10:26 AM ^

A few years ago, I went to Comerica for a Tigers game with my buddy. We decided we wanted to find free parking. We parked it on a nearby street in a neighborhood. Probably wasn't the wisest move, but I definitely saw boarded up homes, broken windows, and even holes in the sidewalk so big that I could have fallen in. I've never seen anything like it. There may be some pockets in really bad areas around the country, but even driving through the city, it's like a ghost town.

If a mayor like Giuliani gets recognition for his leadership and transforming cities, imagine the national recognition one would get if he/she revived Detroit.

tdumich

March 24th, 2010 at 10:27 AM ^

however, there are pockets in the immediate downtown and midtown area that are pretty decent. political leaders have bled the city dry and most have moved to the suburbs. honestly though, with some recent and future planned development, and bing taking over as mayor, it seems it might, a very small might, have a chance to improve. if you want a microcosm of what has ruined detroit, check out this article:

http://detnews.com/article/20100304/OPINION03/3040437/Does-DPS-leader-s…

Noahdb

March 24th, 2010 at 10:36 AM ^

"is totally backwards from what should be happening. Which is people moving into cities, easing the environmental burden of increased transportation and land use"

You have two things working against you here.

1) The environmental burden in the greater Detroit area has already been pretty taxing on the land. I wish I had a link to it, but there's a map about 20 feet from where I'm typing this that shows the brownfield zones in the US. Saginaw, for instance, is one giant brownfield. Flint's another.

2) The United States is basically empty. If I remember the state correctly, something like 2/3 of the country lives within 100 miles of a coast. So that's leaves 100 million people to occupy fly-over country. The US is 3000 miles across, so an area 2800 miles wide and about 1,500 miles tall? That's 4.2 million (if I counted my zeroes right) square miles? That's 23 people per square mile. So, 1/13th the population density of Japan, 1/10th the density of Germany and the UK.

People are going to spread out, for economic reasons if not for social ones.

panthera leo fututio

March 24th, 2010 at 12:21 PM ^

This is one that gets raised a lot, and it's pretty uniformly rejected by people who study the matter. Our country's relatively low-density development patterns are widely thought to have much more to do with municipal governance structures and the corresponding features of land-use ordinances, our historical and current transportation systems, and a host of cultural traits that evolved partially in response to the above.

By way of example, New Jersey-The Netherlands often gets used. Very similar overall population density, but municipalities in the Netherlands are much more compact.

VectorVictor05

March 24th, 2010 at 11:01 AM ^

Very good points, and thanks for the stats that back it up.
I have several friends in the mid-20s that have packed up from the east coast or midwest and moved to places like Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City for a job.

I guess it's a chicken or the egg situation, but the bottom line is businesses follow beneficial economic environments (tax incentives, access to natural resources, cheap land) and people follow businesses for jobs. With transportation (both commercial and personal) becoming cheaper and easier and the internet making it possible for anyone to operate a business from anywhere the obstacles to moving into empty space in this country aren't nearly as daunting as they used to be.

Baldbill

March 24th, 2010 at 10:38 AM ^

One of the biggest issues is that for so long Detroit was a one horse town, by that I mean it had one (albeit a massive industry) industry, the automobile. Everything else was based on it. Sure you had Ford/Chrysler/GM but it was all cars, then there was all the car part manufactutors, again lots of them but still all focused on a single industry. The industry peaked at around 1950-1960, since then it has been dying a slow prolonged death. The government has prolonged the death due to interveneing in to prevent the death of Chrysler in the 1980's, and again here for both it and GM. These 'interventions' help in the short term but actually hurt in the long run, they allow sick weak businesses that have proven unable to adapt to the changing times to continue to be sick and weak. Clearly Chrysler learned nothing, what confidence do any of us have they they or GM will fare any better?
I believe these to be economic issues not political so I will continue.

There were in fact a number of economists that were saying there were issues with the housing in America much sooner than 2005. Too many 'new' houses being built and too many new loans being taken out by people that realistically should not be making said loans. This created a issue that built and built until it crashed. Older homes in urban areas are some of the least desired and least likely to be bought, especially in a city such as Detroit which has few other economic industries to drive it.

Mayor Bing is trying to go a new direction, which is to actually shrink the city. It is a good thought, but one that will force people to make hard choices. The city must rebuy the run down areas, clear the blight, consolidate people to areas that it can provide services/schools for and let the vacant areas, remain so until there is an industry/business that wants to establish itself there. They should rezone/replan the areas for future growth and get on with life as a city that isn't what it once was. Michigan as whole needs to get over the auto industry and diversify.

Sorry my two cents grew to two dollars.

Clarence Beeks

March 24th, 2010 at 11:27 AM ^

Right on the money. Pittsburgh, by way of example (since it was brought up by someone else in here), faced essentially the same situation. It was a one industry town: steel. When steel went south, so did the city. Pittsburgh was lucky to have great leadership that utilized the talent and industry base that remained to expand significantly into the tech sector. They went through some real tough times, but did a fantastic job diversifying their industry and population skill set. There is hope for Detroit. It'll just take time and the right leadership.

Foote Fetish

March 24th, 2010 at 12:31 PM ^

By removing the abandoned buildings and basically creating large tracts of open land, not only would they be saving money on utilities to those areas that are basically uninhabited and effectively using what resources they have to protect inhabited areas, but it would also allow the city to properly plan the regrowth of the city. Provided they can get that growth started again, the city might eventually be better for it.

Now, there's the standard caveat of 'provided the city doesn't screw it up' however the fact that everyone is finally talking crazy talk (shrinking the city) shows that the city government at least is willing to recognize the dire situation.

WichitanWolverine

March 24th, 2010 at 11:13 AM ^

I know you're getting negged left and right for this sentiment, but IMO there's a lot of truth in it. The US automakers for years felt they were on top of the world and would always stay there. They thought they could shove their subpar products down the US consumers' throats without repercussions. They sold products with horrible quality and never cared about what the consumer was asking for. Customers wanted smaller, efficient vehicles but the Big 3 never cared to listen. Now it is biting them in the ass big time with foreign makers "stealing" their market share. Arrogance and entitlement are to blame here, primarily.

Unions surely didn't help the situation. I won't go off on that rant, but I currently work in the general aviation industry in a right-to-work state, and union greed is still forcing my company to outsource production to Mexico.

Noahdb

March 24th, 2010 at 10:42 AM ^

Isn't Chrysler pretty much assured of its future for the next 50 years just through it's military contracts? They make the Abrhams tank and Jeep. Both of those have Army contracts through 2050, so they will be around in SOME form, even if they aren't making many domestic vehicles.