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One thing I have to say... I highly HIGHLY doubt Detroit will lose another 25% again. And if people can keep revitalizing areas of Detroit quickly, keep the economy stable, and promote and diversify in other fields other than manufacturing, Detroit could possibly see a reverse in population or at least a very slow decline.
I work with production software as not only a developer of code, but also a trouble shooter of code. I have done this for 15 years now. When things start working different than before or fail, the first and most basic question to ask when troubleshooting is…..”What changed”. There is input, output, processing, hardware, memory, resource contention, network communication, etc. All those have to be analyzed for burps or changes. In other words, if things are following a certain pattern and the pattern radically changes, the something changed to disturb that pattern and once what has changed is removed or corrected, the previous pattern will return. Thus, this is also my approach to analyzing Detroits situation.
In light of that, one has to look at the patterns of the last few decades. I think the major changes of the last decade were as follows.
1) The housing bubble.
2) The auto industry and Michigan’s economic collapse,
3) Black migration back to the South.
If we are talking about what happened from 2000 – 2010, in the city of Detroit, it’s essentially an examination of what changed for African Americans. Thus, the question is how did the housing bubble, Michigan’s economic collapse and the national trend of blacks moving back to the South from Northern cities, impact African American in Detroit. Secondly, the question that has to be asked to hypothesize about the future population of Detroit, is do those factors exist to the same degree now.
My contention is no, those factors do not exist in the same degree today. There is no longer a housing bubble that creates the hyper degree of house hopping residential upward mobility of the last decade. Housing sales continue to be at very low levels compared the 2000’s. If housing is not selling rapidly then people are not moving rapidly either which means that people are not moving out of houses in the suburbs as much and that people from the city are not buying those houses in the suburbs as much.
Economics is one of the major factors that lead to relocation as people seek to move to where there is opportunity. Michigan was in recession about 4 years before the rest of the nation. While Michigan was laying off thousands of workers, states like Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida and the like were booming, adding thousands of new jobs. Hence, in the last decade, Michigan was the only state that had a net population loss. No doubt thousands of people moved from the City of Detroit as well. They did not all move to the suburbs. An equal number probably left the state as moved to the suburbs, as Michigan, for the first, time, so a decrease in its black population the last decade. Given that there was an increase in the black population of West Michigan, most of the Decrease came from the Detroit area.
This brings me to the last of listed factors (although certainly not limited to the list), which is the trend back south for blacks. The mecca of the back to the South trend for blacks is or was Atlanta. The Atlanta area gained an astounding half a million blacks in a single decade (interesting though, the number of blacks in the city of Atlanta actually declined). This trend or move was facilitated by booming job growth in Georgia, while many Northern states were shedding jobs in industries which originally attracted many blacks from the South up north. Thus, there was a “push” and a “pull” factor that led blacks to move to metros like Atlanta. Today, however, Atlanta’s economy has fizzled and is one of the only major metros that actually lost jobs over the last year. In fact, most of the boom states, with the exception of Texas, have fizzled out.
I think Michigan, to the degree that the national economy does not collapse, has really turned the corner. The push factor that drove people out of Michigan for work is diminishing while the pull factor that attracted people to states like Georgia has also diminished. The population growth in Georgia is the lowest it has been in decades, which means that thousands of Detroiters are no longer moving there. Thus, this is the reason that I most definitely do not see Detroit population dropping like it previously did. In fact, I see the population actually growing in 4 or 5 years. Detroit has many problems and many people might want to move to the suburbs to escape them or because it’s trendy, however, the window to do that is not open as wide as it was the last decade because people are not selling homes at the rate they were then. One of the big reasons that homes are not selling is that people cannot qualify and or do not want to buy a depreciating asset.
That’s my attempt to trouble shoot the situation. It seems to me that a lot of people are simply extrapolating from the last decade and assuming that pattern will continue, while not realizing the factors that created the changes no longer exist to the same degree.
And do note, 98% of the city's population lives in areas that continue to rapidly decline. I'm also hearing a fair number of residents have also stopped paying their taxes to evaluate what's going to happen in the near future and weigh their options. Also note, Detroit has to develop a economy before it can stabilize. I mean yeah, the Big 3 are doing better, but they have a long way to go before we can return to even 1990s-esque prosperity. And until we have a healthy big 3 to develop off of, it'll be quite hard to diversify the economy.
So Detroit's more likely to decline another 25% than grow 1% (take that how you like).
And I haven't even factored in the impact of the severe austerity measures (to the brittle bones we're already operating on) that will be coming very soon as well. People are sick of having to accept third world-esque services for a first world prices (high taxes), especially when they can move to a nearby suburb, or better yet, an entirely different city, and expect way more services for way less in taxes.
Although that may be true as of now. 10 years is a long time. Anything can happen within a decade. It's never too late to start trying to turn something around even though the earlier the better.
I work with production software as not only a developer of code, but also a trouble shooter of code. I have done this for 15 years now. When things start working different than before or fail, the first and most basic question to ask when troubleshooting is…..”What changed”. There is input, output, processing, hardware, memory, resource contention, network communication, etc. All those have to be analyzed for burps or changes. In other words, if things are following a certain pattern and the pattern radically changes, the something changed to disturb that pattern and once what has changed is removed or corrected, the previous pattern will return. Thus, this is also my approach to analyzing Detroits situation.
In light of that, one has to look at the patterns of the last few decades. I think the major changes of the last decade were as follows.
1) The housing bubble.
2) The auto industry and Michigan’s economic collapse,
3) Black migration back to the South.
If we are talking about what happened from 2000 – 2010, in the city of Detroit, it’s essentially an examination of what changed for African Americans. Thus, the question is how did the housing bubble, Michigan’s economic collapse and the national trend of blacks moving back to the South from Northern cities, impact African American in Detroit. Secondly, the question that has to be asked to hypothesize about the future population of Detroit, is do those factors exist to the same degree now.
My contention is no, those factors do not exist in the same degree today. There is no longer a housing bubble that creates the hyper degree of house hopping residential upward mobility of the last decade. Housing sales continue to be at very low levels compared the 2000’s. If housing is not selling rapidly then people are not moving rapidly either which means that people are not moving out of houses in the suburbs as much and that people from the city are not buying those houses in the suburbs as much.
Economics is one of the major factors that lead to relocation as people seek to move to where there is opportunity. Michigan was in recession about 4 years before the rest of the nation. While Michigan was laying off thousands of workers, states like Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida and the like were booming, adding thousands of new jobs. Hence, in the last decade, Michigan was the only state that had a net population loss. No doubt thousands of people moved from the City of Detroit as well. They did not all move to the suburbs. An equal number probably left the state as moved to the suburbs, as Michigan, for the first, time, so a decrease in its black population the last decade. Given that there was an increase in the black population of West Michigan, most of the Decrease came from the Detroit area.
This brings me to the last of listed factors (although certainly not limited to the list), which is the trend back south for blacks. The mecca of the back to the South trend for blacks is or was Atlanta. The Atlanta area gained an astounding half a million blacks in a single decade (interesting though, the number of blacks in the city of Atlanta actually declined). This trend or move was facilitated by booming job growth in Georgia, while many Northern states were shedding jobs in industries which originally attracted many blacks from the South up north. Thus, there was a “push” and a “pull” factor that led blacks to move to metros like Atlanta. Today, however, Atlanta’s economy has fizzled and is one of the only major metros that actually lost jobs over the last year. In fact, most of the boom states, with the exception of Texas, have fizzled out.
I think Michigan, to the degree that the national economy does not collapse, has really turned the corner. The push factor that drove people out of Michigan for work is diminishing while the pull factor that attracted people to states like Georgia has also diminished. The population growth in Georgia is the lowest it has been in decades, which means that thousands of Detroiters are no longer moving there. Thus, this is the reason that I most definitely do not see Detroit population dropping like it previously did. In fact, I see the population actually growing in 4 or 5 years. Detroit has many problems and many people might want to move to the suburbs to escape them or because it’s trendy, however, the window to do that is not open as wide as it was the last decade because people are not selling homes at the rate they were then. One of the big reasons that homes are not selling is that people cannot qualify and or do not want to buy a depreciating asset.
That’s my attempt to trouble shoot the situation. It seems to me that a lot of people are simply extrapolating from the last decade and assuming that pattern will continue, while not realizing the factors that created the changes no longer exist to the same degree.
I agree. People fail to realize that this is not the year 2009 anymore. People aren't that excited to move to the burbs, the south, or extremely thirsty to find jobs (at least not as much) anymore. I know people that have moved back up here because they figured out that things wren't just happening in Detroit they were everywhere just about.
Detroit and Atl for a prime example. Alot of people did leave at first, many of them disappointed, and once the word got out to the people that stayed that all the extra hype is overrated, the hype eventually died down.
Just a few years ago people talked about Atl like it was a black utopia. Things blacks in Detroit and Chicago didn't realize about Atl at first. It's alot smaller than you would think, it's black population within city limits is alot less than the 2 cities mentioned above, their economy is not that great, their schools are not that great, their traffic and crime is comparable to Detroit and Chicago. Most of the things that blacks wanted to escape in Detroit and Chicago were greeting them at the front door in Atlanta with a few extra surprises such as the gays (I have nothing against them but many do) and especially the HORRIBLE suburban type layout, sometimes I just think Atlanta was build AROUND a huge forest, I never seen a large city so hard to get around. I think the street grid system is almost completely absent outside of downtown. From what I seen their neighborhoods are suburban type, kind of reminds me of Kalamazoo (if u heard of it). Their population density is about the same.
The housing bubble is not what it used to be a few years ago either. It will not be as easy for people to move out of the big bad city to the nice, safe, and cozy suburbs. Many of those people are probably going to end up right back in the city anyway.
And as I said before about the economy, although I don't expect it to get any worse than 2009 again any time soon, Metro Detroit is way to big to have all of it's economic eggs in one basket. It needs to diversify it's economy while it still has an economy to diversify. Many people think the past decade was a horrible time for Detroit (and it was don't get me wrong). I think it was a warning shot to the leaders of the city and state that the entire nation heard. And if that didn't wake our leaders up, idk what will. Detroit will recover from the last recession, next time Detroit and MI might just lose everything. This is an indication that they need to get up to speed and fast and make sure their prepared for the next hit (and make no mistake, a huge recession will happen again in the next few decades).
I agree. People fail to realize that this is not the year 2009 anymore. People aren't that excited to move to the burbs, the south, or extremely thirsty to find jobs (at least not as much) anymore. I know people that have moved back up here because they figured out that things wren't just happening in Detroit they were everywhere just about.
Detroit and Atl for a prime example. Alot of people did leave at first, many of them disappointed, and once the word got out to the people that stayed that all the extra hype is overrated, the hype eventually died down.
Just a few years ago people talked about Atl like it was a black utopia. Things blacks in Detroit and Chicago didn't realize about Atl at first. It's alot smaller than you would think, it's black population within city limits is alot less than the 2 cities mentioned above, their economy is not that great, their schools are not that great, their traffic and crime is comparable to Detroit and Chicago. Most of the things that blacks wanted to escape in Detroit and Chicago were greeting them at the front door in Atlanta with a few extra surprises such as the gays (I have nothing against them but many do) and especially the HORRIBLE suburban type layout, sometimes I just think Atlanta was build AROUND a huge forest, I never seen a large city so hard to get around. I think the street grid system is almost completely absent outside of downtown. From what I seen their neighborhoods are suburban type, kind of reminds me of Kalamazoo (if u heard of it). Their population density is about the same.
The housing bubble is not what it used to be a few years ago either. It will not be as easy for people to move out of the big bad city to the nice, safe, and cozy suburbs. Many of those people are probably going to end up right back in the city anyway.
And as I said before about the economy, although I don't expect it to get any worse than 2009 again any time soon, Metro Detroit is way to big to have all of it's economic eggs in one basket. It needs to diversify it's economy while it still has an economy to diversify. Many people think the past decade was a horrible time for Detroit (and it was don't get me wrong). I think it was a warning shot to the leaders of the city and state that the entire nation heard. And if that didn't wake our leaders up, idk what will. Detroit will recover from the last recession, next time Detroit and MI might just lose everything. This is an indication that they need to get up to speed and fast and make sure their prepared for the next hit (and make no mistake, a huge recession will happen again in the next few decades).
I agree....residents buy into the hype that Detroit is the worst ghetto in the country.....then end up going to other places and finding out apparently that heaven has a ghetto too, if Detroit is supposed to be hell.
One thing I left out, about what changed, that is very important, is that no adjustments were made to the population count for the 2010 census, but it was for the 2000 census. I think the official 2000 count was just under 900,000. Then Detroit sued for an undercount, with other cities, and most cities that sued had their population adjusted up, hence, Detroits population was raised to 951,000 for the 2000 census. Its that 951,000 that is the figure that was used to say that Detroits population declined 25%. Also, the get out the count effort by Bing was terrible, compared to previous adminstrations that went all out to get people to participate. Thus, I doubt very seriously that Detroit population declined 25% last decade. I would say it declined about 17%, if the same methodology was used in both census.
Also, those radius population counts in the other thread did not include Canada. That would add about another 500,000 or more people to the 100 mile count, if not more. It would and about 300,000 to the 25 mile count. I am not sure how far London Ontario is from Detroit, but that might be part of the 100 mile count.
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