Neighbourhood dynamics in Detroit (Royal Oak, Ferndale: fit in, section 8, 2013)
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memph: To be fair, the person in question bought the home right after the real estate crash, and it was a particularly small home for the neighborhood - the older sections of Fraser are dotted with the occasional shack of a house. Certainly, it would be impossible to find a deal like that now.
However, the fact that this acquaintance of mine was able to snag a steal like in that in the first place is indicative of two major problems in the Metro Detroit real estate market: 1. We are PAINFULLY overbuilt considering our lack of population and economic growth. Any downturn can quickly flood the market with way too many homes, absolutely destroying property values. 2. During such downturns, it's not uncommon for people with a little extra cash to think they can buy a few discounted homes and play landlord. In the long run, they usually wind up in way over their heads and are unable to properly invest in their properties, often dragging down what would otherwise be stable neighborhoods.
OK so I've skimmed through a good chunk of it. One of the first things that jumped out is the discrepancy between jobs and workers. The report often mentions the issue of "lack of jobs" in the city but that doesn't seem to fully describe the situation. In fact, according to the report:
Jobs in city: 70,700 held by Detroit residents + 163,500 held by suburban residents = 234,200
Workers in city: 70,700 employed in Detroit + 111,400 employed in the suburbs = 182,100
It seems like Detroit actually has a surplus of jobs relative to workers... the problem is that most of them are held by suburbanites rather than residents of Detroit proper.
I'm guessing that a lot of the jobs held by suburbanites are higher paying jobs that require skills/education that many Detroit residents lack and that many of the Detroit residents working in the suburbs are in low skill jobs (i.e. working at Walmart in the suburban mall or something). Correct me if I'm wrong...
Most Detroit residents are low income, which means little tax revenue and it requires more social services and such. If they work in the suburbs, they're likely commuting by car, raising transportation expenses and making it harder to make ends meet, leading to more social problems. So 32% of Detroiter's income is spent on transportation... that's a lot when you're having a hard time to make ends meet. And yet transit is underutilized compared to other cities... yikes.
You can try and help Detroit residents gain the skills that would allow them to take on the higher paying in-city jobs currently held by suburbanites. However, that doesn't mean that they won't use the increased salary to move into the suburbs. Making the city more desirable to live in could help keep them there. It would also make the suburbanites more likely to move to Detroit. Easier said than done obviously... but what "one is lonely" said is true about the core feeling relatively safe, that could be a starting point. And I would like to think that it would be possible to improve the safety issue since there are plenty of low income areas elsewhere which are safer.
You can try and create low skill jobs within Detroit. In the past a lot of that was industrial, now low skill jobs mostly means retail sector. However, for that, you need to get customers. Suburbanites, which are wealthier than the average Detroiter will be able to spend more. Getting them to shop in Detroit instead of the suburbs would be difficult, but maybe a more unique shopping experience, or unique dining/entertainment experience (like in the core?) could work.
The average Detroiter probably doesn't have much discretionary income, although according to the report, a good chunk of what discretionary income they do have is spent in stores in the suburbs. I wonder why?
One thing I notice is there aren't too many big chain retail stores in Detroit. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since locally owned business is more likely to recirculate the business revenue within the community, but then the local owned business needs to be a viable alternative to the big chains.
But maybe I'm underestimating the role of low skill industrial jobs in the economy? Maybe bringing those into the city would be less difficult than bringing in the low skill retail jobs.
The last option would be for Detroit residents to move to the suburbs to be closer to the low skill jobs. Not sure if that would be a good thing though.
The other thing I see in the report is the idea of creating more greenspace, in the form of parks, "carbon forests" along freeways, and "innovative ecological". So right now, parks are poorly maintained and a number have been shut down, right? How will Detroit ensure that these spaces are not only well maintained, but also that dumping and other undesirable activities don't take place in them?
I feel like if the land is privately owned, like with urban farms or turning adjacent lot into side yards, maybe the owners will be able to do a better job at maintaining and protecting it. Maybe small parklets could work in a similar way, if the community has a sense of ownership over them.
Coming as someone interested in how neighbourhoods rise and fall, Detroit is a pretty good textbook example, but I'm not from there and I've never been so all I know is basically based on what's available on line.
I'm not so much interested at finding who/what to blame (urban renewal, freeways, corruption, industry, race riots, underfunded pensions and the other usual suspects) as how the process of decline took place, as well as the situation in the nearby suburbs.
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One of the first things you notice when looking at the historical demographics of the city is that the decline was not uniform, at least not initially. Looking at population change from 1950 to 1970 (1960 census tract data is hard to find), it looks like people couldn't leave fast enough in the innermost core (Downtown/Midtown, Corktown, Poletown) with the population falling to less than half within those two decades. Was there already a lot of abandonment going on at that time in those areas or was a lot of that decreasing household sizes and urban renewal projects? It's just that I find it surprising that these areas lost so much population despite having actually gained population (albeit very slightly) from 1940 to 1950. The 1967 riots would only have been at the very end of this period, and the 1943 riots didn't cause the population to decline.
All of the above; households were shrinking, urban renewal was shifting a lot of the mostly poor households around, and there were quite many neighborhoods that had been neglected from pretty much since 1930.
This picture is described as being in the area of Eliot and St. Antoine in 1930. Today it is a housing development for low-income residents. However, it was actually rebuilt a couple of times before it's present configuration and each time it was rebuilt, the area had lost residents because they had to be relocated. This local documentary does a good job of explaining the area in detail and showing the perspective from the residents.
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Most of the other areas inside Grand Boulevard, New Center/North End, and parts of the Southwest also had pretty intense population loss. The next ring experienced more moderate population loss from 1950 to 1970, moderate enough that it could just be changes in household sizes. The outermost parts of the city, especially the Northwest actually saw pretty substantial population gain, suggesting they actually built new housing (there is indeed housing that looks 1950s vintage in these areas). For that to happen, prices need to be high enough to cover development and construction costs, which means there was a certain level of optimism about these neighbourhoods and that the homes would still be worth something in a few decades, right? Was there a time period in the early 50s where things weren't looking so bad in the city as a whole (and was that when these homes were built, with the population loss in the core happening more late 50s/60s)? Or did the people buying these new homes just think that the problems of the core would remain contained in the core?
Prior to the 1950s, the entirety of Northwest Detroit was rural as well as a few outlying areas on the east and north side of the city. So much of that housing was in fact brand new development from middle class residents moving out of the core. Essentially, they are the suburbs that Detroit was able to "catch".
Looking towards the west, towards Palmer Park, you can see that much of the Woodward Corridor is already developed. That important because suburbs like Royal Oak and Ferndale actually predate the growth of Northwest Detroit, but more on that later.
Looking southeast towards the core, you can see it's incredibly dense and built up. Upon closer look, I think it's not inaccurate to say that much of this growth came from the industrial boom prior to the Great Depression. Notice how fresh the streets look and the lack of trees.
The east side of the city looks equally underdeveloped, but not as dense as the west side. I should point out that the main boulevard in this picture is called Outer Drive. It was built similar to Grand Boulevard, except to circumnavigate through the 1930s edge of the city.
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Forward to 1990 and now every neighbourhood is losing population. The innermost ones are still losing population fast, but the rapid rate of decline has spread to the next ring of neighbourhoods like Petosky-Otsego and most of the neighbourhoods between Poletown and the Pointes. The outermost neighbourhoods in the Northwest are still seeing relatively modest population loss (15% over two decades, give or take) that could just be due to declining household sizes. Of the neighbourhoods I looked at*, the area around Houston-Whittier and Gratiot lost the least, only 0.8% from 1970-1990, which is actually less than from 1950-1970 (10.5% loss). Does anyone know what was happening here? Because from 1990-2010 it lost 48%, worse than any other neighbourhood other than Delray. It looks like it was turning itself around and then suddenly crashed. Of course population change isn't everything. Maybe this area's 1950-1970 population loss was due to decrease in household size and was still fairly middle class? Then 1970-1990 had more poor people moving in, possibly even leading to increases in household sizes and masking the neighbourhood's decline followed by very rapid population loss in the next two decades? This is just a guess though, anyone know what was going on here?
White flight. All those neighborhoods you mentioned were pretty much white middle-class neighborhoods. Prior to the 1967 riots, blacks were still pretty limited to the core of the city although many of them had household incomes that were way above the level of poverty. When desegregation occurred in the 1970s, many blacks moved into these all white middle class neighborhoods, and the whites started to leave. So from 1970-1990, you basically had middle class whites (who over all still had higher incomes) being replaced by middle class blacks. However, from 1990-2010, black fight then occurred and those middle class blacks then moved out into the suburbs leaving behind poor blacks and very few whites. One small but important factor that occurred was that Detroit no longer required city-workers to live within the city limits among other things such as a rising growth of middle class blacks looking for more suburban environments.
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Anyways, from 1990 to 2010, the rate of population decline has increased in most of the outer neighbourhoods, although it's still not as high as in some of the older neighbourhoods. It's actually gone down (just the rate, they still lost people) in the greater downtown/midtown area and Southwest, I guess the greater downtown area is starting to stabilize and the Southwest is being stabilized by immigrants.
Yea, the Hispanic population has been really what's supporting the growth/stabilization of Southwest Detroit.
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What's it like in the core now? Obviously some people are finding it desirable, with the cultural amenities, jobs, university, relative walkability. What are crime rates like? Like on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is whatever one of the safest suburbs is (Bloomfield?) and 10 is the average Detroit neighbourhood. I'm guessing it's not a 10, but is it more like a 5? 8? 3? And how about the highly abandoned areas like Poletown and Core City? I mean crimes per square mile are presumably lower but how about per capita? Does spreading the criminal element further apart (lower density) have any positive effect?
The core isn't free falling like it was in previous decades but it's still pretty ...iffy compared to any suburban locales. However, the lack of density/population does seem to give them impression that crime is lower. Most homicides occur in Detroit's outer populated neighborhoods, most notably Houston-Whitter and along the Southfield Freeway. Those areas still have a sufficient population density where much more of the crime is fueled by drug trafficking and the sort. The downside to that is that crime in the higher density areas outweigh the lack of crime in lower density areas. So basically, it looks like that overall, the city still has high per capita rates.
This map has been keeping tallies of Detroit's homicides since 2012. Vacant areas like the lower east side see a lot less crime, but then directly north of there, the concentration of crime essentially nullifies that fact.
no lack of skill in detroit on finding someone to blame for its problems, usually somebody else.
when detroit thinks its got a problem of its own to fix, it will get better and not b4.
It's interesting that there are no major crosstown flows.
Although keep in mind that crosstown trips are likely to be shorter than the long distance trips from outer neighbourhoods to downtown, so Harper and Clairmount are actually not that insignificant.
By the way, here's a comparison I posted as part of a blog post of population change (%) from 1950 to 2010 by district for Detroit and some "peers".
Other key points...
Among these 5 cities:
-The difference between how city and suburbs are doing is greatest in Detroit
-Although these other cities have experienced comparable population loss to Detroit in the past, Detroit's losses in the last decade have been greater
-The cities that experienced the greatest metro growth experienced the greatest city decline, and those that experienced the least metro growth experienced the least city decline
-There has been a very close correlation between population change and income change
Coming as someone interested in how neighbourhoods rise and fall, Detroit is a pretty good textbook example, but I'm not from there and I've never been so all I know is basically based on what's available on line.
I'm not so much interested at finding who/what to blame (urban renewal, freeways, corruption, industry, race riots, underfunded pensions and the other usual suspects) as how the process of decline took place, as well as the situation in the nearby suburbs.
One of the first things you notice when looking at the historical demographics of the city is that the decline was not uniform, at least not initially. Looking at population change from 1950 to 1970 (1960 census tract data is hard to find), it looks like people couldn't leave fast enough in the innermost core (Downtown/Midtown, Corktown, Poletown) with the population falling to less than half within those two decades. Was there already a lot of abandonment going on at that time in those areas or was a lot of that decreasing household sizes and urban renewal projects? It's just that I find it surprising that these areas lost so much population despite having actually gained population (albeit very slightly) from 1940 to 1950. The 1967 riots would only have been at the very end of this period, and the 1943 riots didn't cause the population to decline.
Most of the other areas inside Grand Boulevard, New Center/North End, and parts of the Southwest also had pretty intense population loss. The next ring experienced more moderate population loss from 1950 to 1970, moderate enough that it could just be changes in household sizes. The outermost parts of the city, especially the Northwest actually saw pretty substantial population gain, suggesting they actually built new housing (there is indeed housing that looks 1950s vintage in these areas). For that to happen, prices need to be high enough to cover development and construction costs, which means there was a certain level of optimism about these neighbourhoods and that the homes would still be worth something in a few decades, right? Was there a time period in the early 50s where things weren't looking so bad in the city as a whole (and was that when these homes were built, with the population loss in the core happening more late 50s/60s)? Or did the people buying these new homes just think that the problems of the core would remain contained in the core?
Forward to 1990 and now every neighbourhood is losing population. The innermost ones are still losing population fast, but the rapid rate of decline has spread to the next ring of neighbourhoods like Petosky-Otsego and most of the neighbourhoods between Poletown and the Pointes. The outermost neighbourhoods in the Northwest are still seeing relatively modest population loss (15% over two decades, give or take) that could just be due to declining household sizes. Of the neighbourhoods I looked at*, the area around Houston-Whittier and Gratiot lost the least, only 0.8% from 1970-1990, which is actually less than from 1950-1970 (10.5% loss). Does anyone know what was happening here? Because from 1990-2010 it lost 48%, worse than any other neighbourhood other than Delray. It looks like it was turning itself around and then suddenly crashed. Of course population change isn't everything. Maybe this area's 1950-1970 population loss was due to decrease in household size and was still fairly middle class? Then 1970-1990 had more poor people moving in, possibly even leading to increases in household sizes and masking the neighbourhood's decline followed by very rapid population loss in the next two decades? This is just a guess though, anyone know what was going on here?
Anyways, from 1990 to 2010, the rate of population decline has increased in most of the outer neighbourhoods, although it's still not as high as in some of the older neighbourhoods. It's actually gone down (just the rate, they still lost people) in the greater downtown/midtown area and Southwest, I guess the greater downtown area is starting to stabilize and the Southwest is being stabilized by immigrants.
What's it like in the core now? Obviously some people are finding it desirable, with the cultural amenities, jobs, university, relative walkability. What are crime rates like? Like on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is whatever one of the safest suburbs is (Bloomfield?) and 10 is the average Detroit neighbourhood. I'm guessing it's not a 10, but is it more like a 5? 8? 3? And how about the highly abandoned areas like Poletown and Core City? I mean crimes per square mile are presumably lower but how about per capita? Does spreading the criminal element further apart (lower density) have any positive effect?
*I defined their boundaries myself, since some areas of Detroit don't seem to belong to any named neighbourhood and the neighbourhoods are often pretty small so I looked at larger areas to save time
You really should spend some time in Detroit. You mean well but I think your perspective will change if you visit.
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