What sets Detroit apart from other American cities? (Warren, Sterling Heights: foreclosures, mover)

[Redrum237]

There are other American cities with higher crime rates (well, a few, from year to year...and to be fair, Detroit's crime rate when averaged out over the past 10 years is probably still the highest....although New Orleans has it and every other major city beat by a good deal in terms of the murder rate), and plenty of other American cities that are filled with ghettos, suffered job losses, etc.

But Detroit seems to be in a category of its own. Baltimore, Cleveland, New Orleans, Richmond VA, Birmingham AL, St. Louis, Buffalo....those cities are all known to have extensive ghettos and dilapitated areas. But there is at least some investment in the cities. The degree of abandonment doesn't come close to Detroit's.

Here are the reasons I believe Detroit is in a category of its own:

1. Next to no white/middle class people

Just about every other major inner city in America, even if it is mostly black and ghetto, has at least one or two fairly large swaths of area that are considered the main yuppie/white/middle/upper class neighborhood, which often form a continguous connection from the downtown to the suburbs (Baltimore for instance has areas like this). Detroit has no such areas aside from very small pockets such as Indian Village, Corktown and maybe around Wayne State a bit, and some lower middle class white areas located around the very edges of the city, I believe. It is perhaps the least gentrified major city in America.

2. Poor public transportation

I'm not sure if there's any other major city in America near Detroit's size without any form of subway/light rail. The people mover doesn't count...it's too small and localized. Even Baltimore has the one subway line. It's the "motor city" and although the auto industry built the city, it's also killed it to some degree. Which brings me to...

3. Unreliable and undiversified industry

The auto industry basically is by far the main employer in Detroit, right? So when the auto industry suffers, the city suffers. And there aren't many other industries in Detroit, are there?

4. The people in the suburbs have little at stake there

In other cities, people from their secluded suburbs at least care about the city. In Detroit, not so much. There is some stuff in the immediate downtown and around Wayne State University (the stadiums, casinos, museums, office buildings) that they care about...and to be fair, those two areas are by far the safest parts of the city, I believe. But the rest of the city....basically, where the vast majority of the people live...is an area the suburbanites basically have no stake in and thus do not care about. As long as the problems don't spill over into the suburbs or the downtown, it doesn't matter to them.

5. Bad reputation
In the end, raw numbers mean a lot, but a city's reputation means a lot too. To be fair, Detroit's reputation is backed up by the actual crime statistics, but I wonder, even if crime in Detroit went down, would people even believe it? Would they even realise it? The city just has a bad image in general.

Those are my theories. Anyone else care to share any?

[MTUCache]

Originally Posted by Redrum237

3. Unreliable and undiversified industry

The auto industry basically is by far the main employer in Detroit, right? So when the auto industry suffers, the city suffers. And there aren't many other industries in Detroit, are there?

To be honest, I don't know how many direct automotive jobs there are left within the actual city of Detroit. Very few, if any. The auto-industry left Detroit right along with the suburbanites in the 70s and 80s and invested in infrastructure in Warren, Sterling Heights, Wixom, etc. So that ties back around too....

4. The people in the suburbs have little at stake there

Not true. They may have a very jaded view of the city, and may wish the vast majority of it no longer existed, but I think we're seeing right now exactly what the suburbs had at stake. For the past twenty years Oakland/Macomb have divorced themselves from Wayne County and tried their darnedest to do without them, but in the end I think the whole area is going to sink or swim together.

Everything else... *shrug*... same thing we've been talking about for years. Good theories, but I don't think they're really even theories anymore.

[Redrum237]

Let me rephrase it....people in the suburbs of Detroit perceive themselves as having no investment in the city. They don't care about what goes on there in terms of crime, poverty, etc., as long as it doesn't effect them. The suburbs don't interact much with the city.

There is no American city I can think of in which the suburbanites care less about the state the city is in, than Detroit.

[delayed]

That is absolutely correct. The suburbs have had zero connection to that city since the 50's and nothing has ever happened to change our attitude towards it. The recent mayor Kilpatrick did a number on any Detroit / Suburb relationship that MAY have been building by pulling the race card every chance he got (campaign slogan: "Our" Mayor) and blaming the suburbs for Detroit's blight. He is correct on that. It is the suburbs fault that Detroit is a cesspool stinking to high heaven with filth, greed, crime..etc. The suburbanites of today abandoned Detroit in the 50's. They basically said, fine. You want it so bad? Take it. Let's see what you can do with it.

Today, you can see what they did with it.

I disagree with the previous poster who said the suburbs will sink or swim in unison with Detroit. Why? Because Detroit has been spiraling out of control as a city since the 60's and while the suburbs may have some budget issues here and there, they are not collapsing. Detroit is collapsing. The thing about facts and statistics is that they can tell the truth without being swayed by emotion one way or the other. Look at the numbers, they tell the real story.

[zthatzmanz28]

Lack of pride, responsibility, and ACCOUNTABILITY....

Throughout city government, public schools and now too much of the residential areas.

[OyCrumbler]

What facts and statistics indicate that the suburbs in metro Detroit are doing well? Have the suburbs been growing while the city's been shrinking in recent years? Is unemployment dipping more slowly or on par with the national average? It seems unlikely that if a metro is decaying at its core that much of the rest of area won't eventually share in the decay.

[delayed]

Well for one unemployment within the city is nearly 1/3 of all residents. The suburbs are experiencing an unemployment rate more near the state average of 15%. Despite the fact that most of the automotive sector job losses are in fact in the suburbs.

Detroit schools have an astounding 75% drop out rate. The suburbs more towards the state average of 15%.

Detroit has a crime rate of 79 per 1000 residence, the highest in the Nation. The suburbs are more towards the state average, ranked at number 22 of 50 states, with 5.62 per 1000 residents.

[OyCrumbler]

I understand that there's a greater degree of normalcy in the suburbs, but I'm curious about where the inertia is going. There are other statistics that can be cited that show the metro is fairly healthy such as the fairly high average income in Detroit suburbs compared to the suburbs of other areas, but my question is more along the line of where these suburbs are headed and whether or not it's becoming more or less prosperous as a whole (just the suburbs, not Detroit) while the city continues to crumble or if the city's devastation is actually taking a toll on the suburbs themselves (even though the suburbs are doing much better than the city itself).

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I honestly don't know. Just looking at the loss of population in the metro and in the city between the 2000 and 2008 census shows that the metro's net loss was completely through the city. However, the slightly positive balance for the suburbs is really small compared to many other northern cities (even those with a net loss within the core city) with a healthier core. It'd be interesting to think of other metrics to try to measure this.

[Dexterguy]

Originally Posted by Redrum237

Let me rephrase it....people in the suburbs of Detroit perceive themselves as having no investment in the city. They don't care about what goes on there in terms of crime, poverty, etc., as long as it doesn't effect them. The suburbs don't interact much with the city.

There is no American city I can think of in which the suburbanites care less about the state the city is in, than Detroit.

It's been like that for a very very long time, and let's look at reality, nothing is ever going to change that. There has been a few suburbanites that have tried to fix and help the city, specifically in downtown (Comerica Park, Ford Field, and even the RenCen over 30 years ago). But building sports venues is not enough to get people from the suburbs back in the city.

It's very true that people from metro Detroit in general do not associate themselves with the city at all. I know people from all over the suburbs, Shelby Twp, Sterling Heights, Farmington Hills, Livonia, etc. that will tell you they are from "Michigan" before they are from "metro Detroit". Oh! And unless you actually live inside Detroit proper, you will never catch anyone around here say they are from "Detroit", even if they live in an inner-suburb.

You can compare that with someone that lives an hour out of Chicago or New York, and they still consider themselves to be from "New York" or "Chicago".

I really think that one reason why suburbanites don't associate themselves with Detroit anymore is because the city is getting smaller and smaller. And you really can't compare Detroit anymore with a metropolis like New York or Chicago.

[Dexterguy]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

I understand that there's a greater degree of normalcy in the suburbs, but I'm curious about where the inertia is going. There are other statistics that can be cited that show the metro is fairly healthy such as the fairly high average income in Detroit suburbs compared to the suburbs of other areas, but my question is more along the line of where these suburbs are headed and whether or not it's becoming more or less prosperous as a whole (just the suburbs, not Detroit) while the city continues to crumble or if the city's devastation is actually taking a toll on the suburbs themselves (even though the suburbs are doing much better than the city itself).

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I honestly don't know. Just looking at the loss of population in the metro and in the city between the 2000 and 2008 census shows that the metro's net loss was completely through the city. However, the slightly positive balance for the suburbs is really small compared to many other northern cities (even those with a net loss within the core city) with a healthier core. It'd be interesting to think of other metrics to try to measure this.

Most of the suburban and exurban development has completely been stopped in metro Detroit. Even in the places like South Lyon, Lyon Twp, Macomb Twp, and Chesterfield Twp were houses were being built like crazy in the early 2000's. There is just a flat out surplus of houses both in the city and the suburbs, and it isn't going to get any better until people stop leaving the state and the area.

Overall, the suburbs that are still "healthy" and don't have a TON of foreclosed properties all over the place are the upper and upper-middle class suburbs. Northville, Plymouth, Canton in Wayne County. Novi, Royal Oak, and Birmingham in Oakland. And in Macomb, Shelby Twp and the Utica area seemed to weather the storm the best.

The areas that got hit the worst were the inner suburbs and the city. Foreclosures were the highest in the city, and older inner suburbs like Eastpointe, Warren, Harper Woods, and just about anything that touches Detroit was hit pretty hard.

Much of "Detroit's" automotive workforce, at least blue collar, lives in the inner suburbs.