Detroit Pictures: 2009 vs. 2012 (Warren, Taylor, Holland: university, suburbs, park)

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

Whether it was "destined to fall" or not is immaterial and irrelevant. Who cares.

I think it has some relevance. People often attribute the decline in population exclusively to "white flight" and "black flight", but even if every residential structure was still occupied, you still would have had a population drop due to the following factors:

1. People having less kids
2. People not having kids or delaying having kids
3. People not getting married, i.e. two homes occupied by single people instead of one home owned by two people
4. People getting divorced
5. Growing elderly population that stay in their homes instead of selling them to a young growing family
6. People not renting out rooms to borders, once very common in Detroit
7. Extended families or relatives not living in the same house like was common
8. Apartment dwellers moving into homes because of homeownership subsidies. So apartment building stays occupied, but not at full vacancy
9. etc.

[MS313]

Originally Posted by 313Weather

I tend to agree with that number, especially given Chicago and Philadelphia declined to roughly the same levels.

But it still goes back to the old question of why hasn't Detroit stopped its decline, and what can Detroit do TO stop its decline...

Why was the population destined to fall???

And first we need to save and try to build on what we already have. Detroit wouldn't be that bad if we had good city services, decent emergency response times, focus on building a better tax base, and dependable public transit that works how it's supposed to. We could build on that alone. Once that is taken care of, focus on DPS and get some damn transit trains running through this area, the Detroit-Windsor area is how big??? about 6 million people (would be in the top 10 largest metro areas if Windosr was included) stretching out to about 10 counties and the only train we have is the people mover? Idk, maybe people of this region isn't demanding it enough for them to even take it seriously until a few years ago with the Woodward light rail. Public transportation to/from downtown will be crucial very soon. As the downtown area gets more and more urban, it's going to become more and more of a hassle to take a car there on a regular basis. Also focus on developing along the riverfront, (hopefully not to many places like these https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl&authuser=0 I don't want Detroit turning into another Atlanta or Vegas with all the suburban style development within the city limits but for the lower eastside, ill take it, for now) but Jefferson Ave has so much potential I can see it as another "N Lake Shore Dr" easily.

[jonnynonos]

The conversation was about blight.

Detroit's 45,000 abandoned homes don't care why people abandoned them.

They are inanimate.

[313Weather]

Originally Posted by MarvinStrong313

Why was the population destined to fall???

And first we need to save and try to build on what we already have. Detroit wouldn't be that bad if we had good city services, decent emergency response times, focus on building a better tax base, and dependable public transit that works how it's supposed to. We could build on that alone. Once that is taken care of, focus on DPS and get some damn transit trains running through this area, the Detroit-Windsor area is how big??? about 6 million people (would be in the top 10 largest metro areas if Windosr was included) stretching out to about 10 counties and the only train we have is the people mover? Idk, maybe people of this region isn't demanding it enough for them to even take it seriously until a few years ago with the Woodward light rail. Public transportation to/from downtown will be crucial very soon. As the downtown area gets more and more urban, it's going to become more and more of a hassle to take a car there on a regular basis. Also focus on developing along the riverfront, (hopefully not to many places like these https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl&authuser=0 I don't want Detroit turning into another Atlanta or Vegas with all the suburban style development within the city limits but for the lower eastside, ill take it, for now) but Jefferson Ave has so much potential I can see it as another "N Lake Shore Dr" easily.

The fact of the matter is Detroit WILL be suburban like Atlanta in the future. There's absolutely no way that the city's going to infill 143 miles of the city with dense, urban development. Furthermore, like Atlanta, Detroit's future will feature A LOT of green/rural space throughout the city limits. So if you're expecting to stick around for Detroit's comeback, that much will have to be accepted. This city will never be the metropolis it once was again.

As far as Detroit's population falling, it was inevitable. Like in Chicago and Philadelphia, there are people who simply wanted to live in the suburbs. Furthermore, beyond the Auto Industry, there wasn't much else to keep people here. When it shifted to the suburbs and failed, people moved to where the jobs were.

The question, of course, is did Detroit have to fall as far as it did. No other city in the US has experienced a collapse as severe as Detroit's (only Cleveland comes closest). A lot of what made Detroit great in the first place only exist in the history books now. There's no question that we could have done things differently in the past to save more of Detroit.

[jonnynonos]

Many neighborhoods in Detroit changed from nearly 100 percent white to 100 percent black in 10 years. That wasn't people falling over themselves to move to the burbs. It was white flight. They left, took their money and businesses, and left behind a lot of poor people.

[313 TUxedo]

Originally Posted by MarvinStrong313

Why was the population destined to fall???

<snip>
.

Because a lot (perhaps more than half) of that 1.85 million were children living with their parents, who were going to grow up and leave their parents' homes to start families of their own, and did. Detroit had a sudden jump in population decades earlier, leaving an unnatural number of families with children in the city at one time.

In recent years, we have seen suburbs that grew suddenly have falling population for the same reason, without urban blight, such as Livonia, Sterling Heights, and Grosse Pointe Farms.

The drop in population will not be as great as in years past, as far fewer households have 3 or more children than in the mid-20th century, before Enovid hit the market.

[MS313]

Sorry for the bad link. But if they were to build mcmansions over vacant land in Detroit, approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of Detroit will look like this in the future South Park Street, Detroit, MI - Google Maps (it's hard to believe that's the eastside). I imagine about half of the eastside will look like that and around 1/3 of the southwest side may look like that as well (although it might just attract a ton of mexicans and be like areas of LA or Chicago. Assuming downtown will be pretty dense and a popular place to live in the future, urban development starts outside of downtown and dense urban neighborhoods fill up the area around downtown bordering 96 to the west, Mt. Elliot to the east, and Grand blvd to the north. The suburban development in the lower east side will most likely push the residents to the north east sides. On the westside west of Livernois it's harder to find vast areas of vacant land like you would on the eastside, although they are there (Brightmoor for example) you will find a couple of empty blocks here and there in the middle of a neighborhood but it's not as bad. So I think the westside (west of Livernois) will see the LEAST change (with the exception of some mcmansions here and there) and that will probably be where most home grown Detroiters will remain. This is just my guess on what will happen.

The question, of course, is did Detroit have to fall as far as it did. No other city in the US has experienced a collapse as severe as Detroit's (only Cleveland comes closest). A lot of what made Detroit great in the first place only exist in the history books now. There's no question that we could have done things differently in the past to save more of Detroit.

NO, Detroit didn't have to fall as hard as it did. The auto industry pretty much made this area in the first place which is why I say Detroit as a city and region could have possibly been much bigger and stronger had it diversified its economy while it was growing. Detroit would have still been hit hard by the great recession and the other things tieing to the auto industry before that but not nearly as hard. Also, the white flight thing, I know Retroit may disagree but things really got fu*ked up after that point. Many whites fled because they didn't want to live around blacks. This was the 60's, come on now, racism in America was ALIVE AND WELL not only in the south but all over the country. Let's face it, it's how it was back in the day, whites did not want to live with blacks period. It was an embarrassing time in American history. I was born in the 90's and I know that much. Hence, why there were so many race riots.

As for the population falling, yeah that makes since.

[Arthur Digby Sellers]

Originally Posted by 313 TUxedo

In recent years, we have seen suburbs that grew suddenly have falling population for the same reason, without urban blight, such as Livonia, Sterling Heights, and Grosse Pointe Farms.

There's blight in Livonia. Not on the scale of Detroit, but if you drive through the city you see empty strip mall after empty strip mall. And the ones that are not vacant are often filled with lower-rent businesses like dollar and check cashing stores. That's part of why I suspect the population has dropped.

[313 TUxedo]

The situation with retail in Livonia is pretty bad, but deceptive.

Livonia is a better place to live than it is to sell something. All those nice little houses are chock full of everything the residents bought at Wonderland for 40 years (this is the same reason older adults can't find radio or TV programming that caters to them - they are not in the market for many consumer goods so the advertisers do not want to buy time on programs that appeal to them).

As for the type of stores found in Livonia, their market is actually customers from Redford Township and the west side of Detroit, who need to travel to shop since the stores in their neighborhoods left.

[313 TUxedo]

Originally Posted by 313Weather

<snip>
The question, of course, is did Detroit have to fall as far as it did. No other city in the US has experienced a collapse as severe as Detroit's (only Cleveland comes closest). <snip>

A lot of Chicago's suburbs have had an equal, if not worse, collapse.