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  #1  
Old Posted Feb 2, 2013, 9:51 PM
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Detroit then and now: An infographic.


Source: National Post

Any idea why the median income peaked in 1970?

The other information that intrigues me is the drop in unemployment in 2002 which don't seem correlated to the shrinking in manufacturing jobs. The graph alone doesn't really show whether those employed in manufacturing are city residents who work in suburban factories or if they work in factories located within the city limits. I'm sort of assuming it's the latter but it could really be either one. It also doesn't explain what other factors are probably affecting unemployment rates.
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  #2  
Old Posted Feb 2, 2013, 11:56 PM
J. Will J. Will is offline
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Having been there several times, it can be hard to imagine areas in that city of over 40k ppsm.
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  #3  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 12:08 AM
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Murders in Detroit are extremely broadly distributed, across the whole city, wow.
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  #4  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 12:14 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Will View Post
Having been there several times, it can be hard to imagine areas in that city of over 40k ppsm.
Yea I wonder what at 40K neighborhood would have been like.
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  #5  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 1:00 AM
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The "death of Detroit" story has become a pretty tired cliche, but this one at least provides some well-organized, interesting visual data to go along with it.


Quote:
Originally Posted by animatedmartian View Post
Yea I wonder what at 40K neighborhood would have been like.
Probably a mix of packed-in, crowded detached homes, and low-rise apartments.

Imagine this but without vacant lots:




The areas in the left side of this image would've been some of those over 40,000/sqmi:




Or on the top left of this:




Woodward Ave. in 1942 - the area in the foreground would have been among the city's densest:

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Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 3:36 AM
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
Woodward Ave. in 1942 - the area in the foreground would have been among the city's densest:

Detroit could have continued to be this if it wasn't for the dumb choices of people in this country during that time. I really hope a renaissance happens in the future, We cannot forget the greatest that was once within many of our cities, especially in the Rust Belt.
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  #7  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 10:01 AM
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Maybe a stupid question, but why did the Black population of Détroit increased so much from 1950 to 1980 ?
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  #8  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 4:09 PM
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Maybe a stupid question, but why did the Black population of Détroit increased so much from 1950 to 1980 ?
Mostly from Blacks migrating from the southern United States.
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Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 6:43 PM
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Maybe a stupid question, but why did the Black population of Détroit increased so much from 1950 to 1980 ?
Not a stupid question at all. It was called the Great Migration. You can read more about it here and here.
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  #10  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 6:52 PM
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Maybe a stupid question, but why did the Black population of Détroit increased so much from 1950 to 1980 ?
The black population in every major U.S. city increased rapidly from the end of WWII until the 1980's.

This was called the Great Migration, and involved rural blacks in the American South moving to bigger cities for economic opportunity (and, to a certain extent, especially in the earlier years, to escape discrimination).

The biggest growth in black population was in cities with a manufacturing base that were relatively close to the South.

Midwestern cities with a manufacturing base, especially Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland, received huge black populations. The major Northeastern cities (except for Boston) also received huge populations (DC also because federal jobs didn't discriminate, for the most part). And in the West, LA and Oakland had huge increase, with folks working in the shipyards and other new opportunities.
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  #11  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 5:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post


Or on the top left of this:



It is amazing how much the fabric of the city has changed. It almost look like a completely different city.



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  #12  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 3:03 AM
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Yea, imagining the physical buildings is the easy part, but I wonder more about actually living there. Like if that neighborhood was still intact, would it be comparable to neighborhoods in New York? Or Chicago? Or would it be unique enough to garner it's own identity that would seem like a "Detroit-style" neighborhood?
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  #13  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 6:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by animatedmartian View Post
Yea, imagining the physical buildings is the easy part, but I wonder more about actually living there. Like if that neighborhood was still intact, would it be comparable to neighborhoods in New York? Or Chicago? Or would it be unique enough to garner it's own identity that would seem like a "Detroit-style" neighborhood?
In 1950, Detroit and Chicago would have been more similar to each other than either city would have been to NYC. NYC has operated on such a vastly different density scale for so long that it really is in a category all its own among american cities.
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Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 5:20 PM
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That's unreal!
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  #15  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 6:50 PM
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As I said in the other thread, it would not require a huge capital investment from the US to rebuild parts of Detroit along the lines of the Stapleton airport redevelopment in Denver, with rowhouses, small apartments and single family homes. The end result could even look something like the 1940s pics. We just lack the will and creativity as a society to pursue it; our globalization-besotted leadership (hello Obama) barely registers the issue.

Those pics btw from 1942 show a real "MIXED USE" neighborhood: manufacturing, residential and commercial. We need balance.
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  #16  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 6:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_denizen View Post
As I said in the other thread, it would not require a huge capital investment from the US to rebuild parts of Detroit along the lines of the Stapleton airport redevelopment in Denver, with rowhouses, small apartments and single family homes. The end result could even look something like the 1940s pics. We just lack the will and creativity as a society to pursue it.
The problem isn't really "will and creativity", it's market reality. There isn't much of a housing market in Detroit, and the problem has nothing to do with housing quality. The housing in Detroit is often better than that in the suburbs.

Detroit was a rich city, and still has very above-average housing stock. The West Side is mostly solidly built, often sizable, brick homes.

The problem is that, for the most part, people don't want to live there, and you can't force them to live there.

Also, people tend to forget that Metro Detroit is doing relatively ok. The economy is pretty good, the population is stable, and suburban Oakland County is one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham are as nice as the fanciest suburbs of other major cities, and in Birmingham, you don't get anything decent (single family home) for less than 600-700k, which is damn high in the Midwest. Somthing nice will be in the millions.

In some ways, it's more accurate to say that Detroit "relocated", instead of declined. The city basically picked up and moved north and west.
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  #17  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 7:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post

The problem is that, for the most part, people don't want to live there, and you can't force them to live there.

In some ways, it's more accurate to say that Detroit "relocated", instead of declined. The city basically picked up and moved north and west.
Exactly. The downtown area, obviously would be one of the first areas to see a rebuild in residential population, but for many of the mid-to-outer ring neighborhoods, they were where the factory workers lived. And without factories or some sort of job center, there's really no demand for living in these areas. It really isn't all that different than what happened in many rust belt cities, but it's the scale of it that really gets people.

Case in point:


http://detroitnewsarchivist.tumblr.c...iews-1940-1959

And what that area looks like today. The Chrysler plant is still in the same location, but it's clearly been modernized.

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  #18  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 8:44 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
The problem isn't really "will and creativity", it's market reality. There isn't much of a housing market in Detroit, and the problem has nothing to do with housing quality. The housing in Detroit is often better than that in the suburbs.

Detroit was a rich city, and still has very above-average housing stock. The West Side is mostly solidly built, often sizable, brick homes.

The problem is that, for the most part, people don't want to live there, and you can't force them to live there.

Also, people tend to forget that Metro Detroit is doing relatively ok. The economy is pretty good, the population is stable, and suburban Oakland County is one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham are as nice as the fanciest suburbs of other major cities, and in Birmingham, you don't get anything decent (single family home) for less than 600-700k, which is damn high in the Midwest. Somthing nice will be in the millions.

In some ways, it's more accurate to say that Detroit "relocated", instead of declined. The city basically picked up and moved north and west.
market reality or market failure? As you said, ppl don't want to live in Detroit for the most part. There are things the state and federal governments could do to restart the market though and correct this.

I recognize that metro Detroit has plenty of nice and desireable, even urban areas. It would be great to see some pictures of said areas on these forums!
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  #19  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2013, 9:12 PM
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Originally Posted by dc_denizen View Post
I recognize that metro Detroit has plenty of nice and desireable, even urban areas. It would be great to see some pictures of said areas on these forums!
Here's a bit of Birmingham:


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr


Birmingham, Michigan by hudkina, on Flickr
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  #20  
Old Posted Feb 20, 2013, 7:01 PM
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This is one of the most interesting threads I've seen on this forum.
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