Canadian Border Cities as Suburbs of US Cities?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

but moving the border could have absolutely meant that detroit never got henry ford, and in that alternate reality maybe cleveland got henry ford instead, and maybe cleveland became the automotive metropolis of 5M people and detroit developed into a more modest canadian industrial city of 1M people.

nothing about detroit's location preordained it to become a 5M person metropolis. nothing about the location of any city anywhere on the great lakes preordained them to become major metropolises - not detroit, not chicago, not toronto.

these types of great cities are built at the intersection of great locations and great men who take advantage of those locations. without the great men, a great location can very easily not live up to its potential.

sault ste. marie is another major strategic control point on the great lakes that was well situated as a center of trade of commerce, but it never amounted to more than a modest little border town. it never got the spark to to set it on fire and join the big leagues like detroit did.

a great location can only carry you so far. you need the dreamers who can make the dream a reality. you need the henry fords.

But even pre-auto industry age, Detroit was a relatively large city on the lakes. It was a little smaller than Cleveland and Montreal, about the same size as Toronto and Milwaukee. It was going to be a city no matter what, even if we debate where it would have ultimately peaked.

This is a lesser point, but I don't credit Henry Ford as the sole reason that auto industry coalesced in Detroit. Major contributing player for sure, but one of many factors. By the time he founded Ford, he had worked several jobs in Detroit that gave him the skills set to build his car prototype (he was an engineer at one point). All of those experiences in his life were factors too.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

But even pre-auto industry age, Detroit was a relatively large city on the lakes. It was a little smaller than Cleveland and Montreal, about the same size as Toronto and Milwaukee. It was going to be a city no matter what, even if we debate where it would have ultimately peaked.

i would agree that detroit was likely to amount to something in the vast majority of various scenarios, but without all of that automobile industry juice, it's entirely possible that the detroit of 2020 could be around the same size as the milwaukee of 2020.

and moving the border could have absolutely denied detroit of all of that automobile industry juice.

nothing about detroit's geographic location dictated that it HAD to become a major metropolis of 5M people. that's not how these things work.

[pj3000]

There's all sorts of literature on the early American auto industry in industrial cities... Milwaukee, Kenosha, Racine, Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, and Buffalo all had early auto manufacturers by the 1890s.

All of those places had: extensive port and rail transportation networks for receiving raw materials, hundreds of machine shops, engine works, and boiler/stove works operating, and huge numbers of immigrant workers coming in... the ingredients necessary for large-scale manufacture of internal combustion engine autos.

In fact, from 1895 and 1899, 69 automobile manufacturers were established in the US... ZERO were located in Detroit.

That is until Michigander Ransom Olds relocated his company from Lansing to Detroit 1900. He is as much responsible for the "Motor City" as Henry Ford is.

From early on, Olds subcontracted work out to Detroit's manufacturers to make the parts for his car.. which led to those subcontractors gaining expertise in auto production... which gave rise to those subcontractors creating their own companies, namely Cadillac, Hudson, Buick, Chevrolet, Lincoln, Dodge, and ultimately GM. This was early technical R&D at industry scale and other cities could not compete with the innovation network in Detroit. The money followed this innovation to Detroit, rather than going elsewhere. And then Henry Ford came in a and integrated all of it.

They are the reason why Detroit became the Motor City -- fellow Michiganders Ransom Olds and Henry Ford.

The auto industry has always been a topic of interest to me. Good academic read on it for those interested:

The Evolution of the U.S. Automobile Industry and
Detroit as Its Capital

http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/entre...ip/klepper.pdf