Originally Posted by Steely Dan
the comparisons and contrasts of detroit and chicago since 1950 is a subject that could probably fill a book. in addition to the above observations, here are a couple of other things that contributed to the different trajectories of the cities.
County Boundaries: chicago was actually quite blessed to be located in a county as massive as cook county. not just for it's physical size of nearly 1,000 sq, miles, but also because cook county encompasses all of chicago's inner-ring suburbia. detroit has the unlucky circumstance of 8 mile road, that isn't just the limit between suburb and city, but also the demarcation between counties. oakland and macomb counties hold a good deal of detroit's inner ring suburbia, but they're in an entirely different county from the central city. and once 8 mile became a race barrier as well, the battle lines became so terribly and clearly drawn as oakland county developed a very adversarial relationship with detroit and wayne county. in chicago's case, the suburbs and the city butted heads to be sure, but because cook county holds all of chicago's inner ring suburbia, the burbs and city were under the jurisdiction of the same county board, and thus were forced to work out solutions that were amenable to all. with both whites and blacks living in large number not just in the county, but also in the city itself, the racial issues of white flight played-out differently in chicago than they did in detroit with regards to city and county boundaries.
the size of cook county has also helped chicago stay in control of the metro region. the other suburban counties in chicagoland are quite small and weak compared to the cook county juggernaut. in metro detroit, oakland county is big enough to see itself on an equal power footing to wayne county, especially considering the wealth imblalance. just look at the number for cook county on the list below. it is a beast. nothing in chicagoland comes anywhere close.
2011 county population estimates:
CHICAGOLAND
cook: 5,217,080
dupage: 923,222
lake: 706,222
will: 681,545
kane: 520,271
lake (IN): 495,558
mchenry: 308,944
kenosha (WI): 167,293
porter (IN): 165,537
kendall: 116,631
kankakee: 113,698
la porte (IN): 111,374
dekalb: 104,743
grundy: 50,130
jasper (IN):33,416
newton (IN): 14,161
___________________________
METRO DETROIT
wayne: 1,802,096
oakland: 1,210,145
macomb: 842,145
genesee: 422,080
washtenaw: 347,962
livingston: 181,722
st. clair: 161,642
monroe: 151,560
lapeer: 88,082
Trains: detroit had extensive street cars and some commuter rail, but it never had anything quite like the 1-2 punch of the el and metra commuter rail systems that chicago had that kept downtown chicago as the unchallengeable employment center of the entire region. even today, more than half of chicagoland's office space is located in downtown chicago. the trains had a big role to play in keeping everything so centralized, and in turn that centralization helped prop up the city during the dark ages of the 70s/80s.
Mexicans: this one is easy. without the hundreds of thousands of mexican immigrants who flocked to chicago during the last 1/4 of the 20th century, a A LOT more of chicago's hoods would have the bombed-out ghetto look. that one single demographic bonanza saved vast swaths of chicago from complete urban abandonment.
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