Don’t know if it applies to Detroit, but a lot of cities were destroyed by the “Urban Renewal” project that bulldozed a lot of viable black neighbourhoods and replaced them with government-run slums.
We had it in Detroit, we called it Urban Removal.
There is a 25 square block section of Detroit just north of I-94 between Mt Elliot and St Cyril that looks like Nagasaki in Sepetmber of 1945.
I saw a Turkey Vulture and pheasant last time I drove through it.