Posted on 07/29/2013 6:31:58 AM PDT by equaviator
Growing up in Roseville in the 1970s, by the time I reached junior high school the majority of my neighborhood friends were refugees from Detroit, those who fled at a time when the inner city was showing the earliest signs of degenerating into an urban wasteland.
These suburban families represented the beginning of white flight, a massive population shift that would prove to be Detroit’s undoing over the next four decades.
Once safely settled in suburbia, these whites would eventually lead the charge against cross-district busing and would congregate as an anti-Detroit voting bloc. That led to Macomb County political campaigns that were often won by the candidate who most effectively bashed Detroit. These white-flighters became the core of a political atmosphere in the 1980s and 1990s that made the tri-county area the most segregated metropolitan area in the nation.
The Motor City’s downward spiral was put in motion.
So, in the wake of Detroit’s unprecedented municipal bankruptcy, the question becomes: Did Macomb County and other suburban communities play a leading role in sparking the core city’s downfall?
The ill-informed national pundits pontificating about Motown’s financial failure offer all kinds of ideological theories that don’t add up.
Sure, big-government Democratic politics and aggressive labor unions contributed to the city’s debts. One liberal commentator suggested that Detroit’s decline was caused by too much of a small-government approach.
To blame the $3.5 billion pension debt on “union bosses” is off the mark when you consider that the average city retiree receives $18,000 a year in benefits. To say that political corruption killed Motown — indeed Kwame Kilpatrick’s raiding of funds was breathtakingly brash — is wildly off the mark when the city owes an unfathomable $18 billion to $20 billion in long-term debts.
As Gov. Rick Snyder and his able Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr have said, Detroit’s long, slow slide began 60 years ago due to mismanagement at City Hall and relentless negative inaction — kick the can down the road and let the next mayor take care of the mounting debts.
But if suburbanites are honest about the history of southeast Michigan, they will acknowledge that white flight, which reached a far higher level of retreat in Detroit than in other metropolitan areas, was the clincher that gradually bled the Motor City dry.
I have not seen any figures on the percentage decline in city property values over the past 40 years, but the loss of property tax revenues over those four decades must be staggering. At the peak of the nation’s housing crisis in 2009, the median price of a single family home in Detroit had fallen to a stunning $5,000.
In Detroit, a housing crisis has been ongoing for decades. The unkempt and vacant homes that so shocked suburbanites across the nation during the foreclosure boom of 2008-10 became standard fare in some sections of Detroit starting in the 1970s.
White families who harbored an “us vs. them” attitude as their neighborhoods became more diverse and bailed out, often selling their homes to landlords looking to make a quick buck. What the white-flighters left behind were streets populated by renters with no incentive to maintain their property.
City Hall proved incompetent in trying to halt the oncoming crime and blight. The residents did not stand their ground. Property values plummeted and many residents chose to give up.
With each friend or neighbor that “got out,” more and more families followed the same path north of Eight Mile Road.
This abandonment led to burglaries, street crimes, drug houses and arsons. As many homes became unsellable, the slumlords swooped in.
After 30 years, the results are graphic: shockingly desolate landscapes — the “ruin porn” — that fascinates photographers from across the globe.
One key reason why Detroit is left with so much messiness compared to other Rust Belt cities is size. Consider this: The Motor City’s 139 square miles is so vast that it could fit within its borders all of Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan. One national reporter who wrote about the bankruptcy called that “one of the most incredible factoids ever.”
To deal with the sprawling boundaries, city and federal officials engaged in disastrous urban renewal projects and built freeways that simply made it easier for workers to commute into the city from the suburbs, rather than staying put in the Motor City. Ironically, the good wages and benefits that unionized autoworkers received also encouraged the evacuation of blue collar families.
Meanwhile, the city clumsily fueled this exodus by failing to enforce basic ordinances dealing with weeds and trash and rodents. Small-time crimes such as vandalism and minor assaults were not taken seriously by the Detroit cops.
Nonetheless, much of the mass migration to the suburbs stank of racist motives and bigoted assumptions that a City Hall led by a black mayor was the enemy.
The attitude was unmistakable. In my Roseville neighborhood, the white-flighters used the N-word with little discretion and openly told an array of racist jokes.
A more subtle form of segregation took hold in the business community. I’ve often wondered what Detroit would have looked like if all those gleaming office towers in Troy and Southfield and Auburn Hills, including the impressive Chrysler headquarters, had been built in the downtown area. Imagine all the abandoned buildings and empty lots that could have been replaced by those aesthetically pleasing engines of economic growth.
As the business community turned its back and the inner city’s population slid from 1.2 million in 1980 to 700,000 in 2010, the decline became a death spiral.
The one bright spot in this dark history is the sudden renaissance of the downtown and Midtown areas. Those two enclaves, populated by college-educated professionals, stand in such contrast to the dilapidated neighborhoods that referring to Detroit’s condition as “a tale of two cities” is already reaching cliché status.
In 2013, Detroit is essentially two cities. And for many years, the metropolitan area consisted of two regions: one black, one white, with Eight Mile as the dividing line.
That line is being blurred in recent years by the onset of black flight — minorities moving out of the city into Warren, Eastpointe, Roseville and even Sterling Heights and Clinton Township.
What is the old white-flighters response to this rearranging landscape?
Well, have you heard the one about M-59 becoming the new Eight Mile?
To the liberal utopians, it is everyone’s fault but their own policies. Heck, if they could just eliminate their political opponents, then utopia would be realized! There was another regime back in the 30’s over in EU that had the same answer to an economic collapse.
Be very vigilente everyone, over the next few dominos that fall you will continue to be blamed. Blame blame blame and then you will have the mob whipped up into a frenzy to eliminate those evil capitalist rich people! Rich will be continually re-defined as those that have “more than me!”
“The writer is a classic Michigan liberal who has been living in a slow growth environment so long, he doesn’t know the difference from democratic incompetence and a true free ecnonomic climate that fosters economic growth. Michigan is full of this type who are happy to swirl in the toilet bowl and call it a cruise.”
I love the folks that were celebrating “July 4th” with fireworks, yet the same morons scream for social security and obamacare. They have no concept of independence!
This author would also blame the abused spouse after he/she left for the decline in the family income and the negative effect on the children....
“Personally I would put the Pistons and Red Wings in a single dual use facility.”
I’m for that but not in a building originally intended to be a jail.
Once you understand Blame & Envy Cocktail, you appreciate how the Jacobins, Marxists, Communists, Bolsheviks, Nazis & Obamanists gained power. It is the central thread of demagoguery, through the generations.
William Flax
Speaking of stupid politicians, how about the police force?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWRVvF_pkhc
It may have sped up the decline, but the decline was inevitable with the leadership and the societal problems. I have been part of “white flight”. This administration and the progressives want to eliminate suburbs and have everyone live in cities. We left because of the decline of the schools, the infrastructure, the decline of my neighbor hood, crime, political corruption. Those who fled are being blamed the decline and for refusing to be victims of a corrupt populace. It got to where I carried a .357 to walk my dog and I couldn’t carry a large enough trash bag to hold the litter I picked with a walk around the block.
“I suppose this idiot would prefer if everyone lived in Soviet-style apartments.”
It appears that’s what obama wants for us but more on the order of post WWII East Germany but ruled by National Socialist, “Nazi’s”, only with an improved secret police and greatly improved surveillance, NSA.
The vast majority of the people who have fled to the suburbs, especially north of 16 mile rd., were all auto company employees, both skilled trades and production whose incomes allowed them to purchase houses and properties not available in the city of Detroit.
Sterling Heights was the first haven for the new upper class wage earners from the auto industry and as that grew, they spread northword and the houses grew.
Macomb Twp., Utica and Shelby Twp. became the new destination of choice for the auto workers who had the incomes to build bigger houses in what was once wooded areas. Those areas are now filled with subdivisions.
The bottom line is, they left Detroit for the same reason anyone else does, a bigger house in a neighborhood that they can afford.....
Here in Eastern Jackson county, everybody works in Washtenaw County. Higher pay there, lower taxes here.
Yes it would, please refer to my prior statement. It wasn't politics and taxes that made the people flee Detroit, it was their auto company created incomes that allowed them to purchase or build homes in what was once country land............
In all fairness to the neighborhoods of Detroit, those are houses that were built in the early 1900's, as was my grandparents house on Detroit's east side.
Forget the poverty, forget the politics, forget the urban blight, in today's society, anyone making 50k a year or more is not going to choose to live in one of those old run down neighborhoods.......
Apparently that is true, though it looks like San Francisco counts water area as well as land to make itself look bigger than it is.
Every older American city went through "White flight" in the postwar period, but none ended up as badly off as Detroit (no city with its own metropolitan hinterland, that is).
Chicago came out better than Detroit, perhaps because Daley policies that liberals objected to prevented the blockbusting and the White flight from going too far or too fast.
Once safely settled in suburbia, these whites would eventually lead the charge against cross-district busing and would congregate as an anti-Detroit voting bloc. That led to Macomb County political campaigns that were often won by the candidate who most effectively bashed Detroit. These white-flighters became the core of a political atmosphere in the 1980s and 1990s that made the tri-county area the most segregated metropolitan area in the nation. The Motor City’s downward spiral was put in motion... The ill-informed national pundits pontificating about Motown’s financial failure offer all kinds of ideological theories that don’t add up.The racist party-line idealogue and demagogue that shilled out this swill should be fired; his editor should be fired; both should be blackballed; and the paper should print a front page apology and point-by-talkingpoint rebuttal of this garbage.
Could you add, Warren and Sterling Heights? Another machine-shop centric town, near Chrysler in it's hayday, Clawson...
Would they have all existed if they didn't get out of Detwaa and build all those business park streets along the numbered miles?
FWIW, many of these mom and pop shops are now vacant with all the changes in the auto industry from Cad/Cam to the ISO movement and then the collapse....
Did anyone get this....
This was a backhanded swipe @ Reagan, it is all his fault, or his brand of Racism
After all it was the Macomb Country Democrats, i.e. the "Reagan Democrats" he is pointing at...
Think about it...
Yep. That is what did it.
” it was the Macomb Country Democrats, i.e. the “Reagan Democrats” he is pointing at...”
Yeah I can see that now but isn’t it true that earlier “flights” were to Oakland County suburbs such as Southfield?
You could be right, maybe cripplecreek will chime in, he is a better Michigander than I.....
“Troy wouldn’t exist as it is today, but for the stupid Detroit politicians.”
To which:
“Could you add, Warren and Sterling Heights? Another machine-shop centric town, near Chrysler in it’s hayday, Clawson...
Would they have all existed if they didn’t get out of Detwaa and build all those business park streets along the numbered miles?”
WWI, WWII, Korea, the Cold War and Space Race, Vietnam...even Desert Shield/Desert Storm...Detroit and it’s Metro area suburbs closer to 8 Mile Rd. (up to 19-20 Mile Rd.) were outfitted for wartime and peacetime manufacturing of military weaponry and equipment but only during WWII was domestic automobile production halted.
There were also the manufacturers of the machinery and tools found on the floors of shops and factories of all kinds. “The Arsenal of Democracy” in Detroit had been around since before Pearl Harbor was hit in 1941. It wasn’t until WWII that it went into overdrive and it had nothing to do with White Flight.
The folks who got off the Titanic caused the ship to sink, right?
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