Detroit and White Flight
During World War II, there was a massive influx of black people into the city of Detroit. This occurred because the city (which earned the nickname "the Arsenal of Democracy") had become a booming production center for supplies for the war effort overseas. The labor force needed supplementing, and there were plenty of minority workers who easily filled these roles.
After the war ended, so did the existence of these jobs. The multitudes of people who filled these were turned loose into the city, without enough work to support themselves. This didn't just affect the black people who had these jobs, but they're the ones who found themselves in a large city where they were systematically discriminated against. Employers were slower to hire them. Landlords were able to act as slumlords. 10 years before Brown v Board, society at large was still decades away from giving them basic human rights.
If you look at the network of highway systems in Detroit, you'll see they flow around the city in a byzantine fashion, slithering around in directions that a city planner wouldn't necessarily choose for logical reasons. The reason was practical at the time for those in control: the routes were planned so as to maximize the amount of "poor" housing that was removed. In a city where there was barely enough housing for all of the blacks that needed it, the city took pains to destroy as much housing that was available to them, while minimizing the impact the construction efforts had on the housing of their white counterparts.
The riots that broke out in Detroit in 1967 merely represented the boiling over of this conflict. After two decades of structural violence, something finally gave, and the result was literal violence. The migration of people from the city to the suburbs had been happening before the riots; the numbers increased dramatically in response to them. It wasn't just the white people who fled the city; anyone who could afford to relocate to the suburbs did so, but the people who were able to move out of Detroit proper were, demographically, almost entirely white.
And so began Detroit's slow and steady decline. As suburban municipalities established themselves around Detroit, people with the financial means moved into them. These suburbs were fiscally independent of Detroit. Even though many residents commuted into the city for work, the property taxes they paid on housing went to the suburbs, instead of the inner city whose infrastructure was being strained by the commuters and businesses who used it. Money flowed out, and the public utilities and services of Detroit became more and more difficult to support in the face of a decreasing population and radically shrinking tax revenue base. The Motor City, so famous for its automobiles, gave commuters mobility that previous generations had never known; In doing so, it disseminated the tool of its own destruction.
This isn't just the story of Detroit; it is the story of many large American metropolitan areas. As the civil rights movement progressed, overt racism became more covert, and people fled from the inner cities to the suburbs. As minorities became gradually more empowered, they started moving into the suburbs themselves; in response to this, white people moved into suburbs even further removed from the city.
I was born in 1982 in Southfield, Michigan. In my youth, I attended an elementary school that was quite a healthy mix of whites and blacks. When I was 10 years old, in response to falling property values in Southfield and in search of a better public school system for me and my brother, my parents moved to the city of Troy, a town which, if it had been any whiter, would have been transparent. I don't believe my parents are racist, but that this move was based on more general, latent racial tensions that were manifesting themselves in the community at the time cannot be denied. My parents were acting to give me the best chance at the best possible future; demographics were a causal factor. My own story is representative of that of many others at the time.
My parents did get me into an exceptionally good high school, and largely as a result of this, I managed to attend a good university. I emerged from college with a degree and worked in the larger Detroit area for the next four years. Finding my first job was difficult; many years later, economists would say that Detroit had been in a recession since around the time I graduated.
After a few years of this, in search of professional and personal growth, I ended up taking a job in California and moving out there. My parents remained behind in the Detroit area. While they were outwardly supportive of what I wanted to do, parents never like to see their kids move a couple thousand miles away. Many of my friends the same age have done exactly the same thing; indeed, I have few high school and college friends who have stayed in Michigan.
It's a mistake to believe that suburbs are somehow independent and unaffected by the problems of their respective inner cities. Located so close geographically, and economically intertwined so intimately, the decay of the cities spreads slowly but surely into the outlying areas. You hear parents complain that their children, with increased options of mobility in their careers, are running away from the suburbs of their youth to other areas of the country that are less affected by these problems. Or, at the other extreme, the economic problems themselves are forcing children in their twenties and thirties to move back in with their parents.
The story here is essentially the tragedy of the commons. Maintaining unity among the residents of Detroit, and preserving the system of the city at large, in the days following World War II was no one person's problem. With each acting in their own self-interest, the city crumbled. The people of these generations that had the power to do so never solved the problems; they merely ran from them. As so often happens in life, if you do this, the problems will catch up with you sooner or later. You reap what you sow.
My father often drops a not-so-subtle, ever hopeful hint that the economy of Detroit is coming back, driven by an increasing presence of startups and entrepreneurs, and that I could probably find a job there if I wanted to. For the time being, he's correct; I have options, and that's most certainly one of them. And I certainly can try to romanticize the notion of returning to the city of my grandparent's youth and allow my efforts to contribute to its revitalization. But therein lies one of the big problems: it's the city of my grandparents. I'm a generation removed from any memory of former glory, any feeling of nostalgia, that might compel me to return and help.
Last I heard, there is a large population of hipsters who have set up residence, and are trying to create a burgeoning culture, within Detroit. Much of this is centered in Midtown or in the so-called "Cass Corridor". I don't know much about these areas or the motivations of the people living in them. I'm not sure how much the presence of hipsters in scattered pockets within Detroit is doing to emulsify the culture of the suburbs with the culture of Detroit. I suspect their presence helps more than not, and that their hearts are in the right place.
At my last job in Detroit (actually, Madison Heights), I remember the receptionist at the front desk. She was a kindly, elderly black lady with a heart of gold and a charming smile, and it was a delight to have her greeting me every day when I walked in. The last thing she said to me, before I walked out and moved out to California, was a simple request masked carefully as a statement by its intonation: "I know that, wherever you go, you'll always speak fondly of Detroit."
Detroit isn't an easy problem, so I haven't always done as she asked. But I'm trying.
After the war ended, so did the existence of these jobs. The multitudes of people who filled these were turned loose into the city, without enough work to support themselves. This didn't just affect the black people who had these jobs, but they're the ones who found themselves in a large city where they were systematically discriminated against. Employers were slower to hire them. Landlords were able to act as slumlords. 10 years before Brown v Board, society at large was still decades away from giving them basic human rights.
If you look at the network of highway systems in Detroit, you'll see they flow around the city in a byzantine fashion, slithering around in directions that a city planner wouldn't necessarily choose for logical reasons. The reason was practical at the time for those in control: the routes were planned so as to maximize the amount of "poor" housing that was removed. In a city where there was barely enough housing for all of the blacks that needed it, the city took pains to destroy as much housing that was available to them, while minimizing the impact the construction efforts had on the housing of their white counterparts.
The riots that broke out in Detroit in 1967 merely represented the boiling over of this conflict. After two decades of structural violence, something finally gave, and the result was literal violence. The migration of people from the city to the suburbs had been happening before the riots; the numbers increased dramatically in response to them. It wasn't just the white people who fled the city; anyone who could afford to relocate to the suburbs did so, but the people who were able to move out of Detroit proper were, demographically, almost entirely white.
And so began Detroit's slow and steady decline. As suburban municipalities established themselves around Detroit, people with the financial means moved into them. These suburbs were fiscally independent of Detroit. Even though many residents commuted into the city for work, the property taxes they paid on housing went to the suburbs, instead of the inner city whose infrastructure was being strained by the commuters and businesses who used it. Money flowed out, and the public utilities and services of Detroit became more and more difficult to support in the face of a decreasing population and radically shrinking tax revenue base. The Motor City, so famous for its automobiles, gave commuters mobility that previous generations had never known; In doing so, it disseminated the tool of its own destruction.
This isn't just the story of Detroit; it is the story of many large American metropolitan areas. As the civil rights movement progressed, overt racism became more covert, and people fled from the inner cities to the suburbs. As minorities became gradually more empowered, they started moving into the suburbs themselves; in response to this, white people moved into suburbs even further removed from the city.
I was born in 1982 in Southfield, Michigan. In my youth, I attended an elementary school that was quite a healthy mix of whites and blacks. When I was 10 years old, in response to falling property values in Southfield and in search of a better public school system for me and my brother, my parents moved to the city of Troy, a town which, if it had been any whiter, would have been transparent. I don't believe my parents are racist, but that this move was based on more general, latent racial tensions that were manifesting themselves in the community at the time cannot be denied. My parents were acting to give me the best chance at the best possible future; demographics were a causal factor. My own story is representative of that of many others at the time.
My parents did get me into an exceptionally good high school, and largely as a result of this, I managed to attend a good university. I emerged from college with a degree and worked in the larger Detroit area for the next four years. Finding my first job was difficult; many years later, economists would say that Detroit had been in a recession since around the time I graduated.
After a few years of this, in search of professional and personal growth, I ended up taking a job in California and moving out there. My parents remained behind in the Detroit area. While they were outwardly supportive of what I wanted to do, parents never like to see their kids move a couple thousand miles away. Many of my friends the same age have done exactly the same thing; indeed, I have few high school and college friends who have stayed in Michigan.
It's a mistake to believe that suburbs are somehow independent and unaffected by the problems of their respective inner cities. Located so close geographically, and economically intertwined so intimately, the decay of the cities spreads slowly but surely into the outlying areas. You hear parents complain that their children, with increased options of mobility in their careers, are running away from the suburbs of their youth to other areas of the country that are less affected by these problems. Or, at the other extreme, the economic problems themselves are forcing children in their twenties and thirties to move back in with their parents.
The story here is essentially the tragedy of the commons. Maintaining unity among the residents of Detroit, and preserving the system of the city at large, in the days following World War II was no one person's problem. With each acting in their own self-interest, the city crumbled. The people of these generations that had the power to do so never solved the problems; they merely ran from them. As so often happens in life, if you do this, the problems will catch up with you sooner or later. You reap what you sow.
My father often drops a not-so-subtle, ever hopeful hint that the economy of Detroit is coming back, driven by an increasing presence of startups and entrepreneurs, and that I could probably find a job there if I wanted to. For the time being, he's correct; I have options, and that's most certainly one of them. And I certainly can try to romanticize the notion of returning to the city of my grandparent's youth and allow my efforts to contribute to its revitalization. But therein lies one of the big problems: it's the city of my grandparents. I'm a generation removed from any memory of former glory, any feeling of nostalgia, that might compel me to return and help.
Last I heard, there is a large population of hipsters who have set up residence, and are trying to create a burgeoning culture, within Detroit. Much of this is centered in Midtown or in the so-called "Cass Corridor". I don't know much about these areas or the motivations of the people living in them. I'm not sure how much the presence of hipsters in scattered pockets within Detroit is doing to emulsify the culture of the suburbs with the culture of Detroit. I suspect their presence helps more than not, and that their hearts are in the right place.
At my last job in Detroit (actually, Madison Heights), I remember the receptionist at the front desk. She was a kindly, elderly black lady with a heart of gold and a charming smile, and it was a delight to have her greeting me every day when I walked in. The last thing she said to me, before I walked out and moved out to California, was a simple request masked carefully as a statement by its intonation: "I know that, wherever you go, you'll always speak fondly of Detroit."
Detroit isn't an easy problem, so I haven't always done as she asked. But I'm trying.