Charles Pugh stated on tv last night that the Detroit figures do not include the thousands of Detroiters who are incarcerated, and that when they are released, they will be returning to the city.
How comforting.
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Charles Pugh stated on tv last night that the Detroit figures do not include the thousands of Detroiters who are incarcerated, and that when they are released, they will be returning to the city.
How comforting.
Aside from the fact that this isn't very comforting, presumably Detroit will continue to export convicts so I don't see that contributing a lot to the net population.
How this guy get to be City County President again? He is the reason why the most vote requirement needs to be tossed out.
So Mr. Pugh, in a moment of panic is suggesting that the Census Bureau should included our criminals who deservedly earned their spots in their new locations like Jackson and Marquette. Naw, it is these bastards who played a role in Detroiters to flee the city and now this bastard is suggesting that they can make a difference with the number. No thanks. As for the number, well it is time for reality. There is no money. If the money is gone, the people will be gone. The rest of the region is on life support. When industry leaves those areas, they will be in the same boat.
I agree. I personally know at least four different households which refused to cooperate
with the census, either for 'privacy' reasons, or, 'mistrust', or,'laziness'.......
....not realizing, or caring, that representation in Washington is at stake here, as well as
potential grants or other monies to be had. Civic responsibility has taken a HUGE hit in
our modern times. People don't bother to vote. Census disinterest. Won't shovel their walks,
or mow their lawns, or pick-up litter surrounding their home or neighborhood.
Want to know WHY Detroit is taking such drastic hits. Look around you, the reasons are obvious.
I could not believe my ears this morning on Fox 2 when I heard a city councilman say thousands of Detroiter's are in jail and should be counted. Now that really put a feather in Detroit's hat.
This graphic by the Free Press shows population change by census tract. It's a much more nuanced view of what's going on in some cities. Some Detroit tracts, especially in downtown and Midtown, did see growth. These are percentages but they do show improvement. In some outlying communities that were growing, you had pockets of population loss even as the overall community population increased.
http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4172086323.PDF
The losses in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and St. Louis are all comparable to Detroit, and I think these cities are probably the best overall comparisons. For some reason Pittsburgh is touted as revitalized when it continues to lose big chunks of population [[faster than even Metro Detroit).
As for NYC and Chicago, they really are quite different cities from one another, and from Detroit. Both cities have revitalized, but NYC has had a much stronger and more sustained revitalization. Really all of NYC has revitalized, while only the downtown/yuppie portions of Chicago have revitalized.
This can be seen in NYC's strong population growth and low unemployment, while Chicago has severe population loss [[numerically almost as bad as Detroit) and high unemployment.
IMO, if Detroit is one end of the spectrum, and NYC is the other end, then Chicago is probably somewhere in the middle, with characteristics of both cities.
As for Detroit, I am surprised at the Hispanic population numbers. I have heard anecdotally that they are moving Downriver, but SW Detroit sure seems more Mexican to me than in years past.
This is exactly the discussion that Detroit needs to be having. The top 5 largest cities in the United States in 1950:
1. New York
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. Los Angeles
5. Detroit
Los Angeles is the only city in the list that did not have a density above 10,000 persons per square mile at that time. As of today, Detroit and Los Angeles are the only two cities on that list that do not currently have population densities above 10,000 persons per square mile.
The top 5 largest cities in the United States as of 2010:
1. New York
2. Los Angeles
3. Chicago
4. Houston
5. Philadelphia
This list has almost not changed in 60 years except for one notable exception, which should be pretty evident to us all.
I like to compare and contrast Philadelphia and Detroit because those two cities have nearly the exact same land area and the populations peaked very close to each other: Philly is 135 square miles and Detroit 139 square miles. So that means the population density of the two cities also peaked very close to each other. Both cities also had to deal with urban disinvestment and de-industrialization. But really the difference between Detroit and Philadelphia is the same as it is between Detroit and Chicago, Detroit and New York, Detroit and Boston, or Detroit and Washington.
Detroit took some ill-advised steps decades ago that places like Philadelphia, New York and Chicago didn't. First of all, it's just really uncomfortable to live in a city with a density of 10,000 persons per square mile if every resident needs a car to live. Detroit was a 10,000 person per square mile city for most of its pre-1980 existence. The city of Detroit did away with its transit system to relieve surface street congestion, while those other cities were building subway systems to achieve the same result. The folly of that decision is evident. Even Los Angeles, which is still a bit below that 10,000 person per square mile density, is rapidly trying to play catch up on the subway building today.
Detroit, having almost always been a very densely populated city, was of course built to be a physically dense city. So when the city gets rid of the tools that allows it to exist as a big dense city then guess what happens? It declines! Severely. With no apparent stop gap. While stupid politicians scratch their heads for decades wondering what happened. Why is it that nondescript buildings built 100 years ago in New York, 150 years ago in Philadelphia and 200 years ago in Boston still have purpose today? But Detroit can't re-purpose the old Cass Tech, which has to be one of the most famous buildings in the entire state of Michigan.
So Detroit and Michigan needs to take this as the opportunity to sit and review its post-war history. Contrast it with its pre-war history and compare it against the histories of its peer cities. That's really the only way to figure out what went wrong.
I assume you typed this before seeing Hamtragedy's excellent description of a number of neighborhoods. Being on the border and driving through east side neighborhoods daily, the number does not surprise me in the least, though I do hope for the purposes of federal dollars, the City finds a way to tick above 750,000.
I went to a funeral recently and the person in question was to be buried at Trinity Cemetery on Mt. Elliot. To get to Trinity the procession drove down on 6Mile, through Highland Park, turned on Oakland went through Hamtramck, made our way to Mt. Elliott until went reached Trinity. The drive there was so depressing because all you saw was decay. It was as if someone dropped a bomb in the area and destroyed all traces of life. How could any realistically would want to move back to a decaying shell slowly rotting away? I love Detroit like the next guy but Detroit's number is a fair number because there is no way hundreds of thousands of people could really still be here.
With idiots like Puke in office, it's any wonder the City is in dire straits. He didn't cause the decline but it is airheads like him and corrupt politicians, ie., thug KK, Conyers, Young and many others who lead Detroit down the path of destruction. Using the taxpayers money as if it were their own personal ATM did a lot of damage to the infrastructure of City government. Of course, Detroiters have no one else to blame but themselves for continuously voting a known liar and thief into office time after time.
I see an even bleaker future for Detroit when GM and Chrysler chooses to pack up and leave the City. They are two of the biggest taxpayers in Detroit. Without them, it will be as if the City fell into the Detroit River and it will become a ghost town.
While I agree with your sentiments regarding most of the elected officials in Detroit, GM and Chrysler have essentially packed up and left the city decades ago. I think you may have noticed.
Why don't people get it? It's not corporate divestment OR NAFTA and outsourcing OR white and black flight OR racial hostility and division OR the lack of public transportation OR redlining mid-20th century OR political corruption OR crime OR decayed, neglected buildings OR bad schools OR an undereducated, apathetic, and poor majority... etc. ad nauseam.
It is ALL of these factors. Detroit was and is the perfect storm. Until we try something that is radically different, our results will remain the same.
Perhaps in a century, Detroit will be famous as the largest ghost town on the face of the earth... but I doubt it. We're not in the desert or remote wilderness. The main thing holding metro Detroit and Detroiters back is US -- and "us" doesn't just mean those with a city address. We are all in this together.
You know it is amazing that people would actually would think of abandoned a city which sits on a strait connecting two lakes. We have cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas dying of thirst yet people flock to those areas looking for a good life yet Detroit is deemed toxic. It's crazy.
I am sad to think of Detroit as a ghost town, that's not what I want to happen. Detroit isn't just connecting two lakes R8RBOB, it's an international border. The potential is huge and no one seems to want to take advantage of that. The frontage along the waterfront, the history of Detroit, Belle Isle....there are so many things that can bring people to Detroit. The things that are keeping people out of Detroit need to be addressed before any of that can happen. In your opinion, what is the most important problem in Detroit that makes people want to leave?
Great post English. I hope we never lose people like you. Some of these people in the metro area [[INCLUDING RESIDENTS OF DETROIT) would make horrible cooks. They'd bake a cake and think the only ingredient is the sugar or the frosting. Not realizing the cake needs flour too, it also needs eggs and milk. The batter needs to be mixed, the oven preheated, and the cake needs to be baked, preferably in a cake pan. They just think the cake is one thing and focus on one thing only. God help us if we continue to elect politicians that seek to address only one issue hoping it is the band aid fix for every conceivable problem.
All of them.
I agree. I think Detroit will eventually become a stable city with a low crime rate and good schools and a place that people enjoy living in, but it will have to do it with about 450K people. Detroit [[we mostly already agree to this) will never see 1.8M residents again, in fact, I doubt Detroit will ever see 1M residents again.
Small and functional >>>> large and dysfunctional
I could believe 713K. There are blocks after blocks of neighborhoods that were viable back in 2000 that are completely vacant now. Just about EVERY neighborhood has plenty of vacant houses. Some neighborhoods have your random mixture of stripped and gutted houses mixed with some boarded up houses. Other neighborhoods are just a few inhabited houses with half the neighborhood LITERALLY burned down. Any, AND I MEAN ANY, area of the city that has wood frame houses has at least 2 or three stripped/gutted and/or burnt up houses on BOTH sides of the street.
I'm in total shock. Not over these numbers, I expected this. I just remember growing up in the 80s in the northwest corner of Detroit after everyone said the city was already hollowed out and a shell of its former self and the neighborhoods that I lived in were almost always fully occupied. Today, the vacancies in the denser neighborhoods are staggering. Scores of people are just walking away from their homes because they just can't be sold. Look at the real estate ads for Detroit. Prices are dirt cheap but houses stay on the market for YEARS. The houses just get gutted then burnt down. There is about 713K left in the city, if even that much.
What no one is talking about and maybe no one wants to face is that the city of Detroit is a deficit NOW. What happens when all of the former tax payers are no longer figured in the estimated revenue for Detroit. It's going to be a seriously rough ride to the bottom. And as English pointed out in her post, I see NOTHING that will turn the population numbers around in the next 10 years.
I truly believe Detroit will turn around. Some of the seeds for that turnaround have already been planted. However, that turnaround won't happen in the next 10 years and it will not produce a population of 750K people. By about 2025 - 2030, Detroit will be a different city, much better in many regards but with a population of about 400 - 450K.
WSJ article about the numbers:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...editorsPicks_2
With all due respect, this is nonsense. Detroit cannot be a functional city with 400,000 residents unless it shaves off the 70 or so square miles that it annexed since 1915. We're talking about a central city of a major metropolitan area, not a half rural half suburban edge county.