Why is Detroit shrinking?

[nain rouge]

Mikeg, Wesley Mouch, et al.: Your arguments prompted me to do more research last night, and I now agree that were sound logistical reasons for moving many automotive factory operations out of the city. That said, I still believe there were also racial motivations at play, too. Sugrue notes:

"Between 1947 and 1958, the Big Three built 25 new plants in the Detroit metropolitan area, all of them in suburban communities, most more than 15 miles from the center city."

That many of those suburban communities would remain predominately white [[often over 90-95% white) for decades was no coincidence. In a sense, the poor planning of Detroit was used against blacks - it made it all too easy to move factories out of the city and to all to easy to keep blacks pinned into the city. The suburbs allowed to people to create their own bubble communities separate from the city, with the end result being utter dilapidation of large swathes of Detroit.

Thanks, everyone, for the insightful posts. I only make the arguments I do in the hope that my points will be refuted - I find it's the most expedient way to gain knowledge.

[Mikeg]

.....That many of those suburban communities would remain predominately white [[often over 90-95% white) for decades was no coincidence. In a sense, the poor planning of Detroit was used against blacks - it made it all too easy to move factories out of the city and to all to easy to keep blacks pinned into the city. The suburbs allowed to people to create their own bubble communities separate from the city, with the end result being utter dilapidation of large swathes of Detroit.....

Those "suburban communities" would remain predominately white because that is what they already were prior to the great influx of southern blacks to Detroit and environs. In 1930, 23% of the population of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties [[approx. one-half million people) lived outside the Detroit City Limits. The 1930 US Census would be the last where Detroit's rate of population increase from the prior census would be greater than the outlying areas of the tri-county region. Despite the influx of southern whites and blacks to Detroit in the following decades, the population of the outlying tri-county areas still grew at a faster rate.

Many of those recent arrivals found work in the new plants out in those "suburban communities" and commuted from their homes in Detroit. Yes, housing opportunities in those "suburban communities" at that time were non-existent for blacks and they faced blatant racism in the workplace, including the Hudson Naval Ordnance plant at the northeast corner of Mound and Nine Mile Roads. But those black workers prevailed and it was the white ringleaders who were fired out there in that supposedly isolated "bubble". [source]

Regarding your comment about "poor planning", what kind of overt planning, "poor" or otherwise was used against blacks? Are you referring to municipal planning [[or the lack thereof) or planning by Detroit's corporations? If it's the former, the rise of formal land use planning in Detroit happened after the die was already cast with respect to the pattern and locations of industrial land uses. If it's the latter, corporate planning is always going to look for the way to maximize their return on investment or the corporation will eventually go bankrupt and there will be no jobs for any of their employees - black or white.