Why hasn't Detroit ever owned up to its urban planning blunders?

[Retroit]

Well, let's get back to basics, shall we? You said that industry declined in Detroit, but Detroit was never a financial center. [[How can you have just learned that Detroit had a stock exchange and then say something like that? Come on!) Then you say that, well, yeah, Detroit had a stock exchange, but it just wasn't as big as New York as a source of economic-industrial-residential staying power. [[That's quite a list of things to add on after your simple statement gets flipped on you, but, fine, we'll work with that.)

How important does the wealth and trading be for a city to have a stock market like that? It has to be monumental. There has to be so much concentrated wealth, frantic buying and selling and profits galore to, well, to set up a stock exchange. It's not like Lucy Van Pelt just went out to Larned and Griswold and set up a cardboard box that said STOCK MARKET. The wealth in Detroit was [[and, to a large extent, is) massive.

I don't deny that Detroit was much more economically significant back then. But how did "urban planning blunders" destroy the stock market? If Detroit's Stock Exchange had equal significance to New York's and if Detroit had a similar equality in all other businesses, would Detroit's "urban planning blunders" have had a detrimental affect on those exchanges and businesses?

The big question is what happened to that wealth. Why did Detroit experience capital flight? Why did the industry leave the city? Why didn't the residents stay?

The answer is in those dirty dozen problems.

The wealth was tied to the auto industry. Factories were moved out of the city. Nothing replaced them. People with capital have no use for abandoned factories [[generally). The factories were outdated and there was not enough clear land to expand. White residents left because they didn't want to live near blacks and it was cheap and easy to built new homes in the suburbs. Black residents left because they didn't want to live near bad blacks and it is cheap and easy to buy homes in the suburbs.

[Detroitnerd]

I don't deny that Detroit was much more economically significant back then. But how did "urban planning blunders" destroy the stock market? If Detroit's Stock Exchange had equal significance to New York's and if Detroit had a similar equality in all other businesses, would Detroit's "urban planning blunders" have had a detrimental affect on those exchanges and businesses?

I never said urban planning blunders destroyed the stock market. I never said Detroit's stock exchange had equal significance to New York's. Do these debate tactics usually work for you?

The wealth was tied to the auto industry. Factories were moved out of the city. Nothing replaced them. People with capital have no use for abandoned factories [[generally). The factories were outdated and there was not enough clear land to expand. White residents left because they didn't want to live near blacks and it was cheap and easy to built new homes in the suburbs. Black residents left because they didn't want to live near bad blacks and it is cheap and easy to buy homes in the suburbs.

The wealth was tied to auto executives, who used it to build huge mansions outside the city and build new factories outside the city. Capital flight was always much more severe in Detroit than population flight, believe it or not.

As for those comments about "bad blacks," keep digging, mister. Read Sugrue's book for an account of "block-busting."

[Retroit]

I never said urban planning blunders destroyed the stock market. I never said Detroit's stock exchange had equal significance to New York's. Do these debate tactics usually work for you?

Did you even bother to read the thread title and initial post, or do you just like to barge into the conversation so you can regale us with your "knowledge"?

[Retroit]

The wealth was tied to auto executives, who used it to build huge mansions outside the city and build new factories outside the city. Capital flight was always much more severe in Detroit than population flight, believe it or not.

Certainly, you don't expect auto executives to live in Detroit. They moved out along with [almost] every other white person. Not only were large factories built outside the city, but also many smaller ones due to lack of space within the city limits. Workers at these suburban factories could not all be expected to live within the city of Detroit.

As for those comments about "bad blacks," keep digging, mister. Read Sugrue's book for an account of "block-busting."

Sugrue's book does not cover the recent exodus of blacks from Detroit.

[Fury13]

White residents left because they didn't want to live near blacks and it was cheap and easy to built new homes in the suburbs.

That's a REALLY simplistic and wrongheaded statement. It was true in some cases, I'm sure, but not the majority of the time. Most white residents left because of one or more of the following reasons: a) new neighbors were not keeping up their property and/or were of questionable or even criminal character [[black OR white); b) manufacturing jobs moved to the suburbs, so they moved to be closer to work; c) higher crime in their neighborhood, including robbery, auto theft, and assault; d) their kids were forced by legal mandate to be bused to schools out of their neighborhood, and those new schools often had lower standards while the kids could no longer walk back and forth to school; e) VA and FHA loans made it easy for homeowners to afford a new single-family home in the suburbs -- again, nearer their job [[and the key words there are NEW and SINGLE-FAMILY; many blue-collar folks were tired of sharing space in an old, cramped, two-family dwelling on a small lot). Finally, yes, there was the "fear factor" instilled by unscrupulous real estate agents that the residents' neighborhood was "going downhill" -- which created a domino effect and caused homeowners to sell for low prices, almost en masse.