1961 Time Magazine Article: Detroit in Decline

For your interest... With all the media attention given to Detroit lately, especially the endless coverage from Time Magazine, I found this 1961 article from Time particularly ironic. It seems so little has changed...

Quote:

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If ever a city stood as a symbol of the dynamic U.S. economy, it was Detroit. It was not pretty. It was, in fact, a combination of the grey and the garish: its downtown area was a warren of dingy, twisting streets; the used-car lots along Livernois Avenue raised an aurora of neon. But Detroit cared less about how it looked than about what it did—and it did plenty. In two world wars, it served as an arsenal of democracy. In the auto boom after World War II. Detroit put the U.S. on wheels as it had never been before. Prosperity seemed bound to go on forever—but it didn't, and Detroit is now in trouble.

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Full article here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...3465%2C00.html

Timely reminder of historic context, George.

Time blogger Darrell Dawsey, raised on the easy side, also links to that 48-year-old precursor in a post today headlined Been A Long Time Coming.

huh, I didn't see that RealityCheck, interesting that I should post it on the same day. Did a word search for "Detroit" pre-1980 on Times' site and this came up. Looks like we're all starting to notice Detroit's echoes of ups and downs.

Interesting excerpts:

"At the depth of the 1958 recession, when Detroit really began reeling, 20% of the city's work force was unemployed."

"During Detroit's decay, much of the city's middle class has packed up and headed for the suburbs. Since 1950, Detroit has had a population drop of 197,568 from 1,849,568 to 1,652,000, while the suburbs, counting arrivals from elsewhere, have jumped by more than 1,000,000."

"Detroit's population decrease would have been even more drastic but for an influx of white and Negro workers from the South. In the past ten years, Detroit's Negro population has risen from 300,506 to 482,000."

Very interesting article. What is interesting about the article is that by 1967, right before the riot, the situation had actually improved in some senses. Cavanagh had been elected mayor, and was very highly regarding around the country for the work he had done. Detroit was considered a model city of racial relations, and unemployment had been very low [[if I recall correctly, under 4%).

The reason I raise this point is that, at the time, it was not at all clear that things would come to what they have. I do not think many in the '60s would have expected the population to decline by more than half, or that so much industry would leave - especially since the auto industry had its ebbs and flows, which made things better and worse within each decade. That being the case, I think it would have been difficult to try to take action to make things better, especially if most people did not think the problem to be as bad as it was.

Used to make my students read that article before the second meeting of class at Wayne State every semester in an attempt to disabuse them of the notion that Coleman Young and The Negroes ruined Detroit.

I also used it to push them to think critically about policy and governance in the region and state. Leadership has had 50 years to correct this issue since Time Magazine pointed it out.

NOTHING has been done to meaningfully change the economy in Detroit or Michigan. North Carolina got slammed with mill closings in the 1970's and made the call to invest heavily in education and research facilities - the result is NC pulled itself out of the funk and is now a powerhouse attracting high quality jobs and investment.

When are the folks left in Michaign going to stop re-electing the same old same old tired leadership?

Detroit and Michigan could work its way out of the mess. but chooses not to. Thats why I took my masters degree and left. What is the point in laying it all on the line to do things like restore the Book Cadillac when the leadership is not on board and the community activists are more interested with playing with Lego in their basements?

My advise to anyone wavering or conflicted. Get the fuck out. Now.

What's even weirder is that you still see and hear people, even on this site, who are still waiting for the auto industry to "make a comeback," and save us all. And so a lot of folks around here act as if any consideration of an alternative to an auto-led economy is some sort of heresy. Even though the handwriting has been on that particular wall for a very long time, if not since the early '60s at least since the mid '70s, many seem to insist on living in perpetual denial even today.

We seem emotionally tied for some reason to an industry that has largely deserted most of us, and has consistently cut jobs for years and years - jobs that won't be coming back. But this city, region, and state, seemingly in thrall to the auto companies and the lost promise of car production, made no plans for that eventuality, which as this article shows has been rushing at us in slow motion for decades.