Best Book On "How We Got This Way"?

I've had people ask me numerous times "how did it get this way" when referring to the current state of Detroit and it's decline as the major city it once was. That's always a hell of question to try and answer. As we all know, there's not a singular reason. I'd like to recommend some reading to people when they inquire, and I figured the folks on here would have some insight.

I have "Detroit Divided" by Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry J. Holzer and I once had a copy of "Devils Night and Other True Tales Of Detroit" by Zev Chafets but I'm assuming there could be others.

Recommendations?

"When America Became Suburban" by Robert Beauregard.

Not specific to Detroit, but a good source for discussion on the state of Rust Belt cities.

I'll check it out, but I'm looking to keep it Detroit proper. Thanks for the tip tho'!

"Dancing In The Street"--- Suzanne E. Smith
"Origins of the Urban Crisis"--- Thomas Sugrue

both definitive..

Sugrue's book is the most analytical, and makes the point that Detroit's decline started in the early 1950s, and was tightly linked with racism.
"Devil's Night" doesn't really try to explain what happened. It's more of a description of what things were like in 1990.

Sugrue's book is my first answer to that question. It lays down chapter, verse and line the devastating racism that crippled our region. Farley adds the math to that consequence.

If that was all we had to endure a lot of our crisis might have been averted.

The consequences of being a one industry town that grew lazy with its oligopoly and failed to innovate, failure at regional planning for housing and transportation with the resultant chaotic sprawl, insurance and services red lining and other factors contributed to a perfect storm. I like to describe the1967 riot as the ton of bricks that broke the camel's back when a straw would have.

IMO the definitive work on 'How we got this way', that combines all causes, is still to be written.

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Originally Posted by Lowell

IMO the definitive work on 'How we got this way', that combines all causes, is still to be written.

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Agreed. Jerry Herron's recent essay definitely points in the direction of further historical and sociological work that needs to be done.

Completely agree on Sugrue's book. One of the best gifts I ever got.

The complete story of what led to Detroit's fall to the current state has not been written because it simply too vast a work. To me it seems that in the last century, just about every single thing that could have been done to set the city up for failure was done.

On another site I had to educate some people who thought that Detroit was a utopia that would have continued untarnished if not for the liberalism that entered with Mayor Cavanaugh:

A little bit of what has led Detroit to its current state

Detroit grew too quickly. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but at the end of the 19th century, Detroit was a decent-sized city. Within two decades it was the 4th most populous city in the nation. Downtown blocks that in 1910 were filled with beautiful homes were within 15 years replaced by skyscrapers.

The economy became singularly centered around the auto industry. Previously, Detroit had a diverse employment with manufacturing playing a large part. The automotive explosion brought the growth, but without diversity the economy of the city was slave to the whims of automobile sales. A recession in the nation would be a depression in Detroit. Anything that upset the auto industry would bring development in Detroit to a halt. The rapid development spurned by the auto industry changed the face of Detroit in the 1st decade and ½ of the 20th century.

World War I ended the 1st great development period that created what we know as Detroit. The last project that was approved before the war was the current Public Library & Art Institute. If not for the conversion of much of manufacturing toward the war effort, other projects may have taken hold including Edward Bennett’s 1915 plan for Detroit which would have put in a series of diagonal boulevards that would have eased traffic congestion, that in turn may have eventually curbed the flow of commerce further and further away from the central city as the simple grid pattern does.

After the building boom of the 20’s the stock market crashed in ‘29. Check the development in Detroit. The city’s development pretty much ceased in 1929. The Book Brothers had been planning the world's tallest building [[81 stories.) Everything stopped with the Depression, which hit Detroit hard.

WWII helped put the nation out of the Depression. Auto production stopped & Detroit became "The Arsenal of Democracy." Factories that had built Dodges, Chevys & Fords were reconfigured for war production. New factories were built out in the farmland to build airplanes. After the war these factories were converted back to automotive production, including the outlying plane factories.

Redlining was a practice that began with National Housing Act of 1934. Essentially it placed grades on neighborhood that would determine whether the homes would be qualified for mortgages and loans. New homes were preferable to older, so older neighborhoods [[as the homes shown in the video) suffered as a result. Even pristine neighborhoods would be considered unsatisfactory for loans if it had an older housing stock, had minority inhabitants or was even near a neighborhood with minorities.

After WWII, the government helped finance the sprawl that created the suburbs through continuing to redline older neighborhoods and newer programs like the G.I. Bill that guaranteed loans for newly constructed homes [[of course built in the “good” neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city) and almost annually increasing the subsidizing of suburban road construction. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 upped the federal commitment to 90% of new highway construction costs. This built our current interstate system, but also built the roads to that allowed those homes to be built on former farmland that are now the suburbs.

The policies used as examples in this piece of propaganda were ineffectual answers to the fundamental flaws already tearing the city apart. Detroit’s population peaked in 1950, not 1960 as would be suggested by the video. Blaming Jerome Cavanaugh for Detroit’s undoing is like blaming Coleman Young for the riot [[which I have actually heard.)

Cavanaugh had a city that was dealing with increasing social unrest due in part to the “Urban Renewal” policies that were designed to level the ghetto, replacing it with new public housing. The fundamental flaw in their plan was that it was designed to condemn & evict first, then build replacement housing. They didn’t even plan to build enough public housing to replace what they were destroying. Then Cobo shot most of the public housing down. Less than ¼ of those displaced actually made it to what little public housing that was eventually built. Those people had to go somewhere, and they ended up in the older housing stock that was being vacated by those moving further out in the city and beyond.

There are so many things that have been detrimental to Detroit that they can’t all be compiled effectively in a simple post on a message board. Some have been self-destructive, but many have been external. The contention that Detroit is an economic liability to the state is true, but there are areas that are worse. The entire upper peninsula has very little economic benefit, but is still a beautiful place that is an asset. This is no new phenomenon, as 115 years ago Hazen Pingree used to bitch about how anti-Detroit the state legislature was. If the rest of the state didn’t look at Detroit with scorn and contempt, but to how it could be a reborn, shining jewel [[it used to be called “The Paris of the Midwest”) it would be a boon to the entire state. As Detroit goes, so goes Michigan.

^What a great post. City of heartbreak and hope, indeed.

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jtf1972;172861]Completely agree on Sugrue's book. One of the best gifts I ever got.

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I agree with English here that your post is enlightened and can be picked apart for the major tendencies it suggests, namely the idea of displacement whether of rich or poor populations; racist
policies, economic segregation encouraged by abandonment, deference to the automotive industry and ideal, careless planning amounting to unnecessary sprawl; and of course the utter lack of interest in what constitutes a civic place. By civic place I mean what you refer to as older housing stock or any housing for that matter, and worse; how the residential environment relates to the rest of built environments. Mind you, Detroit as everybody knows has gems in neighborhood patterns and in its downtown structure. So many cities big and small have had ugliness tacked on in tons that it has become banal, and hard to notice for those who havent known more interesting streetscapes.

When I look at the downtown and after reading stories on the Ren Cen's genesis and eventual overhaul, it is hard not to think that Detroit was not harder hit than most cities though. I am not suggesting a conspiracy, but I do think that the car industry had a very heavy hand in sucking the life of downtown and ensuring that your punter as the british say will not feel welcome. There was ample opportunity for planning to ensure older buildings like the Wurlitzer or countless others be redeemed and built around and augmented to extend a convivial environment in the core of Detroit. When I first started studying Detroit on this forum and on the internet, I had the feeling that everything that could be done to screw a city up had been done to Detroit. The worse thing is a lot of these engineered crimes against the civic place are deemed normal, the situation changes incrementally and Detroit has gotten used to the big and small infamies that built it as it was being dismantled. My guess is a very industrial mindset in the general population was not averse to this since the workplace was in constant flux, buildings and heavy machinerie became obsolete, so did houses and neighborhoods.

What I wonder about is the will and the wherewithal of the people, are people fed up enough, will they really [[regionally) band together and demand an alternative to this anti-city so to speak. I dont mean this as an insult, I am as tough on my own city as on yours. The civil rights movement was about demanding equality for all. It may be wishful thinking, but the idea that people become more demanding is important, residents should not accept what is proposed without evaluating the merits of new planning. I also wish international attention were given to Detroit planning. It deserves the best minds to move forward because it is an overwhelming piece to chew. Detroit needs to loosen up and be more arty à la D, it needs downtown to become like Ty Guyton's Heidelberg Project; one big motown stage reclaimed!