When was the tipping point when Detroit went from up and coming city to decline?

[detlump]

I realize this may be a tough if not impossible question, but when does everyone think this happened? Detroit was a small outpost for many years, then with the auto industry the population swelled and then declined as production moved out of the city to the suburbs, to out of state, to out of the country.

Is it fair to say 1950 [[when Detroit's population peaked) is a good date? Or another point in time?

It's frustrating to see the city now and not have experienced it when it was a bustling city before I was born. My mother used to tell me stories of how much fun she and her friends had at Hudsons downtown, for example.

[animatedmartian]

Once the highways were built. They were purpose built to get people in and out and through Detroit as fast as possible and they did just that. Especially how they were designed made a big impact. In a way, the car killed Detroit because everyone had used one to get out of town.

[firstandten]

I believe the tipping point was 1950 when the population topped out. However in 67 the slow decline accelerated Once we got into the 80's and the auto industry declined the situation was made worst.

So I believe you actually had several points in time and more than one reason as to why Detroit has declined to the point it is today

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Detroit's decline can be attributed to 2 "events" and several trends. The first event was not exactly an event [[because it occured over time) was the creation of the expressway system [[50's-60's), which made it practical to move to the suburbs. Second event was the 1967 riots. Scared off not only residents, but also suburban offices began to grow by the early 70's.

The trends: as both people and money left the city, city services [[including schools, roads and public safety) spiraled downward. City culture broke down: unemployment shot up, drugs crept up, public housing moved thousands of people away from family & churches, vacant structures grew into urban landmines, ready to explode in fire or linger as a place for crime, and always a threat.

I do think we're on the way back, though. What will we regard as the tipping point of renewal?

[Red Devil]

Here is why Detroit declined. Notice what happened in the late 1950s

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/Mfg%20output_0.JPG

[MidTownMs]

1. expressways
2. malls
3. riot of 67
4. auto industry decline
5. Detroit Public School System
6. corruption in city hall

[1953]

My understanding is that the population peaked in 1953.

Some historians have argued that the city's decline really started as far back as the 1930's, when downtown building owners began replacing commercial properties with parking lots of "tax-payers" as they were called...

1953

[LeannaM]

Cities in general declined in the 1950s and 1960s. Many are on the rebound, though. As someone else said, highways were a major factor. Racism probably played a part in most places, as [[this was not always the case, but it was significant) because some white people did not want to live near minorities. As people left the tax revenue declined and the cities began to have worse schools and poorer services. It was a downward spiral. Also, with the highways and cheap gas people could work in the crowded cities and go home to the spacious suburbs in the evenings. Pretty soon a lot of the companies moved to the suburbs, where many of their employees were already.

Knowing as little as I do about Detroit history, 1967 riots seem like they would be a low point, though that may not have been the start of the decline.

It's an interesting question which I admit I don't know a lot about.

[mikefmich]

Housing segregation played a very large role.I find it ironic that what they thought they were striving for 50-70 yrs ago, blew up in their collective faces, idiots that they were.

Another note on the auto industry, if memory serves there was not one new auto manufacturing plant built in the city after WW2 for decades.

The ball was rolling 60 yrs. ago, they just didn't know it yet.

[Hermod]

Housing segregation played a very large role.I find it ironic that what they thought they were striving for 50-70 yrs ago, blew up in their collective faces, idiots that they were.

Another note on the auto industry, if memory serves there was not one new auto manufacturing plant built in the city after WW2 for decades.

The ball was rolling 60 yrs. ago, they just didn't know it yet.

Many of the manufacturing plants in the city were "used up" by war production and the buildings were 'functionally obsolete" as manufacturing technology and materials handling evolved.

Assembling the necessary real estate to build a modern plant in the city was both difficult and expensive. In the inner ring suburbs, land was plentiful and relatively cheap.

While many of them are closed now due to the decline of manufacturing in the USA, take a drive along any of the "mile roads" from 9 mile to 15 mile or run up Stephenson Highway, Dequindre, John R, Mound, or Van Dyke and look at all of the fifties/sixties factories large and small.

[Zackdog]

You can't forget the Clean Air Act of 1970. That act alone put industry everywhere on short notice. Every little plant belched smoke in the air before that. It was easier to close a plant then spend millions bringing them up to snuff for air pollution controls.

Obsolete plants also were contributors. The plants that were left in Detroit also lacked parking lots for their employees since they were built when the streetcar reigned supreme.

[401don]

It's interesting that Detroit's middle class wealth and therefore high percentage of single family homes meant so few highrises downtown. This also fueled the decline of downtown, In other cities young people rent downtown because it fits their income and lifestyle and eventually move out only to be replaced by other young people. In Detroit, that was never an option and we are just now trying to achieve it.

[iheartthed]

Well, using this article printed in Time in 1961 as a guide, I'd put it somewhere in the early to mid 1950s:

Detroit's decline has been going on for a long while. Auto production soared to an alltime peak in 1955—but there were already worrisome signs. In the face of growing foreign and domestic competition, auto companies merged, or quit, or moved out of town to get closer to markets. Automation began replacing workers in the plants that remained. In the past seven years, Chrysler, the city's biggest employer, has dropped from 130,000 to 50,000 workers. At the depth of the 1958 recession, when Detroit really began reeling. 20% of the city's work force was unemployed. Even today, the figure is an estimated 10%, and the U.S. Government lists Detroit as an area of "substantial and persistent unemployment.''
On the Dole. 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.
With little education or training, Detroit's new arrivals have had to scramble for any job they could get. But in their desperation to find work at any wage, they have crowded out thousands of the city's longtime residents; more than 70% of the 61,692 persons on relief have lived in Detroit since before 1950. Children under three get an allowance of $5.50 a week for food, an active adult gets $10.60. The city also pays for fuel, rent and clothing. Counting city and state funds, welfare payments in Detroit this year will total around $28 million, compared with $8,197,000 in 1952.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...873465,00.html

[Parkguy]

The most recent big boom in suburban development only came after the Super Sewer project was approved by the feds back in 1980 or so. You can't build mile after mile of suburbs without water and sewers, especially in this region. The heavy clay soils don't easily support septic systems, and septic systems pretty much demand very low density development, and make large industrial projects very hard to do. The super sewer system was the key in developing the areas west and north of Novi, for instance. There were subdivisions and other big developments platted out that just sat for 12 or 15 years just waiting for the go-ahead on the water and sewer lines. Of course, the trend analysis in the 1960s said the region was going to grow to 8 million by 2020, so expanding like that made sense. But, things didn't turn out that way. The current long-range plan from the Detroit water department focuses on Wixom and Romeo areas. So, I guess we'll be spreading out our flat population growth over even more geographic area. [[And, of course, the fights about the water system over the last couple of years are not about water bills-- they are about getting rich on new real estate developments.) I don't think there was a single tipping point-- there were several. 1: The highway system definitely factors in. 2: Government policies that encourage decentralizing industrial plants to protect from nuclear attack. 3: Housing and economic policies that encourage greenfield development over rehabbing existing housing stock 4: Faulty projections on economic and population growth for the region. 5: The water/sewer system. 6: A culture that developed that believed that a single family home on a large lot is the best way to live. Maybe the tipping point on that one was when "Miracle on 34th Street" came out. Check out the ending.

[Meddle]

Whatever point anyone thinks was the beginning [[there are many to choose from), Coleman's election was the end of all hope for the city. Detroit essentially died that day.

[Buy American]

Whatever point anyone thinks was the beginning [[there are many to choose from), Coleman's election was the end of all hope for the city. Detroit essentially died that day.

I would agree with that 100%.

[Ray1936]

1930, and the great depression.

The last annexation by the City of Detroit took place in 1927, when they annexed Greenfield Township and half of Redford Township. Much of that was still farmland, but the eyes of city leadership were on the future. Then came the depression, followed by WW II. Expansion of the city limits was the last thing on anyone's mind.

By the time we hit our population peak in 1950 and thoughts may have started on further expansion, the surrounding area had morphed into their own little shiekdoms, such as Livonia and Southfield and Warren and god-forsaken little Centerline. Detroit was surrounded with "cities" and no place to go [[Redford Twp. is an exception, but the pols there will never give it up.)

Had the depression not happened, Detroit would have expanded beyond Livonia on the west and up to Bloomfield on the north. The core city might still have today's problems, but the expanded city would still be a place of pride.

1930. The year of the start of Detroit's decline.

[Parkguy]

Good point, Ray1936.

[313WX]

When the street car rails were ripped up.

Though Ray1936 makes a convincing point too.

[gazhekwe]

I can cite a few examples of decline in the 50s, but they indicate decline in progress. Streetcars shut down. Krunchee & Velvet moved to Livonia. Northland opened to bring Hudson's to the suburbs. "Made in Japan" began to dominate electronics, but you could still buy, and have repaired, American made products, and that's what you did. You didn't buy new ones when they broke, you fixed them.

In the 60s the housing decline and white flight were well under way. "They're at Livernois. Got to sell before they hit Wyoming." Forests of For Sale signs and little demand brought long term housing prices down. Selling as fast as you could before you had to take a loss was the norm. More small manufacturing plants moved from Detroit to just across 8 Mile into Warren and other border cities. This accelerated after the riot/insurgency of 1967. But the decline started much earlier as manufacturing changed post war.

[Mikeg]

1930, and the great depression.

The last annexation by the City of Detroit took place in 1927, when they annexed Greenfield Township and half of Redford Township. Much of that was still farmland, but the eyes of city leadership were on the future. Then came the depression, followed by WW II. Expansion of the city limits was the last thing on anyone's mind.

By the time we hit our population peak in 1950 and thoughts may have started on further expansion, the surrounding area had morphed into their own little shiekdoms, such as Livonia and Southfield and Warren and god-forsaken little Centerline. Detroit was surrounded with "cities" and no place to go [[Redford Twp. is an exception, but the pols there will never give it up.)

Had the depression not happened, Detroit would have expanded beyond Livonia on the west and up to Bloomfield on the north. The core city might still have today's problems, but the expanded city would still be a place of pride.

1930. The year of the start of Detroit's decline.

Ray1938, I agree with almost all of what you wrote, except for that comment about Center Line [[two words, please!). The municipality of Center Line existed long before any of those other suburbs you mentioned. It became a village in 1926 and a city in 1936. In 1927, the village of Center Line organized a police and fire department and also installed a municipal well and water mains to serve its 3,300 residents, many who were retired truck farmers from the surrounding countryside, including the last portions of what had been Hamtramck Twp. prior to its annexation by Detroit.

A look at the tri-county census data from the first half of the 20th century shows that 1930 was a tipping point for Detroit's rate of population growth relative to the rest of the tri-county area.

In 1910, 24% of the total Wayne, Oakland and Macomb County population lived outside the Detroit city limits. The 1910 population of Detroit was 465,800 and there were an additional 148,000 people living outside the Detroit city limits in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. This number grew to 500,000 by 1930 [[23% of the total population), 653,000 by 1940 [[28%) and 1,077,000 by 1950 [[36%). This population growth did not come at the expense of the City of Detroit, which also continued to grow during this same time frame.

The growth in population continued positive for both areas through the 1950 census, but beginning in 1930, the rate of Detroit's population growth was eclipsed by the outlying areas, a trend which continued through the 1950 census, after which Detroit's growth rate went negative. From 1930 to 1940, Detroit's growth rate was 2%, compared to 31% for the outlying tri-county area. From 1940 to 1950, Detroit's growth rate was 13%, compared to 65% for the outlying tri-county area.

[English]

Ray1936 [[the Great Depression) and Red Devil [[decline in US manufacturing) have my vote.

The election of CAY is a symptom, not a cause.

[Ray1936]

"Ray1938, I agree with almost all of what you wrote, except for that comment about Center Line [[two words, please!)."

Mike, I stand corrected on Center Line and take those words back. Please substitute "Center Line" in my post for "Royal Oak Township", with absolutely no comparison intended.

That aside, interesting facts that you posted.

[Jason]

I think the 50s may have been when the problems started affecting things, but I would say that Detroit's downfall is tied to the nature of its original growth.

Racism and manufacturing are Detroit's downfalls imo

We depended on manufacturing but American manufacturing has been going down. Racism lead to our current political situation, which itself has affected a lot of other things.

Also, I would say that going forward from today, manufacturing has caused another problem. Manufacturing attracted a lot of engineers and other people, and generated a lot of wealth which was great, but it also attracted a huge number of low skilled workers who have trouble contributing to today's economy, but still cost money to provide services to. I think as a region we have a lot of dead weight, and we'd be better off if they moved to other cities [[although those aren't the people who are moving unfortunately).

[Don K]

if memory serves there was not one new auto manufacturing plant built in the city after WW2 for decades.

Unfortunately for Detroit, auto plants have large footprints, and there wasn't a whole lot of vacant land in Detroit in the 1950's, so the new plants went to places such as Wayne, Livonia, Ypsilanti, etc. Then in the 80's when it was time to shut some plants the oldest, such as Dodge Main and Cadillac Fleetwood, got the axe first.