I left Detroit in 1965 and have been back once since then.

[Art Eastman]

Sad to see the Detroit of today as compared to the Detroit of yesterday;50years ago!

[Dan Wesson]

Sad to see the Detroit of today as compared to the Detroit of yesterday;50years ago!

Agreed. I have found myself often entertaining the idea of returning and making a go of it but the demographics I need aren't there. Yes, it's kinda sad.

[Gannon]

Yeah, I really miss getting stuck in traffic behind one of those steaming slag trucks that used to roll around the SW side on Dix/Toledo. And how the river was brown.

Those were the days.

[dtowncitylover]

I wanted to be snarky, but to give you the benefit of the doubt, why did you leave?

[Wheels]

Sad to see the Detroit of today as compared to the Detroit of yesterday;50years ago!

Why did you take all the white people with you?

[jt1]

Sad to see the Detroit of today as compared to the Detroit of yesterday;50years ago!

I still don't understand how Detroit was a paradise in the 50s and early/mid sixties but hundreds of thousands of people left paradise on earth.

It' so confusing to me that I keep hearing this.

[jt1]

Agreed. I have found myself often entertaining the idea of returning and making a go of it but the demographics I need aren't there. Yes, it's kinda sad.

Sorry people here aren't working harder to get it to a standard that works for you.

[Bham1982]

Sad to see the Detroit of today as compared to the Detroit of yesterday;50years ago!

You haven't been on DYes long enough. It's much better now, according to most here.

Downtown has allegedly never been more vibrant!

[SDCC]

You haven't been on DYes long enough. It's much better now, according to most here.

Downtown has allegedly never been more vibrant!

People have a tendency to look at the past through a pair of smudged, rose colored glasses.
Selective Memory also plays into these rosy, idyllic, flashbacks.

[dtowncitylover]

You haven't been on DYes long enough. It's much better now, according to most here.

Downtown has allegedly never been more vibrant!

You only like to comment on selected parts of people's posts and forget about any context.

In the context of the past 35 years, yes Downtown/midtown Detroit have never been more vibrant. In the context of the past 100 years, Detroit's neighborhoods have seen better days.

[Bham1982]

In the context of the past 35 years, yes Downtown/midtown Detroit have never been more vibrant.

IF you truly believe this, you couldn't be more ignorant about Detroit's past.

35 years ago downtown/midtown had department stores and retail corridors, far more pedestrian activity, and far more residents and workers. Woodward was much more active 35 years ago.

[ndavies]

I still don't understand how Detroit was a paradise in the 50s and early/mid sixties but hundreds of thousands of people left paradise on earth.

It' so confusing to me that I keep hearing this.

It's simple, It was all about Jobs.

In the 60s Detroit couldn't get enough people to work at it's auto plants. We were the silicon valley of the 60s. Manufacturing wages were higher than anywhere in the world. People were being hired from all over the world to work here. It's what brought my family here from Britain.

When the Japanese started selling their better cars for lower prices, Detroit auto companies couldn't compete and started shedding jobs. When I got out of highs school in the 80s, thousands of highly paid manufacturing jobs were being shed. Many of my friends had to leave the state for their first jobs.

[dtowncitylover]

IF you truly believe this, you couldn't be more ignorant about Detroit's past.

35 years ago downtown/midtown had department stores and retail corridors, far more pedestrian activity, and far more residents and workers. Woodward was much more active 35 years ago.

But it was also in steep decline. Kern's? Closed. Crowley? Closed. Saks? Left. Hudson's? Closed. Himelhoch's? Gone. Lane Bryant, Winkelman's, JM Citron, Hughes and Hatcher, B. Siegel gone gone gone gone gone

What do we have opened or opening soon? Moosejaw, Kit and Ace, John Varvatos, Vault of Midnight, Detroit Bikes, House of Pure Vin. More retail than my generation has ever seen in downtown Detroit.

And there was not more residents of downtown Detroit 35 years ago, it was not a residential part of the city. Many of the lofts today were not there in the 80s and the buildings that house many of the apartments we see today were beginning to shutter.

However, I will agree that there were more residents in the city and bus usage to get downtown was still happening, but as the shops closed, the crowds stopped coming.

[jt1]

It's simple, It was all about Jobs.

In the 60s Detroit couldn't get enough people to work at it's auto plants. We were the silicon valley of the 60s. Manufacturing wages were higher than anywhere in the world. People were being hired from all over the world to work here. It's what brought my family here from Britain.

When the Japanese started selling their better cars for lower prices, Detroit auto companies couldn't compete and started shedding jobs. When I got out of highs school in the 80s, thousands of highly paid manufacturing jobs were being shed. Many of my friends had to leave the state for their first jobs.

Population started to decline significantly prior to the time period you are speaking of [[I know there were massive impacts due to freeways, GI Bill, etc) but the city saw a massive outmigration starting in the early fifties yet everyone from that time speaks as if it were heaven on earth.

[casscorridor]

It's simple, It was all about Jobs.

In the 60s Detroit couldn't get enough people to work at it's auto plants. We were the silicon valley of the 60s. Manufacturing wages were higher than anywhere in the world. People were being hired from all over the world to work here. It's what brought my family here from Britain.

When the Japanese started selling their better cars for lower prices, Detroit auto companies couldn't compete and started shedding jobs. When I got out of highs school in the 80s, thousands of highly paid manufacturing jobs were being shed. Many of my friends had to leave the state for their first jobs.

Partly true, at least when looking at Detroit [[and suburbs) as a whole, but doesn't explain why inner Detroit deteriorated so drastically. To understand why this happened, we need to look at Federal and state urban policies, and of course racism. Ultimately, Detroit is the result of a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances... the auto industry is just one of those. Transport planning, housing policies, real estate red-lining, and other factors are just as important.

[MSUguy]

Population started to decline significantly prior to the time period you are speaking of [[I know there were massive impacts due to freeways, GI Bill, etc) but the city saw a massive outmigration starting in the early fifties yet everyone from that time speaks as if it were heaven on earth.

I wasn't around then, but I'd have to think it that wasn't noticeable at first. I'm sure the city noticed in terms of its tax collections and its ability to provide services. To the average person those cuts didn't stand out at first and the city probably seemed to be functioning fine. I'd be curious to hear when they first notice that the city was on the decline.

[ndavies]

Population started to decline significantly prior to the time period you are speaking of [[I know there were massive impacts due to freeways, GI Bill, etc) but the city saw a massive outmigration starting in the early fifties yet everyone from that time speaks as if it were heaven on earth.

You forget that in the 1930s the courts rulings stopped the city from annexing any further communities.

The great depression and WWII stopped house building. There was a huge housing shortage in the city in the late 40s early 50s. So in the 50s and 60s there was a huge pent up demand for housing and the city lost it's ability to absorb the inner ring suburbs. Detroit in the 50s was completely over populated. This led to the huge housing buildups in the inner ring suburbs and the flow of people to the suburbs.

The 60s were great for most working families. They earned enough money to buy a house and all the new construction was in the suburbs.

[DeLemur]

Sad to see the Detroit of today as compared to the Detroit of yesterday;50years ago!

I didn't know that Detroit. Only the Detroit of the 80's and beyond. To me this Detroit isn't sad at all. Its got a unique, authentic and educational feel.

[garyalex]

I didn't know that Detroit. Only the Detroit of the 80's and beyond. To me this Detroit isn't sad at all. Its got a unique, authentic and educational feel.

Well, I do know that Detroit. I was born and raised there. I've been in NYC since 1980. All I know since then is what I've seen in some visits and what's in forums like this one. I'm retiring this fall and coming home. It should be interesting. It's where I want to be.

[softailrider]

I still don't understand how Detroit was a paradise in the 50s and early/mid sixties but hundreds of thousands of people left paradise on earth.

It' so confusing to me that I keep hearing this.

Speaking as a person who has either lived in or near the city for 58 years, I would say it was mostly about race.

[Dumpling]

Art, I take it you came back and checked out the Dream Cruise?

[Hypestyles]

Art Eastman, are there plenty of jobs where you are now? Let us know.

[EastsideAl]

But it was also in steep decline. Kern's? Closed. Crowley? Closed. Saks? Left. Hudson's? Closed. Himelhoch's? Gone. Lane Bryant, Winkelman's, JM Citron, Hughes and Hatcher, B. Siegel gone gone gone gone gone

What do we have opened or opening soon? Moosejaw, Kit and Ace, John Varvatos, Vault of Midnight, Detroit Bikes, House of Pure Vin. More retail than my generation has ever seen in downtown Detroit.

And there was not more residents of downtown Detroit 35 years ago, it was not a residential part of the city. Many of the lofts today were not there in the 80s and the buildings that house many of the apartments we see today were beginning to shutter.

However, I will agree that there were more residents in the city and bus usage to get downtown was still happening, but as the shops closed, the crowds stopped coming.

This is quite true. I was working downtown at the time, and it was sad losing one store after another. The unstoppable trajectory of decline was clear though by the early to mid '70s.

Of course, Detroit was hardly alone in this. That was the era when mall were springing up everywhere and downtown retail was on a steep decline throughout the country. But, of course, downtown Detroit went down faster and more profoundly than most other cities.

[EastsideAl]

I wasn't around then, but I'd have to think it that wasn't noticeable at first. I'm sure the city noticed in terms of its tax collections and its ability to provide services. To the average person those cuts didn't stand out at first and the city probably seemed to be functioning fine. I'd be curious to hear when they first notice that the city was on the decline.

Urban decline was underway throughout the country by the mid 1950s. Hastened by a number of factors, not the least of which was a decidedly anti-urban set of federal policies.

Detroit thought it was ahead of the game of fighting urban decline by making use of all of the best urban planning advice of the 1950s and 60s: tearing out the entire south part of downtown to build the shiny new Civic Center, tearing down that embarrassing old City Hall and the old Kern Block to begin the modernization of the public space at the center of downtown, getting rid of all of those unsightly old neighborhoods and streets by emptying blocks and blocks of land to build new public housing projects and private developments, and by modernizing transportation through getting rid of those old congestion-creating streetcars and building lots of broad new freeways to speed car drivers along their way.

I think by 1967 it was pretty damn clear that things were going in the wrong direction. And by 1973 very clear that there was no agreement at all on what the right direction might be. And soon thereafter clear that the resource pie available to fix things was shrinking, perhaps forever.

[mwilbert]

Population started to decline significantly prior to the time period you are speaking of [[I know there were massive impacts due to freeways, GI Bill, etc) but the city saw a massive outmigration starting in the early fifties yet everyone from that time speaks as if it were heaven on earth.

Heaven on earth would be an overstatement, and I wasn't there in the early 50's, but while outmigration started two decades earlier, it was pretty great living in the University District into the 70's. The schools were pretty good [[Hampton and Mumford were both high-performing, and you had a number of good Catholic schools); there was lots of convenient retail [[including the Avenue of Fashion); there was a high degree of neighborhood engagement, and it was quite safe, partly because there were vast numbers of kids on the streets leftover from the peak of the baby boom. However it didn't last, because by that time you were seeing a growing number of people leaving either because either of some level of aversion to blacks, or because of concern about rising rates of crime, or both. In addition to the general crime level, there were a number of specific crimes which made people less inclined to stay.

Once you get to that point, you get into a downward spiral--part of what made that neighborhood great was the social ties, and as people leave, those ties weaken, so more people are likely to leave. If the people who replace them are poorer/less educated [[and they were) the schools get worse, the local retail deteriorates, and still fewer people feel like staying. Of course there was more going on than that--the 70's weren't a very good decade for Michigan economically in general and a lot of people left the city and state for economic reasons, but that just made things worse. Also, coincidentally, all the elms died, which made a big difference in the attractiveness of many blocks.

Eventually the neighborhood stabilized, but it stabilized as a completely different kind of neighborhood, with poorer residents, few children, bad schools, higher crime and not much local shopping. The crime and the shopping have improved, neighbors tend to be friendly, and the neighborhood is quite pleasant. Even the trees are improving, thanks to the Greening of Detroit. I like it a lot, but it is still nothing like it was 50 years ago.