'Only to this degree in Detroit'. I think it was just a matter of degree.
I think you'll find that most if not all major cities have been the relocation of many of their corporate offices to the burbs.[[from Grist: Suburban Corporate Campuses Going Out of Style)In the late 1990s, when Don Chen, Matt Raimi, and I were researching our book, Once There Were Greenfields, we lamented the flight of business from America’s central cities to increasingly outer suburbs and farmland. In that book we frequently turned for data to metropolitan Chicago where, for example, Ameritech had built a half-mile-long “landscraper” near O’Hare Airport far from the Loop, Motorola had set up camp in Schaumberg, and Sears had fled the iconic Sears Tower for Hoffman Estates.
Detroit also had the 'luck' of a few really big companies with early suburban presence. Ford, GM [[New Center & Tech Center). If these firms were downtown, things might have been a little better. But like a lot of things -- it wasn't one single factor. Lot of eggs in one basket [[auto), sparsely populated right after the war, rust belt, and so on.
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