Gwynne Dyer: Broken and bankrupt Detroit may yet make a comeback

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      As it happens, I was in Detroit this month. I went to see the art and the architecture, domains in which Detroit is still one of the richest cities in the United States. It’s broken, and it’s broke, and now it’s officially bankrupt too. But bankruptcy is actually a device for escaping from unpayable debt.

      All over the world, Detroit’s bankruptcy is being used as an excuse to pore over what’s sometimes called “ruin porn”: pictures of the rotting, empty houses that still stand and the proud skyscrapers that have already been torn down. There’s even a self-guided tour of “the ruins of Detroit” available on the Internet: people take a melancholy pleasure in contemplating the calamitous fall of a once-great city.

      Two-thirds of Detroit’s population have fled in the past 50 years, but there were specific reasons why Detroit fell into decline, and there are also reasons to believe that it could flourish again—not as a major manufacturing centre, perhaps, but “major manufacturing centres” probably don’t have a bright long-term future anywhere. There are other ways to flourish, and Detroit has some valuable resources.

      The events that triggered the city’s decline are well known. Large numbers of African-Americans from the southern states migrated to Detroit to meet the demand for factory workers during and after the Second World War. Being mostly unskilled, they started in the worst jobs—and even after they had acquired the skills, they stayed in low-paying jobs because of racial prejudice.

      Spurned by the unions and victimised by a racist police force, they eventually rioted in the summer of 1967. Brutal policing made matters worse and hundreds were killed, but the worst consequence was the fear that the violence engendered. The great majority of the whites just left town.

      I first went to Detroit a couple of months after the riots, and driving into the city the fear was actually visible. The traffic lights are spaced far apart on Woodward Avenue, and as each light turned green all the cars would accelerate away—and then, if the next light was still red, they would slow more and more until they were barely crawling, but they dared not stop for fear of being attacked.

      Then, finally, the light would turn green, and they would race away through the intersection—only to go through the whole process again as they approached the next light. It was this unreasoning fear that caused the massive “white flight” to the suburbs and the hollowing out of Detroit.

      The big automobile companies also took fright, and the new car plants were built elsewhere. As the jobs disappeared and the population dropped, the tax base fell even faster, for most of the people left behind in the city were poor or unemployed African-Americans. The city could no longer afford to provide good police or medical services, so even more people left.

      This vicious circle has lasted half a century, exacerbated by much corruption and maladministration. This month’s declaration of bankruptcy is a brutal measure, for much of the debt being repudiated is the pensions of city employees, but it may give the city’s government enough leeway to begin rebuilding public services. If they are restored, much else could follow.

      Let me explain what brought me to Detroit early this month. We were doing what we dubbed the “Rust Belt Art and Architecture Tour”: driving from Buffalo to Cleveland and then to Detroit, ending up in Chicago.

      All these cities took a terrible beating as the industries they were built on died or moved overseas (except Chicago, which is “too big to fail”). But three generations ago, when they were the industrial heartland of the United States, they were very rich—at just the right time.

      The first decades of the 20th century were the heyday of art deco, the most beautiful architectural style of the modern era. That was also the period when newly rich captains of industry could scoop up bucket-loads of new European and American art: impressionist, expressionist, abstract, the lot—and they lived mostly in what are now the Rust Belt cities.

      So they put up dozens of art deco towers: the Guaranty Building in downtown Detroit is my candidate for the world’s most beautiful office building. They filled their homes with best of modern art—and, in the end, donated most of it to the local art galleries. Even in Detroit, where so much has been lost, more than half of those buildings are still there. So is all of the art.

      Other cities would kill for these assets. In a post-industrial economy where people have more choice about where they live, they are assets that can actually attract population—especially since, in Detroit’s case, the people who left didn’t go far. Most of them are still out there in the suburbs that surround Detroit.

      The city of Detroit’s population has fallen from two million to 700,000 over the past 50 years, but the metropolitan area’s population has stayed stable at around four and a half million for all of that time. The job, really, is to bridge the devastated middle ring of low-income Detroit housing and reconnect the outer suburbs with the city centre. Detroit can rise again. It just takes the right strategy.

      Comments

      11 Comments

      Alan Layton

      Jul 22, 2013 at 12:34pm

      As always Dyer provides a reasoned, calm essay, complete with history and facts. I have no doubt Fox News will be blaming the fall of Detroit on Obama.

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      RUK

      Jul 22, 2013 at 3:34pm

      The fall of Detroit is an object lesson to American manufacturers. If you export jobs, guess what? Americans go out of work!

      Multinationals are a fact of life, but CEOs who decide to shift their production to foreign countries are traitors to their own lands and should be treated as pariahs.

      Of course part of the problem is that Detroit became noncompetitive. Their workforce, lacking socialized medicine, was relatively expensive due to medical plans and such. Their products were manifestly worse than the Japanese competition. Japanese cars were rusty awful tin cans until 1976 or so, but they got their quality control act together and by 1990 were better-driving, thriftier, and better-equipped vehicles.

      I used to be cynical that Detroit could bounce back. However Tesla has only been around for a few years and is starting to make real inroads in the lux sedan market - American products *can* make a comeback.

      Canadian politicians hopefully are looking at Detroit and doing everything that can be done to avoid their mistakes.

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      Billy Bones

      Jul 23, 2013 at 1:05am

      A high quality fuel efficient car that had real longevity was never produced. Every year they would say that their cars were getting better but it was just hype and almost everybody knew it.

      After two generations had rejected the big three cars in favour of a superior Japanese product, it was done . The manufacturing base was moved off shore and it "ain't a'comin' back baby"

      My Teenage Memories of Detroit from '68. Saw some black guys warming their hands over a fire in a oil drum on South Michigan Ave near the Tiger stadium. Saw a Black Panther dude loading a shotgun in the back seat of a Buick Skylark on Woodward. MC5, Marvin Gaye

      I would never buy a car made in North America. Terrible resale value.

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      Joe

      Jul 23, 2013 at 6:34am

      Editor: the Guaranty Building is in Buffalo, not Detroit, isn't it?

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      Alan Layton

      Jul 23, 2013 at 8:29am

      Did you guys even read the article? The car manufacturers moved out of Detroit for other American cities close by first, not overseas.

      scissorpaws

      Jul 23, 2013 at 8:55am

      Interesting how Paul Krugman paints much the same picture by comparing Detroit's demise with Pittsburgh's resurrection, showing the stats that suggest those cities that managed to prevent the do-nutting of their urban core did much better due to increased upward mobility of the poor because they lived closer to where the jobs were hence could afford to travel to them without need of a huge commute. It's telling how the first casualty of New Austerity is the pensions of the workers. Where's the politicians giving up their lifetime benefits or banks being asked to received ten cents on the dollar. The pensions of the ex cops and firefighters and teachers are more likely to be spent in Detroit hence help with the recovery. Ironically.

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      Martin Dunphy

      Jul 23, 2013 at 11:27am

      Joe:

      Thanks for the post. I'm not sure, but I think Dyer may have mistaken the Guardian Building (also known as the Union Trust Building), a wonderful example of art deco architecture (1927-29), for the Guaranty Building (which as you rightly point out, is in Buffalo and was constructed almost three decades before art deco's architectural influence).

      Billy Bones

      Jul 24, 2013 at 5:34pm

      Alan;

      "The big automobile companies also took fright, and the new car plants were built elsewhere." (Flight or fright or both?)

      I didn't see that about neighbouring cities. They had factories in other Michigan cities like Flint and Pontiac, but closed them too a long time ago.

      When the big three got bailouts, especially GM, they used the money to expand into the markets of China and Brazil. They even got tax breaks for doing it.

      They have off shored their factories and kept the profits off shore too.

      This this just the begining of the domino theory of economic collapse.

      http://www.globalresearch.ca/american-cities-going-bankrupt/31980

      "Large and smaller US cities are troubled short of bankruptcy. They include New York, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Bell, CA, Detroit, Pontiac, Cincinnati, Honolulu, Washington, Newark, Camden, Paterson, Harrison and Salem, NJ, Gary, IN, Redding, PA, Joliet and Riverdale, IL, Hamtramck, MI, and others."

      McRocket

      Jul 25, 2013 at 10:12pm

      Interesting article.

      I think the solution and the effects of art are over simplified though.
      Most people don't give a rat's buttocks about art. Outside of a school trip, I bet most people have rarely - if ever - gone to their local art galleries.
      And the VAST majority of people don't move to cities because of more paintings or neat architecture. These are gravy - the meat is jobs and reasonable living standards.
      I also think Detroit lost people not primarily because of race problems (though NO DOUBT, this helped the flight), but because the Rust Belt as a whole deteriorated. Manufacturing just became too costly in those areas and the factories left.
      But humanity is becoming more and more urban, if Detroit just stopped spending money it does not have and lives within it's means, they eventually should come back to life as a viable city...but the days as a manufacturing giant are probably gone forever.

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      Hiakiko

      Jul 26, 2013 at 7:11am

      Why are you people talking about art? Most forward thinking people know through common sense that the fall of Detroit was due to the liberal mentality and union thugs. Now we have what was once a great city as a embarrassment to the rest of the United States. Let us not forget about all of the corrupt politicians this city has been infested with over the past 50 or so years. Thanks Liberals, good job.

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