Marilyn Salenger: ‘White flight’ and Detroit’s decline By Marilyn Salenger By Marilyn Salenger July 21, 2013 Marilyn Salenger is president of Strategic Communications Services and a former correspondent and news anchor for several CBS stations. An almost palpable sadness has swept across the country at the news that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. In the late 1960s,racial tensions engulfed parts of our country, at the cost of lost lives and abject destruction. It was the beginning of the ending we are now seeing for a city that once stood tall with head held high. opinions Orlando Shooting Updates News and analysis on the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. post_newsletter348 follow-orlando true after3th false The term “white flight” has become less common in recent years because its huge waves appeared to have stopped as tensions eased. While the suburbs began to draw people out of our cities in the 1950s, Detroit’s neighborhoods and their demographics changed drastically and quickly after the 1967 riots.
Detroit population drops again but loss is slowing | Detroit Sun Times American households are making more money today than they did three decades ago—in some places, a lot more. In order to find out which places have seen the greatest increase in household income, we turned to the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), which uses historical reports from the decennial Census and the American Community Survey to track median income over time. Research site MooseRoots then adjusted all the data to 2015 dollars to filter out the effects of inflation. On the whole, households in northeastern states have seen the largest income increase since 1980, with New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont ranking among the top five. Only a handful of states have seen median household incomes actually decrease since 1980—and several of them are in the Midwest. For a big-picture perspective on the changes across the nation, Mooseroots created heat maps to show the 30-year transformation, both in absolute dollars and percent change. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 5. 4. 3.
Marilyn Salenger: ‘White flight’ and Detroit’s decline By Marilyn Salenger July 21, 2013 Marilyn Salenger is president of Strategic Communications Services and a former correspondent and news anchor for several CBS stations. An almost palpable sadness has swept across the country at the news that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. While the possibility of this had been discussed, the reality of what was once the fourth-largest city in the United States sinking to such depths is disheartening, a moment people will remember for years to come. To understand that the decline and bankruptcy represent so much more than dollars and cents requires a step back to a time that many would prefer to forget but remains unforgettable. In the late 1960s,racial tensions engulfed parts of our country, at the cost of lost lives and abject destruction. It was the beginning of the ending we are now seeing for a city that once stood tall with head held high. My home town of Gary, Ind. White flight took hold and left a lasting imprint. Continue reading
Detroit Redlining Map 1939 | DETROITography Part of Detroit’s history of racial discrimination is comprised on housing discrimination, which in turn contributed to job discrimination, interpersonal racism, and continued racial inequity of opportunity. These areas of Detroit were targeted for “urban renewal” in the 1960s which displaced thousands of black residents to public housing complexes. Today these areas of Detroit have more vacancy (see map) than others either because the redlined properties were managed by slumlords whose properties deteriorated (see map) more quickly or from renewal efforts that didn’t consider the displacement of black residents. The racial divisions we see in our neighborhoods today are the result of deliberate actions taken in the past. (State of Opportunity) This segregation of housing, which was legal up until the 1980s, also furthered school segregation and the inadequate education of Detroit’s black children. You can find other HOLC maps online at: urbanoasis.org Like this: Like Loading... Related
Vanishing City: The Story Behind Detroit’s Shocking Population Decline The news this week that Detroit’s population plunged more than 25% to just 714,000 in the last decade shouldn’t be surprising. The city’s collapse is as well-documented as it is astonishing – the population peaked at nearly 2 million in the 1950s, driven in part by a post-World War II auto industry boom now long gone. (More on TIME.com: See tilt-shift photography of Detroit) Predictably, Detroit officials have vowed to challenge the Census Bureau’s report. But there is another story behind these numbers. (More on TIME.com: See Detroit school kids’ dreams for the future) Simply put, Detroit is at a crossroads. But for all the talk of Detroit’s revival aspirations, this week’s numbers are sobering. (More on TIME.com: See pictures of a Detroit food bank)
Detroit: Why Bankruptcy? Why Bankruptcy Now? | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development City of Detroit Like it or not, the Detroit bankruptcy filing is a page turner. What insights and lessons might an economic developer glean from it? That is our task in this issue. The ever-reticent Krugman, for example, blames job sprawl and suburbs, and a ton of media folk blame the decline on the auto industry or they resuscitate age-old deindustrialization woes. What the Curmudgeon proposes is simply to step back a bit and subject some of these “causes of bankruptcy” to a review. Right off the reader might appreciate the Curmudgeon “take” on the bankruptcy filing. Economic and population decline has not been a stranger to Detroit over the last half century. In our view, the immediate trigger, and prime cause, of the bankruptcy filing is (political agendas aside) unfunded pensions and retiree health care benefits. In any case, in the sections below, we shall pose several questions, hopefully pertinent to economic developers. Let’s start with Coleman Young’s election in 1973. 1.
Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism This is black history month. It is also the month that the Emergency Manager who took political power and control from the mostly African American residents of Detroit has presented his plan to bring the city out of the bankruptcy he steered it into. This is black history in the making, and I hope the nation will pay attention to who wins and who loses from the Emergency Manager’s plan. Black people are by far the largest racial or ethnic population in Detroit, which has the highest percentage of black residents of any American city with a population over 100,000. Eighty-three percent of the city’s 701,000 residents are black. Detroit’s bankruptcy plan calls for the near-elimination of the retiree health benefits that city workers earned over the years, as well as drastic cuts in the pensions that retired and current workers have earned and counted on. It’s important to view what is happening to Detroit and its public employees through a racial lens. So, why is Detroit bankrupt?
Detroit Is an Example of Everything That Is Wrong with Our Nation Back on July 18, 2013 the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Detroit is now seeing a little life, but the city is far from where it once was. Once the wealthiest city in America, known as the “arsenal of democracy,” Detroit was the fourth largest city in the U.S. in the 1960s with a population of two million. Now it has become an example of everything that is wrong with the American economy, Detroit has become nothing more than a devastated landscape of urban decay with a current population of 714,000 whose unemployment rate at the height of the recession was as high as 29 percent, and has only decreased due to the rapidly decreasing population. Visiting Detroit is the closest Americans can come to viewing what appears to be a war-torn city without leaving the U.S. This former powerhouse is a barren stretch of land, devastated by looters and and full of run-down, vacant houses. Unfortunately, Detroit is not alone.
Explicit cookie consent IT WAS inevitable that the rights of creditors and pensioners would come into conflict, especially in places that suffer from high debts, sluggish growth and an ageing population. Admittedly Detroit, where a bankruptcy plan proposes deep cuts to the wealth of both bondholders and retirees, is an extreme example. But it does point to where future battle lines will be drawn. The city, which filed for bankruptcy last year, has an estimated $18 billion of debt and has seen its population fall by more than half since 1950. It does not seem unreasonable that retired workers should be treated more generously in bankruptcy than unsecured bondholders (although that may drive up borrowing costs for other cities). Once a worker has retired, it is very hard to replace lost income. In contrast, most municipal bonds are held as part of a diversified portfolio; any loss resulting from a writedown will cause only a small dent in the investor’s wealth. The bill for past complacency has come due.