A Dream Still Deferred AT first glance, the numbers released by the Census Bureau last week showing a precipitous drop in Detroit’s population — 25 percent over the last decade — seem to bear a silver lining: most of those leaving the city are blacks headed to the suburbs, once the refuge of mid-century white flight. But a closer analysis of the data suggests that the story of housing discrimination that has dominated American urban life since the early 20th century is far from over. In the Detroit metropolitan area, blacks are moving into so-called secondhand suburbs: established communities with deteriorating housing stock that are falling out of favor with younger white homebuyers. If historical trends hold, these suburbs will likely shift from white to black — and soon look much like Detroit itself, with resegregated schools, dwindling tax bases and decaying public services.
Detroit’s white population rises Detroit’s white population rose by nearly 8,000 residents last year, the first significant increase since 1950, according to a Detroit News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The data, made public Wednesday, mark the first time census numbers have validated the perception that whites are returning to a city that is overwhelmingly black and one where the overall population continues to shrink. Many local leaders contend halting Detroit’s population loss is crucial, and the new census data shows that policies to lure people back to the city may be helping stem the city’s decline. “It verifies the energy you see in so many parts of Detroit and it’s great to hear,” said Kevin Boyle, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian who studies the intersection of class, race, and politics in 20th-century America. “The last thing I want to do is dampen the good news, but the problem is Detroit is still the poorest city in the U.S. “I think it’s a trend. “It’s not creating an even playing field.”
Industrialism; urban decay; Census; The collapse of Detroit - latimes Imagine for a moment that every single person living in the city of San Jose, plus another 150,000 or so, just up and left. Vanished. Poof. Gone. Leaving their homes, business buildings and factories behind. That is, in effect, what has happened to the city of Detroit, according to 2010 U.S. It's an unprecedented collapse of a major American city. In Detroit, the loss amounts to a staggering 60% of the city's peak population. There are all sorts of implications here, both for Detroit and for the nation. But there are two larger issues that have broader national implications. The second is, what are we going to do about it? Detroit has played a significant role in my life. The collapse of Detroit has roots in intentional de-industrialization by the Big Three automakers, which in the 1950s began aggressively spider-webbing operations across the nation to produce cars closer to regional markets, and to reduce labor costs by investing in less labor-friendly places than union-heavy Detroit.
Anatomy of Detroit’s Decline - Interactive Feature Mayor Coleman A. Young of Detroit at an event in 1980. Richard Sheinwald/Associated Press The financial crisis facing Detroit was decades in the making, caused in part by a trail of missteps, suspected corruption and inaction. Here is a sampling of some city leaders who trimmed too little, too late and, rather than tackling problems head on, hoped that deep-rooted structural problems would turn out to be cyclical downturns. Charles E. Edward Jeffries, who served as mayor from 1940 to 1948, developed the Detroit Plan, which involved razing 100 blighted acres and preparing the land for redevelopment. Albert Cobo was considered a candidate of the wealthy and of the white during his tenure from 1950 to 1957. Coleman A. Kwame M. Dave Bing, a former professional basketball star, took office in 2009 pledging to solve Detroit’s fiscal problems, which by then were already overwhelming. Related
Coleman A. Young, 79, Mayor of Detroit And Political Symbol for Blacks, Is Dead Coleman A. Young, the combative, tart-tongued former union organizer who became the first black Mayor of Detroit when he was elected in 1973 and then went on to run the city for a record 20 years, died on Saturday at Sinai Hospital in Detroit. He was 79. The cause was respiratory failure, officials said. A popular and streetwise politician, Mr. But like the other black mayors, Mr. Afterward, the Motor City lost even more of its factories, stores and jobs as well as thousands of its middle-class residents, particularly whites who had been moving to the suburbs in great numbers since Detroit's 1967 race riots. ''I don't dispute the gravity of Detroit's problems,'' he wrote. Mr. The center, built for $350 million by a consortium of of more than 50 corporate investors led by the Ford Motor Company, opened in 1977. Mr. Even so, Mr. But that was not enough to keep businesses and residents from fleeing the city. Still, black Detroiters viewed Mr.
Investors see farms as way to grow Detroit - latimes Reporting from Detroit — On the city's east side, where auto workers once assembled cars by the millions, nature is taking back the land. Cottonwood trees grow through the collapsed roofs of homes stripped clean for scrap metal. Wild grasses carpet the rusty shells of empty factories, now home to pheasants and wild turkeys. This green veil is proof of how far this city has fallen from its industrial heyday and, to a small group of investors, a clear sign. "There's so much land available and it's begging to be used," said Michael Score, president of the Hantz Farms, which is buying up abandoned sections of the city's 139-square-mile landscape and plans to transform them into a large-scale commercial farm enterprise. "Farming is how Detroit started," Score said, "and farming is how Detroit can be saved." In Detroit, hundreds of backyard gardens and scores of community gardens have blossomed and helped feed students in at least 40 schools and hundreds of families. It will start small.
Crime, Not Debt, is Detroit’s Biggest Problem A couple months ago, Governing’s cover story, “Who Will Save Detroit?,” focused on some of the public- and private-sector folks injecting an exciting energy into the city’s economic development and revitalization efforts. But the answer to Detroit’s problems won’t be found in new business ventures or in how the city restructures its debt, say two Detroit women with stakes in the city’s future. Rather, they say, it’s in bringing crime under control and making neighborhoods livable again. Read the rest of this month's magazine issue. The two women are Kym Worthy, the Wayne County, Mich., prosecutor, and state Rep. “You can have all the urban development you want and attract all the business people you want, but if the city’s not safe, they aren’t going to come,” says Worthy. Worthy, known for prosecuting then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for perjury in 2008, is the first female and the first African-American to run the county prosecutor’s office. Want more urban news?
Detroit to get $21 million more for blight demolition WASHINGTON — The City of Detroit stands to receive an additional $21.25 million in demolition money from the federal government under a proposal authorized by the Obama administration and approved Wednesday by a state housing board. The money will be enough to take down nearly 1,300 blighted structures if recent averages hold. The Free Press was the first to report that U.S. Treasury officials had signed off on allowing the Michigan State Housing Development Authority to move another $32.7 million of a $498-million award made in 2010 under the Hardest Hit Fund to its demolition account with the lion’s share — roughly two-thirds of the total — going to Detroit and the rest to Flint. Nowhere in the nation has that argument been used more than in Detroit, which had already received or been promised up to $107 million in reimbursements from the fund for tearing down abandoned, decrepit structures. “This program has always been about allowing the states to determine where their needs are.