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Lu Jennings

GIS 3991/Cities

17 July 2000

The city within the history of America plays an enormous role in the economic, political and social development of the nation. The city was the location of the industrial revolution of the late 1800s early 1900s. The inventors, innovators, and their creations of the 20^th century evolved in the city. Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone; Thomas Alva Edison and the electric light; the Wright Brothers from their bicycle shop to the airplane; and Henry Ford and the automobile assembly line. The city housed the ingenuity that resulted in economic development.

With the success of the industrial revolution, migration within geographic regions flourished. For the first time large numbers of people left their homes on the farm and moved to the city. The city, which held a reputation for sophisticated living, was not attractive to the migrants but the jobs and the money were there. The residents of cities enjoyed dining out and evenings at the opera or theatre. The ladies attended intellectual lectures by writers, artist and experts in various fields of study from art history and anthropology to horticulture and geography. Counter this with the simple country life, which was more relaxed and subdued. People worked their farmland, attended church and visited their neighbors, women joined Quilting Bees and the men played checkers.

The lure of high paying jobs, primarily, the Ford Motor Company offering $5.00 per day in wages was the draw into the city of Detroit. "In the 1920s, Henry Ford made headlines by promising $5.00 a day to every worker in his enterprise. Ford workers soon discovered that it was not quite $5.00 a day for not quite everyone. Fully a third of all Ford workers never got the $5.00 a day" (Georgakas & Surkin 88).

From the 1920s until World War II virtually all of the workers in the Detroit auto plants were white migrants from the outlying farmlands of Michigan or formerly rural sharecroppers. Prior to the war none of the auto plants hired large numbers of African Americans, unless they were needed as union busters. However, the "Labor shortage of World War II changed that. At that time, blacks, mainly fresh from the South, were hired by the tens of thousands. Chrysler’s number of black women employees went from zero in 1941 to 5000 by 1945. Many of these jobs were taken away in the recessions of the 1950s" (Georgakas & Surkin 28). There were years when no blacks were hired by any plant. When the auto industry staged a comeback in the early 1960s blacks began to be rehired.

With woman working in the retooled auto plants to build machinery and equipment to support the war effort it would later influence the daughters of these women. Upon the return of the men from war these women auto plant workers referred to as Rosie the Riveter went back into their homes and the men returned to the plants, albeit only for a short time. Eventually the influence of their mothers having worked to support the country economy, a generation later the daughters of the woman who worked during WW II would leave their homes for outside employment.

Following the war the federal government would compensate the men, who served their country in various capacities during the war years. The federal government instituted several guarantees to provide financial support to veterans. Among them the underwriting of loans for home purchasing and guarantees for college education offered by the Veterans Administration. "The extension of homeowners’ benefits to returning veterans in the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (the GI Bill Of Rights) solidified the government’s new responsibility to finance private housing for millions of Americans." (Sugrue 60). The underwritten loans for home ownership and education by the VA play an enormous role in the return of living in outlying areas. The city of Detroit was already densely populated before the war, although adequate housing was not available to African Americans.

A suburban housing boom started in the late 1940s when Vets returned home in large numbers. Postwar housing construction boomed in what was once farmland, now the suburbs. Secondary to the housing growth was the educational opportunity provided by the VA, again through the G. I. Bill to the World War II Vets. Prior to WWII, a college education was generally the domain of people with financial means or huge family sacrifice. The G. I. Bill suddenly made college education available to those who were never before so fortunate.

You than have an entire generation of white males holding college degrees guaranteeing access to professional positions. This large influx of white male professionals in combination with new suburban housing for the returning Vets will result in numerous options for millions of Americans. Among the options was whether to remain in Detroit or move back to the open space (formerly farmland) of newly constructed suburbs. "Americans never much liked living at the densities typical of those old downtown either. They were not swell places. Diphtheria and typhoid were common. We lived that way only for as long as necessary to get jobs" (Garreau 106).

The Vets were returning home, finding a new and welcomed access to higher education and single home ownership. However, not all Vets benefited from the federal governments guarantee policies. There was one group of veterans, also returning home who were unable to take advantage of this good fortune in education and housing.

The African-American Vet was systematically denied the opportunities made available to his/her white counterpart. Although the federal government provided guarantees, the housing purchases were limited to the city of Detroit and college access was also restricted. What was available were those jobs left behind in the auto industry by the newly college educated white Vet. This is probably one of the city of Detroit’s most obvious effects of racism between African Americans and whites. Race played an extremely important role in the demise of Detroit. It was following the WWII era with this tremendous growth outside the city that marked the beginning of the decline of Detroit.

"During World War II, the government built expressways from the heart of Detroit, where all the workers lived, to its new Willow Run Bomber Plant, and to the Chrysler Tank Factory that was hastily constructed in warren, beyond Twelve Mile Road" (Kunstler 193). The highway development projects further exacerbated the decline of the city. The interstate freeway constructed destroyed the most densely populated area of the African-American community in Detroit. The building of the Chrysler Freeway (I 75) proceeded directly through the Lower East Side, and the African American community of Paradise Valley. The vibrant Hastings Street business district was demolished too. The Chrysler resulted in eliminating Detroit’s most prestigious and prominent African American Institutions. From the cities renowned jazz clubs to the Saint Antoine branch of the YMCA, the heaven for African American culture, politics and economics vanished (Sugrue 47).

This left many African-American homeowners and businesses unable to sell their property. The loss was tremendous when they saw their home or business with a designation of condemned. The government failed to provide any opportunity to gain compensation. These events left the city with less educated, unskilled (trade unions) African Americans living in poor housing. The suburbs had new homes; college educated professionals and the enticement of employment: "the flight to the suburbs alleviated some of tension over housing. Between 1950 and 1960 More than 500,000 people left Detroit for life in the suburbs. In total population the city actually lost about 270,000 people, for migration was offset by immigration – mostly of blacks – and an increase among blacks and poor whites. By 1960 the number of blacks had risen from 303,000 to 487,000 while the total population declined to 1,670,000 - the old, the very young, the black, the unskilled, and the fearful" (Darden, Hill and Thomas 140).

The suburbs began to draw retail and office centered jobs to its domain. In Detroit the malls sprang up Northland (located in Southfield), Eastland (Harper Woods), Westland (Westland, MI) and Southland (Southgate) Malls opened over a five year period during the 1950s. " The nightmare that haunted urban renewal in the 1940s and 1950s came true in the 1960s and 1970s. Many downtown’s and neighborhoods were ghettoized. It was not only that more shoppers were black. They now had equal entry to white owned shops, theatres, and restaurants where they had been unwelcome. But downtown also changed in another way. Stores that had been landmarks, pillars of the merchant society, and beacons of social aspiration were gone. Many moved out to shopping malls in the suburbs…" (Zukin 207). The people with finances to support these malls lived within a two-three mile radius. The office complexes of business also employed these shoppers and suburban residents.

A huge blow to the City of Detroit came with the decline of the American auto industry in the 1970s. This followed a devastating riot in 1967. The Detroit "Race Riot" of 1967 was not a "Race Riot", it was a civil disobedient uprising, which destroyed several African American communities. The white flight caused by the disturbance drove the remaining white citizens of Detroit to seek the suburbs to live and work in. "The exodus to the suburbs was, in fact, one of the major causes of Detroit’s deterioration.

East side auto workers who had missed the impact of the recessions and received good UAW – bargained (United Autoworkers) wages moved to St. Clair Shore. Warren, MI, grew from a small suburb into a prosperous community of over 100,000 as new Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, and feeder plants were built there. GM’s technical center expanded enormously. Until 1970 Warren also remained 100 percent white, not even allowing a Negro Army captain and his family to reside there. Every period of prosperity enabled more Whites to move to the suburbs, further isolating the Negro within the city ghetto, and this was a conscious decision" (Widick 141). The federal government deliberately supported this period of significant growth for the outlying areas. The design was for the suburbs to grow and the city of Detroit to decline.

Business that once operated within Detroit now moved to its Edge. It was during this period that the Edge City began to materialize. The Edge City is usually several small municipalities within a county that appear to be one location; the Edge City seldom has a central downtown area. What they do offer is large commercial spaces for leasing. Edge City jobs are located in office buildings with retail space options. They have the ability to accommodate high tech jobs. Detroit’s premiere Edge City is Oakland County. "The northwestern suburbs of Oakland County have enjoyed a phenomenal growth in population and corporate business during the past two decades. Oakland County trails only Manhattan in the list of wealthiest counties with more than a million people. Oakland County suburbs – Southfield, Troy, Farmington Hills, Pontiac, Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills – number six out of the ten cities in metropolitan Detroit with over 1 million square feet of office space. Oakland County now possesses half of all the office space in the seven county regions. Oakland’s total office footage now tops Detroit’s. In fact, just two Oakland County suburbs, Southfield & Troy, now have a combined 24.6 million square feet compared with Detroit’s 25.3 million. Also 200,000 fewer people reside in Oakland County than in the city of Detroit. Oakland County officials are now touting a 1,700 acre, High Technology Park that will serve as a link to a high tech corridor similar to Boston’s Route 128 and Santa Clara County’s Silicon Valley" (Darden, Hill and Thomas 36).

As city residents were being left out of employment opportunities suburban housewives were gaining employment close to home. The granddaughters and daughters of the women who listened to intellectual lectures during the 1920s, and worked in the tank plants being called Rosie the Riveter, during the war in the 1940s had now decided they wanted to become "Working Women" in the 1970s.

As Detroit declined, the suburbs thrived and Edge City prospered. The need to turn this situation around was paramount to Detroit’s rebirth. If both Detroit and the Edge City are to benefit they will have to work together. The edge always has more jobs than homes. The city has an enormous pool of available workers. The key to bringing the jobs and workers together may rest in public transportation. The highway system was the primary focus of the federal government. The Detroit public transportation system was never developed beyond Detroit proper. "Trains can be charming, but the economics’ of commuter trains are maddening. You get to the office and are stuck without flexibility of a car. There is usually a third Rush hour in Edge City – lunch. An Edge City is thought to need a stunning thirty million square feet of office space – equivalent to downtown Dallas – to justify a new rapid transit train system" (Kunstler 131)

The underlying question remains why were cities such as Detroit left to wither on the vine for so long, when Edge City was growing at enormous rates? The decline has an adverse affect on the region economy, when work needs to be completed and workers are available to perform the work, yet the two cannot get together so everyone suffers. The political forces are allowing race to be identified as the overwhelming cause for Detroit to have the look it currently projects. "But the central changes that occurred in public discourse about American cities at this time was a connection between race and economic decline, an equation of "urban problem" with "the Negro Problem"(Zukin 207). The Edge City is also somewhat responsible for the division within the races, according to Widick: "One minority was never given the opportunity for economic and social progress which were available to the immigrants and the uprooted whites of America" (Widick xx). The social force of race and the economics of unemployment will need to be explored to bring Detroit back from the brink.

Detroit needs to become an area of interdependent housing, employment and socialization. "What our analysis suggest, as much as anything else, is that an effective and balanced urban redevelopment strategy will have to be a regional, public strategy" (Darden, Hill and Thomas 65). Revitalization can occur in Detroit. Housing has an opportunity to grow and it can be both affordable and/or subsidized housing, allowing equal access to all.

"Riverfront redevelopment is the linchpin in Detroit’s cooperate – center redevelopment strategy, for the city is attempting to create a "golden arch" beginning at the riverfront and radiating through the central business district to a Central Function cultural area. Detroit is aiming to foster upper-income neighborhoods within this arch, and the city has set about constructing a transportation system to knit activities in the arch into a unified whole" (Darden, Hill and Thomas 62).

The outlook for Detroit seems promising both economically and socially. With an opportunity to focus on the needs of the city and the edge in partnerships will give both enormous benefits. "The answer to achieving livable communities lies in regional cooperation. Cities and suburbs are beginning to envision a new template based on regional cooperation and joining forces to address issue that cross local jurisdictional boundaries – transportation, environmental protection, housing affordability, education, concentrated poverty, and economic development. The bottom line, local leaders are learning, is that cities need suburbs and suburbs need cities to prosper in the New Economy" (HUD xii).

An early indication that regional cooperation is viable is in education. The Charter schools within Michigan are open to children statewide regardless of home residence. Students living in Detroit attend charter schools in Dearborn, Southfield and Bloomfield Hills. Parents and students are given an option in their choice of educational environment, curriculum and teaching philosophy. Once proven the option is accessible and beneficial the numbers deciding to take advantage of it increase.

If regional cooperation in education can serve the people of Metropolitan Detroit, it can also work with transportation planning and economic development. The access to edge employment with a regional bus or light rail system opens the doorway for the economic development needed.

Detroit has the ability to return to a vibrant, prosperous city. It may take more years than many have predicted however, the possibility is genuine. It will not happen without tremendous effort of all concerned. None the less, it is more likely to happen currently than it would have 10 or 15 years ago. Detroit needs to look at the Edge as a possible blue print also. Looking at what the Edge City has achieved: "fundamental shifts have occurred in American settlement patterns, so that areas along the metropolitan periphery that were once suburban have evolved into a new style of city, with everything that more conventional cities have to offer" (Teaford 1).

Detroit does not have to overlook the Edge City success. The rebirth can draw from the example of the Edge City. Think of Detroit’s neighborhoods as small towns; with specialty stores, shops and services within walking distance, encouraging pedestrian use by improving public safety. Support of public – private partnerships for building of commercial and residential property will stimulate economic growth.

Detroit’s rebirth must also focus on aiding people, give preferences in assisted housing for low-income residents. The affordable housing for rental/lease and homeownership purchase programs is necessary.

There are serious challenges and impediments to Detroit’s rebirth. It has an old and almost obsolete infrastructure. The residents are more dependent on city services. However, it does have a middle class. The ability to reverse the decline and continue growth rest with the middle class. As long as the middle class can grow they will replenish the population, encourage school improvements and support economic reinvestments.

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