OT: As Detroit Dies, The Minute Hotel Goes With It
Today, the only newspaper in town (that town being Detroit),the Detroit News, wrote a strange and oddly poignant article about the demise of Cass Corridor. In one sense the passing of a location known for illegal activity and violence should be celebrated but the article details the struggles of one of the last standing "minute hotels." The part that made me well-up with tears: The waterbed in room 15 had to be removed b/c no one can afford the extra $5.
Detroit is losing part of its history and character, yes, a negative part to be sure, but once the negatives are gone, will there be any positive left to make Detroit relevant?
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091015/METRO08/910150425/Cass-Corridor…
October 15th, 2009 at 10:52 AM ^
IMHO there's no hope for Detroit in the near future. The city passed a tipping point a long time ago and now a lot of the people who could otherwise turn the city around have moved somewhere else. The tax breaks that Michigan is giving to the entertainment industry are a great idea though and have already paid some dividends.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:01 AM ^
So to recap, Detroit has no hope unless there is hope. BRILLIANT!
October 15th, 2009 at 12:11 PM ^
He said no hope in the near future. That doesn't mean that there is no hope that 50 years from now it could be the city it was 50 years ago (minus the obvious racial problems that started the riots and led to the city's downturn).
October 15th, 2009 at 10:53 AM ^
Robocop.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:47 AM ^
Don't be so quick to write off Axel Foley.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:58 AM ^
Living about a two minute drive from this place, I can say that the particular area is arguably the most depressed in all of America. For blocks all there is are empty buildings. You know things are bad when the hookers leave.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:20 AM ^
Stay safe, brother.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:22 AM ^
Or "depressing"?
I read an article a few years ago that talked about the demise of Detroit. It really began at the end of World War II. Returning GIs and their families wanted a bit more room to spread out and the white picket fences, which the suburbs offered. This led to a steadily declining population and a loss of the kinds of business that reflects a vibrant community (shopping, dining, etc). In turn, this inevitably led to a loss of tax revenue and poorer neighborhoods. After decades of rapidly losing altitude and gaining speed, Detroit is where it is. Time Magazine is, again, chronicling this sad volume as a testament to the decline of America's manufacturing power.
Personally, I think that when the hookers decide they can't make a buck, we've actually sunk lower than Atlantic City.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:25 AM ^
#4:
de⋅pressed
/dɪˈprɛst/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [di-prest] Show IPA
Use depressed in a Sentence
See web results for depressed
See images of depressed
–adjective
1. sad and gloomy; dejected; downcast.
2. pressed down, or situated lower than the general surface.
3. lowered in force, amount, etc.
4. undergoing economic hardship, esp. poverty and unemployment.
5. being or measured below the standard or norm.
6. Botany, Zoology. flattened down; greater in width than in height.
7. Psychiatry. suffering from depression.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:35 AM ^
See Thomas Sugrue's book, "The Origins of Urban Crisis". It wasn't just the GI's wanting to move to the newly minted suburbs, the federal government wanted them to move there as well and subsidized this desire through the Federal Highway Act and Federal Housing Authority.
And for those now lamenting the loss of Cass Corridor's last flophouse, there are plenty more (sadly) in the city to go around. See the Cabana Motel on the 94 service drive for evidence. http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=556
October 15th, 2009 at 10:14 PM ^
This is true, but it happened in cities all over the country, not just Detroit.
Detroit's biggest problem is that from 1973-93, it had incredibly poor leadership. Coleman Young used race-baiting and patronage to win elections, but it only served to drive away most of the city's most productive citizens (of all colors), not to mention many businesses.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 AM ^
I disagree that CAY was a poor leader from 1973-93. He was a very good leader in his first term or two (when he took the city over after "nobody else wanted it"), but did a terrible job, worthy of criticism, in his latter tenure. Detroit's problem did not start in 1973. The city was already in a 20 year decline, and that decline continues through today.
The trouble I see here is that while CAY is so often given the "race-baiting" and divisive label, the similarly divisive Brooks Patterson is given a pass - despite the career he built in the 1970's through his resistance to cross-district bussing and school integration.
I hate to defend CAY too much, because he deserves criticism, but these problems did not occur in a vacuum. The whole region was an active participant, and we are all paying the price.
As for the assertion that these things happened everywhere, and that everywhere else has recovered better than Detroit, I would say that Detroit's specific circumstances were fairly unique. What other place saw a similarly huge influx of workers from the South to work in a 20th century industrial boomtown that saw tons of growth pre-WWII and a slow decline ever since? Milwaukee... Cleveland... Indy... Sounds familiar. The thing is, we flew higher than all of those places combined, and we got burnt because of it.
October 23rd, 2009 at 4:18 PM ^
Detroit was still a functional city in 1973. In fact, the USOC had nominated it for the Olympics several consecutive times around then. Its population had dropped, but that was true of virtually every big city back then after the creation of the interstates. No one could have predicted in 1973 that Detroit would become a nationwide joke.
Young was the biggest part of Detroit's problem. He was elected in a very close race, at a time when the city's population was almost evenly split between blacks and whites - much like Chicago, Cleveland, and St. Louis are presently. The city badly needed a reconciliatory presence in the mayorship. Young was not that guy. Whites, who overwhelmingly did not vote for him, were nervous when he took office. Unfortunately, he did nothing to reassure them with his infamous "Hit Eight Mile" speech (among many others) and his incredibly clumsy integration of the police department. And once it became clear, in subsequent elections, that he did not need any white support, Young's race-baiting and class-warfare tactics became more and more overt, further fueling the exodus of whites (and later, middle-class black families) from the city. Detroit went from being 53% white (out of a total population of 1.5 million) in 1970 to 21% white in 1990 (out of barely 1 million), while its poverty rate soared. And through it all, Young saw fit to publicly insult the president, governor, surrounding county executives, and local business leaders. He could not have been more of a PR disaster. Pandering to the lowest common denominator made him untouchable but turned the city into a poorhouse.
As for Patterson, I agree that his background is sketchy in many ways. But the bottom line is that he at least understood where the money was and how to attract it. Young somehow thought that biting the hand that fed his city was a good idea.
October 15th, 2009 at 8:25 PM ^
I think this is the Time article you're referring to: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1925796,00.html
I read it a couple of weeks ago and it's a really interesting and enlightening article on Detroit's demise.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:55 AM ^
Was the lack of a mass transportation system? I mean sure there's the people mover but that doesn't really move people anywhere.
All great cities have a semblance of a public transportation system and I think that that is what did Detroit in (and ya know white flight).
October 15th, 2009 at 12:14 PM ^
The lack of a mass transit system definitely did not help Detroit prosper, but there are so many reasons for why Detroit is the way it is right now.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:19 PM ^
cities from the great:
NYC, London, Chicago, (pretty much all of Europe) all have great mass transportation systems. Sure you don't really need one when you're in Texas and can just build build build but I think that a good mass transportation is the hallmark of a great city.
I would classify that most of the cities in the top left are not nearly as good as cities in the bottom right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USCommutePatterns2006.png
October 15th, 2009 at 12:42 PM ^
That graph just shows old cities (NYC, Boston, Philly, DC) vs. new cities (Dallas, F/W, Houston, Phoenix). Sure there are some exceptions: SF vs. LA, but I don't think mass transportation is what makes a city "good" or "great". Just look at the number of people moving into the cities in the upper right hand corner in the past 20 years.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:24 PM ^
that was systematically dismantled in the early 1950's. The City and Region made a choice to get rid of trains and implement a 'balanced' system of highways and public transit that included only buses. (buses that I believe GM produced)
The last streetcar was removed from Woodward in 1956, coincidentally the same year as the Federal Highway Act. In fact, few of the big early 20th century streetcar, subway, and el systems in this country remain. (I can only think of NY, Chicago, Boston, and Philly... the trolleys in SF only sort of count) Other cities have all built new ones in the last 50 years - something that Detroit has not been able to do.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:35 PM ^
And this to me is exactly why Detroit never bothered to build a mass transportation system. Because they had all of their eggs in one basket with the big 3. Why would you encourage people to not drive their cars that were the life blood of the city? That is the real downfall of Detroit was no diversification of goods produced.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:35 PM ^
We have public transit in the form of streetcars. Makes driving for the first time here quite stressful, any time you want to turn you have to watch out for pedestrians, other cars and streetcars coming from two different directions.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:39 PM ^
It's called the people mover and it moves people.
Some days it goes clockwise, some days it goes counter clockwise. This just adds to the excitement.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:26 PM ^
in Detroit of several reasons:
1. The area was built on the automobile! Workers aspired to own one. Can you blame them?
2. Due to the incredible post WW2 prosperity of the Big 3, and the brilliant UAW leadership of Walter Reuther, the auto worker was an exceptionally well paid blue collar worker. As such, they could afford single family homes and moved in droves to suburbs like Warren, Southfield and Livonia. And the federal tax code subsidized single family home ownership thru mortgage interest and property tax deductions. Detroit historically has had the lowest percentage of residence in multifamily units (apartments) of any metro area in America. And with that came sprawl, since housing was horizontal, not vertical.
3. Mass transit requires population density to work efficiently. That's why cities with substantial vertical population, like New York, Toronto, Chicago, Paris, London, etc. have good mass transit. the working class people in the formative years of these cities did not have the affluence of the auto worker in the formative years of Detroit and so lived in apartments in the cities and not single family homes in the suburbs.
Now, Detroit's current predicament might be marginally improved by building a mass transit system but decry the lack of one it not to understand the history of Detroit.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:36 PM ^
Detroit can turn it around, they're starting to already. You won't see it for about 15-20 years though. Check out Pittsburgh as an example of what a post-industrial city can become.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:28 AM ^
I grew up on the edge of Wayne (The county Detroit is in). My grandfather had worked for the City of Detroit, saved his money, and moved the family out).
My mother and father had great memories of a great active Detroit when they were young. They told me a few times about the fear when Detroit burned in 67. Something they told me that you never see in books or news articles is that all the other cities in Michigan with large black populations also burned that week.
After the riots, the feds ordered all the jail camps opened and all the rioters released.
Right about that time Detroit started getting judges who thought punishing black crime was unfair, and would let them go.
Something my folks told me about, that you never see reported, is that in 1968 a black Detoit group called the Republic of New Africa was meeting in the city, and they ambushed two cops, killing one. When police got to the church the group was meeting in, they fired at the police and there was a seige. The police ended up arresting the group's leaders.
Judge Crockett and Del Rio, both black, set up court at the police station hosue and released all the men arrested, because the police were racist by patrolling near the church where the meeting was being held.
My parents said that was when women didn't feel safe in Detorit downtown with a black population because they would not be punished for crimes.
Then of course you had Young, and his constant race baiting and racial insults over and over and over and over.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:32 PM ^
Did your parents tell you about the decades of severe police abuse suffered by the city's black population? Did they tell you about the entrenched workplace discrimination at the factories everybody came here to work at? Did they tell you about the forgotten and marginalized African American ghettos scattered across Detroit, and how when people attempted to escape these ghettos, they were often met with organized violence in their new, white neighborhoods? Did they also tell you that these kinds of things happened in every city with a large black population in this and every other state?
I have no doubt that your family was frightened by the 67 riots - justifiably, but it does not mean that they have given you the entire story about the history of race relations in the city.