Coleman Young wrote that on the night he became the first black mayor of Detroit, he had conflicted emotions. On one hand, he said it was “a preposterous, impossible dream come true.” On the other hand, he said he knew he was only getting elected because “the white people didn’t want the damn thing any more. They were getting the hell out, more than happy to turn over their troubles to some black sucker like me.”
That was forty-five years ago, and more and more of us, black and white, are now coming to realize that we are all in this together. What really caused Detroit’s decline? Some white folks think it was irresponsible blacks who didn’t want to work or keep up their homes.
Some blacks think it was because whites used the city up and then abandoned it, taking their jobs and money with them. There’s some truth in that, but the main reasons are different.
Two things happened to doom the Detroit that once had almost two million people, and was the industrial automotive center of the world. The city did not have a responsible zoning plan, so that when Detroit exploded in growth a century ago, houses were thrown up just about everywhere. Old auto factories had multiple stories, like the Model T plant in Highland Park. After World War II, automakers wanted to build more efficient, sprawling single-story factories.
But Detroit didn’t have the large parcels of land needed.
So the Big Three went to the suburbs, and other states. Cities like Los Angeles and even Toledo grew by annexing nearby tracts of land. Detroit was up against county lines and incorporated areas, and hasn’t been able to add a single parcel since 1927.
Parts of the city were also crowded. When the Lodge Freeway opened in 1954, people started moving to the suburbs. This wasn’t white flight at first – they wanted more space. As people and jobs started to leave, Detroit taxed those remaining to try and keep up services, which caused more to leave. Then came the riot or rebellion of 1967.
Today, Detroit has barely 670,000 people in a space that once held three times as many. Things are definitely better in the downtown-midtown corridor, but not so much elsewhere.
What’s needed most is two things: Detroit needs a good public school system, one people of all classes and races trust. And the city needs jobs.
Coleman Young used the power of eminent domain to force the sale of private property so that General Motors could build the Poletown, otherwise known as the Hamtramck Assembly Plant. This was highly controversial, and in 2004 the Michigan Supreme Court ruled it illegal to use eminent domain to give land to private developers.
Professor John Mogk thinks that was a mistake.
He’d like to see a constitutional amendment giving the city the right to use eminent domain judiciously, with protection for the rights of legitimate homeowners.
That may be worth seriously thinking about. Consider this: Mayor Duggan told me that when Foxconn was flirting with Michigan, he approached them on behalf of Detroit – but the city couldn’t possibly put together the thousand acres they wanted.
And as controversial as the Poletown plant was, it is today one of only two auto factories still operating in the City of Detroit.
This essay first aired on Superstation 910 AM
