DETROIT – First the good news: Detroit voters saved the city from economic and political chaos earlier this month, when they rejected a proposed new city charter that would have likely landed the city in court, in bankruptcy and possibly back under state control.
What’s more, the residents, a large majority of whom are black, voted overwhelmingly in favor of giving Mayor Mike Duggan, who is white, a third four-year term in November. In a field of ten candidates, Duggan, 63, who led the city through bankruptcy and out of state control, got an amazing 72.5 percent of the primary vote.
Duggan, a former prosecutor, Wayne County political boss and head of the Detroit Medical Center, will still face a runoff in November against Anthony Adams, an attorney and former deputy mayor under disgraced criminal Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
But you might ask why bother with a second election? The primary vote was 50,853 for the incumbent to 7,014 for Adams, who pledged to work to make housing and water more affordable. There was a somewhat subtle attempt to make race a factor in the primary campaign. Anthony Adams, like most Detroiters, is black, and talked of taking the city back.
But Duggan’s race has never seemed to bother Detroiters, who view their mayor as “the man who gets it done.” In his first race, when he was ruled off the ballot because of a technicality, a majority of voters wrote in his name, and he won easily.
Since then, the Duggan administration has brought working lights to every street in Detroit for the first time in decades. Hundreds of derelict buildings have been razed. Police response times have drastically improved. Downtown Detroit is looking better than at any time since the 1960s, or at least it was before the pandemic hit.
Yet, nevertheless, the city is still failing. Yes, the finances have stabilized, and the city is being well-run. But as a place to live, Detroit is largely a disaster, one that seems to be getting worse.
The proof of that can be found in a report released in May by Detroit Future City, a respected non-profit dedicated to finding solutions for Detroit. Its findings were grim:
While nearly three-fifths of everyone in the Detroit Metropolitan Area lives in a middle-class neighborhood, only five percent of Detroiters do. Some African-Americans are, to be sure, doing better financially. But when they do become middle-class, most leave Detroit for a nearby suburb.
The detailed report, called “The State of Economic Equity in Detroit,” could be summed up by saying there is little to no equity, and the contrast between city and suburb is getting worse.
The report is filled with sad statistics that prove it. Average household income in Detroit was $33,900 in 2019; in the entire region, it was $63,000. Detroiters have a life expectancy that is five years fewer than someone living in the suburbs.
Unemployment in the city is one and a half times what it is in the suburbs. To be sure, incomes have improved since the Great Recession of 2008-9, but while white Detroiters have seen theirs rise by an average of 60 percent, blacks have only seen an eight percent boost.
While many say that small business is the key to economic success, in Detroit, it is brutally hard to raise capital; the city is 99th out of a hundred in entrepreneurship rates.
There’s also an education crisis, one in which only 17 percent of third-graders can read as well as they should. Overall, it is hard to see how Detroit can ever be anything like prosperous again. That’s without even considering woes like crime, unaffordable car insurance and a lack of public transportation.
In a foreword, Detroit Future City CEO Anika Goss blamed “the systematic racism of the policies of the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, 60’s and ‘70s (which) continue in economic development policy even today.”
That may well be true, but although the report suggests things that need to be done (such as “increase access to quality affordable housing”) it doesn’t really have ways to make this happen.
There is, however, a clear way to fix Detroit that would work, and which was outlined by urban expert David Rusk in his brilliant 1993 book Cities Without Suburbs (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)
Metropolitan government.
Combine Detroit with its suburbs, few of which would ever have existed without the jobs the city once provided. There’s more than enough tax base to rebuild the city, something that would have a catalytic effect that would eventually help the whole region.
“Inelastic cities die; elastic cities become more prosperous,” said Rusk, meaning that cities that can increase their land area (and tax base) do well, and those that can’t, eventually lose out.
Detroit and Los Angeles were both booming in the 1920’s. But Detroit was up against county lines and incorporated cities, and couldn’t grow, while Los Angeles (like Toledo in the 1960s) kept annexing land.
But in some cases, cities have combined with their suburbs to form a sort of supercity. Indianapolis is one. Miami-Dade County and Omaha also have gone that route, and it has worked.
So far, however, there has been no political will in Michigan to do that. Racism has played a role: Black voters in Detroit were reluctant to give up the political power they were so long denied.
Meanwhile, many whites have indicated they don’t want to pay taxes to help Detroit. The result has been a lose-lose for everyone.
Fixing this is possible. Detroiters were willing to overlook race to do the right thing in choosing a mayor. Their neighbors in the suburbs should be smart enough to do the right things as well.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
