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Detroit: A city in transition
Compare the case studies of Detroit, an older industrialized city in a developed country, and Jakarta, a boomtown in a developing country. Examine the different types of problems each city has in growth, land use, sanitation services, wastes, transportation, energy use, jobs, and other issues.
In 1915, Henry Ford's Model T automobile rolled off the first moving assembly line and catapulted Detroit, Michigan, into international renown as the birthplace of modern industrial production. The assembly line revolutionized manufacturing. When Ford announced that workers would make $5 for an 8-hour shift--in contrast to the standard wage of $2.75 for a 10-hour shift--crowds of eager workers besieged factory doors (1). Job-seekers came not only from neighboring states but also from as far away as Ireland and Eastern Europe. Large numbers of both whites and blacks came from the deep South in search of jobs and opportunities. Housing could not be built fast enough--by 1920, the city lacked adequate shelter for more than 30,000 families (2). Detroit's population quadrupled in only 20 years, from 285,704 in 1900 to well over 1 million by 1921 (3) (4). In the 1930s, Detroit saw itself as a futuristic city of science and industry. By 1950, its population was almost 2 million. Inspired by post-World War II boom times, city planners were building roads and houses for a city of 8 million (5). Forty-five years later, however, the population of the city proper of Detroit is again hovering around the 1 million mark. Detroiters have fled the central city for the broader six-county area, which now has a population of 4.3 million (6). Ironically, the automobile is now at the heart of a new urban transition: suburban flight. Left behind is a central city constantly struggling to revitalize itself, but marred by abandoned buildings, spray-painted graffiti, and other signs of the hopelessness and frustration of poverty. From Fur Trading to Car BuildingThe former Ville d'Etroit ("City of the Strait") started out in 1701 as a French-Indian fur-trading center on the Detroit River. Detroit was laid out with its center on the river and its main arteries fanning out into the rich, flat farmland. By the late 1800s, Detroit was a manufacturing center for marine motors, steam engines, carriages, wagons, and farm implements. In the early 1900s, it switched to the manufacture of auto parts. The auto industry boomed during the 1920s. Layoffs of workers in the Great Depression of the 1930s sparked worker interest in labor unions, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Teamsters.Racial History and ContributionsDetroit's racial history reflects many of the problems experienced in numerous North American cities. Because of its location just across the river from Canada, Detroit was a major terminal on the underground railwayþa system that smuggled slaves out of the South to freedom in Canada before and during the Civil War. In the early 1900s, many southern blacks migrated to Detroit seeking jobs in the auto industry. They did find jobs, but were usually given the most menial and most dangerous work, such as spray painting and foundry and janitorial jobs (7).Blacks were forced to live in certain areas of the central city. As late as 1942, white mobs attacked blacks attempting to move into a federally built segregated apartment building--the Sojourner Truth Homes--built on the edge of traditionally white territory (8). One of Detroit's claims to fame is the Motown Sound developed by Motown Records in the early 1960s, which nurtured some of America's favorite recording artists, such as Diana Ross, the Temptations, the Jackson Five (including Michael Jackson), and Stevie Wonder. Although Motown Records has moved to Los Angeles, Detroit's black music community continues its strong tradition in local clubs, with jazz and blues summer festivals along the riverfront. Detroit suffered race riots in 1943 (34 people killed) and 1967 (43 people killed); in both cases, most of those killed were black. The 1967 riots were similar to riots in other cities at that time, when blacks across the country were expressing extreme frustration with barriers to progress. Flight to the SuburbsFollowing World War II, Detroit saw a housing boom and annexed several suburbs to reach its current size of 140 square miles (360 square kilometers). However, suburban flight began in the 1950s and accelerated in the wake of the 1967 riots. Like several other North American cities with large black populations, Detroit was in turmoil in the late 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, whites abandoned the city and settled in sprawling developments on its outskirts; today, the city proper is 76 percent African-American (9).Urban sprawl, a trait common to large U.S. cities in recent decades, creates a number of problems. Because everything is so spread out and the automobile is the main form of transportation, energy use is extremely inefficient. U.S. cities use much more energy than cities in the rest of the world. Carbon dioxide emissions (from the burning of fossil fuels) are two times higher in U.S. cities than in European cities (10), and probably close to 5 to 10 times higher than in cities in developing countries (11). Even more troublesome, however, is the chasm that grows between inner city and suburb when sprawl develops. The people who cannot afford to leave the inner city are abandoned, and buildings and land are allowed to deteriorate as development leapfrogs to fringe areas. Before World War II, most factories in Detroit were located along railroad lines, and workers' homes were clustered near train stations. As motor vehicles became less expensive, however, industries began to use trucks instead of trains to move materials. Freeway construction allowed plants to be located farther away from materials (12). As the old auto plants in the city aged, many were replaced by suburban plants (in Wixom, Flat Rock, Pontiac) or by plants in other states or countries. By the 1980s, suburban sprawl around Detroit had metamorphosed from a collection of "bedroom communities" to full-fledged "edge cities"; not only housing but also jobs and services began to be concentrated in these areas. Edge citiesþoften centered on a mall at the intersection of freewaysþare built to a scale to accommodate the car, not the human (13). When cars are the transportation mode of choice, public transportation is often nonexistent. Today, the lack of public transportation limits job opportunities for inner-city residents. Four in ten Detroit residents between the ages of 18 and 65 do not have a car and are unable to get to jobs, which are located primarily in the suburbs (14). An attempt was made in the mid-1970s to revive the downtown area by building the huge, shiny, 73-story Renaissance Center--a central tower surrounded by four shorter towers that look like pistons in an engineþto attract conventions and businesses. The center was spearheaded by Henry Ford II and a group of businessmen. After several years of optimism, most of the tenants left. Ironically, in 1996, the entire complex was purchased by Ford's major competitor, General Motors, which moved its offices there. Urban PovertyThe suburban exodus of jobs has trapped Detroit in a downward economic spiral, leaving the local government without a sufficient tax base to generate funds to manage the city. In addition, thepercentage of poor has more than doubled, from 15 percent in 1970 to 32 percent in 1990 (15). The median income in Detroit was less than $10,000 in 1994 (16).Although poverty is widely distributed throughout the city, the highest levels are found in the center. The suburbs are more affluent (17) (18). Infant mortality rates are three times higher in Detroit (21 per thousand live births) than in the neighboring suburb of Warren (7 per thousand) (19). Violent crime is a major problem in Detroit. Until recently, the murder rate had been rising steadily, from 33 per 100,000 population in 1970, to 46 in 1980, and to 59 in 1991 (20) (21) (22). But in 1992 it began to decline, and in 1994 it stood at 53, the third highest in the country after New Orleans and St. Louis. This rate was well above the rates in Los Angeles (24), Houston (21), and Philadelphia (26) (23). Drug trafficking is also a problem. Water and WasteDetroit's water and sewage systems were installed decades ago and are suffering from lack of maintenance. Filtration systems are not sophisticated enough to capture microbiological contaminants, such as cryptosporidium, which made people sick in Milwaukee in 1993. Gasoline and oil from city streets wash into the city's waterways when it rains, and during heavy downpours the city's sewage pipes overflow into rivers.The city's solid waste disposal system is outdated. In the United States, people in cities produce more garbage per capita than the national average. Preventing so much waste in the first place would be ideal, and improving recycling is important. A study by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that other cities of comparable size--such as San Diego and San Antonio--recycle as much as 19 percent of their waste. Detroit recycles about 5 percent (24). Air QualityAir quality in Detroit has improved dramatically since the United States passed the Clean Air Act in 1970. In 1992, however, the city still had 154 days in which air pollution levels were high enough to cause discomfort to asthma or allergy sufferers or to be annoying or aesthetically displeasing. The city also experienced 11 days when air pollution reached unhealthful levels.HousingThe number of houses in Detroit has declined over the past two decades, although not as rapidly as the city's population. The 1990 Census found about 36,000 vacant housing units in Detroit. Between 1970 and 1990, some 119,000 Detroit houses were torn down, leaving 410,000 units in 1990 (25).The city has a program to remove abandoned buildings, which pose a threat throughout the year as a haven for drug users and on Devilþs Night (the night before Halloween) as targets for arsonists. As a result of this program, the city is riddled with vacant lots, a handful of which have been reclaimed in neighborhood tree-planting projects through the Urban Resources Initiative Program (26). Satellite photos of Detroit show that the central city is being reclaimed by vegetation (bushes and trees growing up in vacant lots and around abandoned properties). Lead Paint HazardThe problem of highly toxic lead in old paint in homes affects mostly poor, minority residents in the inner city. According to the 1990 U.S. Census, over 97 percent of Detroit's homes were built before lead-based paint was banned, so most contain some lead-based paint. Furthermore, it is estimated that the paint is deteriorating, and thus more likely to be inhaled or ingested, in about 69 percent of the houses (27).BrownfieldsIn addition to its vacant lots, Detroit has about 2,500 vacant industrial sites, called brownfields. Taken together, these constitute one of Detroit's most pressing problems. The situation is common in old industrial cities in the United States. When companies moved to new sites in the suburbs or went out of business, they left behind land and buildings contaminated by heavy metals such as lead, mercury, copper, cadmium, and chromium. While the presence of brownfields does not always mean that humans are exposed to toxics, it does detract from the economic value of the land. Companies are hesitant to invest in the land because of expensive cleanup regulations.Environmental JusticeIn Detroit, as elsewhere, those living in such undesirable locations tend to be members of minority groups and the poor. In a landmark study published in 1987 that looked at the distribution of commercial hazardous waste facilities across the nation, the United Church of Christ found that "the proportion of residents who are minorities in communities that have a commercial hazardous waste facility is about double the proportion of minorities in communities without such facilities. Where two or more such facilities are located, the proportion of residents who are minorities is more than triple" (28). Detroit and three surrounding counties contain 16 such facilities, half of which are in the city proper. In a 1992 study, researchers found that within 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) of a facility 48 percent of the residents were minorities and 29 percent were below the poverty line. At more than 1.5 (2.4 kilometers) miles away, those figures drop to 18 percent minorities and 10 percent below the poverty line (29). The realization that minorities are bearing a disproportionate burden of the results of pollution is at the heart of a growing movement in favor of "environmental justice."What Next?An analysis of Detroit in the early 1990s found that the city had failed to attract new businesses, such as banking and other service industries. Attempts at establishing metropolitan-wide planning had failed, and political decisionmaking often broke down into debates between the white suburbs and the black inner city. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s, politics were dominated by a strong Democratic party and active labor unions, the active engagement of civil society in government was sorely lacking (30). The election of a new mayor in 1994 brought new hope to the city. Spurred by the belief that the city government cannot tackle Detroit's ills on its own, the mayor's office is working to facilitate partnerships with community members and private businesses. In 1996, Detroiters voted to allow casino gambling, which is now being touted as the economic salvation of the city. Plans call for three large casinos to be constructed.In addition, Detroit recently won a $100 million urban redevelopment grant from the federal government to encourage new businesses to move to the central city (31). In the zone marked for renewal, 47 percent of residents live below the poverty line (32). The redevelopment proposal covers job training, building renovation, parenthood classes, and other programs (33). By 2005, Mayor Dennis Archer hopes to create 5,800 new jobs in the area (34). Cooperative ventures between banks, schools, and auto companies are expected to pump an additional $1.9 billion into the community over the next 10 years and to generate at least 3,275 more jobs (35). In 1997, many Detroiters are hopeful that their city may rebound. Indeed, property values are increasing throughout the city, and some areas are beginning to see new activity. References
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 World Resources Institute, 10 G Street, NE (Suite 800), Washington, DC 20002 (202/729-7600; fax: 202/729-7610). For more information contact lauralee@wri.org. |