detroit despair from above

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Cybrvanr

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I watched a show on the History Channel this week about assembly lines. They featured Ford's Rouge river assembly plant. This intrigued me to look at the facility today and see what it looked like. To do that, I used Google earth, and I found www.thehenryford.org/rogue

At the peak of it's operation, from 1930-1950 or so, the complex employed about 100,000 workers. The plant basically made cars from beginning to end...ore went in one end, and finished vehicles came out the other. The plant even produced it's own electricity! Today, the plant only employs a small fraction of it's once mighty workforce...about 5000. Today, Ford owns only about half of the complex from what they previously owned, and has no more river frontage. Ford got out of the steel mill business, and the glass making business, among many others, and in the process, sold of the sections of the plant that performed those duties. While some of the employment at Rogue is being performed by third party, and not Ford, there is still significantly less work being performed there than it was during it's peak.

According to the web site, Ford was intending to close the plant in 1992 when the only car still in production there, the Musting, was slated to be discontinued. You can thank Mustang fans, and the employees at Rogue for saving such an American icon :) Today the plant also produces pickup trucks and SUV's, and the sections owned by Ford have been significantly modernized.

From Google earth, large sections of the complex appear to be either abandoned, or dormant, as there is not smoke coming from stacks, no vehicles or supples sitting outside, and it all looks dirty and dingy like it has not been maintained in a long while. In particular, the dock area around the steel mill and such that was the original section of the plant that Henry Ford build in the 20's. Only the northeast quadrant of the facility appears to be used. This is the area I guess that was modernized.

Looking farther out on the city of Detroit in Google Maps shows extreme dispair of magnificent proportions. There are significant square miles of residental neighborhoods around detroit. However, more than half of the neighborhoods have empty lots that can be easily seen from the aerial photographs. I also noticed that there is hardly any traffic seen on the streets, unlike aerial photographs of New York, DC, and other thriving cities. Many of the downtown areas too are not occupied by large high-rise buildings, but parking lots...very empty parking lots! Detroit is home to 950,000 people, and about half of those rent their homes, and don't own them. (http://detroit.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm) Detroit is a very large city geographically, but significant portions of it are abandoned and unoccupied. It's population peak was in 1970, when it had over 1.6 million people living there. This, was also the peak of the American automotive industry.

This is very sad. I have seen pictures of many of the homes in the area from both yesteryear and today. Many bungalows and forsquares of which were built before WWII and were quite nice family homes at the time and housed the autoworkers and supporting businesses. You can see where the American dream used to be very, very real for the people of Detroit, and they lived very well off. Ford, in particular provided many jobs for minorities, and allowed the American dream to be a reality for not just caucaians. Today however, Detroit is known for it's high crime, especially among it's black population.

If you have ever seen Eminem's movie "The 8-mile", it appears to depict life in Detroit quite accurately....of torn apart families barey making it by scraping together any dime they could find. One of the most profound parts of the movie I remember was when he was with his friends, and they spotted an abandoned house. They chose to burn the house down becasue it was a source of crime. One of his friends said "Funny, I always wanted to live in a house just like this one"

I find this interesting when comparing it to my own hometown here of Richmond, which is home to 1.1 million people (counties and suburbs included) and is doing pretty good economically. Population wise, the area is bigger than Detroit. The greater Richmond area occupies a significantly less area geographically. We have been blessed with the telecom and other high-tech industries, and thankfully have spared the despair that has afflicted many manufacturing & industrial based cities like Detroit. It is just so sad to see a city that once provided people with a great place to live with such blight. I hope that it is something that can be turned around, but with the state of manufacturing in the USA today, I don't see much hope, and worst of all, I see
 
We're about 60 miles north of Detroit and on the Canadian side of the river but we'd be taken by the folks to the Detroit zoo, shopping etc quite regularly until all the riots in the late 60's. We always still went to the car show and my mom would always go to the flower show but other than that there wasn't much left downtown but houses that looked worse than burned out Beirut. It's actually quite a lot better now, I was there a few days ago, downtown area that is, still it's not a real downtown that you go to walk around etc..the convention center and casinos are the only real attractions. I always thought to see the real disparity in wealth all you had to do was drive along Jefferson which is quite slummy, cross one street light into Grosse Pointe and be into multi million dollar mansions. Still for all its woes there's lots to see and do. I can spend hours at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village and never tire of it.
 
Detroit, Flint and any number of Michigan towns, like many others in that area suffered badly from white fight and the decline of American manufacturing and steel production. Free trade hasn't helped matters much either.

Sad thing is that such areas feed a vicious circle. Businesses won't move there because of the conditons/lack of good labour force. State and local governments cannot do things to turn the area around/increase the qualit of the labour force without steady funding sources/taxes for the major projects it takes to do those things.

Gambling will only get a town/city but so far, as it seems most everywhere is hounding out casinos as away to raise revenue. Sad thing is that without a "hook" to draw people and businesses back, nothing will change.

L.
 
Some parts of Pittsburgh still show signs of the lost steel industry from when it shut down in the early 80's. Some mill sites have been turned into shopping centers and research labs but there is still a lot of empty space. Our city now has about 300,000 people in the city. I understand that back in the 50's there were twice as many people. In fact, there are more transplanted Pittsburghers in other cities that from any other city on earth!

Laundress, right now city council is trying to decide which casino company should get to be in Pittsburgh. This is just after PA permitted gambling. Lots of people, including me, don't like the idea.
 
Don't write off Detroit just yet....

Another website I follow is detroityes.com, home of "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" which is a fascinating collection of ruined buildings in Detroit. You can also check out forgottendetroit.com for some great in-depth coverage of selected buildings.

But something I find very encouraging is that Starwood Hotels has made a big investment in Detroit. Not only are they remodelling the Hotel Ponchatrain to become the Sheraton-Ponchatrain, they are working with developers to restore the long-vacant Book-Cadillac Hotel into the Westin Book-Cadillac, and Book-Cadillac Residences (a condo project on the upper floors of this mamouth hotel).

I used to work for Starwood. They will not make an investment in a location unless they can be SURE there is money to be made. So I view this as quite exciting for Detroit.
 
Those are some absloutely beautiful buildings there Dan! Even as they sit abandoned and run down, their beauty still shines. One of the worst parts about this is that in the attempts at "urban renewal" and to reduce crime, the abandoned buildings are being demolished, and along with them, their unique craftsmanship and beauty will be gone forever.
 
The downfall of the Detroit and Flint Michigan areas certainly illustrate the FAILURE of the service economies being tried-you need those high paying and benefit jobs to SUPPORT the service economy jobs-maybe someday the economists will understand-common "Horse sense"isn't it?How many other idustrial areas like Detroit are going to fall to this before someone wakes up?After all there isn't enough higher paying service and hi tech jobs for every job hunter and job holder out there.This country needs to learn they can't abandon their main Bread and butter-and thats INDUSTRY!!Some of these trade treaties we signed--need to be "unsigned" before its too late!
 
Holiday Road..

Starting in 1960 we made a road trip every other year, from Phoenix, AZ back to Detroit, where my family is from. Chevy Chase had nothing on us. My sister, mom, the occasional older brother/sister and my younger brother. Who were those crazy people in a 1962 black Galaxie with the windows up in Summer? Crazy people that had A/C in their car! Miles of Route 66, odd little motels and meatloaf for sandwiches kept in an ice chest in the trunk. No fast food for us.

My Grandmother lived near The Rouge in Lincoln Park. The sky would be red from the smokestacks of that place. And me being a car nut always wanted to go there. In 1965 we finally made it to The Rouge on a factory tour. Over the steel furnaces on an open catwalk. Through the stamping mill. Oh the glass factory part was too dangerous to see. Yeah, they just about cooked us, then blew out our eardrums, but glass is too dangerous. Finally to see new 1966 Mustangs being assembled as the body changes were not too different than the 1965s. Ford was keeping their other assembly lines under wraps.

Funny how car makers used to change most of their models ever year, add new features and mostly have stayed in business. Let's see, how about that 2006 Grand Marquis, and what is different about it than the 1992 model? And car makers wonder why people aren't buying cars.

One of these years I hope to make a road trip back there.
 
I live in Roseville, 2 miles North of "8" mile. I frequently go into the city in search of estate sale goodies or old appliance and tv shops. Believe me, you aren't missing much! It depresses me how run down it is, with the factories in decay, and burned out buildings. If you want to see what the city was before the 1967 riots, see "Detroit a city on the move" on the prelinger archives. I think it was made in '65 and was made to lure the olympics here. One thing was true, Detroit was a city on the move after '67!
 
The riot started on my 18th birthday...

I was working in K-Mart sporting goods on Sherwood & Outer Drive. We nearly had a riot of our own from all the people who showed up wanting to buy guns and ammo, sale of which had been forbidden. We had to move all the stock back into the stockroom and keep the door locked. Eighteen was when you had to register for Selective Service, and my draft board was downtown in the Cadillac Tower. I sweated out going down until I couldn't stand it anymore on Thursday. (riot started on Sunday) It was a completely eerie trip through mostly empty streets, with burned down buildings in a lot of places. Fire trucks rode around with armed National Guardsmen rinding on the ladders. These guys were camped out at Farwell Field adjacent to the armory on 8-Mile, and their helicopters flew right over our house at all hours of the day and night. I never witnessed anything myself and never was in any danger but I recall being mighty apprehensive. Over forty people were killed one way or another during the riot. A couple of years later I had a summer job working for the City on a surveying crew, and we went all over the city. I did not realize until then how widespread the riot damage was. I think that Detroit had already begun to slide by 1967, but the riot sped up the process. The original poster said the population today is 950,000. In the 1950s when I was growing up it was nearly two million. That is a big change.
 
Detroit could come back....

I'm a lifelong New Yorker....

I would think that anyone coming back to this city after five years' absence would be flabbergasted at the amount of new development and restoration of neighborhoods...

I was skeptical at first, but I AM seeing wonderful homes being resurrected out of once-grand neighborhoods even I was frightened to venture in, when I was a kid.

I believe Detroit could come back.
 
Boy, does that bring back the memories. I remember my mom begging my dad not to go into work the next day. His office was at East Warren and Cadieux, not in the riot area, but she was afraid it might spill over near his office. Sadly, As far as I am concerned the city has never been the same since the riots. I have lived in AZ and NC and stayed at just about all other large cities in the 48 thanks to a traveling job I used to have (Hughes Aircraft). Everyone always joked about where I came from though. Most common ones were Detoilet and murder city..
 
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