Pictures of Old Detroit & Homes

[jamiel]

I've had a slightly different experience than Carmine (are you at the Connor facility)? I work for GM at the Renaissance Center (headquarters), and was recruited to move up here from Atlanta where I worked for Cingular Wireless in 2005. I joined GM right as things were starting to slide downhill (the day before I was asked to switch from contract to direct-hire they announced layoff of 40,000 people). That said, it's great working in the city downtown. I wish the Renaissance Center were more centrally located (it's on the edge of downtown at the riverfront, so that it's about a 10 minute walk to the heart of downtown for lunch etc), but it's a nice facility. The progress on the riverfront has been amazing (originally there was no entry from the Ren Cen to the riverfront--it was set up as a bunker). I have been commuting downtown daily since, and have had no crime or other bad things happen (I did have a smash and grab a couple miles north of our house in a parking garage--I'd left a gift bag on the car seat--oops, that was stupid). Anyway, we live just beyond the city limits in Pleasant Ridge (10th gayest city in the country--according to the Census Bureau) which would be classified as an inner-ring suburb. I could easily take the bus to work every day (3 express buses an hour each direction during rush hours between downtown and 16 mile road), but don't because we have free parking (the big 3's car-friendly policies do distort commuting patterns severely). Yes, the city is bad, but there is definite improvement (there are 10s of thousands more jobs in downtown than there were before; although there has been a pull of many of these jobs from the suburbs by Blue Cross-Blue Shield and Quicken Loans).

That said, there is an energy around here which is palpable. The hope is that it can move from downtown/midtown (where Carmine speaks of the hipsters, it's that plus more--people wanting a less-sprawling lifestyle at all stages of their lives). The residential/settlement patterns of the city are decidedly low-density and resolutely middle-class (single family homes, not terribly well constructed) which exacerbates the blight (and is an interesting harbinger to what is going to happen in the sunbelt cities which sprawled in the 1980s/1990s with their acres of vinyl siding and HardiPlank). The depopulation of Detroit was starting 15 years before the 1967 riots (there is some excellent scholarship on that topic available).

Detroit is a really interesting case of America and capitalism, warts and all. I never fail to impress people new to the area just driving them on my commute and deviating by 1/4 mile to see the contrasts (Carmine--I drive Woodward to McNichols to I-75...imagine tooling through Palmer Woods and Highland Park).

 

[MrX]

Yeah, it's certainly an interesting city from a historical point of view. I actually have some direct connections to the place myself.

One of my ancestors started their life in Detroit, built their career there and then moved to New York when the city started to decline where she married an Irish guy and ended up spending the rest of her days in Ireland (well they were over and back between NYC and Dublin for years).

So, I guess I've a little bit of Motown in my genes!

Hopefully Detroit eventually finds its feet again. I think part of the problem now is that it's self-perpetuating because when it really fell dramatically off a cliff in the 1980s it also caused a 'brain drain' where a lot of people who had the qualifications or skills to create new businesses or work in businesses that might move in to the area have gone elsewhere.

I think though it does very much underline why you need a mixed economy with lots of different industries. If you're a one trick pony, your town can go from boom to bust incredibly quickly.

These days, people, businesses and capital are even more mobile than ever before, so I think it's going to be a case of 'boxing clever'. The places that are retaining some degree of success are the places that are able to move with the ebb and flow of business. If you're stuck with a big blue collar industry like the car manufacturing industries Detroit was built on, there's always a risk the rug can be pulled straight out from under you.

It's just the sad reality of how the modern world works. European countries tend to cushion it a bit with social welfare systems and abilities to up skill and retrain people when it does happen, but I think we're all going to have to move much more towards that model because as Detroit shows, a job for life's an unusual thing these days.

To me Detroit stands there as a rather tragic lesson in how not to do economics and governance.

--

It worries me that you're seeing other cities doing the same thing with other sectors for example, London and New York are entirely built around the Financial Services Sector. If something were to change that whipped that particular business model out from under them like a major disruptive technology that bypassed the banks and trading houses or some kind of a move away from big financial centres, those kinds of places could be New Detroit!

Although, the more likely New Detroits are going to be in China as the manufacturing industries move on to even cheaper destinations as Chinese incomes are now climbing rapidly.

 

[carmine]

Perhaps I didn't communicate this effectively... There is a perception (and I think some people want it that way) of "Oh well, manufacturing is dead. Detroit is F'ed because all they do is cars."

Au contraire mon frere, Michigan's recovery since 2008 has been called the second best in the nation BECAUSE of the auto industry...

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...48-states-shows-autos-drive-u-s-recovery.html

I've seen several other studies that rank us consistently in the top 5. The point of my earlier post was to show that Michigan is not Detroit; Detroit is not the auto industry. Detroit's "civic leaders" throughout the 70s-90s famously thought that the suburbs couldn't survive without the city's core. Not only were they completely wrong, but the suburbs are now paying the bills that keep many Detroit-City municipal and cultural institutions alive. The water department serves 130 suburban communities. The Detroit Institute of the Arts, The Zoo, and now Belle Isle state park are funded with out-of-city dollars. On the private side, Fox theater, baseball/football/hockey stadiums and COBO hall would all be failures without suburban dollars.

In fact, GM's purchase of the Renaissance Center in 1996 was a huge gift to the city of Detroit, because the 5-towers consistently low-occupancy rates meant it was a huge failure. Ironically, the 77-story Renaissance Center was constructed/financed by Ford Motor Co. Construction, (another gift, because no one else would invest in the city) which began in 1971, was supposed to symbolize a "renaissance" of the city proper after the 1967 riots.

GM spent $500 million renovating the space. Had they wish to "go suburban", they easily could have, as they owned all the land from 12-13 mile roads on the west side of Mound Road. This in fact was the original 1955 plan... GM's tech center would be east, and a new HQ would be built to the west, thus taking them out of Detroit almost entirely. But they didn't leave, and they GAVE their historic Albert Kahn-designed HQ for $1. It now houses 2000 state workers (my mother among them until her retirement).

Granted, their have been tax-breaks (I've voted to grant them in my own city) but off the top of my head, I can think of 5 MAJOR (as in multiple hundreds of million dollar) investments that GM/Chrysler have made withing the city since 1980 at times when no other private investor would build so much as a supermarket within the city proper. (There have been only two major supermarkets added to the city in the past 3-years. Prior to that, I can only think of one built in the previous 30-years, which failed... Astounding when you consider the size of the city.)

Detroit's leadership failed DESPITE having a number of generous taxpaying manufacturers. They did zero to retain or earn new investment. City's like Warren, Sterling Heights, Auburn Hills, and older communities like Dearborn are FAR MORE dependent on the auto industry than Detroit which has Wayne State Unversity, several teaching hospitals, Compuware, Rock Financial, etc. Yet these suburban communities remain safe and desirable.

The pockets of new growth downtown are coming from those who knew were betting city would soon be run by an emergency manager (as it is now) and that bankruptcy would leave their council and mayor powerless, (as it is now).

If people in the mold of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick,

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/201...c-corruption-inside-the-kwame-kilpatrick-case

Councilwoman Monica Conyers,

http://www.examiner.com/article/det...nica-conyers-blunders-are-great-entertainment

Councilman Charles Pugh,

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/09/disappearing_ex-detroit_counci.html

...still had any power within the city, there would be no chance for a rebirth.

They failed their constituents. They failed Detroit. An entire generation of post '67 riot politicians started the failure/corruption-ball rolling before some of them were born.

 

[petek]

Time for pictures

 

[petek]

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[petek]

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[launderess]

New York City & Financial Sector

While yes, it is true "Wall Street" still does play a major role in both NYS and NYC finances, the City at least has been working under the Bloomberg administration and even before to diversify and bring other good to high paying sources of employment.

NYC for instance has an aggressive film/media industry program.

Bloomberg (not surprising) has also been pushing the past few years to make New York City the "Silicon Valley" on the Hudson. Google and other major tech companies have major offices here and there is a push to expand. Cornell or some large college is building a tech campus on an East River island. Indeed according to latest numbers the tech sector in NYC is just behind Wall Street in terms of importance to the City's economy.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4...mmit-study-says-new-york-city-tech-is-booming

Financial services in NYC have been shrinking since the meltdown several years ago when Lehman Bros and others bit the dust. Yes, there are still high paying jobs to be had but the sector is shrinking and will continue to do so as Wall Street adjusts to the Dodd-Frank Act and other parts of the new reality of the US banking/credit system.

Wall Street today is more and more a residential district than anything else. Office buildings one remembers from one's brokerage assistant days are now condos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_in_New_York_City

 

[carmine]

Jamiel,

Yes, I do work at Conner. Have been a few other places in my career at Chrysler inluding a few years in Arizona!

 

[MrX]

@laundress

The UK's financial services sector's probably a little oversized to put it mildly in terms of its importance to the British economy.

The financial service sector now accounts for about 9.6% of UK GDP directly vs about 7.9% of US GDP for the US sector.

Ours is pretty high here in Ireland too with about 7.2% of GDP coming from the IFSC (International Financial Service Centre) .. a single cluster of companies in Dublin!

 

[rpms]

I was showing these pictures to my dad and he started to talk about visiting his cousin, Betty, in Detroit in 1958.
He remembered the address and I Googled it. You can take a virtual tour both inside and outside.
The house sold in 2006 for $54,000. It was sold again in 2010 for $67,149. It was sold again in 2012 for $3,101. Yikes! Can you imagine being retired and your life savings were poured into your house? Betty, moved probably 10 years ago
The address is 5300 Radnor Detroit, Michigan.

 

[rpms]

55 years later...
You can still see where the jack was for the phone. Looks like the same cupboards in the next pic.

 

[rpms]

[No message]

 

[rpms]

Love the tv

 

[davey7]

My father's side of the family first settled in Detroit (they were sponsored by my grandmothers sister who had emigrated to the US when my grandmother was an infant). My grandparents stayed in the Detroit area until we moved my grandmother to be closer to my parents when she couldn't live on her own anymore (she lived to 101).

My dad and his brothers all left Detroit for graduate school. They found it to be rather provincial and my dad remembers having trouble with girls not wanting to date him because he didn't "want to be an engineer for the automotive industry" (he is a retired academic, as were both of his brothers). Note; my father was a young adult when he came to the states in the 50's.

My point is, it really was a one industry town, at least in mind, if not actuality. Of course, Detroit proper suffered as factory technology switched to single-floor layouts and needed more space and preferred building on greenfield sites rather than rebuilding existing factories (obviously you couldn't close down a plant to rebuild it with much ease). And of course the ugly R word has a lot to do with that problems, much like Gary over in Indiana.

 

[jamiel]

There is an interesting point to be made about Detroit. In the US there are really only 3 industry towns: New York for money/banking; LA for media; and Detroit for auto. If you're serious about that industry, that's where the knowledge and ecosystem for these industries reside. Other industries don't have the same coalescence or proximity benefits. There are literally thousands of people working for Toyota/Nissan/VW/Hyundai in SE Michigan (not to mention the big 3 and the supplier base). As the Sunbelt has pulled some of the assembly plants, it hasn't been able to find a location to create a hub of knowledge like Detroit for any of the higher-value activities. VW tried to do that moving their HQ from suburban Detroit to suburban Washington DC; only to return most of the positions back in the last couple years. It makes for an interesting environment, but I really like the energy.