See Part I in Sept. 2 post, immediately below
Coleman Young
and the
Push-Pull of the Suburbs
Detroit hit the iceberg in the fifties when the J.L. Hudson Co., the city's premiere downtown department store purchased rural land at the city's northwest border of Eight Mile Road to create Northland Mall, the world's first and largest major retail mall. Later Hudson's built Eastland Mall on Eight Mile Road on the city's northeast edge. The malls spurred the development of affordable suburban housing north of Eight Mile Road in Oakland and Macomb Counties. Instantly, these malls began sucking retail business from Detroit's downtown as well as from the city's strip malls on its main drags like Livernois, Grand River, Gratiot and Michigan avenues. By the eighties Hudson's downtown store was operating at a loss and eventually, in 1992, Hudson's closed the once world- famous and elegant downtown store on Woodward Avenue. The building was empty for six years until it was imploded in 1998.
Expressway Construction Guts City
Another force was at work during the fifties that would gut Detroit. Still fresh from his experience in World War II, President Eisenhower saw the military importance of roads and said let's build a border-to-border freeway system for national defense and commerce. This led to the Federal Highway Act of 1956, the largest public works act in history and the single-most destroyer of inner cities. It also marked the end of a robust railroad system and the beginning of a booming trucking industry.
Soon, the John Lodge Expressway replaced James Couzens Road, then the Ford Expressway was built to slice east-west across the city, paralleling northeast-bound Gratiot Avenue. Both the Lodge and the Ford destroyed thousands of beautiful homes and vibrant neighborhoods and displaced thousands of black and white residents, as well as creating a new housing market for whites in blue collar suburbs like Warren. Later, the Walter P. Chrysler northbound section of I-75 would take out what was left of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley -- the original, historic neighborhoods of black Detroit.
The 1967 Riot Rebellion
The sixties brought the civil rights movement and in 1967 the infamous 12th Street riot. A smaller, similar riot occurred in 1968 on the city's east side. Detroit was still a white majority city but that would change. After the riots, whites fled Detroit like they were being chased by Hurricane Katrina.
The late sixties and early seventies were also the year when the black militancy movement swept the nation, and Detroit was one of the stages where that played out. This scared many whites and accelerated their flight from the city to its burgeoning working class suburbs.
I've always thought that Detroit's last best political hope after the riots was Richard H. Austin, a prominent black accountant who aspired to public life and took a run at the mayor's office.
It was 1969 and the city could have either stabilized with a racial balance of roughly 50 percent black-white, or continued hemorrhaging white people, as it ultimately did. As we know, the city ultimately shrunk in population size to about 900,000 in 2006.
Austin ran for mayor, lost in the primary and in 1971 was elected Michigan's first black Secretary of State. I think he could have had a healing effect and possibly stemmed the tide of white flight because he was a well-liked moderate Democrat. Many blacks at the time thought he was an Uncle Tom. The voters instead elected white Wayne County Sheriff Roman S. Gribbs as Mayor of Detroit. Gribbs turned out to be a caretaker mayor who squandered his single term rather than make any attempts to stem the tide of outmigration.
In 1973, blacks and white liberals elected black state senator Coleman A. Young as Mayor of Detroit. I liked Coleman and voted for him three times. He brought pride and hope to the black community, stood up to suburban hostilities, and was a charismatic public speaker. Sadly, his often incendiary rhetoric increased white fear and expedited white flight.
Die is Cast
But by then, the die was cast. Metro Detroit was experiencing what regional planners call the "push-pull effect." Whites were being pushed out of Detroit by its deteriorating public services, failing public schools, rising taxes and escalating crime. And they were being pulled to the suburbs by their new housing and infrastructure, safety, newer and better schools, and quality of life. Most of the city's white flight was racially-based. But not all of it.
The city's economy was changing, too. In the sixties, some 70 percent of all American cars were manufactured within Southeast Michigan. Today, it's less than five percent. Between 1970 and 1990, Detroit lost half of its manufacturing jobs, some 200,000, and thousands more since then. The good, skilled jobs had moved to the suburbs, leaving Detroiters without cars with a large disadvantage in getting those jobs.
Metro Population Stays Same While Housing Doubles
In 1970 some 4.8 million people lived in the seven counties of Southeast Michigan. Today, the same number -- 4.8 million -- live in Southeast Michigan. Yet the number of housing units has doubled during the same 37-year period! This means that the same number of people are living in twice the number of households. We've had zero population growth and 100 percent housing growth. All we did was develop virgin farmland, build more roads, freeways, sewers and strip malls, and suburbanize. While the region was busy with all this housing and infrastructure expansion, the city of Detroit's housing stock eroded to the point that today one-third of its 120-square mile land mass is vacant land and property. We have lost so much time, and so much of the city's housing stock and infrastructure are beyond reclaim.
Signs of Hope
Recently I see signs of hope. Redevelopment projects in the city are being done in a more thoughtful manner. I am truly impressed with downtown's revitalization and GM's work on the riverfront and th city's beautiful new RiverWalk. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's New Neighborhoods strategy holds promise. It may be too little too late, but Kwame's giving it a hell of a shot. Detroit Renaissance has just launched a plan to revitalize the region in the wake of all this recent devastation in the auto industry. The new group One D can make a difference.
The sixties brought the civil rights movement and in 1967 the infamous 12th Street riot. A smaller, similar riot occurred in 1968 on the city's east side. Detroit was still a white majority city but that would change. After the riots, whites fled Detroit like they were being chased by Hurricane Katrina. 
How Did Detroit Get 
Friday night at the Jazz Festival looking south down Woodward toward Hart Plaza.
