Sean Farrell
UPP 520
Professor Betancur
Essay #2: The Downfall and Revitalization of Detroit and its relation to Neo-Liberalism
Introduction: The city of Detroit has undergone a series of dramatic economic transformations throughout its history. It is these economic cycles throughout Detroit’s chronological timeline that help to both explain and describe the condition that Detroit is in, as well as give perspective for policymakers to come up with ways to deal with and improve the community based on said factors. Detroit has seen both a dramatic population decline as well as changing demographic transition since it hit its peak population of 1.8 million in 1950. The city has reduced its population 60 percent since the mid-century period …show more content…
One cannot fix a city one doesn’t understand and Detroit’s history provides some lessons that are integral to understanding why the city is what it is today. Beginning in the year 1701, Antoine Laumet de Cadillac arrived at the current site of where the city of Detroit exists and establishes Fort Pontchartrain, which served as a military outpost for French North America. Remaining in French control for a while, it wasn’t until 1825 with the establishment of the Erie Canal that the first example of Detroit’s start as a successful trading and shipping hub was begun. Not until 1914 did the city of Detroit find its niche as an automobile manufacturer, however, and as of this year the city was producing and manufacturing over half of the country’s cars. For decades the automobile economy thrived without hesitation but then an unexpected event, the Great Depression, through all this progress on its backside. In an eerily similar way to how Detroit was impacted by the economic downturn in current years, “The Great Depression hit Detroit hard. Auto production fell by three-quarters in just three years, forcing tens of thousands of layoffs and countless foreclosures. Major banks faced insolvency.”1 Once the United States decided to become an …show more content…
Downtown and Midtown Detroit are by-far the most culturally developed and vibrant neighborhoods in the city of Detroit and city officials, planners, and private enterprisers are aware of this fact and have begun to take advantage of it. As Frank Joyce of AlterNet points out, Detroit is a city of four distinct economies –the old economy, the entertainment economy, the urban pioneer economy, and finally the category of “other economies.” Essential to understanding how each of these economies relates to the residents of Detroit is essential because it is these residents to whom these revitalization efforts are supposed to be helping in the first place. Joyce points out that “hundreds of thousands of people, mostly African-American, still live in Detroit. They do get by. They do constitute an economy. Some have a connection to economies one through three [illustrating the old economy, entertainment economy, as well as the urban pioneer economy]. Many do not. Despite the resourcefulness they repeatedly show, economies 1-3 generally consider them a problem, not an asset.10 If the residents of the city itself, again mostly African American, do not feel as though they constitute an integral part of the economy and its increasing calls for improvement and revitalization efforts than is it fair to say that these efforts
UPP 520
Professor Betancur
Essay #2: The Downfall and Revitalization of Detroit and its relation to Neo-Liberalism
Introduction: The city of Detroit has undergone a series of dramatic economic transformations throughout its history. It is these economic cycles throughout Detroit’s chronological timeline that help to both explain and describe the condition that Detroit is in, as well as give perspective for policymakers to come up with ways to deal with and improve the community based on said factors. Detroit has seen both a dramatic population decline as well as changing demographic transition since it hit its peak population of 1.8 million in 1950. The city has reduced its population 60 percent since the mid-century period …show more content…
One cannot fix a city one doesn’t understand and Detroit’s history provides some lessons that are integral to understanding why the city is what it is today. Beginning in the year 1701, Antoine Laumet de Cadillac arrived at the current site of where the city of Detroit exists and establishes Fort Pontchartrain, which served as a military outpost for French North America. Remaining in French control for a while, it wasn’t until 1825 with the establishment of the Erie Canal that the first example of Detroit’s start as a successful trading and shipping hub was begun. Not until 1914 did the city of Detroit find its niche as an automobile manufacturer, however, and as of this year the city was producing and manufacturing over half of the country’s cars. For decades the automobile economy thrived without hesitation but then an unexpected event, the Great Depression, through all this progress on its backside. In an eerily similar way to how Detroit was impacted by the economic downturn in current years, “The Great Depression hit Detroit hard. Auto production fell by three-quarters in just three years, forcing tens of thousands of layoffs and countless foreclosures. Major banks faced insolvency.”1 Once the United States decided to become an …show more content…
Downtown and Midtown Detroit are by-far the most culturally developed and vibrant neighborhoods in the city of Detroit and city officials, planners, and private enterprisers are aware of this fact and have begun to take advantage of it. As Frank Joyce of AlterNet points out, Detroit is a city of four distinct economies –the old economy, the entertainment economy, the urban pioneer economy, and finally the category of “other economies.” Essential to understanding how each of these economies relates to the residents of Detroit is essential because it is these residents to whom these revitalization efforts are supposed to be helping in the first place. Joyce points out that “hundreds of thousands of people, mostly African-American, still live in Detroit. They do get by. They do constitute an economy. Some have a connection to economies one through three [illustrating the old economy, entertainment economy, as well as the urban pioneer economy]. Many do not. Despite the resourcefulness they repeatedly show, economies 1-3 generally consider them a problem, not an asset.10 If the residents of the city itself, again mostly African American, do not feel as though they constitute an integral part of the economy and its increasing calls for improvement and revitalization efforts than is it fair to say that these efforts