Detroit’s Place and Power

Arguments can be made that other cities can teach you more about America, but my money is on Detroit.

Yes, Boston is the best place to learn about the American revolution, although Philadelphia may beg to differ. New York City is no longer the gateway for new Americans and barely clings to the claim as the nation’s financial center. Los Angeles’ star as the nation’s motion picture mecca has dimmed. Chicago’s broad shoulders as the nation’s commercial crossroads have slumped. And Washington, DC, which has a memorial, monument or museum exhibit for just about everything that has ever happened in America, is missing a heart.

But if you discover Detroit — from its historical heights to its depths to where it stands now — you are likely to learn more about our nation’s struggles and soul.

Like nowhere else, Detroit provided manufacturing jobs for descendants of slaves. Southeast Michigan was the the magnet of the “Great Migration” from the Deep South of America.

Like nowhere else, Detroit manufacturers created the American Middle Class. A 40-hour work-week paid many thousands of employees enough to own a car and a house, enjoy holidays and weekends off, and take week-long  summer vacations. Which is why America invested in highways instead of railroads; it’s why America has suburbs, while Europe and Asia have city-to-city bullet trains.

Like nowhere else, the race riots of Detroit during the summer of 1967 taught us that a job is not all that our nation owes its citizens. This made most suburbs white and turned our cities blacker and browner.

Like nowhere else in America, the rise of suburbs and the fall of industrial manufacturing crushed Detroit. Its population dropped from high of 1.86 million in 1950 — the nation’s fourth largest city —  to  about 700,000 sixty years later…..1.1 million fewer people within the same city footprint. Thousands of vacant buildings have been demolished; and in their place, there are mostly unkempt green spaces, connected by wide boulevards with sparse traffic.

Because of its dependance on manufacturing, especially related to the automotive industry, the “Motor City” has lagged far behind other major cities in diversifying its economy. But now, a generation after most other cities, Detroit’s neighborhoods are in the midst of rapid gentrification, which is creating another period of flight….new, young (and mostly white) professionals in…..long-time, older (and mostly of color) residents out.

This has all happened elsewhere, of course…..but without the dramatic, defining extremes of Detroit.

If you doubt my assertion regarding Detroit’s place in defining America, read Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel Middlesex, published in 2002, which leads the reader over three generations from rural Greece to urban Detroit. The transition of Detroit from 20th Century boom-town to 21st Century bankruptcy is not merely background; it’s a charismatic character full of personality and life-altering power.

JER