 
Ray
Member
Username: Ray
Post Number: 1093
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 6:18 pm: |    |
Thank you everyone for your thoughtful responses to my post.
After I wrote this, I decided that blaming an entire generation was simplistic and divisive. I actually composed this after arguing with my 67 year old co-worker about the merits the proposed Woodward rail line (he can't understand why anyone would want to ride mass tranist when driving is so much more pleasant).
Perhaps a better way to look at is to hope that everyone of all ages will see the wisdom -- the urgent necessity -- of reclaiming our city for all people. |
Ray
Member
Username: Ray
Post Number: 1094
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 6:24 pm: | |
By the way, I claim a unique demographic title: I am the first and oldest member of generation X in the United States. I was born in October, 1964 at the exact official moment when Generation X began according to the US Census.
(OK I am joking). To may shame and horror I think I missed the official start of Gen X by 45 days. But I hate the Beatles and listen to 89x so I claim unofficial membership. |
Warrenite84
Member
Username: Warrenite84
Post Number: 262
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 7:05 pm: | |
People from generation X and later along with immigrants will be the driving force behind Detroit's revitalization.
The boomers and their parents that gave up early contributed to the Detroit we have today. Of course no streetcars and poor code enforcement didn't help either.
By the time Coleman got in, chances for Detroit's renewal during that period was done.
I have to agree about many things Ray and Johnlodge have said here. |
Warrenite84
Member
Username: Warrenite84
Post Number: 263
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 7:09 pm: | |
The only exceptions I can recall to my above post are Max Fisher, Al Taubman, Mike Ilitch, Peter Karmanos, Dennis Archer, and Rodger Penske. Thanks stand up guys. |
Raggedclaws
Member
Username: Raggedclaws
Post Number: 155
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 7:25 pm: | |
Deja Vu ! That's what I was thinking when I started reading this thread earlier today...deja vu !
I was thinking "Ray"..."abandonment of Detroit"..."whites"...where have I heard this before ?
Three weeks ago on the thread called "Detroit is a Pit", that's where. Ray, I think there may be some posters over there still waiting for more info on your "fight, pay, and bleed" theory of Detroit abandonment. Did you just think you could just start another thread on the same old tired topic ?
Oh, yeah ... it looks like you did.
Glad you had that epiphany about being simplistic and divisive. Spot on, my man !
You all need to stop over analyzing and leave those who, for many complex reasons have left Detroit in the last 5 decades, alone. Their leaving doesn't fully explain the state of Detroit today. Grow up, already. |
Ray1936
Member
Username: Ray1936
Post Number: 2850
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 7:26 pm: | |
Boo hoo. Everyone talks about the Boomers and Generation X. No one talks about us Depression Babies any more.
I remember taking the streetcar to stand in the bread line in 1936....those were the days.... |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 262
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 7:39 pm: | |
I should not allow myself to get sucked in to this thread. But, teach old dogs new tricks.
In for a nickel, in for a pickle.
Jams: I am going to expand on your last two posts. I hope you agree with my wild statements.
JohnLodge: I applaud your remarks and agree.
Sean-of-Detroit: You are tipping an iceberg. A revelation, if you will! (Schools)
3-D. Dinosaur Days, 1942-43 Racism?
Quote: (from an earlier post)
I have to preface this story with some qualifications of the vernacular that we used in those days.
The words, "Black" and "African" were pejorative adjectives that were used by the racist in
phrases, i.e. “Those Black@#$%^& or those African@#$%^&. The words, “Colored” or
“Negro,” were considered to be politically acceptable. I am not sure what that meant to either
race.
End of quote.
Quote (from an earlier post)
The rush back to normalcy was bedazzling after Japan's surrender. Automotive producers were
stumbling over themselves to get their products out on the road. Cigarettes were openly
displayed in the stores. Butcher shops had any variety of meat you might want, and gasoline still
sold for less than 30 cents.
I do not know how many G.I.'s came back to Detroit, but the number had to be in the tens or
hundreds of thousands. Some went back to their old jobs. Some began college. A lot of them
got married and some of them joined the "52/20 Club." That was twenty dollars a week for 52
weeks and a Thank You to Uncle Sam.
End of quote.
A new addition to that last quote:
Those soldiers who were fortunate enough to come home, intact, to their girl friends, and
a few, to their wives, were sure as hell looking for something more than a fifty year old tract
house on a thirty foot lot, which many of our families grew up in.
Do you know what those faint-hearted, run for your lives, cowards, did? They had the
temerity to buy a NEW house on the other side of Eight Mile Rod. And then, to add to that
atrocious behavior, some of the parents followed them, way out to SCS or Warren or East
Detroit or dozens of other suburbs. Shame on them all. So they wanted to keep their families together. So they should have known better.
Another addition:
Obviously most of the ‘posters’ (people) on this thread are aware of the tremendous influx
of temporary labor that overflowed Detroit during the War Years. They came from all over the
country. Kentucky, Iowa, South Dakota, and every other State in the Union. And do you know
what those dumb people did when the war ended? They went HOME! Their HOME.
So what happened to Detroit? Super Markets, Shopping Centers and companies like Sears and
Montgomery Wards (and I am not taking a crack at them at all) killed the small business people.
The corner grocery store, the hardware stores and a myriad of other small businesses that could
not compete with the multi-mega scope of big business, just disappeared.
Re: Seans post: Education?
I have to qualify my position before making any statements.
I was baptized a Catholic. I went to a Catholic Grade School, High School and College.
We sent our children to St. Ignatius and St. Philomena Grade School and Bishop Gallagher High
School. Today, I will subsidize my grandchildren, and my great-grandchild, to go to a Catholic
School.
The Catholic School system, can, in no way, compete with the Public School System on
the basis of curriculums. When I went to St. Joe’s High School, we performed “imaginary”
experiments in our Chemistry Lab class. You are reading this right. St. Joe’s did not have the
money to buy any number or kinds of equipment for anything for any subjects we studied.
So, what is my fascination, dedication and admiration for the Catholic School system? It
is peculiar only to me. My choice.
Now here is the kicker, Neither I nor my wife have ever been practicing Catholics. We
have never believed or accepted a spiritual entity. We believe that a human being who may have
been named Christ was in fact, an itinerant preacher who had a good philosophy for leading a
good life. Pure and Simple. So we call ourselves Christians. We still support the Church, financially.
So, do I worry about the possibility of winding up in Hell? Of course not. I have been in
Tucson, AZ. far too long to let that thought intimidate me.
Back to normalcy. The Catholic Church played a gigantic roll in the development of
Detroit during the Thirties and Forties. Suppose, today, the Church came back to Detroit and
said, “Hey, Detroit, we are going to relieve you of your financial burden in educating your
children. We will take 25 % of them and save you the financial burden of doing same. Sounds
like a bargain to me.
So why do I champion the Catholic School system. First of all, for what it did to give
Detroiter’s, a choice.
But mostly because, I can give you about ten pages about Sister Bernard Joseph, my
second grade teacher. (And I did not like her.) And about Mrs. Guinan, Mrs. Kennedy and Sister
Beatrice in the Third Grade. There was shortage of nuns that year and they hired a couple of
temporary lay teachers to help out. And there are memories for each year. So my affinity for Catholic Schools are simply based on personal preference.
“The race is not always to the swift, but to the more interesting.”
I am drifting now away from the subject at hand.
Stop bitching and complaining and playing the “blame” game. Most of you have no idea
of the dynamics of that period.
I will go on writing my stories of childhood in a glowing and inspired mood. But I would
never, in a million years, want those years to return if I were an adult.
Do not beleaguer or antagonize the question of “who did what to whom?”
Here is a question,, “What do the 950,000 people who live in Detroit proper, have to say,
about anything?
Like politicians we tend to avoid the more pertinent issues. |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 263
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 7:44 pm: | |
Ray:
Why in heck did you not tell me that you were in that line? I might have been right behind you. I remember pushing some little kid out of the way and stealing his bread. Maybe it was you.
I just love those Depression stories. Mostly fantasy, just to hide the heartbreak of reality. |
Tayshaun22
Member
Username: Tayshaun22
Post Number: 406
Registered: 02-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 9:58 pm: | |
Watch Season 4 of The Wire Danindc. Do you want your kids in those inner city schools? |
Livernoisyard
Member
Username: Livernoisyard
Post Number: 5490
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 10:18 pm: | |
quote:People from generation X and later along with immigrants will be the driving force behind Detroit's revitalization.
The boomers and their parents that gave up early contributed to the Detroit we have today. Of course no streetcars and poor code enforcement didn't help either. The Boomers were merely the beginning of the end. What has followed them hasn't really done that much.
Consider just one thing (I got work to do, even at 11 PM...). The SAT scores peaked in 1962 by those at the very end of the generation that preceded the Boomers--The Quiet Generation--those born before 1946. Ditto for the ACT test. None of the Boomers took the SAT during or before 1962.
The SAT test was even severely dumbed down after Jan 1994. And still today the ACT and SAT scores are very, very low compared to 1962. Ask Prof Scott about all those intellectual dropouts who have high school diplomas yet no real academic education and take up to two years of remedial courses at US colleges today.
So, the Gen Xers, who really are academically far worse off than the Boomers, are going to save the day? Or even save Detroit??? Don't make us laugh... |
Lilpup
Member
Username: Lilpup
Post Number: 3769
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 5:07 am: | |
I think KK succeeded in proving this theory wrong last night. |
Masterblaster
Member
Username: Masterblaster
Post Number: 141
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 7:02 am: | |
Although I do not understand the dynamics behind the exodus of Caucasians from Detroit during the decades of 1950's to 1990's....
I still don't understand why their exodus was so WHOLESALE and COMPLETE. The white population went from over 1.5 million people (in 1950) to just above 100,000 (and that number includes white Hispanics!) in the year 2000, according to the Census. That's a 93% decline!
If you look at Chicago, according to the 2000 Census, white people are not the majority, but they make up about 40% of the population. That means that over 1,000,000 white folks still live in Chicago. In the cities of Cleveland and St. Louis, the city is only slightly above 50% black. Many white folks still stayed, even though they experienced the same problems as the white folks in Detroit.
The only other cities that maybe approached the white exodus of Detroit were Atlanta and Washington, DC, which were 2/3 to 70% black, but even those cities are getting a lot of white folks and their investment now.
(And as a matter of fact those aforementioned cities - Atlanta, St. Louis, and Washington DC, are always in the top 10 in CRIME along with Detroit.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U nited_States_cities_by_crime_r ate |
Sean_of_detroit
Member
Username: Sean_of_detroit
Post Number: 9
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 9:17 am: | |
Livernoisyard,
I read something interesting in "The World Is Flat" (available in almost any bookstore or Michigan Library). The Chinese seem to consider what is happening in America as a typical problem of wealth. The first generation (WWII and depression era?) works hard and acquires the wealth in hopes for a better life for their children. The second generation learns to maintain the wealth, as they saw what their parents did to earn it. The mass running could maybe be explained as a last ditch maintenance effort of not just wealth, but a certain level of "pleasentness" (maybe not). Unfortunately, they didn't have to practice at obtaining new wealth, so that skill is rarely developed or exercised. Then the Third or Fourth (current) generations end up feeling the illusion of entitlement and end up squandering all that wealth, and the cycle eventually starts over. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it seems to make some sense.
A really good movie to demonstrate a good analogy of what happened back then is "Pleasentville". It starts out really silly, but picks up and really conveys the message to whites pretty well. It also conveys the seemingly hard to understand reason of why whites were among the looters, and why black owned businesses were also destroyed.
I think if the racism and overcrowding combined were to Detroit what Hurricane Katrina was for New Orleans, then all the issues after that were like smaller thunderstorms and tropical storms. The only difference is that no one bothered to fix our levies. |
Civilprotectionunit4346
Member
Username: Civilprotectionunit4346
Post Number: 646
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 10:39 am: | |
The Baby Boomer generation will be a driving force for probably another 10-15yrs before so of the other generations start moving in. My parents are boomers. I can see what you mean about boomers. My old man is very thick-headed in his ways and ive seen other boomers that are the same.
I'm a Gen X'er and I don't drive a Suv and own a McMansion. With what i'm makin right now at my job I wish I had a better job and was able to afford a house. With the way the job market & economy has been it's hard to find something better that will offer a better salary.
I mean there's alot of major issues and some people differ and vary on them. Some people say we need more jobs here, some say we need better health care, some say more to be spent on the police and etc for the city.
Some boomers ive talked to aren't like my old man some have very open minds. Ive noticed my generation and some of the younger ones they think the same way. What's terrible is the one's that are most in politcal power most are stubborn people of the boomer generation. |
Mwilbert
Member
Username: Mwilbert
Post Number: 127
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 11:35 am: | |
It is not true that because Chicago (for example) has a higher percentage of its population being white, that it means that fewer whites left. It probably is true; I don't know. But you are talking about a period of almost 60 years--most of the people who were in Detroit in 1950 are dead, and therefore wouldn't show up in current population numbers anyway.
There was also a tremendous white exodus out of Chicago. But in Detroit, very few people no moved in, black or white. That was not true in Chicago. As a result, you have ended up with a big racial imbalance in Detroit, and not so much in Chicago.
But you can't infer the level of white flight directly from those numbers; you also have to look at in-migration. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2019
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 11:42 am: | |
In talking with Detroiters of that period, I'd say that one factor was the vast influx from people during World War II. Job-seeking people pouring into town from the South meant that the city was suddenly crowded with people who had no roots in local institutions, no sense of history. They were there to make MONEY. I think these sorts of people were more likely to shrug off the city and get that double-lot, as they had no fond memories of growing up there.
Just another 2 cents. |
Dan
Member
Username: Dan
Post Number: 1509
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 1:08 pm: | |
"...A.J. Weiner..."
TEE HEE |
Detroitrise
Member
Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 1755
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 1:28 pm: | |
This is a good topic with a horrible title.
WHY did all the white Great Depression/WWII children abandon the urban areas (Detroit receiving the brunt of it).
I think Uniroyal put something in our drinking water 
I still think the 1967 riots were the biggest factor. People feared Detroit would basically burn down to the ground and they were afraid of that. However, they didn't want to leave all of that wonderful culture and big city experience we had.
The stuff Detroit experienced beforehand was happening all over the country (growing pains).
(Message edited by detroitrise on March 12, 2008) |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2021
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 1:51 pm: | |
Um, 1967 is greatly exaggerated as a reason for white flight. White flight began much earlier. (Grampy Detroitnerd left Detroit for the suburbs in the 1920s.) The 1967 event gave lots who had ALREADY fled a cozy rationale for what they did. That's why that myth has such currency: It's soothing for old-timers, confirming their deepest prejudices about the city. |
Detroitrise
Member
Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 1756
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 2:07 pm: | |
"Um, 1967 is greatly exaggerated as a reason for white flight. White flight began much earlier."
Exactly. However, the flight before the riots here was simply just growing pains.
The city ran out of development room, so it simply spilled over into new land. |
Danindc
Member
Username: Danindc
Post Number: 4011
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 2:14 pm: | |
quote:Exactly. However, the flight before the riots here was simply just growing pains.
The city ran out of development room, so it simply spilled over into new land.
That doesn't explain why the population had been declining for 15 years by 1967. |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2024
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 2:20 pm: | |
The city shrinking was just growing pains? Explain. |
Detroitrise
Member
Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 1757
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 2:21 pm: | |
"That doesn't explain why the population had been declining for 15 years by 1967."
Growing pains.
The taxes even then were relatively high in the city of Detroit while development was still occurring.
It was cheaper to build on the land surrounding the city (housing, jobs, etc.). that's explain the New Center area and Eastland/Northland Centers.
Plus, the big 3 were investing in factoris on the outskirts of the city (because it was cheaper). The people and money simply followed them. however, the people who had good paying job and everything stayed.
Also, lifestyle changes. Everywhere across the nation, People wanted to live the life of the Cleavers. It was the American dream during the 50s-80s.
(Message edited by detroitrise on March 12, 2008) |
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 2025
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 2:24 pm: | |
I think it's not a matter of personal taste but of public policy and governmental subsidy. Read Sugrue's book. He makes the point better than I could.
Basically, you're going to run into a lot of resistance on that "white flight after 1967" myth. Why? Because it's just that: A myth. It doesn't stand up to the evidence. |
Livernoisyard
Member
Username: Livernoisyard
Post Number: 5498
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 5:48 pm: | |
White flight started right after WWII in the late 1940s and 1950s. The US Defense Department built lots of new buildings in the outer areas of Detroit and into the suburbs. Jobs and people naturally followed when those newer buildings replaced the older ones in the city. Many older buildings have been essentially vacant since the 1950s, and many rotted away and their roofs caved in.
It's really simple common sense, actually. |
Mikeg
Member
Username: Mikeg
Post Number: 1507
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 6:35 pm: | |
quote:Plus, the big 3 were investing in factoris on the outskirts of the city (because it was cheaper).
They didn't go there because it was cheaper, they built there because with the advent of land use zoning in Detroit, by the late 1930's there weren't any undeveloped parcels with heavy industrial zoning large enough on which to build a new state-of-the-art auto assembly plant. The Chrysler plant on Mound in Warren that currently builds Dodge trucks opened in 1937 and was designed as a single story plant. The typical multi-story assembly plant design of that era with their complicated conveyor systems and delivery elevators that had evolved by necessity in urban neighborhoods were already recognized as inefficient and obsolete.
With the Lend-Lease programs prior to the US entering WW II, many new defense plants were also built on the outskirts of Detroit for the same reason. Additional defense plants were constructed after Pearl Harbor. The Federal government built new defense housing near these plants as well as within the city of Detroit to house the massive influx of workers who came to this region to work in the new defense plants and converted auto assembly plants.
New private housing construction had been very slow during the Depression and came to a halt during WW II due to building material restrictions. New housing construction exploded in the post-war years, and the infill of the remaining vacant residential land in Detroit caused its population to peak when those areas were finally built out in the early 1950s.
All those WW II veterans who had married and started a family weren't going to live in an upstairs flat for very long and as soon as they could afford it, they wanted to buy their own home. Demand exceeded supply within the Detroit City Limits, so where do you think these young growing families moved to? Despite the fact that most of these families where white, I think the use of the racially-charged term "white flight" is a misnomer for what happened during the 1950s. This was more the result of a "perfect storm" caused by the effects of the Depression and WW II followed by the economics and demographics of the post-war boom. |
Mackinaw
Member
Username: Mackinaw
Post Number: 4499
Registered: 02-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 8:59 pm: | |
I agree completely with Detroitnerd.
The flight was set into motion by the massive, manifold government subsidies to suburban development and urban divestment. Detroit's case was so severe because the taste for suburban living is so much stronger in this area (and was enabled by car culture and low-density landscapes), and because racial tensions went way back to before these policies were even enacted. Sugrue's book illustrates the pre-67 outbursts masterfully. |
Masterblaster
Member
Username: Masterblaster
Post Number: 142
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 10:42 pm: | |
To Mikeg, Livernoisyard,Mwilbert, and more - all cities experienced what you talked about, YET THEY DID NOT EXPERIENCE THE COMPLETE and WHOLESALE ABANDONMENT BY ITS WHITE UPPER AND MIDDLE CLASS!#••••••
Please explain why from 1950 to 2000, the white population of Detroit grew by -1.4 million (or -93%). No other city came close to that kind of abandonment. |
Detroitrise
Member
Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 1772
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 10:53 pm: | |
Agreed Masterblaster. |
Warrenite84
Member
Username: Warrenite84
Post Number: 265
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 11:36 pm: | |
Livernoisyard, I appreciate your scholarly attempt in post #5490.
Two questions:
Which generations were in office or were the primary homeowners during this population decline?
Are you saying that Boomers and priors had the superior intellect to leave Detroit than to attempt detente with those left???
You know, you're supposed to leave the city left to your generation's care, BETTER than you found it. Oh, that's right, the ME generation strikes again! |
Livernoisyard
Member
Username: Livernoisyard
Post Number: 5502
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 - 1:17 am: | |
quote:Which generations were in office or were the primary homeowners during this population decline?
Are you saying that Boomers and priors had the superior intellect to leave Detroit than to attempt detente with those left???
A careful read of my post would not have been come up with the Boomers (the first Pampered generation) getting much credit for anything. The SAT scores peaked in 1962--about one year before the oldest of the Boomers took the test. [The oldest of the Quiet Genners were born in 1945. Add seventeen equals 1962--the SAT's best year.]
There was a precipitous drop in the SATs starting in 1963 (the first year that the Boomers took the test. What a coincidence!), and the SATs (and ACTs) never recovered. In fact, they got much worse throughout the entire Baby Boom generation, as they took those tests for the nineteen years of the Boomer Generation (and got even worse later). Again, what coincidences!
I suspect the SAT collapse starting in 1963 was primarily due to excessive TV watching, cutting into time that could otherwise have been devoted to academics. Most of those who studied the causes for the utter collapse of the US public school system in the 1960s and later put excessive TV watching clearly near the top. And certain demographic segments watch far more TV than others.
Still, the Boomers with all their academic faults and shortcomings were far better then than what replaced them in Metro Detroit now--making Detroit (to a lesser degree in many of its suburbs) the most illiterate of the largest US cities. It isn't hard to figure out why the current crop of Detroiters are so illiterate. Maybe even you could come up with the most plausible, obvious reason! One that passes the Occam's Razor smell test.
(Message edited by livernoisyard on March 13, 2008) |
Warrenite84
Member
Username: Warrenite84
Post Number: 270
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 - 1:39 am: | |
You make some good points.
I think it took a team effort for education levels to be so bad.
Off the top of my head, my list of likely suspects are: tv,uncaring teachers, broken families, druggie/criminal(parents, siblings, friends), lack of decent role models, ebonics, and peer pressure.(Don't want to get caught reading a book or speaking properly and be accused of "acting white".
(Message edited by warrenite84 on March 13, 2008) |
Paulmcall
Member
Username: Paulmcall
Post Number: 721
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008 - 11:35 am: | |
Did anyone mention busing as another reason why some folks wanted out of Detroit?
The 67 riots and block busting convinced many people sitting on the fence that they should get out while the getting was good. House prices went down and people got scared.
Fear (real or imagined) drove many people away from Detroit. |
Hockey_guy
Member
Username: Hockey_guy
Post Number: 27
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008 - 3:12 pm: | |
It's sad because some of the younger people take on their parents hatred of Detroit. My friend is 20, lives in Saginaw, and has never been to Detroit, yet has traveled the country. Recently we went on a trip to California, and he kept telling people how bad Detroit is. And he loved San jose's downtown, he thinks the buildings must be taller than in Detroit. I keep telling him he needs to check out Detroit, and how much I like it, but his parents are scared to death of the city, and advise against it. |
Bulletmagnet
Member
Username: Bulletmagnet
Post Number: 1041
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008 - 8:20 pm: | |
If one really wanted to know why people left Detroit, one need to ask that question to the ten's of thousands who did in the time period stated above (1950-1990). Average out the answers and you will get the true picture. But that would not be possible as the reasons are as diverse as the people themselves. I know why I left, and it is the same reason I'm not coming back. I don't think my kids have a desire to live in Detroit ether. |
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