Understanding the Trends that Have Reshaped Detroit

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Understanding the Trends that Have Reshaped
Detroit
john powell Executive Director, The Kirwan
Institute for the Study of Race and
Ethnicity Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil
Liberties, Moritz College of Law The Ohio State
University October 4, 2005
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The Transformation of Detroit

• No one social program or policy, no single
  force, whether housing segregation, social
  welfare programs or deindustrialization, could
  have driven Detroit and other cities like it from
  their position of economic and political
  dominance there is no simple explanation for the
  inequality and marginality that beset the urban
  poor. It is only through the complex and
  interwoven histories of race, residence and work
  in the postwar era that the state of todays
  cities and their impoverished residents can be
  fully understood and confronted.
• Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban
  Crisis Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.
  Page 5

A number of historical and contemporary policies
and structural factors created todays conditions
in Detroit
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Understanding Detroits Changes

• Population movement in Detroit
• Where have the people gone?
• Impacts of these trends on todays Detroit
• What have these trends produced?
• New suburbanization
• African American suburbanization
• Why do we need regional cooperation
• Economic vitality and improving equity

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Population Change in Detroit

• Suburbanization has stripped Detroit of much of
  its population
• Housing discrimination blocked access out of the
  city for African Americans
• Leaving the city extremely segregated

The six foot high concrete wailing wall built
to segregate African Americans from a White
housing development.
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Trends Impacting DetroitPopulation Loss to the
Suburbs

• Detroit has lost almost half of the population
  living in the City in 1960, depopulating many
  neighborhoods

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Where have people moved?

• Like many metropolitan regions, Detroit has
  experienced significant population loss from
  older City neighborhoods (into the periphery of
  Wayne County and the surrounding region
• Racially these trends have varied for Whites and
  African Americans
• Whites have moved throughout the region, while
  African Americans have remained more concentrated

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Population Changes in Southeast Michigan have
Shifted Much of the Regions Population to the
Suburbs
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Whites have moved throughout the region since
1970, while African Americans have moved
primarily to concentrated areas adjacent to the
City of Detroit.
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Low income households were primarily left behind
in the population movement to the suburbs, this
is most pronounced for African Americans but also
evident for Whites.
White Low Income Areas
African American Low Income Areas
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What have accompanied these changes?

• Shifting of employment activities to the suburbs
• Concentrated poverty in the City
• Abandonment, disinvestment and vacancy in the
  City of Detroit
• Extreme segregation

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Employment Shifting to the Suburbs
Suburban Job Centers in Detroit

• Employment has shifted in the Detroit region to
  the suburbs
• The following statistics were gathered by the
  Detroit Free Press
• The suburbs have about 85 percent of the region's
  retail establishments and 87 percent of the jobs.
• Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties have 110
  bowling alleys combined Detroit has two.
• The suburbs have 130 7-Elevens the last one in
  Detroit recently closed.
• The suburbs have more than 400 first-run movie
  screens Detroit has 10.
• The suburbs have Northland and 20 other malls.
  Detroit has none.

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Why are businesses moving?

• Business (and Insurance) Redlining
• Not all business movement is due to population
  change, spatial models (such as Claritas) used to
  identify locations for new businesses usually
  identify urban neighborhoods and African American
  neighborhoods as poor locations for investment
• Similar trends can be seen in insurance redlining
  practices

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Detroits urban employment centers declined as a
result
Hudsons employed over 2,000 people in downtown
Detroit. Closed in the 1980s this Landmark was
demolished in the late 1990s.
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The Decline of Anchor Institutions

• Critical institutions, like Hudsons, act as
  anchor institutions supporting other activities
  in the community
• Decline or loss of these institutions can be
  devastating to communities
• Efforts to bring these institutions back have
  been attempted in Detroit (with questionable
  success)
• The Renaissance Center, Casinos

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What are Anchor Institutions?

• Anchor institutions are significant community or
  regional institutions that serve a specific
  community or regional need and become magnets for
  other opportunities
• Areas near these institutions become dense
  clusters of opportunity, conversely losing these
  institutions can destabilize multiple opportunity
  structures
• Anchor institutions can include
• Shopping centers, entertainment districts,
  hospital/medical centers, colleges, universities,
  employment centers, churches, social
  institutions, arts and cultural institutions

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Moving Employment Opportunities

• The Brookings Institute found Detroit to be the
  second-most decentralized metropolitan area.
  78.05 percent of its employment is located more
  than ten-miles from downtown.

• Source Job Sprawl Employment Location in U.S.
  Metropolitan Areas (2001), Brookings Institution.

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African Americans are Segregated from Jobs and
Job Growth
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Conditions of concentrated poverty are found
throughout many of Detroits neighborhoods.

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Disinvestment and Abandonment

• Population loss has resulted in a surge of vacant
  and abandoned properties
• Almost 10 of Detroits housing stock was vacant
  in the 2000 Census, compared to only 5 in the
  surrounding suburbs
• As a result the City of Detroit contains the
  largest number of tax foreclosed properties and
  vacant properties in the State
• Approximately 40,000 tax reverted parcels, 90,000
  vacant parcels city wide

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Extreme Segregation in the Detroit Region
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New Suburbanization

• African Americans are the fastest growing racial
  group in Detroits suburbs, slowly reversing
  trends from previous decades
• This new growth presents both opportunities and
  challenges
• The opportunity to build more racially diverse
  coalitions throughout the region
• The challenge to assure African Americans are
  moving to suburbs of opportunity (not declining
  opportunity)

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In the 1990s, African Americans were the fastest
growing racial group in Detroits suburbs, while
Whites are moving into the regions exurbs.
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An Opportunity African American Suburbanization

• There is a major migration of African Americans
  to the suburbs
• In a study of 15 metropolitan regions by IRP,
  roughly 50 of African Americans were found to
  live in suburbs in 2000
• 60 of Latinos lived in suburbs in 2000
• Examples of suburbanization of African Americans
  from key Gamaliel metros include Detroit,
  Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, St. Louis

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Source U.S. Census Data, adapted from work by IRP
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Source U.S. Census Data and Mumford Center Data
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A Challenge African American Suburbanization and
Segregation from Opportunity

• Opportunities (good jobs, good schools, anchor
  institutions) do not necessarily follow the
  African American families to the suburbs
• A growing body of evidence suggests that African
  Americans are predominately moving to distressed
  suburban communities
• Over 80 of suburban African Americans and
  Latinos live in at-risk suburbs (in 15 regions
  studied by IRP)
• Compared to only 50 of suburban Whites
• Source Institute of Race and Poverty

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Not All Suburbs are EqualSuburb Does Not
Necessarily Equate to High Opportunity

• African Americans and Latinos who reside in the
  suburbs are much more likely than suburban whites
  to live in fiscally stressed jurisdictions with
  below average public resources and greater than
  average public service needs
• As of 2002, essentially half of the poor
  residents of U.S. metro regions lived in the
  suburbs
• Source Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce, Minority
  Suburbanization and Racial Change Stable
  Integration, Neighborhood Transition, and the
  Need for Regional Approaches. Report of
  Institution on Race and Poverty (presentation at
  the Race and Regionalism Conference in
  Minneapolis, May 6-7, 2005.)

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The Changing Face of White Flight While African
Americans are Moving to Closer Suburban
Communities Whites are Moving into New
Developments in the Surrounding Exurbs.
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Why Regional Cooperation is Important to Regional
Health

• Equity based regional policies are the best
  methods to addressing these trends
• Regional school strategies to address segregation
  and concentrated school poverty
• Regional affordable housing strategies
• Regional transportation/mobility strategies
• DETROIT IS THE LARGEST REGION WITHOUT A REGIONAL
  PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
• Strategies to curb sprawl and reinvest in
  existing neighborhoods (with infrastructure and
  other resources)
• Strategies to make decisions regionally and to
  share resources (taxes)

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Why is this Important for both City and Suburbs?

• The suburbs are changing, traditionally urban
  issues are now impacting our older suburbs and
  these communities have fewer resources to deal
  with them
• Need for a unified approach to address these
  issues
• Smaller suburbs do not have the resources to
  address these regional trends

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Does this apply to Detroit?

• These trends are apparent in the Detroit region,
  a number of suburbs are beginning to show signs
  of decline from issues that are traditionally
  associated with urban areas

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Regional Economic Health

• Research suggests that regions who utilize
  regional policies are economically (and socially)
  healthier
• Conversely, regions that are the most fragmented
  are more economically depressed
• Why?
• No unified strategy for economic development
  (infighting over jobs and new businesses)
• A less qualified and educated work force due to
  educational disparities in the region
• A entry level and low skill work force that is
  spatially isolated from suburban job
  opportunities
• More likely to exhibit sprawling growth that
  wastes public resources on new roads, sewers,
  schools in undeveloped areas, while existing
  resources are left to deteriorate

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Sprawling Growth in Southeast Michigan

• Although Southeast Michigan has experienced
  limited population growth, sprawling land
  consumption has increased dramatically
• Between 1982 and 1997, the Detroit-Ann Arbor
  region experienced a 5 population growth, but
  experienced a 29 increase in developed land
• Population density in the region declined by 19
  during this 15 year period

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Does this apply to Detroit?

• Yes, the Detroit region must compete with
  socially healthier (more equitable) regions for
  investment in todays economy
• The region can not depend on the old industries
  of the past to sustain economic health
• Regionalism is a strategy to make the region more
  competitive in the new global market place

• Between 2000 and 2004 the Detroit region lost
  150,000 jobs
• Since 2000, the Detroit region was the 14th
  slowest growing metropolitan region in the
  nation, with a regional population growth of 0.8
• This trend will grow worse if economic trends
  continue

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Does this issue apply to Detroit?Spatial
mismatch in Detroit, White and African American
households without vehicles in Detroit.
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Regional Strategies for Economic Health

• Chicago Metropolis 2020
• In the Chicago region a collaborative
  organization with strong representation of the
  business community have worked together to
  promote regional affordable housing
• Economic leaders in the Chicago region see
  affordable housing as a critical impediment to
  regional economic health
• Over 100 the regions largest employers have
  signed a pledge to factor affordable housing
  supply and regional transit into new investments
  and business expansion in the region
• The group works also works to lobby for statewide
  initiatives to promote affordable housing in job
  rich communities

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Concluding Thoughts

• Multiple policies and structural factors (both
  historical and contemporary) have worked to cause
  Detroits decline and have produced extreme
  inequity and segregation
• New dynamics are shaping the Detroit region
  (African American suburbanization, economic
  changes)
• Regional reforms are needed to address both
  historical and current trends, in order to make
  the entire Detroit region healthier and more
  competitive in todays economy
• Working to understanding the best models of
  regionalism
• Research initiative currently underway in the
  Cleveland region to understand which regional
  policies are most beneficial for the African
  American community
• This work will be applicable to the Detroit
  region and the challenges faced by the African
  American community in Detroit

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