Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
I have never been to Johannesburg, but I'm skeptical that it has more art deco buildings than Detroit. Detroit was likely several times the size of Johannesburg in the 1920s and 1930s.
|
Hard to find exact figures but Detroit was about twice as large in 1950, though the Johannesburg figures would deliberately exclude certain sections of the population.
However that doesn't really tell the full story as this time period coincided with massive amounts of growth in the city. Joburg (and surrounding art deco centres like Springs) also continued to grow at a feverish pace during the 1930s while Detroit was stagnating during the Depression. Similarly, building continued during WWII as the countries war effort was significantly less than the US or other allied powers. This era also coincided with a massive influx of capital from gold mining and the deliberate reconstruction of huge portions of the inner-city in the deco style (New York of Africa and such). Keep in mind that a significant majority of the world's gold was coming from the region at the time. Deco also remained quite popular in South Africa well into the 1950s while the US was shifting away from it to more modern styles. Durban also has a huge amount though it was small enough at the time I'd put Detroit ahead of it.
I'd also expect Miami's story to share at least a few similarities - it wasn't exactly a major centre during the deco period. Also worth noting that period architecture in Detroit seemed more varied to me the times I've been there.