Quote:
Originally Posted by Docere
Detroit in the early to mid 20th century may have had the most prosperous working class in the world at the time. May explain the "Los Angeles" urban form as well - auto-oriented development was evident earlier than in other US cities.
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There isn't really a long history of auto-oriented development within the city of Detroit, which is a huge, often glossed over, factor in Detroit's post-1950s struggles. There has never been a suburban-style mall in Detroit's city limits, because there was never any room for it. The examples of auto-oriented projects that have been completed, such as the GM Poletown plant in the 1980s, were utter disasters for everyone except the corporation that built it.
Whenever there have been attempts for large car-centered development, it has often come at the expense of some community, and usually required the demolishing of neighborhoods and/or existing business districts. The GM Poletown plant was extremely controversial because it destroyed ethnic Polish neighborhoods and commercial districts in Detroit, for instance. City leadership realized, accurately, that creating large tracts of land for industrial development was the only way the city could compete against the suburbs.