Bringing this back to the question of Great Lakes cities, it's interesting to some similarities between L.A. and Detroit: both boomed in the early to mid 20th century(Detroit was late for the North, L.A. was early for the Sunbelt)were early examples of auto-dominated, weak-transit cities.
http://www.urbanophile.com/2012/02/2...pete-saunders/
Of course they had very different economies and locations.