Quote:
Originally Posted by benp
The biggest differentiation between Detroit and Chicago was the number and percentage of residents living in single family homes and large apartments.
In 1950, before depopulation started:
-- 52% of Detroit households were owner-occupied housing vs 30% of Chicago
-- 48% of Detroit households were single family detached vs 17% of Chicago
-- 17% of Detroit households were in 5+unit apartments vs 41% of Chicago
Because Detroit was so top heavy in owner occupied units and single family homes compared to Chicago, central city household economic issues and resultant depopulation had a much greater geographic effect on its communities. Management and maintenance of large apartment communities was able to continue with a reduced number of renters, while single family homes often went through long periods of vacancy and deferred maintenance, leaving them subject to decay and vandalism, and reducing desirability or even capability to house future tenants.
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This also gets at the point I tried to make-- which is that Detroit never had anything approaching the urban culture of Chicago. When the city offers a roughly similar lifestyle to the suburbs, it's easy to see why people would decamp to communities offering the newer, better version of what they currently have, especially as the city started to show signs of deterioration and dysfunction.
Imagine a family living in one of Detroit's single family home neighborhoods in the 1960s. They have a modest sized home with a yard and at least one car. They drive to the grocery store and to run errands, dad drives to work. The family shops at the mall, kids play in the yard...they live basically a typical suburban lifestyle. When the city starts to deteriorate (in real terms or even just in perception, i.e. demographics start to change), what is holding that family in Detroit, when they can have the same lifestyle in Warren or Southfield, without the ills of the city? They're still driving everywhere, still living in a detached house with a yard that the kids play in...
Contrast that to a family living in Chicago- and let's omit the bungalow belt for this conversation. Maybe this family lives in a 3-flat or a walkup...maybe even a high rise apartment. They walk to most errands and maybe don't even have a car. Dad takes the El to work in the Loop. The family takes transit to shop downtown or in one of the plethora of intact neighborhood business districts. When the city starts to deteriorate, and this family is looking at the prospect of moving to the suburbs, they're faced with a
big lifestyle change. Plenty of people still moved out to the suburbs, of course, but lots of people chose to stay in the city, and Chicago never lost all its wealthy and middle class people to the burbs. Of course, they also had the benefit of getting lots of mostly Mexican immigrants to backfill those who did leave, but that's another factor not really related to the point I'm trying to make here.
Detroit offered way more of a suburban lifestyle, and it really couldn't keep up when the freeways opened up the hinterlands for unfettered suburban sprawl. Everyone wants the newest, best version of the burbs, so they go further and further out to chase it. Without having a strong urban core with all the corresponding urban amenities and lifestyle, what pull factors existed to keep people in the city, especially as the city began to greatly struggle?