Where Is The Rust Belt?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

There's of course the racial element that caused people to flee the city faster and more wholesale than just economic restructuring would have caused. Limitless sprawl has also definitely contributed to the intensity of the emptying out of Detroit. But I think there are plenty of examples of super sprawly regions that have not collapsed to claim that Detroit's issues are just due to sprawl.

yeah, egregiously out of control sprawl is not something unique to metro detroit (hello, chicagoland!).

what is a little bit more standout-ish about post-war detroit was the near total completeness to which white flight was carried out at the entire city-wide level.

from 1950 to 2010, the city of detroit's NH-white population decreased by over 96%, plummeting from ~1,535,000 NH-white people all the way down to 55,604.

no other major american city has come close to that level of near total evacuation of the central city by white people.

Originally Posted by pj3000

Consider my rustbelt taffy pulled... hard.

would it help if we posted some ruin porn for you?

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Consider my rustbelt taffy pulled... hard.

I mean, damn... when I look at them listed like this, I think, that's a list of some fucking cool cities.

Basically some of my favourite American cities, minus LA.
I love Pittsburgh almost as much as Buffalo.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Oh indeed.
No one really (except for benp and westcoastperspective) toots Buffalo's horn on this site, so me as a Canadian that grew up with it as the closest larger Metro, I'll proudly carry that torch

Go Bills!

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

Are you seriously arguing that Detroit's decline is not tied to regional economic issues?? Had deindustrialization, automation, and offshoring of manual labor never happened, do you seriously think Detroit would still be in the condition its in today? The city/region grew into a powerhouse because of industry, and when that industry began to go away, or require less labor, the growth stopped.

The growth stopped because of suburbanization. Detroit stopped growing in the 1950s. Metro Detroit didn't stop growing until the 1970s. Metro Detroit added 2 million people in the exact same decades that Detroit lost over 300 thousand residents.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Buffalo declined hard, perhaps harder, but didn't sprawl as much and retained more whites and wealth and prewar urbanity.

Most of old money/moneyed areas of Buffalo remain intact. Even Buffalo's "Millionaire's row" aka Delaware Ave, once the most prestigious address still has many mansions (no longer SFH) remaining from the Gilded age, whereas say across Lake Erie, Cleveland's once grand Euclid Ave doesn't really exist anymore. Delaware Ave is still fashionable with the Westin Hotel/Delaware North HQ, Avant condos/Embassy Suites etc.

In Buffalo it was primarily the working class neighborhoods, East side in particular, that emptied out.

New build luxury condos or townhouses will set one back ~$1M-$1.5M. Existing large homes anywhere ~$500k-$1.75M depending on condition and street/area. The biggest and grandest homes will fetch ~$2M or more in the city limits.

Head North on Delaware Ave past the "Midway" townhouses (c. 1880-1910) and you'll see beautiful old homes, former mansions, grand apartment buildings, and "Gilded age era" private social clubs.
Originally Buffalo's wealthy wanted to mimic Manhattan's elite with 4 storey townhouses, but then realized they can build grand estate homes further north on Delaware Ave.
Street view recently updated
https://maps.app.goo.gl/nPjVo3Zaa3aSVrMg8

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by JManc

Go Bills!

Go Bills, Jeremy!

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Wigs

The city of Detroit literally lost more people in population than the entire 2 county Buffalo-Niagara metropolitan area.
City of Detroit declined by 1,217,104 people

It also went bankrupt, and was America's poster child of neglect, disinvestment, and abandonment. If that's not economic collapse of a city, I don't know what is

How does this thread turn into Detroit exactly? The obsession you people have, it's insane. Detroit living forever rent free in your minds, definitely the most relevant US city.

First of all, you know absolutely nothing about Detroit. Second of all, whatever the city proper lost at one point is irrelevant. If you're really trying to compare Detroit to Buffalo LOL, Detroit is more than five times the size... Buffalo is relatively a provincial town. Apples and oranges.

Buffalo metro area also shrunk in the 2020 census, Detroit area grew by 2% even outpacing Chicagoland. So your rosy narrative on Buffalo isn't exactly the most truthful. Pretty slanted. Census also greatly miscounted Detroit proper, and that's just a fact. Accredited research says so.

Detroit today, has literal mega billions being invested in it, colossal global industries that are growing, a tsunami of new urban development, thousands of new residential units yearly, multiple new research campuses planned...

Buffalo has???.. A new paint job on a tower built in the 70's. Wow, Detroit really wishes it was Buffalo.

Buffalo is definitively true Rustbelt in the sense that it has no long term prospects at all. The major metropolis of Detroit is an entirely different case.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

From 1950 (peak) - 2010 (post-war low), the city of chicago's population decreased by ~875K, so not that far off Detroit in absolute numbers, though nowhere near as extreme by percentage.

Since we're apparently doing "rustbelt taffy-pull" v8.0, I'll just post this again.



These are what I consider to be the textbook large rustbelt cities.

None of this means shit. If you add a few square miles of southern Oakland County and other parts of Wayne suddenly Detroit has the same percentages as Chicago. Cut off select parts of Chicago and you get the same outcome too.

Detroit proper has one of the fastest growing inner city white populations in the Midwest in recent years.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

None of this means shit.

well if you say so.....

Originally Posted by The North One

If you add a few square miles of southern Oakland County and other parts of Wayne suddenly Detroit has the same percentages as Chicago. Cut off select parts of Chicago and you get the same outcome too.

i'm unconvinced. let's see the math.

additionally, municipal limits may be arbitrary, but they most certainly do have real world impacts.

Originally Posted by The North One

Detroit proper has one of the fastest growing inner city white populations in the Midwest in recent years.

sure, but that's kinda like giving a $20 bill to a homeless person and saying they now have one of the fastest growing net-worth's in the city.

when your base is near zero.....

Originally Posted by The North One

Buffalo metro area also shrunk in the 2020 census

actually, the buffalo MSA grew by 2.8% from 2010-2020.

but it was still one of the very slowest growing metros, along with most of the other classic rust-belters.


the 10 slowest growing 1M+ MSAs from 2010-2020:

hartford: +0.1%
cleveland: +0.5%
pittsburgh: +0.6%
rochester: +1.0%
st. louis: +1.2%
milwaukee: +1.2%
memphis: +1.6%
chicago: +1.7%
detroit: +2.2%
buffalo: +2.8%


source: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/upl...rica_s-Largest-Metro-Areas_-Populati.pdf

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by The North One

How does this thread turn into Detroit exactly? The obsession you people have, it's insane. Detroit living forever rent free in your minds, definitely the most relevant US city.

First of all, you know absolutely nothing about Detroit. Second of all, whatever the city proper lost at one point is irrelevant. If you're really trying to compare Detroit to Buffalo LOL, Detroit is more than five times the size... Buffalo is relatively a provincial town. Apples and oranges.

Buffalo metro area also shrunk in the 2020 census, Detroit area grew by 2% even outpacing Chicagoland. So your rosy narrative on Buffalo isn't exactly the most truthful. Pretty slanted. Census also greatly miscounted Detroit proper, and that's just a fact. Accredited research says so.

Detroit today, has literal mega billions being invested in it, colossal global industries that are growing, a tsunami of new urban development, thousands of new residential units yearly, multiple new research campuses planned...

Buffalo has???.. A new paint job on a tower built in the 70's. Wow, Detroit really wishes it was Buffalo.

Buffalo is definitively true Rustbelt in the sense that it has no long term prospects at all. The major metropolis of Detroit is an entirely different case.

You think that's bad? CA loses 2 people and the entire country flips out. San Francisco. Los Angeles. The real boogiemen of the US.
Maybe it's a Rust Belt thing, but you can always talk about poop in SF.

[JManc]

^ SF and LA have a hard time keeping football teams. The 49'ers should be renamed the Santa Clara 49'ers.

Originally Posted by The North One

How does this thread turn into Detroit exactly? The obsession you people have, it's insane. Detroit living forever rent free in your minds, definitely the most relevant US city.

First of all, you know absolutely nothing about Detroit. Second of all, whatever the city proper lost at one point is irrelevant. If you're really trying to compare Detroit to Buffalo LOL, Detroit is more than five times the size... Buffalo is relatively a provincial town. Apples and oranges.

Buffalo metro area also shrunk in the 2020 census, Detroit area grew by 2% even outpacing Chicagoland. So your rosy narrative on Buffalo isn't exactly the most truthful. Pretty slanted. Census also greatly miscounted Detroit proper, and that's just a fact. Accredited research says so.

Detroit today, has literal mega billions being invested in it, colossal global industries that are growing, a tsunami of new urban development, thousands of new residential units yearly, multiple new research campuses planned...

Buffalo has???.. A new paint job on a tower built in the 70's. Wow, Detroit really wishes it was Buffalo.

Buffalo is definitively true Rustbelt in the sense that it has no long term prospects at all. The major metropolis of Detroit is an entirely different case.

Bills > Lions.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by JManc

The 49'ers should be renamed the Santa Clara 49'ers.

Coming soon to an NFL near you, the Arlington Heights Bears.


FTR, the Bills don't play inside Buffalo city limits either.

[Klippenstein]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I think of Buffalo is rust belt motherland.

I liked this so I stole it. I grew up in the Buffalo metro aka the motherland, which is probably why I was irrationally attracted to one of the most industrial parts of Chicago where I live now (the SE side).

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Coming soon to an NFL near you, the Arlington Heights Bears.

Whaa? Da Bears without Soldier Field? I hope they name their new stadium Ditka Field at least.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by The North One

How does this thread turn into Detroit exactly? The obsession you people have, it's insane. Detroit living forever rent free in your minds, definitely the most relevant US city.

First of all, you know absolutely nothing about Detroit. Second of all, whatever the city proper lost at one point is irrelevant. If you're really trying to compare Detroit to Buffalo LOL, Detroit is more than five times the size... Buffalo is relatively a provincial town. Apples and oranges.

Buffalo metro area also shrunk in the 2020 census, Detroit area grew by 2% even outpacing Chicagoland. So your rosy narrative on Buffalo isn't exactly the most truthful. Pretty slanted. Census also greatly miscounted Detroit proper, and that's just a fact. Accredited research says so.

Detroit today, has literal mega billions being invested in it, colossal global industries that are growing, a tsunami of new urban development, thousands of new residential units yearly, multiple new research campuses planned...

Buffalo has???.. A new paint job on a tower built in the 70's. Wow, Detroit really wishes it was Buffalo.

Buffalo is definitively true Rustbelt in the sense that it has no long term prospects at all. The major metropolis of Detroit is an entirely different case.

Way to take this to heart, dude.
Inferiority complex much?

You claim I know nothing of Detroit when you know nothing of Buffalo
I actually like Detroit, am well aware at the CSA being ~4.5x Buffalo's CSA size.
I was merely stating facts of how far the core city has dramatically fallen in population.

Buffalo is a much smaller and leaner 2 county Metro/MSA obviously.
And yes, you're right Buffalo is not growing and has no prospects and is just 1 tower with a $208,000,000 total "paint job"

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

actually, the buffalo MSA grew by 2.8% from 2010-2020.

but it was still one of the very slowest growing metros, along with most of the other classic rust-belters.

The core county and employment center is Erie where 80-85% of employment and 90% of the wealth is located.
Both the core county: Erie and core city: Buffalo are growing.
Buffalo +17k
Erie County +35k
which is huge in a small Metro where the city declined for 70 years, and the core County: Erie for 50 years

Niagara Falls, NY is still declining which drags down the Metropolitan numbers, but economically and wealth wise they don't add much to the Metro. Niagara county declined 3,800 people from 2010-2020.
Niagara county is basically a bedroom community for Erie county.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by JManc

Bills > Lions

Facts.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i'm unconvinced. let's see the math.

I did the math in another thread a while ago. If I recall correctly, when you add up the population of the border cities around Detroit + Detroit's population you'd get about 1.5 or 1.6 million. There was not much more than 2 million people in that same footprint in 1950.

[Steely Dan]

^^ i'd still like to see the numbers if you can find them.

that said, one of the things that's nice about that chart showing the relative population declines of the major rustbelt cities is that it's comparing pretty damn static geographies from 1950 to 2020 (with the exception of milwaukee), so we're getting a pretty good apples to apples view of things instead of cherry-picking data.

i still maintain that the most unique feature of the city of detroit's decline was not uncontrolled sprawl (that story was told in LOTS of cities), it was the completeness to which white flight was carried out, such that by 2010 the city's NH-white population had declined by over 96% from the 1950 peak.

like sprawl, LOTS of other major cities had white flight too, but nowhere did the phenomenon occur to such an extreme degree of near total completeness along central city vs. suburban municipal lines as it did in metro detroit.





but speaking of cherry-picking (and for those who don't like the physical size of chicago's expansive city limits), check this out:

- city of detroit: 139 sq. miles | 1950 pop. 1,849,568 | 2020 pop. 639,111 | change: -1,220,457 (-65.4%)

- southside of chicago*: 118 sq. miles | 1950 pop. 1,504,237 | 2020 pop. 1,033,062 | change: -471,175 (-31.3%)


it's interesting how similar the average densities of those geographies were back in their heyday (13.3K ppsm for detroit vs. 12.7K ppsm for SS chicago), and now the SS of chicago, even with all of its decline, has nearly double the average density (4.6K ppsm for detroit vs. 8.8K ppsm for SS chicago).


(*) for the purposes of this exercise, i'm counting the "southside" as all community areas from #34 - #75, so everything in the city south of the south branch of the river and not including the near south side, which is really now part of the "central area" and has thus been witnessing very strong growth over the past several decades.

[edale]

Originally Posted by The North One

None of this means shit. If you add a few square miles of southern Oakland County and other parts of Wayne suddenly Detroit has the same percentages as Chicago. Cut off select parts of Chicago and you get the same outcome too.

Detroit proper has one of the fastest growing inner city white populations in the Midwest in recent years.

Lol, classic. If we just expand the already large municipal boundaries to be even larger, Detroit would be more populous/wealthier/whatever. If the municipal boundaries were larger, those areas would have almost certainly been affected by the same white flights and abandonment that the rest of the city suffered.

The "major metropolis" of Detroit routinely comes up in urban discussions because its collapse is pretty unique among major cities. No other major American city comes close to approaching the scale of abandonment and depopulation that Detroit has experienced. In this sense, it's pretty unique and thus gets discussed a lot. The northern half of St. Louis is probably the closest comparison, but that's a much smaller area of abandonment, and there still is the relatively healthy southern half of the city intact. Detroit has no comparable healthy side...just pockets of intact neighborhoods and a downtown/midtown core that is seeing lots of investment currently. It shouldn't be a surprise that urban nerds like to discuss Detroit given its unique predicament.