Slow motion decay

Slow motion decay
Originally uploaded by buckshot.jones

This past summer marked the 40th anniversary of the 1967 riot in Detroit. Even though I am a history buff, and the riot was a piece of history in my time, part of me said, "enough already." That being said, one of the most poignant lines I heard about the riot and the times since is, ‘Detroit has been going through a slow motion riot for over 50 years’. The point being, the city has been in a slow decline since its peak in the early 1950’s.

The causes are numerous and complex. Race and racism has played a role, but that is only part of the story. In many ways the decline can be traced back to the 1930’s when the auto industry started a major consolidation. By the early 1960’s what was once hundreds of auto manufacturers had been shrunk down to essentially four, then three. All the while these businesses still produced tremendous wealth and built an astonishing middle class. My own family benefited from this wealth creation. This applies to the decline because no longer did the working class need to live close to work and transportation. A factory worker like my father had the means to live pretty much anywhere, and decided to move from the city to the suburbs. Why not? More room to raise a growing family. New homes and spanking clean new schools. Multiply that experience by thousands of autoworkers and you get an understanding of how the city withered while the suburbs boomed. Not the full story, but a piece of the picture