Detroit, Michigan

 

Detroit, in the state of Michigan was our next footprint in the quest to touch foot in all 50 states of the USA. Michigan is on the border with Canada surrounded by the great lakes. You can see Canada (Windsor) across the river and people from both sides cross each day for work or even lunch !  So, we went to Detroit because a friend from work had been and said it was great. This is in contrast to other Americans who gave us the tilted head and squinted fringe look (aka WTF) when we said we were going to Detroit. But our friend said it was safe, interesting and well worth a look.

Detroit as some of you may know, is famously known as Motor City - home of the Ford motor car and also other car manufacturers GMC and Chrysler. 

But Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and it's only now starting to develop, grow and get back on its feet. So why did it go bankrupt? Well, it kinda goes back a long was from what I can understand, starting back in the 50s and 60s.

We took a walking tour called the Rise, Fall and Renewal of Detroit to help learn the history but together with google, we've now got a good understanding. The city of Detroit has gone through a major economic and demographic decline in recent decades. The population has fallen from a high of 1.8 million in 1950 to 700,000 in 2013. The city's automobile industry has suffered from global competition and has moved much of the remaining production out of Detroit. Local crime rates are amongst the highest in the US and vast areas of the city are in a state of severe urban decay. In 2013, Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history, which it successfully exited on December 10, 2014. 

So, back to why the decline happened. In July, 1967, black residents of Detroit rioted. The immediate cause of the riot was a police raid on an after-hours drinking club in a black neighborhood. The police found far more people than expected, yet still attempted to arrest all 82 people on the premises. The deeper cause was the history of police harassment and brutality. Eventually, units of the National Guard and US Army were required to restore order. The weeklong riots resulted in enormous losses = 43 lives and about $45 million in property. 

After the riots, thousands of small businesses closed permanently or relocated to safer neighbourhoods, and the affected district lay in ruins for decades. While the 1967 riots are seen as a turning point in the city's fortunes, Detroit's decline began in the 1950s, during which the city lost almost a tenth of its population. Powerful historical forces buffeted Detroit's single-industry (car manufacturing) economy, and Detroit's federally supported comeback strategies did little to help. 

It seems that the city population significantly declined over decades and therefore less taxes were taken, public/govt agencies didn't reduce so costs went up and the jobs/people kept moving away due to car manufacturing moving interstate or overseas cause it was cheaper. Clearly a fairly big recipe for disaster and the city just became a ghostown and economic time bomb. Thus the outcome resulted in the bankruptcy and the government weighed in to help out the Big 3 car companies. 

Talking to the coffee shop chick who's a credit specialist by daytime (the people you meet right!), she said that things are improving a lot but she sees lots of people getting into debt stress too late before asking for help. Real estate has been as cheap as chips - seriously, two key people (and Trump's not one of them) in Detroit have just bought up real estate big and will make a huge profit in years to come, if not now. But, they have invested in a dead city and well done to them for bringing it back. There is much to do still with many city buildings empty (for years) and construction and rebuilding is active throughout the city. We learnt that GMC has its headquarters here in Detroit and other technology based companies (such as Google....poaching auto engineers maybe??) are moving into Detroit so it is growing again. While there are still many empty buildings around, there seems to be a push for people to find 'opportunities' in this emptiness. They put posters in windows to promote events or even remind people as per the trash bin below.

 

Some downtown pics below and of course, the home of the Detroit Tigers Baseball Team (who the Nats flogged I might add). The fist is a monument for Joe Louis. It represents the power of his punch both inside and outside the ring. Because of his efforts to fight laws enforcing racial segregation the fist was symbolically aimed toward racial injustice. The statue is referred to as a "battering ram". Joe Louis held the world heavyweight championship from 1937 to 1949, and is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.

Coney Island Hot Dog. This is a classic must-have when in Detroit. We had lunch at the American Coney Island diner and sampled this legendary hot dickety dog. It's a hot dog with mustard, onion and chilli beef on top. It was nice, tasty but, can't see what the huge rave is about. I'd have a ssssy roll any day over this doggie. But the chilli cheese chips on the side were the bomb. My god, the calories were getting on my waist today. We got served by a dinky Detroit'ian and he was a dude to say the least. Gave us the real royal service and it was great. Big tip to him $$.

 Detroit is deep with African American civil rights history and played a major role.. In 1963 Martin Luther King gave a major speech here that foreshadowed his 'I Have A Dream' speech two months later. He was accompanied by singer Aretha Franklin (I'm a big fan by the way).  The Underground Railroad was an 1800s network of assisting escaped slaves on their path from plantations in the American south to freedom in Canada. Detroit was one of the last “stops” on the Railroad, before escaped slaves could find their freedom in Canada. 

These pictures are taken on the Riverside walk - the river is Detroit River which looks across to Canada. It's a bit like Aulbuy-Wodonga in NSW/Vic but two different countries.

There are at least seven known paths that led slaves from various points in Michigan to the Canadian shore and it is estimated that 200 Underground Railroad stops existed throughout Michigan between the 1820s and 1865. The last runs on the Underground Railroad ended in 1865 with the end of the Civil War and the 13th Amendment’s abolishment of slavery.

A pretty big first day as always. Tomorrow we hope to see the Motown museum and the Henry Ford Museum. Very excited.

Oh and before I go, I took a few pics below for a friend of mine - you know who you are !!!