Detroit’s decline – in motors and music

Detroit’s population has shrunk, pulling down tax revenues and leaving 40 per cent of the city unoccupied and derelict. The bankruptcy report published by Detroit city today outlined problems from crime rates to broken street lights, alongside the city’s budget deficit that has brought it to bankruptcy this week.

Detroit’s great strength – the car industry – has also been its weakness, says Lars Bjorn, professor of sociology at the University of Michigan.

“The focus in Detroit has been on one industry – that has been its blessing and its downfall. That explains why it grew so fast through the 20s and then why it went into decline. They’ve been talking about diversifying since the 50s but they haven’t.”

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were headquartered there, and employed a peak of 285,000 workers in 1950. Automation, cheaper imported cars and falling demand, meant that the industry never returned to those heights.

Hit factory

Motown records was America’s biggest music label at its peak, producing more hits than anyone else in the late 1960s. Stars from the Supremes, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5 signed to the label which called itself “the voice of young America”. It was America’s biggest black-owned business ever.

Motown moved to California in 1972 as the competition heated up, was sold by founder Berry Gordy in 1988, and effectively shut down in 2005, though the name lives on.

The car industry may never pick up to its former glory, but Professor Bjorn is hopeful about the city’s regeneration. “There have been some positive signs in the past five years,” he says.

“There are two cities in Detroit: there is a lot of improvement in the inner city, where there are young people moving in for the first time in years. They work for IT companies, they are college-educated, and for the first time in 50 years there are places in Detroit where housing is in short supply.

“But outside that, we have all the problems that the city faces and much of the city is wasteland.”