Detroit's hard times started more than half a century ago, when the City's population began to decline in the early 1950's. Not due to school segregation and race riots of the 1960's, as many believe, though those issues certainly sped the flight, but due to a variety of factors ranging from housing to industrial to national security policy that prioritized the regional dispersal of housing and industry. From its peak of over 2.2 million people, the City now has less than 800,000, not to mention an unemployment rate somewhere near 50%, in an area the size of San Francisco, Manhattan and Boston combined.
(the above image was created by Dan Pitera, University of Detroit Mercy/Detroit Collaborative Design Center)
It's hard, faced with such dire images and statistics, to remember that the City still has a significant population, wealth of buildings, land and resources, and as a result a lot of opportunities for creative solutions to find incredible resources. Examples will follow in subsequent posts.
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