Census: Detroit's population falls to 713,000

Source: Detroit News

Detroit — Detroit's population fell to 713,000 in 2010, its lowest level in a century, according to U.S. Census figures released today.

The loss of 238,270 residents since 2010 is a sobering statistical stamp on a decade's worth of job losses, plant closings and foreclosures in a city that was home to 1.8 million residents in 1950. The numbers follow Census figures released in December that show Michigan was the only state to lose residents since 2000, falling 54,000 to 9,883,640. Michigan is set to lose one of its 15 congressional seats.

Mayor Dave Bing declined comment to reporters at a noon gathering at the GM Renaissance Center.

For many, it was a drop of unexpected proportions. Even professional demographers were stunned by the scope of Detroit's population loss. . .

Read more: http://detnews.com/article/20110322/METRO/103220399/Census--Detroit’s-population-falls-to-713-000

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That truly is a stunning drop. Damn. Hang in there, my home town.

post-industrial ghost town. I was last in Detroit in 1997 to support the newspaper workers and there were parts of the city where I thought I was in the slums of a third world nation. We can thank Bill Clinton and the free slave democrats for creating the ruins of Detroit with the passage of NAFTA.

There was a time when GM employed 800,000 people. That was not going to last.

NAFTA contributed to its continuing decline and depopulation.

She said she and hubby were the only tenants in their floor of the apartment. She couldn't believe how many people and activity we had here. Many of their friends are leaving.

That isn't Tiger Stadium!! (AKA Briggs Stadium) That's what I remember from my home town!!

At one point some cities were More important than they are now - Samarkand comes to mind. Rome was almost abandoned. But a major city not hit by disaster but by not changing with the times?

There are a couple in the Sahara that were only recently discovered by satellite imagery. Apparent trading centers that became unimportant. A few Aztec "cities" were abandoned as well. They don't always really know why. Climate change on a local level is often a prime suspect.

Detroit at this point doesn't have a real "purpose" for being there. It's just a narrow spot in the Great Lakes Chain. New Orleans doesn't have much need to be that large either. Not THAT much is coming down the Mississippi. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and a host of other large industrial cities don't really have any infrastructure or natural resource to justify their location AND size. There were moments when they did, but they don't really exist any longer.

Something silly like 80% of the population lives within 100 miles of the coast line in the US. Dallas should take note. Things don't last forever.

The Great Lakes for transporting raw materials and it wasn't that far from ore and oil reserves. At least that's how I remember being taught in geography at school back in the stone age.

I place its decline with the debt for the war in Vietnam, which had to be be paid to the debtors to Japan and elsewhere. Just as the Iraq war was financed by China.

Those loans weren't made for the good of mankind, they were made for profit. There had to be a collateral given and IMHO it was the American market and manufacturing base.

Half the bad press about any institution or business or whatever is just softening people up to accept a change that advantages some parties who will swoop in with 'the solution.'

In the case of Detroit, they (media stories) faulted fuel efficiency or poor quality in the years following Vietnam. In the case of everything since 2000, they faulted the high cost of producing goods following labor laws and environmental protection. So people let it happen and middlemen made a fortune selling it off.

Now they've gotten to the bone, they've stolen everything else and that is why they are attacking all public jobs, to get everything at bargain basement prices that it took generation of taxes to create.

But what do I do know, anyway.

Detroit was there for similar reasons as Cleveland and Pittsburgh, as well as several other cities in the region. But many of those reasons aren't there any more. Detroit didn't build cars from "scratch" anymore and didn't need access to many of the raw materials. Chicago is a real exception. Truth is that Chicago doesn't really "use" any of its local geography/resources. It could "exist" anywhere. I heard an interesting case one time that the Chicago fire actually positioned it well for the future by affecting their infrastructure.

When Rome burned, it gave Nero a chance to rebuild. After wars, a lot of contracts get handed out to rebuild. Enough mythology, though.

The American automobile industry was built from the need to manufacture for WW2. Its products were durable and made good enough to be exported worldwide.

We need to make something to export besides weapons of war and junk paper to finance the wars that followed. Am I beating a dead horse here? In fact, do we want heavy industry here again?.

You're right about Chicago, which appears to be second NYC in terms of financial power.

Is it based on war as well? Can't seem to get the latest greatest war off my mind today.

Thanks for the answer about the other cities of the rust belt. Friends from that area say all the new businesses are being created by immigrants and their hometowns are unrecognizable.

Did this have to happen? Is it good thing? I guess only the people of the region can say.

Being located near the largest concentration of fresh water, the most important natural resource, is important. Being the busiest border crossing in the country is important. There are a lot of cities that don't serve a "purpose"....Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando. What's their reason for existing?

At least according to information online. By volume, the South Lousiana port in the New Orleans suburb of LaPlace is the busiest in the U.S. Add the Port of New Orleans itself and that lead only increases.

source: http://geography.about.com/cs/transportation/a/aa061603.htm

so i wouldn't call it quits just yet.

It's being punished.

Punished for being a liberal city in a reactionary, red-neck, fundie state.

Punished for being world-class, then punished for losing world class status.

Punished for being run by incompetents by being run by more incompetents.

Drained like the host of a parasite, and cast away.

But within that corpse lies the seeds of renewal. When the People stop waiting for a Savior from Outside, they start to take on their functions in life: parents, husband, wives, neighbors, community.

Detroit will be back. And then the fascists had better take to the lifeboats.

not far behind Detroit.

Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Dayton.

The population is growing.

http://www.newsweek.com/2009/11/26/cutting-down-to-size.html

Babylon was one of the worlds great cities for a couple thousand years, and was the seat of empires, learning, and commerce. It survived invasions, plagues, droughts, earthquakes, and floods. It was killed by irrelevance.

The seats of power shifted elsewhere, new learning centers had sprouted elsewhere, the economy collapsed, and external forces were making it an uncomfortable place to live. By 275 BC most of the residents had moved to another nearby city, and 100 years later the city of Babylon, which had played such a pivotal role in the founding of human civilization, was described by a Persian scribe as an empty ghost town that was already disintegrating and being reclaimed by nature. A very small population of farmers and merchants remained for centuries, but they were stragglers living among the ruins. The city was effectively dead.

Sounds sorta like Detroit.

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they refused to diversity and it killed them.

single-business towns are always going to be at risk.

That's why during the boom years you invest that money in other ventures: attracting new industries, setting up good schools to produce citizens capable of working in a diversified economy, building infrastructure that can serve both your predominate industry but also encourages other types to flourish, hell save some of it for a rainy day.

Instead they assumed the good times would last forever and made no real plans.

It's the same with biology: an ecosystem based around 2 or 3 species isn't going to thrive. It would take the smallest thing to crash the entire set up. The greater the diversity the more robust the entire system is.

There are many single-industry towns in this world. What killed Detroit was low Asian labor costs.

Detroit, that is.

People could pool their money, build the first electric car that really competes with GM (or whomever) - as employee-owners. Maybe the first photovoltaic plant that comptetes with China. Or maybe a regional agricultural cooperative, work like granges, get some political power. Maybe create little employee-owned company sites that own neighborhoods. Have to change the tax laws, take it off the backs of the workers and put it on the companies that create a profit where it belongs. I can dream, eh?

Maybe the gov could invest a trillion or so for building, education, and salaries for a million people for a few years as a start-up.

Houses so cheap they talk about bulldozing them.

Sad, as it sits.

revitalize areas. Unfortunately, when the areas get better they kick the artists out but that would be awhile.

And I doubt that artists would find a thriving market there.

numbers. Maybe not quite so extreme, but probably not too far off.

The crown jewel school of the midwest. That campus alone will keep st louis alive and perhaps thriving again, even if much smaller than its industrial prime. Detroit has cheap land, and a progressive/ keep it local grass roots economy, and some prime ag--more and more going live every year. I hope that's enough

the "crown jewel school of the midwest."

Univ. of Chicago, Northwestern Univ., Univ. of Michigan (Ann Arbor is 45 min. from downtown Detroit, and I've done it in less) and Univ. of Wisconsin would all give you a run for that crown.

U-M is in a research consortium with Wayne State, which is located in Detroit, and Michigan State University in East Lansing next to the state capitol, Lansing. E-Lansing is about 1.5 hours nw of Detroit on I-96 which is a much easier drive than I-94.

Perhaps you would agree that there are several "crown jewels" in Midwestern high education.

He's had huge power over the school system's money. Now he's been granted authority over curriculum, etc.

He's built a few trophy schools for high achievers, and gutted education for the mass of the student body.

No way I'd want to raise kids in this environment. Unless I had the money to send them to private schools.

Good that someone can find the money to build fancy sports venues.

:hi:

lots of reasons - but when I taught in detroit two decades ago, about 1/3 of freshman in high school made it through 12th grade and something crazy like 1/2 to 1/3 of those didn't pass the state test, so they didn't get a diploma, but a certificate of completion.

Even back then, parents that could tried to send kids to private schools.

Detroit is more a harbinger - what happens when the primary economy is tied to one industry that declines, after decades of decline. Many cities look at Detroit as an anomoly. I would say that after a decade of nearly flat economic growth (one decade) it is a canary in the coalmine for many other cities - if we continue to have flat or negative economic growth.

My point isn't pro/anti Bobb - it is that focusing on Bobb misses the real issue that threatens many american cities.

poor economy = less money for schools = worse economy = less money for schools = even worse economy and so on.

"The loss of 238,270 residents since 2010..."

Shouldn't that be

"The loss of 238,270 residents since 2000.." ??

Or has Detroit really lost 238,270 people in in less than a year?

What struck me was you can see the downtown, and then in what seems like just a stone's throw away the empty lots begin. Block after block of not just abandoned buildings, but buildings that had been removed, leaving behind some grass and debris, and that's it.

This story, IIRC, was in the Ford Motor Company history Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress by Douglas G. Brinkley:

When Ford Motor Company installed its first robots, a Ford P.R. drone escorted labor leader Walter Reuther on a tour of the new, high-tech addition.

Smirking, the P.R. flack took extreme delight in telling Reuther that "not one of these robots will ever call in sick or go on strike."

Reuther replied: "And not one of those robots will ever buy a Ford car."

Detroit by itself can't justify two reps in congress, so our esteemed governor (Snyder - R) has to figure out how to gerrymander the thing to make Democrats redundant.

I watched the Canucks/Red Wings game from the Joe Louis Arena last night. They claimed it was a sell-out, but I couldn't believe how many empty seats there were down in the ice area where the cameras sweep. It was shocking considering the Canucks are the top team in the league. In the concourse images during one of the intermissions, the only black faces I saw were behind the counters as servers. I know hockey is primarily a "white" sport, but what are the demographics of the population reduction? Is it mostly whites that have left or are blacks also exiting in large numbers?