As one of the birthplaces of modern China, it has been the economic pillar industry and even the spiritual pillar of the United States in the past hundred years. At that time, Ford invented the assembly line production method, which improved the production efficiency of automobiles, greatly reduced the purchase cost of automobiles, and made ordinary citizens affordable to buy automobiles.
With the rapid development of the world, some cities have also risen, Detroit, known as the "Motor City", benefited from the development of the American automobile industry, in the heyday of the 50s of the last century, ranked the fifth largest city in the United States, with a population of nearly 2 million.
Detroit: A city that thrived as a result of cars.
Located in Michigan, Detroit, a strategic location on the Great Lakes waterways, became a transportation hub before and after the Civil War.
From the establishment of the first automobile factory in 1899 to the Great Depression, Detroit grew to become the second-largest industrial city in the Great Lakes after Chicago, with a population of more than one million. Beginning in the 50s of the last century, a large number of black Southerners moved into Detroit, and Detroit became the largest city with the highest proportion of black people in the United States. Today, blacks make up more than eighty percent of the population in urban areas.
As we all know, the United States is basically monopolized by three companies: GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Until the '80s, all three companies were headquartered in Detroit. At that time, Detroit produced a quarter of the cars in the United States, with an annual production of more than 3 million vehicles, and 90% of the city's residents lived on cars, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it was the "automobile capital of the world".
Together with the satellite cities around Detroit, the entire Detroit metropolitan area has a total population of more than 4.4 million, making it the fifth largest city in the United States. But this was Detroit's last glory.
Decayed by cars.
Starting in the early '80s, Detroit's auto industry began to decline. Japanese and Western Europe's high-quality and low-cost automobiles invaded the United States on a large scale, leaving American automakers powerless, and a large backlog of cars produced in Detroit began, and the cars produced by the three major companies could not even be stored, forcing the automobile production line to close.
By the mid-80s, 270,000 auto workers had been laid off in the city, affecting all industries, the unemployment rate had risen to 21%, and it was estimated that one in one citizen went to bed hungry, making it one of the worst "dead cities" in the country. A riverside building sold for $500 million, but it was later auctioned at half price.
In the late '80s, when the U.S. economy picked up and more people bought cars, Detroit recovered a little, but car production was only slightly more than half of its peak year.
In the new century, Detroit, which has a single industrial structure, has missed the transition to new energy and watched Tesla place its production plant in California in the west.
The 2008 financial crisis dealt Detroit a fatal blow. In 2012, Detroit was named the most miserable city in the United States by Forbes magazine. In 2013, Detroit, overwhelmed by nearly $20 billion in debt, declared bankruptcy, making it one of the largest urban bankruptcies in U.S. history. When Detroit ran for mayor in 2017, half of the eight candidates were former felons.
Detroit's transformation from a prosperous city to a bankrupt, sin city is a microcosm of the inability of American races to integrate, the inability of blacks to self-control, and the massive flight of industry.
Today, Detroit has 650,000 people left, large numbers of white, middle-class people have left the city center, and the city is clouded by high unemployment and criminal violence. According to a Detroit News report, 1 in 5 Detroit tenants faced eviction in 2022.
Data shows that in the past 2023, Detroit's total GDP is only $37 billion, and its per capita GDP is less than $60,000, making it the poorest big city in the United States. Such an economy is only equivalent to a third-tier city in China, and is not much different from Ma'anshan in Anhui, Huanggang in Hubei, and Anyang in Henan.
In general, Detroit's urban structure and industrial layout are car-oriented, but when it encounters the hollowing out of the American manufacturing industry and the wave of new energy, it finally loses a good opportunity for transformation, which is worth learning from China's cities!