The origins of the urban crisis

What Hacker News says

1. RALaBargeFeb 2025
   30 miles West in Ann Arbor, there are tech gigs but not tons of them. If you are apart of the University of Michigan, there are tons of opportunities via the college and the groups there, but if not there aren't tons of openings.

   Detroit itself is an amazing city, but it isn't a tech hub, nor is it for everyone. It is the shell of the automotive companies that started to move their operations of out the country in the 50s-70s. Check out the book "Origins of the Urban Crisis" to get an understanding of the decay in Detroit and other large cities who the Big 3 have abandoned for a profit.

   All of my friends that I have brought to the D are always weirded out by how big the city is, yet how few people you actually see outside of the entertainment district. The streets and sidewalks can be fully empty, with a 6 lane road that has so many holes that it is more pothole than road now.

   This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert.

   Show morethread
2. garciansmithFeb 2025
   Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" has a much more nuanced thesis, and part of it is that people were leaving well before the 1967 Uprising, part of it was broader economic changes, part of it was governmental policies (especially with regards to housing and transportation).

   The causes of the decline of Detroit's population are complex, not something that can be distilled in an HN comment honestly. But the idea that no one left Detroit willingly is not correct. I know people who did, even interviewed someone who said their family left due to simple racism: a Black family moved to their neighborhood so they left. Of course, in many cases choices could be weighted by other things like, say, you wanted to purchase a house but couldn't get a mortgage in the city due to extensive redlining but could easily get one in the suburbs.

   Show morethread
3. uxp100Jan 2019
   Right, an interesting read that covers this a little is "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" by Sugrue. Black people and Women entering the workforce was against Union interests since it increases the labor force.

   In many cities, building trades were essentially white only into the 80s. (I've heard pretty awful stories about the carpenter's union in town into the 90s too. Explicit statements of no Blacks allowed.) This was on purpose. Automotive unions were nearly as bad.

   So a baffled, "What? How can Unions be racist?" seems disingenuous.I don't think racism is inherent to unions, or that a tech workers union would even be likely to be racist against Indian people. But a blanket denial seems like trying to gaslight people.

   Show morethread
4. hackuserDec 2015
   I was just reading [1] about how Detroit's original decline was due, to a significant degree, to the mortgage industry:

   Through a system called Red-Lining in the mid-20th century, which the federal government actively facilitated [2], banks refused to lend to any residents of neighborhoods with even a few residents who were of 'undesireable' races, including of course, blacks. This wasn't a conspiracy theory; it was all done in the open. Consequences:

   1) Even for whites happy to integrate: A few black families move in, credit dries up, nobody can sell or improve their homes, and your housing values plummet.

   2) And even worse for blacks: Imagine trying to buy a house without credit. Now imagine doing that coming from the rock-bottom financial circumstances imposed on most blacks in the mid-20th century.

   3) Blacks who did obtain homes couldn't get home improvement loans, resulting in deterioration of their homes and a reputation among whites for not caring about their properties.

   4) The effect on supply and demand: It forced a very large and growing number of black residents into a small, artificially limited number of rentals (they could only live in certain neighorhoods, remember), driving up rental rates and driving down the quality of their residences (landlords could fill their properties without doing maintenance). Even more perversely, even if someone would sell them a house, blacks had to pay more than whites for the same house - the black bidder had far fewer options. Again, remember the people in the worst financial circumstances were the ones facing these problems.

   Back then bankers said the same thing: They are bad credit risks.

   ----

   [1] The Origins of the Urban Crisis:Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue: A prize-winning scholarly history. Highly recommended; it changed dramatically how I understood racial issues and urban development (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10233.html)

   [2] It was called 'red-lining' because the Federal Home Loan Association (I think I have the right agency) would literally draw red lines around these neighborhoods and identify them to banks as the worst possible credit risks.

   Show morethread
5. hampelmJul 2013
   The riots are part of the story, but absolutely not the start. Population was significant declining before the riots. A number of choices, including a long history of racial segregation in housing before the 60s combined with US housing policy (the GI Bill) to create strong incentives for people to build new houses outside of the city. That, combined with a lack of dense housing in the city, created cascading problems that are difficult to recover from.

   A good source on this topic is Thomas Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis".

   Show morethread
6. RALaBargeFeb 2025
   That's cool. Feel free to leave a reference or something. From the Wiki description:

   The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit is the first book by historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue in which he examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit. Sugrue argues that the decline of Detroit began long before the 1967 race riot. Sugrue argues that institutionalized and often legalized racism resulted in sharply limited opportunities for African Americans in Detroit for most of the 20th century. He also argues that the process of deindustrialization, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor-saving technologies. The book has won multiple awards including a Bancroft Prize in 1998

   Show morethread