CASE STUDIES Flashcards
Detroit context
A city in the state of Michigan, USA
It’s declining… suffering from the effects of deindustrialisation.
It’s in the rustbelt, an area of industrial decline in the northeast USA including Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago.
The once-powerful manufacturing region that stretched from the Great Lakes to the Midwest, famous for steel and car production. It fell into decline following automation, global shift and increased free trade.
It was once the centre of American car manufacturing ‘Motor City’
It’s population fell from 1.5 million in 1970 to only 680,000 by 2015 - a huge drop of over 50%
The average household income was about $25,000 in 2015, half the national average and more than $60,000 lower than in Santa Clara County
By 2014, two-third of Detroit’s residents could not afford basic needs like food and fuel and the poverty rate was 38%
Life expectancy in parts of Detroit is just 69 years, and less than 30% of students graduate from high school
In 2014 Detroit had the second highest murder rate of any US city
Average house prices in Detroit are about $40,000 and it is estimated that in 2015 there were 30,000 abandoned homes and 70,000 other abandoned buildings
Detroit has severe shortages of public sector workers (teachers, nurses) because most have simply moved away to better places.
Santa Clara has shortages of skilled workers, because living costs (house prices and commuting costs) are so high
Demand is so low in Detroit that huge areas of the city are simply abandoned.
Detroit demograohics
82% black, 8% white, 7% Hispanic, 1% Asian, 2% mixed
Detroit is dominated by Black African Americans
This is because they are the lowest income group left behind when other groups - generally more skilled and better educated - have migrated from Detroit as it has declined
Many industrial cities, like Detroit and Cleveland in the USA, or Newcastle and Hull in the UK, entered a spiral of decline as a result of deindustrialisation, or negative multiplier effect. Regeneration targets this.
A spiral of decline is a hard-to-stop loss of jobs, people and tax revenues that leads to further losses and greater decline.
Social consequences of inequality in Detroit
Reduced:
Trust in people with positions of power, especially police and planners
Social and civic participation
Educational attainment and training
Social mobility
Attachment to place
Increased:
Segregation of different socio-economic groups, property damage and violent crime
Health issues: either because of lack of wealth, access to care or more deliberate lifestyle choices
Higher infant mortality and shorter longevity
Status competition, which drives less-affluent people into debt to keep up with a peer group practising a higher level of consumerism
Urban decline in Detroit
In the UK, there are places like Hartlepool, a former shipbuilding and steel town in Teeside with an unemployment rate twice the national average (13%). Over a quarter of Hartlepool’s high street shops are empty, showing the lack of spending power in the area. (Then the textbook goes into some stuff about the UK Rust Belt, but I’m going to write it because it doesn’t seem relevant.)
Rural Decline in Detroit
Rural Decline
Unlike urban places, rural areas do not have as many environmental issues, a lack of green space or conflicts centred on ethnicity.
Decline centres instead on a faster ageing population, exacerbated by the out-migration of young people.
Falling employment in farming and other primary sector work like mining, quarrying, fishing and forestry.
Often this is the result of mechanisation, i.e. bigger, more efficient and sophisticated machines often doing the work once done by human labour.
Out-migration of young people for education and then employment
Ageing rural populations
Those with an increasing percentage of over 65s, who are retired and dependent on pensions; placing high demands on public services, especially healthcare.
Decline in rural services, especially post offices, banks, petrol stations and some public services.
Even in those with population growth, since people increasingly drive to use services in towns
A shift in economic activity towards services, especially leisure and tourism, but this only benefits popular areas accessible from major towns and cities.
