  Tkshreve Member Username: Tkshreve Post Number: 738 Registered: 07-2006 |
I recently spent a few days in Chicago for the first time in my life. Having spent the last five years learning and trying to define Detroit, I went to Chicago to "see how different it really was". Arriving home, I thought I would start a thread encompassing my fellow dyes'ers thoughts on the windy city in relation to Detroit. At this point the only things I can really say that these two cities have in common would be; Climate - Geography (Great Lakes Cities) - and Architecture (Historic Buildings). Of the differences I will list a few: -Foot Traffic -Public Transit -Inner City Demographics -Strip Clubs (we win on that one) -Current Construction Projects (They are still building highrises like the trump tower, and we build the Compuware) -Vacant Buildings (I didn't see any in my brief travels) What I'm trying to find out is how close would Detroit be to where Chicago is now, if we had not ceased all growth about 30-some years ago. Did our bustling mid-west cities of the 1920's - 1960's ever have anything in common? Thoughts? | ||
Tkshreve Member Username: Tkshreve Post Number: 739 Registered: 07-2006 |
Oops..... what's a comarison? | ||
Border5150 Member Username: Border5150 Post Number: 166 Registered: 03-2004 |
There is no comparison between Chicago and Detroit | ||
Crawford Member Username: Crawford Post Number: 479 Registered: 10-2006 |
There are plenty of Detroit-type neighborhoods in Chicago, but they aren't downtown or in the touristy sections. The South and West sides of Chicago (about two-thirds of the city) are pretty similar to Detroit, and have more than their fair share of blight, abandoned buildings, extreme racial segregation, etc. That said, of course downtown and the North Side yuppie neighborhoods cannot be remotely compared with anything in metro Detroit. These areas are thriving and very desirable. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3477 Registered: 07-2004 |
What leaps out in my mind is that Chicago never pretended that it could live without its downtown. Massive and continuing investment in rapid transit kept the Loop as the center of the metroplex. In Detroit, declining investment in rapid transit meant that investment would go where the federal government built freeways adjacent to new land. And that's what happened: People followed the money. At least Chicago's city fathers had the sense to maintain a countervailing force to the highway bonanza. In Detroit, our leaders did nothing to countervail it, in fact encouraging it. | ||
Dtowncitylover Member Username: Dtowncitylover Post Number: 484 Registered: 02-2008 |
Chicago still has alot of ethnic enclaves. Many Jewish, Polish, Indian, and Russian neighborhoods. Where my siter lives (Devon & California) is Little Bombay, all along Devon. For the most part, Detroit has few, if any, ethnic enclaves. Greektown is not Greek and Chaldean Town is dwindeling. | ||
Gistok Member Username: Gistok Post Number: 6126 Registered: 08-2004 |
However, even Chicago has its Southfields and Troys with large office tower centers and corporate campuses... ever been to Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates? | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3480 Registered: 07-2004 |
Sure it does. And downtown Chicago is still the center of it all. And the reason is because they made sure they had countervailing forces to ensure downtown's survival. | ||
Eastsideal Member Username: Eastsideal Post Number: 278 Registered: 10-2007 |
Chicago had a hard core of urbanites who were committed to living in a city environment, and determined to keep it feasible and reasonably safe for them to do so - some of them ethnic people, but many of them highly educated, professional people. Detroit had, like Chicago, a lot of people from the rural south and from poor and rustic parts of Europe, and a lot of middle- and upper-middle-class families who preferred a suburban lifestyle. But, for the most part, that's ALL Detroit had, and they split for the newly developed countryside, the big green yards, and the malls at the first sign of trouble. With no hard-core of moneyed and committed urbanites, most of the people left in the city were just those who were too poor to leave. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3481 Registered: 07-2004 |
Eastsideal: I wouldn't go so far as to say that that's ALL Detroit had. In the industrial Midwest, cities that had suffered through the Depression suddenly had full employment, but Detroit needed many more workers and fast. Unfortunately, the nearby industrial cities, which shared a Middle Western heritage with Detroit, were unable to spare a man, so Detroit had to pull in people from out of the state and out of the region to fill the shop floors during the war. In a sense, so many people came in that they effectively overran the people who DID live in Detroit and had an enduring interest in local institutions. | ||
401don Member Username: 401don Post Number: 926 Registered: 11-2007 |
Lots of discussion has been made of the white exodus from the entire city of Detroit, but Detroit never had a large office population downtown for a city of 2 million people. None of the auto companies were located downtown and most of the office tenants have been gov't and banks. Actually, were there ever any large private sector companies prior to GM and Compuware? | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3482 Registered: 07-2004 |
You'd be surprised about statewide statistics on office space. Last I read, the city with the third most office space was Troy. The city with the second most office space was Southfield. The city with the most office space was ... surprisingly ... Detroit! | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3483 Registered: 07-2004 |
And, yes, Detroit had a large workforce downtown. It's still pretty high, considering everything that's been done to botch it. As for saying none of the auto companies was located downtown, that's because there was no parcel large enough downtown to build offices on the scale they envisioned. General Motors built their new headquarters in New Center, just a couple miles up from downtown and accessible by streetcar. | ||
Mauser765 Member Username: Mauser765 Post Number: 2970 Registered: 01-2004 |
There is no comparison between Chicago and Detroit There is no comparison between Chicago and Detroit There is no comparison between Chicago and Detroit comon - all together now: There is NO comparison between Chicago and Detroit | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3484 Registered: 07-2004 |
Also, another thing: Chicago, for all its wonders, is saddled with being a WORLD-CLASS CITY. That means that they're constantly aping New York and Los Angeles and London, trying to shoot for stuff that's international. Whereas we are a backwater, unencumbered by what the important tastemakers say a WORLD-CLASS CITY must behave like. And I actually really like that about us. When I moved back from New York in 2002, I thought it was refreshing. Everybody else on the East Coast was twiddling knobs and listening to ambient music, and I hadn't heard anybody play a guitar in years; Detroiters were still playing rock and roll! Love it! | ||
Eastsideal Member Username: Eastsideal Post Number: 281 Registered: 10-2007 |
Don is basically right though, Detroit never developed the big corporate downtown of a Chicago, or even of smaller cities like Cleveland or Minneapolis. Part of what that meant is that there were fewer people working downtown than in those cities, and no large anchor downtown to stabilize things when times got bad. Instead most downtown Detroit office buildings had a large number of smaller tenants, most of whom eventually either went out of business or left to be closer to their clients and customers. Hence our uniquely large number of vacant office buildings. So the city never really developed the significant core of urban-dwelling professionals that is a prominent feature of more active large cities like Chicago. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3485 Registered: 07-2004 |
Also, another thing: Chicago, for all its wonders, is saddled with being a WORLD-CLASS CITY. That means that they're constantly aping New York and Los Angeles and London, trying to shoot for stuff that's international. Whereas we are a backwater, unencumbered by what the important tastemakers say a WORLD-CLASS CITY must behave like. And I actually really like that about us. When I moved back from New York in 2002, I thought it was refreshing. Everybody else on the East Coast was twiddling knobs and listening to ambient music, and I hadn't heard anybody play a guitar in years; Detroiters were still playing rock and roll! Love it! | ||
Savannah Member Username: Savannah Post Number: 110 Registered: 02-2008 |
Back in the '60's when I was a kid, one did not often hear New york and Chicago spoken of unless Detroit was mentioned in the same breath. But, no, now there is no comparison. Like the man said,"Cleveland, but without the glitz" | ||
Crawford Member Username: Crawford Post Number: 481 Registered: 10-2006 |
Mauser, please give one reason why we can't compare Chicago and Detroit? Yes, Chicago is many times more prosperous than Detroit. At the same time, that never stopped Chicago boosters from comparing Chicago to cities much more prosperous than Chicago. What's the difference exactly? The fact is that any city can be compared to any other city. | ||
Gnome Member Username: Gnome Post Number: 2336 Registered: 08-2007 |
Chicago has had a long history of Bosses. Buisness and Political. McCormick, Pullman, Marshal Fields. These giants thought big and acted big and they invested a great deal of respect in famed city planner Daniel Burnham. Burnham, an early employer of Frank Lloyd Wright, through sheer force of will built the 1893 Columbian Expo almost overnight. Burnham built the White City and the Chicago City Fathers turned to Burnham to design The Plan of Chicago in 1909. http://books.google.com/books? id=SXYlV95ZIogC&printsec=front cover&dq=%22daniel+burnham%22& lr= Burnham designed our Dime Bank and David Whitney Buildings btw. | ||
401don Member Username: 401don Post Number: 927 Registered: 11-2007 |
Thanks Eastside, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Even two or three corporate headquarters downtown would have made a huge difference to its stability. Of course the Ren Cen made matters worse by sucking tenants out of existing buildings and office workers off the streets. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3486 Registered: 07-2004 |
Al, I think you're painting a simplistic picture of downtown Detroit. Downtown Detroit was a core. You could either BUILD on that core, or abandon it. Chicago didn't abandon its core and Detroit did. Call it whatever you want, natural, logical, etc., but don't tell me Detroit didn't have the kind of downtown other cities did. The pictures alone prove you wrong. | ||
Eastsideal Member Username: Eastsideal Post Number: 282 Registered: 10-2007 |
Exactly. I think it's hard to appreciate from a distance just how important Detroit once was. It was the 5th largest city in the country and the 4th largest metropolitan area. And, more importantly, it was the richest city, with the highest average income of any city in America. Other cites that we would now consider to be much more attractive than Detroit were once small insignificant and much poorer backwaters compared to this place. But it was also always more a city of single family detached homes than any other city in the country, less densely urban than most, and of course much more a city of industrial workers than of office and professional workers. | ||
Eastsideal Member Username: Eastsideal Post Number: 283 Registered: 10-2007 |
It wasn't the same kind of downtown that cities like Chicago had/have. Given Detroit's once huge population, downtown Detroit was proportionately smaller than the centers of most other large cities in the country. There was not a single large national company headquartered in downtown Detroit, and virtually no development downtown after the 1920s unitl the urban renewal efforts of the '60s. It was indeed the center of the city, and certainly the retail and entertainment center. It was absolutely much much busier than it is today (I'm old enough to remember downtown as the shopping center of the city). But it was never the economic engine that drove the area, which is one major reason why it saw a much sharper decline than other downtown areas around the country, and has been much slower to come back than most. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3487 Registered: 07-2004 |
Those trends began in the 1920s, when powerful people like Ford, who was basically a brilliant bumpkin, wanted to get as far from Detroit as he could, setting up his operations in other cities. (Henry Ford despised cities. Remember his answer to urban ills? "We shall leave the city.") Only after the advent of the flivver did you really start to see that single-family built environment because few people wanted to walk as far as that necessitated to a streetcar. We have slowly, gradually squandered our urban core for decades and decades. Please, let's not accept comforting myths about how downtown was doomed by anything other than the past generations' biases and mistrust of cities, and a torrent of federal spending (1956 Highway Act, G.I. Bill, etc.) that helped finish the job. | ||
Eastsideal Member Username: Eastsideal Post Number: 284 Registered: 10-2007 |
I agree with you on all of that. But the building of Interstates, the GI Bill, etc. happened everywhere in the country. Even the racial, crime, and decay problems that Detroit experienced are hardly unique to this city. Goodness knows Chicago had all of these things happen to it too. But the main question is why isn't Chicago more like Detroit (or, why isn't Detroit more like Chicago). And, why is downtown Detroit so much less active now than the downtown areas of most other large American cities. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3488 Registered: 07-2004 |
Must a downtown be an economic engine? Why this fixation on national headquarters downtown? To me, a downtown SHOULD be filled with lots of small businesses to make it viable. There are many factors that helped ruin downtown, but I don't think it was the lack of a corporate headquarters. If anything it was the Depression, a lingering mistrust of cities, and a bevy of subsidies that helped people abandon city life. But, if you feel comforted by the idea that downtown was doomed by some fault of its own, stick to your story. I don't mind.  | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3489 Registered: 07-2004 |
Detroit abandoned rapid transit. Chicago didn't. | ||
Lmichigan Member Username: Lmichigan Post Number: 4096 Registered: 10-2003 |
Chicago was a natural, mid-nation transit hub. Detroit could have nevere become that, even if it wanted to. The two cities were built on different scales, because of this. It's not that they can't be compared, but more simply that the comparison really don't mean anything. If it weren't for the designing and production of automobiles, Detroit would have been another Cleveland, and in many regards, many of the aspects of the city were undersized even with the huge population given the city's singular focus. | ||
1kielsondrive Member Username: 1kielsondrive Post Number: 879 Registered: 08-2008 |
There are none. |
