Will shrinking the city save Detroit?

April 11, 2011

The recent census indicates that Detroit lost 237,500 residents, or 25% of the 2000 population, over the past ten years. The city also lost 25% of its jobs since 2000—over 498,000 positions. The rapid decline of what was once the nation’s fourth largest city has motivated Detroit government officials, city planners, and community members to propose a radical solution: make the city smaller.

A long-term trend

Urban historians have attributed the socio-economic and population decline of the city to a number of factors. Beginning almost immediately after the war, Detroit began to lose jobs—134,000 between 1947 and 1963. Historian Thomas Sugrue argues that this period was characterized by violence, with white residents attempting to maintain power through terror—setting fire to homes and slashing the tires of their black neighbors. The riots of the 1960s further fueled the ongoing flight of the middle class. The auto companies shipped many of their jobs to the suburbs and overseas, simultaneously weakening the unions and shedding thousands of jobs. In every year between 1972 and 1992, Detroit lost an additional five percent of the jobs it had.

“Right-sizing” the city

With over 40 square miles of vacant land in Detroit, the diminishing population is a visible problem. Mayor David Bing has proposed reducing the city to a geographic area appropriate to the size of the remaining population. The city will begin by demolishing 3,000 houses deemed unsafe and a public hazard before the end of the year, with up to 10,000 houses being torn down within the next three years. The plan is to encourage citizens to move closer to the center of the city. The process will be gradual, beginning with city services such as trash collection becoming more infrequent. City planners call this solution “right-sizing” and note that similar initiatives have occurred in other cities with declining populations, such as Youngstown, Ohio. The adjustments mark a new era in city planning, where officials must make difficult decisions about managing resources in an effort to stabilize the population.

Even if the benefits of reducing Detroit were to materialize, the political challenges are enormous. The plan calls for long-time residents to leave their homes. The cost to relocate residents will be an especially irksome constraint given the city’s depleted tax base. And the plan necessarily calls for some neighborhoods to be saved at the expense of others, a politically thorny problem.

Nevertheless, if the population decline continues to surpass experts’ already pessimistic predictions, Detroiters may not have much of a choice.