Detroit is like an American nightmare that comes to life (USA). Doomed Detroit: from the “Motor City” to the ghost town of Detroit, what happened to it

Do you want to see a dying American metropolis with abandoned skyscrapers, garbage, burnt-out cars on the streets, crowds of homeless people and the highest murder rate in the United States? Then hurry up, because Detroit is not going to die at all. Moreover, in a few years there will be no trace left of the established image of the “American nightmare”. The US authorities made a key decision to save the largest city in Michigan and once the capital of the automobile industry, investing tens of billions of dollars in its resuscitation and the effect is already becoming noticeable. Another thing is that simply pouring huge amounts of money into a bankrupt city without eliminating the causes that led to the economic and social catastrophe is, in my opinion, a bad decision. After all, the problems began in the 60-70s of the last century, when the automobile giants Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, dissatisfied with increased taxes and as a result of the overproduction crisis, began to leave Detroit, moving factories to other cities in the country and abroad. Meanwhile, almost the entire population of the metropolis either worked at car factories or was indirectly connected with it. In the eighties, the crisis reached its peak when unemployment in Detroit reached 50% of the working population, after which the city plunged into darkness.

I stayed near the Detroit airport, where hotels, unlike the center, are very expensive. My three-star hotel cost $40 per day, which is practically nothing for the USA. Let me remind you that with all my savings, in New York I barely found an option for 120 per day and I was glad that at least that was the case. Do you know what these guys are doing in the photo below? This is a special machine for pumping water out of puddles and cleaning city sewers -

The only inconvenience of living near the airport is, firstly, the noise of planes taking off (but this does not scare me, after all, I served in the Israeli army for three years at a military airfield), and secondly, it is transport. America is a country of motorists and public transport here is bad, and in relatively small cities it’s a problem. There is no transportation at all to Detroit from my hotel, but luckily there is a free shuttle to the airport, where I catch a bus into the city. This is the third day in a row I’ve been riding this way and I always end up being the only passenger at the stop -

The bus runs from the airport to Detroit every half hour and costs $2. Naturally, they don’t give out change. There is no place for people to change money. But, as I said above, there are also few people willing to use the bus, so no one cares about your change. On the other hand, the driver doesn’t even look at how much money you put in the box. Yesterday I only put in one dollar, not two. Nobody cares.

These buses will take you to the center of Detroit in about 30-40 minutes. The main thing is to take care of your back. What does the back have to do with it, you ask? The roads in Detroit are quite broken, but the bus rushes without avoiding potholes and cracks. I can’t even type on my phone; I can’t hit the letters with my finger because of the shaking.

So, let's take a deep breath and get off the bus in the criminal capital of the United States. What do we see around? Crowds of bloodthirsty killers, pickpockets, drug dealers - they are all waiting for the naive tourist. Kidding. Nobody cares about you. This does not mean that there is no crime and that everything that is written in the newspapers is not true. Everything is consistent, as is the fact that, calculated per 1000 residents, there are exactly 10 times more murders here than, for example, in New York, including criminal Harlem and Queens. You just need to understand that 95% of crime does not affect us in any way, these are internal fights between criminal clans and drug-related gangs. We, as tourists, only run the risk of running into a spontaneous, opportunistic attack from a random hooligan or homeless person, and these chances are relatively small. Of course, the chances of getting into trouble will increase if you walk after dark, or climb into abandoned houses where homeless people probably live. You can also be bitten by stray dogs that you meet in the ruins of factories. Otherwise, take the usual precautions: do not carry valuables or documents with you, look around on deserted streets (and avoid deserted streets), do not withdraw money from street ATMs, do not flash an expensive camera, do not show that you are not local. And everything will be fine.

I got off the bus in front of the former Detroit Central Station, which was abandoned in 1988 when Amtrak stopped serving the bankrupt city. The building stood abandoned for exactly 30 years and gradually deteriorated until last year it was bought by the Ford Corporation and just these days they opened the facility to everyone for free. In a matter of days, on the car company’s website, where they opened a registration for those wishing to visit the building, About 20 thousand people signed up, see Mlive News. The fact is that next week the building will be closed for restoration until 2022 and then company offices will move into it. Now is our last chance to look inside, take advantage of those who are traveling around America now. I think this information will be of interest to blogger and traveler Sasha Belenky macos , which at these moments is moving somewhere in this direction, but from Canada. He has an excellent series of reports about Detroit and you can compare how terrible the city was 4 years ago when he came here: . Already, most of the places he climbed cannot be reached. They are either destroyed or repaired. And in another year or two you will not even see what I will show you in this article.

At first I stood in line, but after standing for half an hour I didn’t move an inch. Okay, there are enough photos of this building on Google, I won’t waste time standing in lines.

In old photographs of Detroit (well, like old ones, from five years ago, for example), this building stands shabby and scary in the middle of an intersection. Now it is being repaired -

On the issue of dangerous places. It is not recommended to walk through such a crossing above the highway. Here you can really be robbed and not only will you have nowhere to run, but there will be no one to help you. But I have no choice, there is no other way to the object I need -

It's not worth going here either -

Suddenly, a mosque is in the middle of a wasteland. Detroit is home to the largest Arab community in the United States, immigrants from Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Based on official statistics, there are 300 thousand of them here, which is slightly less than 10% of the population of greater Detroit, that is, with its suburbs.

Almost all abandoned buildings are surrounded by fences and many of them are private property. The fact that the owners abandoned their house does not give us the right to consider the house a garbage dump, or even just a place to visit. No, you can get in, but from a legal point of view, it makes no difference whether you got into an apartment with a family living there, or where the family has moved out from. So be careful, because you can run into not only homeless people, but also the police.

How much do you think this car is selling for? Yes, it is ancient, about forty years old. Now, you can't see it in the photo, but it only costs $300. Pay and collect. I don’t know how far this unit will go, but it’s a fact.

Do you know what a homeless person does? You'll never guess. He dries things. There is a sewer hatch with hot steam coming out of it; the city is blowing out sewerage. All over the city, homeless people have blocked the hatches with their rags and, sitting next to them, surrender to nirvana -

Grandma for one day for everyone. Doesn't remind you of anything? This is historical garbage, the era of the collapse of Detroit in the 70-80s, when people began to lose their jobs and degenerate.

Of course, there is a sense of decline in everything. You will only find such damaged asphalt like in Detroit in St. Louis, where the situation is reminiscent of Detroit, but I’ll tell you about that separately.

By the way, a real Masonic lodge. Do you think I'm joking?

Here's the proof for you -

A chic historical building that is open to visits, but you must register in advance.

Abandoned hotel -

And one more hotel. What are we talking about, what hotels, what tourists? The city stood in ruins for almost 40 years...

And yet, as I said above, not everything is so bad. There are still few new buildings here, but the old ones are being actively restored -

This skyscraper built in the 1930s, on the left, stood abandoned a few years ago, and now it is being renovated -

And another "dead" hotel -

The very center of the city and again desolation -

I wanted to climb onto the roof of this building on the right, using the external ladder, but when I approached I noticed that the fire escape had rotted and fallen off -

Please note that work is actively underway -

Just five years ago, this beautiful central avenue in Detroit looked like something out of a horror movie about a zombie apocalypse. And now it’s quite civilized, they even set up chess, like in Yerevan near the Moscow cinema -

There are still very few people, yet the city has lost 70% of its inhabitants...

Suddenly, the synagogue, naturally closed. But it seems that Jews sometimes appear here, judging by the neat flowers at the entrance and the burning lights above the door -

And again, everywhere and everything is being built and restored -

But the city has yet to tackle asphalt -

And I’m going to this, at first glance, unremarkable house, right ahead -

What kind of house do you think this is and why am I going there? At first glance, there is nothing outstanding there, except for this arch on the corner, which has clearly been covered with dust for a long time.

So, it was from this building that the history of the Ford Corporation began; it was here in 1892 that Henry Ford rented a small room for a workshop and began building his first cars -

You can go inside, now there is nothing here, but again, the building was bought and they will restore it -

But you must admit that the interiors are impressive!

Like this ancient chest -

But this is all nonsense compared to what you will find there, on the floor above! There was a Detroit theater here, which operated from 1926 until 1960, when the crisis had just begun in the city. People were no longer interested in cultural events and in 1972, after standing abandoned for 12 years, the theater was turned into a nightclub with prostitutes. This is a completely different matter; all the signs of a crisis are obvious. But in 1976, the crisis brought down even signs of debauchery and the nightclub went bankrupt. Since then, the place has been abandoned for, say, 42 years. A few years ago, the former theater was turned into a parking lot -

Phew, how dusty and stuffy it is inside, let's take a walk further -

I wonder if this guy's pants are stopping him from walking? If you think that he is sick, then you are mistaken, this is fashion. In Detroit, every second such “fashionist” is found in black areas.

A small area in the center has already been put in order and here you feel like you are in Manhattan in New York, absolutely civilized -

Not so long ago they launched a monorail around the city center, and they didn’t really rack their brains about what to call this type of transport, so it’s called a “people mover,” a mover of people, literally.

On the right, by the way, is the only entirely new complex built in Detroit over the past 40 years -

Monument to the Victims of the Armenian Genocide in downtown Detroit -

It's time for me to go back to the hotel! Otherwise, I’ll still be stuck in the city after dark and humanity will lose the great figure of science and technology, Sasha Lapshin. Kidding. Here is my stop, where I spent about 40 minutes, because the buses do not follow the schedule in any way -

Finally, I’ll add a few numbers that may disappoint someone, because we grew up convinced that America is a country of fabulous money that awaits us. So, in Detroit today there are about 25% of the working population unemployed and the benefit is just over $500. It is not clear how to live on this amount in the USA. Okay, you get free lunches at the homeless canteen and discounts on electricity and water. The average salary in Detroit was $28,000 per year in 2017, with 50% of the population earning $16,000 to $18,000 per year. In 2017, 82% of Detroit's population is black and that's not good or bad, it's just a fact. Moreover, in 1950 the city was 92% white, also just statistics. Detroit ranks first in the United States in the number of murders.

Even in the most developed country in the world (the USA) there is a ghost city - Detroit. Just a few decades ago it was a successful and dynamically developing metropolis with modern infrastructure - the world capital of the automotive industry. But what happened? Why is Detroit a ghost town? We have to figure all this out today.

Getting to know "Hollywood City"

Do you want to buy real estate in America for just a couple of dollars? I'm not kidding. Due to the already low insolvent population, most (if not all) houses are listed at real estate auctions for extremely low prices.

There are no buyers here. A rare occurrence is the purchase of your own home from the city municipality. And it's cheaper than paying taxes. The latter is not a replenished duty for local residents.

A ghost town in the USA, Detroit is also a Hollywood location for filming apocalyptic scenes for films. You just need to come here with your film crew - no decorations are needed. Here everything is as if the residents hastily left the city, which turned into a ghost after many years.

What does a ghost town look like?

Over 80 thousand abandoned buildings turned into ruins, skyscrapers with broken glass, dilapidated houses overgrown with grass. This is the most dangerous and criminal American city. However, the number of murders has decreased in recent years. At one of the conferences, the mayor of the city answered a question about the drop in crime, saying that there was simply no one left to kill.

Local residents jokingly call their city, which is turning into a wasteland, the prairies, steppes of North America, emphasizing the decadence and tragedy of the city.

Let's look at history and find out why Detroit is a ghost town. A photo of this mystical city is presented below.

From the history of past centuries

The city was founded in 1701 by the French figure Antoine Lome; it was he who gave the name to this settlement. Translated from French, "Detroit" ("Detroit") means "strait". Fur trade with the Indians took place here. For about a century, this city belonged to Canada, but in 1796 it became the property of the United States - Detroit is turning into a major American transport hub, thanks to the favorable location of the lakes and the interchange of transport routes. The city's economy at that time depended on shipbuilding.

Until the mid-19th century, Detroit was the capital of Michigan.

Detroit development

Now many people are wondering why Detroit is a ghost town? A century ago, this city was experiencing the heyday of its development. Majestic buildings, skyscrapers, office buildings and luxurious mansions were built here. It was in Detroit that the first Ford opened, and then Cadillac, Dodge, Chrysler and Pontiac. Detroit became the seat of the world's automobile industry and was called the West of Paris. It was here that fashion for cars was created, new models were produced, becoming the subject of admiration and imitation.

High employment and rapid development of infrastructure contributed to economic growth. As a result, other areas of city life have grown. As the economy grows, the local population also increases. Life in Detroit is in full swing.

Reasons for the devastation of the city

But the economic boom also had a flip side to the coin - cheap labor began to come here. The whites mingle with the blacks, who offer their services for pennies in contrast to the natives of the city.

Herein lies the answer to the question of why Detroit is a ghost town. Gradually, local residents, not wanting to live next to the settlers, move to the outskirts of the city. The middle class, accustomed to good cars and a beautiful life, uses the services of city shops less and less. Due to the decline in customer flow, businessmen rushed to the places where their potential customers live.

Consequences of the outflow of the solvent class

As bankers, engineers, store owners, and doctors began to leave Detroit, the city entered an economic crisis. The number of African Americans continued to grow, so there were more and more poor people in the city.

Car factories, following other business sectors, began to close. Immigrants who arrived began to lose their jobs. They didn't have the money to move from Detroit, which was once rich and now desolate and gloomy. Poverty and misery enslaved the city, and the municipal treasury was short of taxes.

Below is the ghost town of Detroit - photos before and after the economic collapse.

Life in Detroit has stopped

Due to poverty and lack of jobs, the city has become the most violent and crime-ridden place in the United States. The remaining residents clashed with immigrants from Africa. There were constant interracial clashes, and crime was on the rise. The culmination of events - which entered the American history books - was the "12th Street Riot." In July of that year, serious confrontations occurred, which resulted in the most violent riots and lasted five days. The rioters set fire to cars, shops, houses, devastated and robbed everything that came in their way. All of Detroit was engulfed in fires and chaos.

During these riots, the police took everyone away. National federal troops also took part in suppressing the riot. At the end of the uprising, losses were calculated: 2.5 thousand shops were burned and robbed, about 400 families were left without homes, over 7 thousand were arrested, about 500 people were injured and 43 were killed. Economic damage ranged from 40 to 80 million dollars (or 250-500 million dollars at today's prices). Photo of the ghost town of Detroit (one of the houses) below.

This became a point in the life of the city. Small and medium-sized businesses have completely left the city. The oil crisis in the country, which broke out in 1973 and lasted for six years, completely shook the automobile business of the American automobile industry. The gluttonous bought less and less. It was decided to close the last factories in the city. The workers moved out of the city with their families. And those who couldn't - stayed here.

The Detroit administration announced financial problems that it was not possible to cope with on its own. All of the above reasons were the answer to why Detroit became a ghost town.

Automotive hopes of residents

The reason was not only the influx of African emigrants, but also the discrepancy between the hopes of highways that residents had. The stated requirements for comfortable travel on Detroit roads have become difficult to meet. The moment came when there simply wasn’t enough space on the roads for everyone to test their vehicles.

By the way, public transport here was very poorly developed, because the original motto for the townspeople was: “Every family has a separate car.” This is another reason why Detroit is a ghost town. The outflow of population began earlier, but immigrants accelerated the process and deepened the problem.

Detroit today

Today the city has a population of less than 700,000 people. Of these, less than 20% of the population are Americans, 80% are African Americans. According to statistics, only 7% of school-age children can read and write fluently.

Many people are trying to sell their homes, but there are no buyers. And there is no money to leave the ghost town either. The population lives in such a vicious circle. If you look at the empty city center today with apocalyptic landscapes, it becomes clear why Detroit is called a “ghost town.”

The city administration does not have the funds to restore it; the US government has repeatedly tried to revive Detroit, but all attempts have been in vain. Some building owners have not given up hope that someday life will return to Detroit, and that land and real estate will rise in price here.

Thousands of abandoned buildings and offices are being targeted by local vandals. Since the early 80s of the last century, local residents have had a tradition of setting houses on fire. On Halloween, mass arson begins in the city. Why the sign from the ghost city of Detroit (photo below) was picked up by other residents of the states remains unclear. But the fact remains a fact.

An Artist's View of Detroit

Not only Hollywood directors are interested in this gloomy place, but also artists draw inspiration from here. Needless to say, the place is very unusual; there is an opportunity to build development trajectories of the modern post-apocalyptic period. For example, American artist Tyree Gaton began to attract tourists to the city with his work on Detroit ruins. He created objects that are at the same time a painting, a sculpture, a design object, and an original installation. He laid out rusty cars and household appliances in whimsical compositions and decorated them with bright colors. Heidelberg Street, where the artist worked, attracted not only American but also foreign tourists, and Gaton himself received several international awards for his creative achievements.

How is the US government planning for Detroit's revitalization?

As previously written, American authorities have repeatedly made attempts to restore the city. But due to many reasons, this has not yet been possible. One of the local government's ideas was to open two casinos in the city. But they also did not live up to hopes for Detroit's economic recovery.

The bankruptcy process in Detroit lasted from 2013 to 2014. During this period of time, it was not possible to demolish dilapidated buildings that were planned by the government of the country to restore the city. When the process was documented, the authorities decided to demolish almost one quarter of the buildings in the city. According to the authorities, this would help attract new investors and in the future cover old debt obligations, which at that time amounted to over $20 billion.

Ghost town Detroit

In 2013, the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy. It's a high point for a once-great American city decimated by economics and mismanagement.

However, long before the city learned of its financial insolvency, it was already in decline.

And it was once the capital of capitalism, the great “roaring furnace” at the very center of America’s rise to global power and greatness.

By the way, Stalin wanted to copy it on the banks of the Volga, but found that he could not reproduce its machine spirit.

The ghost town of Detroit used to have a spirit of frantic, unstoppable economic cruelty, ruthless, cold and majestic.

The original heart of Detroit was filled with some of the most exuberant and powerful buildings of the American mid-century: colossal, ornate theaters and cinemas, mighty hotels and department stores, all emphasizing energy, movement, optimism and strength.

Why Detroit is a ghost town

The main reason for the decline of the American city was the failure to integrate the automobile industry into the world economy.

In the 20th century, the largest automobile and tank production facilities were located there.

During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt dubbed the city the "Arsenal of Democracy" as it went from producing Cadillacs and Fords to producing 35 percent of American war production: tanks, Jeeps and B-24 bombers, which were produced by the tens of thousands.

And this was one of the cities of the “Promised Land,” a new future sought by countless black Americans who had left the bigoted, segregated American South in the hope of a new life.

Detroit population

Wartime expansion (1941-45) attracted 200,000 immigrants, many of them blacks from the South.

They were attracted by high wages from the new plants of General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and a number of other facilities, including the military.

During the 1950s, at the height of its influence, Detroit boasted a population of more than 2 million people with steady, well-paying jobs.

Today the city's population is approximately 700,000, and large parts of the city are abandoned and rotting.

Without money in the municipal budget for demolition, these buildings will likely remain that way.

Over time, these abandoned buildings became attractions for urban explorers and photographers trying to document and understand the fall of a great American city.

Photos of Detroit's “ghost town”

Detroit riot

Detroit was known for its thriving Ku Klux Klan and its fanatical police force.

The city experienced race riots as early as 1943, caused by the brutal segregation of hastily built and sparse public housing. 34 people died and hundreds were injured.

In 1967, a second terrible race riot occurred, which left 43 dead and almost 500 injured. Federal troops, deployed under the Insurrection Act, eventually imposed a sullen peace.

The fighting was so severe that at the height of the Vietnam War, thousands of soldiers were needed to restore order.

So, as thousands of black families moved to Detroit, real estate agents sought to make a profit by scaring white residents.

They then bought their homes cheaply and sold them for large profits to blacks. This cynical process was called the "block affair", a method of panicking people in all areas with warnings of a black invasion.

Meanwhile, city planners encouraged even more risk-taking. Since it was a Motor City, they did not support public transport, but built a network of highways, which resulted in long distances, which further “broken up” residential areas.

White people began to move out of the city into new suburbs with lower taxes and better schools.

Thus, inch by inch and largely thanks to whites, Detroit became a black city.

Detroit collapse

The disaster of 1967 accelerated this process. In 1974, it elected its first black mayor, Coleman Young.

He would later become infamous as the man who helped kill Detroit. His election, fair or unfair, was the signal for a more rapid flight.

Although other sources say that Young was wrongly accused and that the destruction of Detroit began before him. Both versions have their truth.

The war in the Middle East in 1973, and the subsequent rise in oil prices, finally drags Detroit down.

From that point on, the American automobile industry lost support even among patriotic Americans and never fully regained it.

Meanwhile, the housing crisis grew and grew. There was already a stupid, government-sponsored mortgage boom, with the government lending to people who would never be able to pay off their loans: an early version of the prime-lending crisis.

The first cocaine appeared, sweeping the lethargic and homeless suburbs.

And local politicians and businessmen were confused: “We couldn’t understand that we were no longer in the top ten cities in the United States.”

The most dramatic development in recent years is the idea that agriculture can revive the “ghost town.”

But even this met with contempt and opposition. The city fathers don't want to see combines and barns, not to mention pigs and chickens, in the middle of their proud and historic city.

And yet, among the abandoned houses, modest but determined efforts are being made to turn barren lands into fruitful ones.

Detroit has a lot of trash, but it also has a lot of land. A home can be purchased from the city for $300, although each lot costs up to $3,000 per hectare.

Some entrepreneurs explain what's next: “The city thought farm meant a big red barn with pigs and chickens. And they also thought that this would be a sign of defeat and failure. So we painted them a picture of what we had in mind: gardens, fruit plantations, hydroponic greenhouses.”

There are currently 139 square miles of vacant land. With the unemployment rate touching 50 percent, many people may be interested in moving back here.

It's impossible to say that this will happen.

Is Detroit the new Amsterdam?

Another radical scheme to resurrect a ghost town comes from Jeffrey Fieger, a Detroit lawyer who made his name defending the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian, or “Dr. Death,” the notorious local pioneer of euthanasia.

He recently said: “I can take back Detroit in five minutes. I would clean up the streets and parks. Would enforce medical marijuana laws. I would also implement new prostitution laws and I would make us the new Amsterdam. We would attract a lot of young people. We'd make Detroit a fun city. A place where you want to live, and they would live here.”

*Fieger was the Democratic candidate for governor of Michigan in 1998.

Got to Detroit. It was very interesting to look at the dying city.

Detroit was once the fourth most populous city in the United States (after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) and the capital of a powerful automobile industry. Here were the factories of the giants Ford, Chrysler and General Motors (as well as Packard and Studebaker), which fed half of the city’s residents.

But at some point something went wrong. Several negative factors overlapped each other at once, and the city began to die.

Since the middle of the 20th century, auto giants began to experience difficulties. In 1973, the oil crisis hit the Big Three hard as their cars could not compete with fuel-efficient European and Japanese models. This blow was followed by the energy crisis of 1979, and finally the financial crisis of 2008-2009, which almost finished off the American automobile industry. Factories closed one after another, and workers and their families left the city.

Wealthy residents also left, since Detroit was not adapted to life by car. In the center of Detroit, at some point there was simply not enough space for everyone who wanted to drive a car. One of the reasons for the death of Detroit is the discrepancy between its “pre-automobile” urban planning structure and the set super goal of “Each family - a separate car.” The city of skyscrapers, no matter how hard it wants, cannot live without powerful public transport. As a result, the city center began to die, shops and cultural institutions closed because customers stopped visiting them. Rich people moved to the suburbs and abandoned the center.

In 1950, 1,850,000 people lived here. Whites began to leave Detroit back in the 60s, in particular after the black riot of 1967, when, during a series of riots and robberies, the police temporarily lost control of the city. In the 70s, the outflow intensified, and two peaks of emigration occurred in the 80s and 2000s.

There are now fewer than 700,000 people left in Detroit. In total, 1.4 million white residents left the city after World War II. Most settled in relatively prosperous suburbs, but many left the region altogether. By 2013, nearly a quarter of Detroit's population (23.1%) was unemployed, and more than a third of the city's residents (36.4%) lived below the poverty line.

Such a rapid outflow of residents turned Detroit into a ghost town. Many houses, offices, and industrial workshops were abandoned. Many are trying to sell their homes and other real estate at bargain prices, but there are often simply no buyers for housing and offices in a depressed city.

In the 80s, local African Americans came up with a new folk pastime - burning abandoned houses on Halloween. On another night, up to 800 fires burned in the city. To stop this process, the authorities created volunteer detachments of “Angels of the Night”, which prevented arson.

In recent years, a total of about 85 thousand abandoned properties have been identified in Detroit. In 2014, Detroit adopted a brownfield demolition program that would demolish about half of that number. If we talk about the area of ​​the city, then approximately a quarter of it is planned to be razed to the ground.

In 2013, Detroit declared bankruptcy, unable to repay $18.5 billion in debt to creditors. In December 2014, the bankruptcy procedure was completed. Now the authorities are thinking about how to improve the situation in the city and subsequently bring back investors.

Many believe that the fate of Detroit is unique, but, firstly, in the history of the United States there have already been bankruptcies of cities (albeit not such large ones), and, secondly, Detroit is only part of the famous Rust Belt, which since 70 - years is almost entirely in decline due to a reduction in production in a number of branches of heavy industry.

I will make 3 more posts about Detroit: good Detroit, bad Detroit and a post about street art. There are a lot of photographs. In the meantime, check out the short travel notes.

01. We are approaching Detroit.

02. On the right is Canadian Windsor, on the left is American Detroit. They are separated by the Detroit River. You can get to Canada either by bridge or by road tunnel.

03. Lively suburbs.

04. Canadians have wind power plants.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.

06.

07. It’s scary to fly over America, there are hundreds of kilometers of identical houses...

08. Progress has reached the point that now you don’t need to get a ticket in the parking lot, then pay for it, and leave. Now you insert your bank card at the entrance, then you insert it at the exit. That's all. Unnecessary procedures with paper tickets are dying out.

09. Border with Canada.

10. Canadians have everything clean and tidy. Detroit has already been demolished by 70 percent... a terrible sight. There are only empty parking lots left.

11. There are practically no living buildings in the center. Sometimes only the first floors are used, but more often the buildings are simply boarded up. Now very little remains, everything has been demolished.

12. The once noisy streets of the center.

13.

14. Bar.

15. Residential areas are also desolate. Most of the houses were demolished... This is what some areas look like...

16. And some – so...

17. Detroit continues to die, despite all the measures that are being taken to save it.

18. School.

19. Factory.

20. They made a parking lot at the theater...

21. 10 dollars - and you can park your car in the former theater... Beautiful.

22. Scary.

23. Don’t walk on lawns.

24. Noah's Ark.

25. Now they continue to demolish buildings. To prevent dust from rising during construction work, special fans are used that spray water.

26. Since the 70s, Detroit has experienced a sharp increase in crime.

27. Most of the crimes in the city are related to drugs, but there are also a lot of violent crimes. Detroit is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the United States; the murder rate here is on average 10 times higher than in New York.

28. Many Americans now compare Detroit to the city of Gotham from Batman comics, although in the fictional city it was about the merging of power and crime, and the decline of Detroit occurred for socio-economic reasons.

I’ll tell you more about Detroit soon, but for now it’s time to move on, Chicago is waiting for me!

Sponsor's Corner

The application helps me search for hotels in the USA

Detroit today and yesterday: born and destroyed by cars

Editor's response

“This is not the first time in history that this has happened. The corpses of other great cities are buried in deserts and wiped out by Asian jungles. Some fell so long ago that not even their names remain. But for those who lived there, destruction seemed no more probable and possible than the dying of a gigantic modern city seems to me...”
John Wyndham. Day of the Triffids

Detroit is a city born and destroyed by cars. Why the richest auto empire, one of the most prestigious US cities of the last century, is breathing more and more slowly, increasingly turning into the Atlantis of our days - read on AiF.ru.

Former Detroit train depot. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Detroit - the automotive capital of America, the metallic clang of which literally rings in your ears after reading the book “Wheels” by Arthur Haley, the site of the international January auto show, which sets the tone for the whole year, the birthplace of the white-skinned rapper Eminem - has been officially declared bankrupt.

Just 50 years ago, the city was almost the most prestigious in the United States, with an industry that outstripped all other American cities. Entire communities of immigrants flocked there in search of work, a better life and the American dream. It was in Detroit that the famous Henry Ford assembled his first car and set up the first car production plant, using conveyor assembly for the first time in the world. It was there, in Detroit, that a personal car became a familiar and everyday thing in family life - long before a similar event in any other city.

Abandoned residential buildings in Detroit. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Detroit, 2013

Detroit is a city that still has everything: houses, shops, cars, trees, bus stops. But there's no future .

The windows of once-chic hotels and theaters are boarded up, and the formerly gilded stucco is covered in dust and cobwebs. In the center of the cottage community of that same one-story America of Ilf and Petrov there are cheap burnt houses, the inside is painted with graffiti. Huge buildings, which rise like ocean liners among the fields, try to remind of the former greatness of the city, but through the broken windows you can see completely empty office spaces. And the future is not visible.

Today it is better not to walk the streets of Detroit alone. And it’s almost impossible to meet a passerby at 4-5 pm.

Photo: AiF / Irina Zverkova

Even on the central streets there are enough houses, the first floors of which are sheathed with wooden panels and sheets of iron, so that the entrances do not turn into brothels and fires do not break out. On the surviving store windows, the inscriptions Sale and For Rent are barely legible, washed away by the rains and grayed with dust. Apparently, the last owners tried to somehow keep the business afloat.

Unlike European cities, where the entire center is given over to tourists, in Detroit it is very difficult to buy any souvenir, or even a bottle of water. There are almost no shops, and if there are, you don’t really want to go into them - there’s usually a bunch of gloomy people standing at the entrance...

This is exactly how the former kingdom of cars looks and breathes today. What happened to the powerful auto empire?

Prosperous Detroit in 1931. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Detroit, 1910s

The city flourished at the beginning of the 20th century. It was at this time that the economic boom in the automotive industry occurred. Following Henry Ford, General Motors and Chrysler opened their factories in Detroit. Thus, the largest automobile enterprises, the “Big Three”: Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, were concentrated in the city.

Intersection of Michigan and Griswold streets, 1920. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

In the 1930s, with the advent of labor unions, Detroit became an arena for the auto workers' union to fight against employers. One of America's first highways, M-8, passed through the city in the 1940s, and the World War II economic boom earned Detroit the nickname "the Arsenal of Democracy." The rapid economic growth of the first half of the 20th century was accompanied by an influx of people from the southern states (mostly black) and Europe. Although employment discrimination (which was quite severe) had eased, there were still problems, and this resulted in a race riot in 1943, as a result of which 34 people were killed, 25 of them African-Americans.

In the 50s of the 20th century, Detroit was one of the main centers of mechanical engineering in the United States, and at that time it promoted a program of cheap and accessible cars at the state level. The city was experiencing a boom in its development - it literally flourished, becoming one of the richest cities in North America. Since the mid-20s, with the development of the automobile industry, a large number of personal cars appeared in the city. Detroit became one of the first cities to build a network of expressways and interchanges. On the other hand, the public transport system did not develop. On the contrary, automobile corporations lobbied for the elimination of tram and trolleybus lines. At the same time, a campaign was going on, the purchase of a personal car was advertised, and public transport was presented as unprestigious and inconvenient, as “transport for the poor.” This transfer of residents to personal vehicles contributed to the movement of the population from the center of Detroit to its suburbs.

General Motors headquarters in Detroit. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Detroit, 1950s

This marked the beginning of Detroit's decline. More and more skilled workers sold their homes and left to live outside the city in the fresh air, even while remaining in their previous jobs.

Along with the relocation of engineers and workers, the city began a campaign to populate the city center with African Americans. They were allowed to work in a successful city in good companies (a kind of manifestation of American democracy). The appearance of such neighbors further stimulated the outflow of the middle class and elite to the suburbs.

It should be noted that residents of the Detroit suburbs already paid a completely different tax - at their place of residence. As a result of budget cuts, the city began to decline. Jobs were cut, shop owners, bankers, doctors moved to where there were paying customers.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

In Detroit itself, meanwhile, there were more and more poor people (mostly African Americans) - they simply did not have the money to move out of town.

Among them, due to poverty and unemployment, crime flourished, so Detroit quickly gained notoriety as one of the darkest and most dangerous cities in the United States. At this time, racial segregation was abolished in the United States, as a result, African Americans increasingly encountered whites, and this led to interracial conflict. The climax occurred in 1967, when confrontations culminated in July in one of the most violent riots in US history, lasting for five days and known as the 12th Street Riots.

In 1973, the oil crisis broke out. It led to the bankruptcy of many American automakers, whose cars, gluttonous and expensive, could no longer compete with economical European and Japanese cars. Factories began to close one by one, people lost their jobs and left Detroit. The population of the city within its administrative boundaries decreased by 2.5 times: from 1.8 million in the early 1950s to 700 thousand by 2012. It should be noted, however, that these figures also include people who moved to working-class suburbs where housing cheaper and safer.

Detroit streets at night. Photo: AiF / Irina Zverkova

Detroit, 2013

Over the past decades, the state and federal governments have not given up efforts to revitalize the city, especially its central part. One of the last initiatives of the 2000s was the creation and construction of several casinos, which still could not strengthen the economy of Detroit. In December 2012, the city budget deficit was $30 million.

Today, Detroit is the city with the highest crime rate and the lowest level of education. And the highest property taxes in the USA. Taxes that hundreds of thousands of city residents did not pay. Both because of poverty, and because it was easier to buy back your house for a few dollars after the property was seized.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

By 2013, the most active people left the city, leaving only dependents. For every 6 retirees in Detroit, there are 4 people of working age.

If in the last century 70% of the population was white, now 84% of the residents are African-American. Alas, they are not very educated: only 7% of schoolchildren, according to American studies, can read and count fluently. As a result, Detroit has the highest crime rate in the United States and the most murders, with the majority (70%) drug-related.

People are just running away from here. From the kingdom of cars.