"...The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the riot, totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion—the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969." -- Coleman Young, Detroit Mayor 1974 to 1994
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
I just don't know what it's all about
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No doubt the riots were an impetus for migration, nevertheless it should be noted that historically migration of the better off from the city core has been a continuous occurrence since the mid 19th century.
At the turn of the 20th century, before even the first motor car had ever come off an assembly line the major cities including Detroit already resembled the concentric ringed suburbs that exist today where the majority of professionals and similar no longer lived in the city center they worked in.
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