Did Geographic Ignorance Accelerate Detroit’s Decline?
by tdaxp ~ December 24th, 2008
Obviously, geography matters. A recent post on Catholicgauze, and also at gnxp and Strange Maps, shows how the geographic borders of Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany still predict election outcomes in Poland, nearly a century later:
Yet incredibly, at least one form of geographical analysis actually illegal in the United States. “Redlining,” for instance, is an application of discriminant function analysis or logistic regression (or a pen-and-paper approximation of this) whereby information on geographical location is used to calculate a set of categorical dependent variables, one of which is “Do Not Offer Mortgage.” In a previous career Barack Obama scored political points by suing those who use geographic indicators of credit-worthiness.
The city of Detroit is in terminal decline, and conversation swirls around simply abandoning the city or turning it into a woodland. Certainly Detroit is on track to be Houghton, Michigan of our lifetimes (if you’ve never heard of Houghton, you will understand the reaction of those in a century who are confused when some town is compared to ‘Detroit.’) Yet the tragedy is compounded by the fact that laws designed to prevent the use of geography probably put Detroit in its current death spiral.
The Detroit News special series on the death of a city, block by block sheds some light on how geographic knowledge could have been used to stave off the decline of Detroit. As it is, it is a tragedy for both geographers and the citizens of Detroit that political ignorance of the study of how place matters helped destroy an American city.
[1]...
December 24th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
The Poland thing is interesting, the Detroit thing sad.
The links fro Detroit were very interesting. If Detroit contracts, perhaps 50 years from a stronger Detroit can begin growing again.
December 24th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I like the idea of “re-greening” broken down cities. I just wonder how difficult it is to remove the cement from the streets? Taking down the houses and buildings is easy (but expensive), but removing cement must be difficult? Is it even necessary to remove the cement, or will it eventually get broken down or covered with grass?
December 24th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Seerov,
In the blogpost I mentioned Houghton — whatever the legal definitions, Houghton/Calumet was once in fact a good-sized city (100k-200k, IIRC) in the upper peninsula of Michigan I remember driving through the towns (“urban villages” would be both politically correct and absurd) that remain. When you drive in the woods you can see some of the old roads that remain, the old blocks, if you look carefully enough in the dark forest that has reclaimed the land.
I don’t know how many centuries will be required to completely break up the concrete and cement, but roots are awfully strong, and (when measured in generations) awfully fast.
In Duluth, Minnesota, which is probably a bit healthier than Detroit, you can see trees growing from the elevated train-tracks that once served the port.
December 24th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Never underestimate the importance of Detroit’s strategic position. In event of a Canadian invasion it would be one of the first strategic choke points seized, denying the freedom of American naval forces to move freely along the Great Lakes and defend against Canadian perfidy.
Other than that it’s a pit.
December 25th, 2008 at 5:44 am
John Mosier in The Myth of the Great War said the infrastructure improvements Imperial Germany carried out in Alsace make it obvious where the former Franco-German border is even today
December 27th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Haven’t read the series yet, but Seerov’s comment about greening cities reminds me of this article.
http://www.ecotecture.com/library_eco/interviews/register3a.html
As of its writing (2000), the guy being interviewed was trying to rebuild Berkeley’s old creek beds, digging them out from the underground culverts and fill that had replaced them. Sounds like a good idea for a city with lots of excess real estate: keep people busy, reduce drainage costs, make the place look nicer and reduce water pollution from runoff.
December 28th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
In the clearest sign yet that Detroit has lost the Mandate of Heaven to exist, they go 0-16 after a loss to Green Bay in a game that included a quixotic attempt at a free kick field goal [1]. (A discussion of what such a thing would be is available along with a video of a previous failed attempt. [2])
Michael,
What an interesting article!
The Haidian district in Beijing, like Berkeley, is full of place-names indicating areas which once had water, streams, lakes. It would be interesting to see some of it brought back.
WRT Detroit, it may be appropriate to keep some Detroiters on long enough to dig their city’s grave, if you will, but it certainly casts a ghastly shadow!
Lere,
Fascinating!
I remember reading a book by Newt Gingrich in the mid-90s, where he mentioned seeing the bullet-holes from The Great War as a child in France.
History and geography cast such shadows.
J.F.,
LOL!
What about Detroit (and I ask this honestly) is not geared to a lost age?
[1] http://www.freep.com/article/20081228/SPORTS01/81228022/1048
[2] http://nfl.fanhouse.com/2008/11/23/what-in-the-world-is-a-free-kick/
December 28th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Hmm… “John Carpenter’s “Escape from Detroit,”" anyone?
December 30th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Finally read most of the series (some of the links brought up error messages), a few random thoughts:
*The finance tactics of the “block busters” sounds an awful lot like sub-prime mortgage lending. I wonder how much damage they would have been able to do if they’d been limited to prime borrowers?
*Heck, I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t just ban sub-prime lending altogether:P
*Banning absentee landlords might also be a good idea, at least for multi-unit dwellings in poorer neighborhoods.
*One of the lessons of the Great Depression given here seems to have been lost on the Detroit politicians–Cutting vital staff (including your police officers) is BAD way to deal with revenue cuts.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article5408194.ece
*I wonder how many people that Church might have saved if they didn’t have to worry about paying taxes? Exempt it, give it a grant for as much insulation as possible (to minimize its heating bill), let them get back to work.
*A few months back, in another thread, I suggested buying up derelict property like that one apartment building, fixing them up and turning it into housing for public employees working in that neighborhood. I still think it’d be a good idea.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Michael,
Good comment.
Indeed. It would be interesting to know just how much damage affirmatice-action-style lending has done to America [1].
There would be less need for this if we allowed lenders to use the information at their disposal to make rational lending decisions.. *sigh*
Why?
Should we ban absentee stockholding, absentee bondholding, along with it? Or does only low-income housing suffer from such an excess of capital that we should restrict investment to those willing to get stabbed?
Sioux Falls, SD had the same idea about a year ago, in an effort to pay for a new indoor swimming pool.
Idiots.
December 30th, 2008 at 10:25 am
“Indeed. It would be interesting to know just how much damage affirmatice-action-style lending has done to America [1].”
Umm, are you saying this to expand the conversation or to attribute ’70s style social experimentation to ’50s real estate agents?
“Why?
Should we ban absentee stockholding, absentee bondholding, along with it? Or does only low-income housing suffer from such an excess of capital that we should restrict investment to those willing to get stabbed?”
Read the relevant section of the series: Detroit’s poor areas saw absentee landlords come in, screen tenants poorly (if at all) and depreciate the resulting wear and tear instead of fixing it. The result being a lot of buildings becoming uninhabitable and a danger to their neighbors.
Just as a direct lender is better able to take responsibility for its borrowers than a buyer of exotically bundled instruments, a local landlord is better equipped to take responsibility for his/her renters than a remotely based land holding company.
“Should this be deducted from their paychecks, or is this an attempt to increase their pay?”
The latter, plus an attempt to make the neighborhood safer by increasing the number of productively employed residents (some of whom would be police), plus an attempt to provide role-models for local kids other than retirees and criminals, plus an attempt to do something with derelict buildings other than tear them down, plus an attempt to get some communication going between the helper and the helped.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Michael,
So is your idea that only those who can afford to rent apartments that landlors find attractive to live in should be able to do so?
.
What makes you think any of this?
Such intertwined objectives!
I wonder if it possible to disentangle them, or if the proposal is safely beyond the realm of falsification?
Of course, you need to add in non-monetary costs, such as the bad role-models you are giving to the kids of the employed workers, the increase of rapes among the daughters of the workers, the increased geographical mobility local thugs will enjoy now that they are able to befriend those with more income at their disposal, etc.
Tennessee tried the mirror image of this: exporting thugs to good neighborhoods. [1] Things were worse off than they were before.
I guess we could pray that exporting good people to bad neighborhoods would have the reverse effect. However, as an important vector seems to be the decline of neighborhood trust, and this requires only a small number of anti-social free-riders, I would expect the dynamic to be the same.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/13/clearing-the-ghettos.html
December 31st, 2008 at 8:18 am
Michael
When I was growing up my parents lived in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio and owned two rental properties in the inner city. They owned the properties because they believed that their initial investment would be secured by the value of the property and the monthly rent would exceed what they could have gained from interest had they left their money in the bank.
Had such a “no absentee landlord” law existed, my parents would not have moved themselves and my sister and me to the inner city to be good role models for the local residents. They would have simply never purchased the properties and instead might have bought CDs, bonds, mutual funds or simply left their cash in a traditional savings account. My father never would have invested his time in either repairing or maintaining the properties. Most likely, those two houses, rather than being repaired, maintained and occupied by gainfully employed tenets for several years (before eventually being resold), would have remained abandoned (as they were when my father purchased them at a sheriff’s sale).
Inner cities need to create incentives for people to invest. I wonder if there are laws or regulations that prevent landlords from screening tenets. It seems unlikely that an owner would make a business model of renting to bad tenets if given a choice. I wonder if existing regulations make it difficult to evict tenets who do damage or do not pay rent?
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:27 am
I have similar family experiences with Brent’s.
To answer Brent’s question
Yes, in particular areas of race, sex, age, and religion are very sensitive. Essentially, all a landlord can look at it ability-to-pay, which is taken care of in the form of a deposit.
That sounds great, until you realize that say an upper-middle-aged married couple is almost certainly better – both for tenancy and for the community — than single witches with an eye to sacrifices. (A real experience.)
Likewise, as a lot of the things you can’t screen on overlap with socio-economic status, essentially any screening regime is going to rapidly get you demonstrable differences in acceptances based on race, sex, age, religion, putting the landlord on the defensive in a court-case。
January 4th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I don’t have family experiences matching your’s and Brent’s. I was observing that lack of oversight by absentee landlords seemed to accelerate the decline of individual properties and their surrounding neighborhoods and assumed that reversal of the absentee part might correct the problem.
Giving the matter more thought, it occurs to me that another approach might be to hold landlords to a limited liability for the actions of their tenants. The occasional loud party or over-grown lawn (my own sin:P) wouldn’t bring the wrath of the law on their heads, but consistent patterns of offenses committed on a property or against neighbors would.
More responses later–the coffee shop is closing.
January 4th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Do you support repealing the relevent civil rights, fair housing, and renter’s rights acts along with this, or are you suggesting that we hold landlord’s criminally liability for things over which they have no power?
January 5th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I’m suggesting that, if a landlord is developing a pattern of not using all the power at his legal disposal to prevent and/or deal with problem tenants, the city should use every pattern within ITS legal disposal to light a fire under his pants.
“I wonder if it possible to disentangle them, or if the proposal is safely beyond the realm of falsification?”
Why disentangle them? And falsification is a matter of comparing the results (crime, property values, education) with similar neighborhoods where this isn’t being done.
“Of course, you need to add in non-monetary costs, such as the bad role-models you are giving to the kids of the employed workers, the increase of rapes among the daughters of the workers, the increased geographical mobility local thugs will enjoy now that they are able to befriend those with more income at their disposal, etc.”
Bad role-models are a risk, but it’s mirrored by the potential of good role-models for native kids. The employed workers whose daughters you’re worried about include police officers: Would YOU want to touch the daughter of someone who could pull you over? Increased educational attainment for even a portion of the native population creates the same mobility risk.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Michael,
Thank you for your comment.
Why disentangle them? And falsification is a matter of comparing the results (crime, property values, education) with similar neighborhoods where this isn’t being done.
I was just wondering if there is any way you could measure progress on your plan?
No, it’s not.
In terms of social trust, one antisocial person does more harm than one prosocial person does good.
In educational settings, one distruptive student does mor eharm than one studious student does good.
In terms of crime, one criminal does more harm than one non-criminal does good.
This has been demonstrated in classroom studies, economic gameplay, city-wide experiments [1].
So I reiterate my point: you need to add in non-monetary costs, such as the bad role-models you are giving to the kids of the employed workers, the increase of rapes among the daughters of the workers, the increased geographical mobility local thugs will enjoy now that they are able to befriend those with more income at their disposal, etc.”
It depends: am I an honest citizen, or a hood looking for street cred?
(I assume by “touch” you mean assault, or rape. )
No, it doesn’t, as education skews toward high-intelligence, high-SES, etc. Education serves to decapitate a low-SES community by taking the best and brightest away.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/13/clearing-the-ghettos.html
January 7th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
“No, it doesn’t, as education skews toward high-intelligence, high-SES, etc. Education serves to decapitate a low-SES community by taking the best and brightest away. ”
You’re missing the point. If a street thug can befriend a teacher’s son to gain access to other, more affluent neighborhoods, why couldn’t he prevail upon a cousin who made good to the same effect?
“In terms of crime, one criminal does more harm than one non-criminal does good.
This has been demonstrated in classroom studies, economic gameplay, city-wide experiments [1].”
How many of those studies focused on situations where good students were ADDED TO rough classrooms, or non-slum-dwellers to a slum? Take a person out of their familiar environment, they’re usually temped to make it more familiar. Add an unfamiliar element to a familiar environment, what happens?
January 7th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Michael,
This is a valid point regarding roadblocks, sundown laws, and such.
I don’t see how it supports your point?
So you are arguing that if, say, we can look at a school during integration that went from 100% black to 50% white, say, we should see a 50% reduction in school violence?
Basically, you are arguing that in spite of analogous studies coming up empty, there should be evidence for your contention if the circumstances are close enough to your ideal. I am wondering how we can test what you are saying.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
“I don’t see how it supports your point?”
You’re the one who brought up the possibility of something like this being used as a vector for crime expansion. I responded by pointing out that improving education of those slum dwellers whose education can be improved has the same potential effect. The broader point being that any method of improving connectivity has this kind of risk. Outside workers can be put at risk, dwellers empowered to transcend their circumstances can misuse it.
It should also be pointed out that this connectivity risk runs both ways. Assuming for the sake of argument that the rape risk is greater in the slums and that some people wouldn’t be put off by the increased risk of getting caught–that doesn’t change the reality of that increased risk exists. By introducing to the community people with a greater ability to do something about particular problems and by giving them an added incentive to do something, that problem will be reduced over time to the benefit of all.
“So you are arguing that if, say, we can look at a school during integration that went from 100% black to 50% white, say, we should see a 50% reduction in school violence?”
I’m pointing out that the counter arguments you bring up tend to involved removing slum dwellers from their familiar environment. Remove someone from their familiar environment, the instinct is usually to try to recreate that environment to the greatest extent practical. Add an unfamiliar element to a familiar environment, and the response is more varied: some will approach it as a novelty, some as an opportunity, some as a threat. As such, any effort to improve the social environment for children in high-risk areas has to focus more on the latter than on the former.
To bring up the specific example you mentioned, I don’t know what the exact result of busing in students from good areas was, but it isn’t a surprise if it didn’t turn out well; a handful of school kids dependent on already-weakened local authorities isn’t going to accomplish much. Missionaries to far-away lands have had successes in converting locals to their beliefs, however. Likewise, colonial governments worked best when they were able teach their skills to local allies.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Michael,
Thank you for your comment
It has the “same potential effect” in the same way that a drink of water and a hurricane has the same potential effect of drowning.
In reality, of course, judging policies by their worst possible effects is not a valid way forward.
As I mentioned previously, education skews toward “middle class values,” socio-economic status, intelligence, etc. So those who get out of the ghetto because of education tend to be better-behaved than those who do not. Their relatives likewise will skew higher (as those traits are heritable).
So, your argument does not support your contention.
The “community of people with a greater ability to do something” about rape in ghetto-like conditions are low SES thugs capable of honor violence and honor killings [1,2]. That is, a person with middle class values and an affection for the criminal justice system is much less able to protect loved ones in high crime situations than someone who does not mind going to jail for several years in order to slash the throat of the man who raped his sister.
I do not know what you mean here.
Nor here.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archives/tag/the-searchers
January 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
“In reality, of course, judging policies by their worst possible effects is not a valid way forward.”
Thank you for pointing that out:P
“As I mentioned previously, education skews toward “middle class values,” socio-economic status, intelligence, etc. So those who get out of the ghetto because of education tend to be better-behaved than those who do not. Their relatives likewise will skew higher (as those traits are heritable).”
So the children of teachers, social workers, police officers and firefighters DON’T skew that way? Because if they do, then you’re back where you started. This particular possible negative effect is a possibility with any means of improving the lives of people in bad neighborhoods. And I do mean ‘any’ because a cure for genetic or epigenetic sources of low intelligence or self-control would still leave cultural and other non-hereditary environmental sources to deal with.
“The “community of people with a greater ability to do something” about rape in ghetto-like conditions are low SES thugs capable of honor violence and honor killings [1,2]. That is, a person with middle class values and an affection for the criminal justice system is much less able to protect loved ones in high crime situations than someone who does not mind going to jail for several years in order to slash the throat of the man who raped his sister.”
Umm, it also includes police officers who’re currently thin on the ground in a lot of these places.
January 9th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Michael,
Thank you for your comment.
They do (at least, compared to ghetto dwellers), but that’s irrelevent to your point here.
Again, you are creating an equivalency only by judging policies by their worst possible effects. This is not a valid way forward.
Certainly police officers (and their children) know how to call 911.
Still, assuming a high-crime environment, this is much less a deterrent than slashing someone across the neck, and being willing to take the 5-10 year prison sentence that comes from this.
(Unless you are arguing for an extralegal militia of criminals in police uniforms, who would be able to defend themsevles and their families. )
Unless you are arguing that your plan will grant this sort of immunity to police officers, landlords and their families, etc., it provides no help to you here.
You are not able to demonstrate any of your claims.
January 10th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
“Again, you are creating an equivalency only by judging policies by their worst possible effects. This is not a valid way forward.”
Nice of you to observe that, considering that you were the one who brought up the worst-case scenarios to begin with:P
“Certainly police officers (and their children) know how to call 911. ”
Last I looked, police officers also know how to gather evidence on people, arrest them and apply force (including lethal force) when said people aren’t cooperating with the arrest procedure. And their friends and relatives have more direct methods for contacting them than 911. Have enough cops and acquaintances thereof applying these methods in a given neighborhood over time and the hotheads and glory seekers will necessarily end up dead or in the hospital and the smarter criminals will be forced to adapt or find a new line of work.
“Unless you are arguing for an extralegal militia of criminals in police uniforms, who would be able to defend themsevles and their families. )”
The only time a militia would be needed is in the worst-case scenario of one or more of the local criminal gangs deciding to mount an assault on the workers, their families and allies. The rest of the time, a quite legal Neighborhood Watch program would suffice.
You’ve pointed out problems with worst-case scenario thinking twice and we’re going around in circles. I’m dropping this part of the debate.
January 10th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Lets go back to the part about good and bad role-models. I asked a question I should have labeled non-rhetorical; you’ve seen the literature, I haven’t.
“How many of those studies focused on situations where good students were ADDED TO rough classrooms, or non-slum-dwellers to a slum? ”
You mentioned the bussing programs of the ’60s and ’70s as a negative example. I can also think of the Korean shopkeepers targeted in the King riots. But I can also think of missionaries of various religions who changed the beliefs of their target populations and the European colonialists whose effects are sometimes discussed in this and other blogs. Can you think of other examples, positive or negative? How does your understanding of my idea jibe with your understanding of what made these situations successes or failures?
January 10th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Michael,
Thank you for your pair of comments.
I didn’t. I pointed out logical and expected results (increase in rapes, murders, robberies, death, mahem, etc).
If I wanted to think of a worst-possible scenario, I would be talking about a wave of riots, the delegitimization of the police force in the eyes of a large fraction of Americans, etc.
But I wanted to stick to inevitable outcomes, not worst-case outcomes.
Well, it depends, to what extent will you allow the ‘colonists’ to set up their own law-courts, monopolize violence, confiscate property, replace the idigenous population, etc
I’m being non-rhetorical here. If you want a cultural revolution from above, you have to at a mininum dissolve the civil rights of the people in the area, and at a maximum replace them.
If you look at the evangalization fo Africa by Christians and Muslims, for instance, you will find a tremendous amount of change along the line sof how people respond to the question, ‘Is Jesus God’? or ‘Is Muhammad the Seal of the Prophets’? But cultural folkways remain in tact. So, for instance, even though neither Christianity nor Islam have a tradition of female circumcision, Christian and Muslim tribes in eastern Africa which practiced that behavior before conversion continued to practice it after.
More lasting social change was accomplished by the Chinese Communist Party wrt opium consumption and the British in India wrt widow-burning. The British and the Communists did not rely on the power of verbal persuasion, however.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
“Well, it depends, to what extent will you allow the ‘colonists’ to set up their own law-courts, monopolize violence, confiscate property, replace the idigenous population, etc”
Since the ‘colonizers’ would be employees of the local government, new courts and governmental institutions wouldn’t be needed. At most, they would need to be fixed to treat decades of neglect and bad ideas.
The point about old folkways staying put is a valid one. I’ve heard the same thing heard about the Pashtun tribes, that their strict ways are their own traditions and not Islam’s. But do we really need a complete Culture transplant, or just a swap-out of the parts that hurt slum dwellers and their neighbors? If a complete transplant isn’t needed, then why would a cancellation of their civil rights be needed?
January 13th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Michael,
Nice try.
This is a redirection, a logical fallacy.
The part after the comma in your sentence in no way follows from the part of your sentence before the comma.
I assume you want to change their bad behaviors, and their values (that is, improving their socio-economic status).
I can’t imagine how this can be done to adults and their chidlren without coercion.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
To clarify my critique of your redirection, technical social engineering requires the disenfranchisement of the target population, as you will be abolishing things.
New law-courts, etc, are needed to prevent the locals from accessing their own law-courts to protect their folk ways against their new overlords. Not because the colonists do not have access to lawyers, etc.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
“I assume you want to change their bad behaviors, and their values (that is, improving their socio-economic status).
I can’t imagine how this can be done to adults and their chidlren without coercion.”
Arresting a person for committing a violent crime sounds pretty coercive to me. As does forcing one’s child to go to school because the church leadership convinced you it was a good idea after forming an alliance with the teachers who moved into the neighborhood along with the local police, firefighters, paramedics and social workers.
“To clarify my critique of your redirection, technical social engineering requires the disenfranchisement of the target population, as you will be abolishing things.
New law-courts, etc, are needed to prevent the locals from accessing their own law-courts to protect their folk ways against their new overlords. Not because the colonists do not have access to lawyers, etc.”
This would be quite valid if we were talking about, say, Gaza. We are (or at least I am), however, talking about slums in the United States. These areas are nominally subject to the same courts and authorities as the non-slum areas and dwellers in the same nation, including you and I. I’m talking about looking for ways to make slum dwellers more than nominally subject to those institutions: What are you talking about?
January 14th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Michael,
Sure does.
But then again, I thought you were talking about cultural change, not just putting band-aids on the problem by locking up guys after they commited a crime.
I don’t know what you mean here.
You are the one who began talking about “Missionaries to far-away lands” as a model of “success in converting locals to their beliefs.” You also brought up “colonial governments [which] worked best when they were able to teach their skills to local allies.”
Don’t bring up a comparison if you can’t stand to have that comparison criticized.
When your comparison is reduced to absurdity, that’s reductio ad absurdum — a method of demonstrating it was a bad comparison to begin with.
Merely the cultural change, converting local beliefs, social engineering, etc., topics that you brought up.
If the only thing you were talking about actually was making “slum dwellers more than nominally subject to thsoe institutions,” just put more cops on the beat. The incredibly high price you were willing to pay (in murders, rapes, bad peer groups, etc) implies to me – along with your comparisons to missionaries, colonization, etc – -that you were talking about social change.