The Decline of the American City

Detroit has always fascinated me, although, with the exception of that ginormous airport, I've never visited the city. Growing up, I learned the words to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" as "root, root, root for the Tigers," the Detroit baseball team, because they were my dad's favorite team. Based on movies like 8 Mile and Four Brothers, and the book Middlesex, Detroit culture intrigued me. 
Why does Detroit interest me so much? I guess it's because I want to know what makes it so legendarily bad. I wanted to know what caused the riots, the white flight, the economic downturn. I wanted to know why no one wanted to live in Detroit, and why the people that did still did.  I've scoured Google Earth for images of Detroit, looking for evidence of the scary and horrific. I want the destruction, the murder, the violence to be obvious. What has happened to this city? Alas, none of those things are necessarily obvious from web images.
I had the same urges when moving to Washington, DC. I had never heard about the Anacostia River or known anything about the neighborhoods outside of the Northwest quadrant before moving to the city, particularly, the neighborhoods east of the river . Once I learned more about the East of the River community and the socioeconomic situation, I wanted to see it. I wanted to know what makes Anacostia so notably terrible. Since living here awhile, I've been there a few times now. I'm not sure what I expected to find there, but it's not...what I expected. Just travelling by bus or car or waiting on the metro, it isn't all together obvious that this is a dangerous place. I haven't been witness to any shoot-outs or drug deals, nor are there any more or less destructed, ugly buildings on this side of town then on mine. It is more an eerily quiet feeling, the vast expanses of land, that make this place seem defeated or sad, but not terrifying.It seems, it's less about what  places like Anacostia or Detroit have, and more to do with what they don't. This section of Washington, DC, the symbolically-left-off-the-maps part, is lacking resources. There are no grocery stores, no bars, no restaurants, no gyms, no movie theaters, and no retail shops. Everything that is there has been developed and maintained by the government. Namely, public schools and public parks. Residential buildings. Where are these people expected to work? Where are they supposed to buy food? Why would anyone that wanted to live a typical city-dwelling life choose Anacostia to live?
What these places have in common, and what I think then must contribute to their decline, is that they have been left. Everyone that can leave, has left, and those that can't are left to fend for themselves. They have become dysfunctional places in this idleness, in the flight of the people.
I recently came across a book called Made in Detroit at the library. It was a fascinating narrative of a white man coming to terms with growing up in Detroit. His birth comes the same year that Coleman Young (the first black mayor of Detroit, who served 5 terms) is elected mayor.
The narrative was an excellent visual of blue collar Detroit and the challenges the author, Paul Clemens, a white man in a predominately black city, faced. The book deals first hand with white flight and race relations at this time, and the challenges of being working-class. What I found interesting is how similar this reverse discrimination is. The predominant racial group in Detroit held all government positions and the power of the city, and, as a result, misused their authority at times. As Clemens grew up in Detroit, his commentary was interesting--in fact, many reviewers defined his attitudes as "racist." What I really think these reviewers are upset about, and Clemens addresses this in the book, is the lack of "white guilt" he feels. He's not racist; however, he has no reason to feel white guilt. What did he grow up with in Detroit that minority (majority in Detroit) groups could not also partake in? Living in this city, Clemens played sports, went to school and church, and later worked with African Americans. In this unique situation, there was no opportunity for him to feel any white guilt--on the contrary, he often felt on the losing side of race relations in this city. His narrative isn't racist--it's honest. He struggled with race relations because they are ugly and were in his face. He struggled with them because Detroit was rioting and his beloved city was falling apart. His family did not partake in the white flight, and got left behind to suffer the consequences of the mass population loss.
The factors that play into a city's decline are many. I have always focused before on the why, as a sociology major, I often read about decline and studied the social implications of this. Instead of What happened? and Why?, it's time to take a look at what we can do about it. The function of a city or community is to provide and support the individuals that are apart of it. When the community is no longer self-sustaining, problems occur. In terms of community organizing, it's interesting to think about meeting the community where it currently is, not expecting it to catch-up or follow along with current trends or interests. I wonder, are places like Anacostia and Detroit beyond repair? What would spur development and revitalize these communities? How could you attract people to move here? And is that something these communities even want or that developers are interested in doing?

--Megan