Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "DETROIT HOODS GOING BACK TO NATURE PART 2" video.
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All of those streets used to be densely packed with houses, apartments, stores, schools, churches, factories, all the things needed for people to earn a living and have a decent life. Between the tremendous increase of industrial output from the auto factories and two world wars, Detroit had to constantly annex more land and open up new areas for residential and industrial development. The population rose in an almost unbroken line from 993,000 in 1920 to about 1.9 million in 1955. It was a city of wealth almost beyond compare, second only to New York City. Since then, the population has declined an an equally unbroken line to the 670,000 of today. Detroit has all that vacant land because it's a city that was built to hold almost three times more people than it does today.
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Robin John Depends on the definition of "thriving", of course, but the Detroit Riots of 1967 are generally a convenient dividing line. Before the riots, average incomes were still high and there hadn't been any sustained decrease in population numbers. After the riots, the middle class, black and white alike, fled in increasing numbers, and population and incomes began their inexorable declines to the numbers of today. Whites as a percentage of the population in 1967 weren't as high as many people probably think they were, with non-Hispanic whites making up about 55% of the population. Interestingly, blacks as an absolute number of Detroit's population has barely changed since 1967. There were about 660,000 blacks then and about 608,000 blacks today. The difference was many more whites than blacks could afford to leave, so rather than becoming more black, it's really just become less white.
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