the havoc the Spurs have wrought!!
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The New York Times
June 30, 2005
To the Chagrin of Detroit, Top 10 No Longer
By JEREMY PETERS
DETROIT, June 29 - Cynics have signed this city's death certificate time and time again. But even for the many others who say Detroit is not dead, just on the cusp of an economic revival, the numbers are hard to ignore.
On Thursday, the Census Bureau will release its latest population statistics, showing that Detroit was not on the list of the top 10 most populous American cities for the first time since the 1900 census. San Jose, Calif., has taken its place.
Although the two cities are separated by a mere 4,324 people, in many ways they could not be further apart. Detroit, the Motor City, is the hub of the American auto industry and a microcosm of the nation's declining industrial base. The computer chips of San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, are what have replaced the sheet metal and molten steel of Detroit in the new American economy.
"It's part of a pattern for the heavily industrialized cities, but I think Detroit is a specific case," said Dana Johnson, chief economist at Comerica Bank in Detroit. "There's been an ongoing dynamic here of people, middle-class people in Detroit, fleeing the city looking for better schools, better lifestyles, better services. So it has been a particularly hard fall."
The new census data show that other heavily industrial Midwestern cities are shrinking as well. Of the 10 cities with the largest population declines between 2000 and 2004, seven were in the Midwest. New York remained the nation's biggest city, with 8,104,079 people, followed by Los Angeles, which the Census Bureau measured at 3,845,541.
The fact that Detroit is shrinking is nothing new. Detroit has clung to its position on the list of the 10 most populous cities since the 2000 census when it first dropped below 1 million people. That was a stinging blow for a city that was the nation's fourth largest in 1950. Since then, it has shrunk in every census. The latest figures recorded 900,198 people, half the population of 50 years ago.
Still, some city leaders say Detroit is just beginning its economic and social renaissance.
"Sufficient groundwork has been laid for new investment that will increase the housing stock, jobs, and it portends for a good future for the city of Detroit," former Mayor Dennis Archer said. "I don't think anybody, with all due respect, pays much attention to a city's population."
To walk around downtown Detroit is a lesson in contrasts. On any given summer afternoon, people fill cafe tables on sidewalks while construction workers hammer away at new loft apartment buildings. But past 6 p.m., with workers back home in the suburbs and the construction crews gone, the city becomes a ghost town.
In this city, where four professional sports teams drive much of the economy, a nighttime Detroit Tigers game is one occasion when the downtown springs to life at night. In the winter, Red Wings hockey games have drawn suburbanites into the city. But with the National Hockey League shut down this past season, many local bars and restaurants that depend on Red Wings traffic saw their business slow to a trickle.
In San Jose, where the Sharks, an N.H.L. franchise, are the only professional sports team, the tech boom brought with it a construction boom downtown. Museums, a convention center and light-rail trolleys were put in, and streets were transformed into pedestrian promenades.
On the unofficial but closely watched "Best Of" lists, San Jose is a perennial performer. It has also been called one of America's best-managed cities, not to mention one of the most livable. In Detroit, "Best Of" accolades are hard to come by. Time magazine recently named Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick one of the nation's three worst mayors. His office declined to make him available for comment.
Part of the fallout from Detroit's population drain has been a sharp cutback in city services.
"You don't have the resources to stay vibrant if the tax base is declining," said David Littmann, a retired economist and longtime observer of the Michigan economy.
With a $300 million budget shortfall projected next year, more than 700 police officers and firefighters face layoffs. When the school year ended this month, 34 public schools closed for the last time.
The problem is not that people are leaving Michigan. It is that they continue to leave Detroit for the suburbs north and west of the city. With 5.5 million people, Detroit has the nation's eighth largest metropolitan area, according to the 2000 census.
Not that San Jose has been without its economic hardships. The city was hit hard when the dot-com bubble burst and has a 5.5 percent unemployment rate. That is higher than the 5.1 percent jobless rate nationwide but still lower than in metropolitan Detroit where 7.8 percent of the labor force is unemployed.
As manufacturing jobs have left Michigan and the Midwest, metro Detroit has experienced growth in business services. Employment in the public sector has also increased over the past two decades. "It's just not as attractive as the compe ion elsewhere," Mr. Littmann said.
Still, Detroit loyalists like Mr. Archer refuse to throw up their hands. "A lot of cities have their ups and downs," he said. "The city of Detroit has had its downs and we've had our ups. Now it's time for us to go back up."
Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from San Francisco for this article.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Everyone gets out of Detroit and moves to the 'Burbs. I would love to see Metro-Detroits Population. My home area alone only had 23000 people in it 1995 10 years later 85000 people.
Travel Michigan and you will see cities like Troy, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, Rochester, Macomb, Clinton Twp, Sterling Heights, Dearborn, Westland, Canton blowing up in size.
Detroit is a hole, everyone here knows it, and only the poorest of the poor live there
Agreed. I live in Dearborn and every night the strip along Michigan Ave. with all of the restaurants and clubs is just hopping with people.
Yeah it is a shame that people around the nation know what DETROIT is like however they do not know what the outter areas are like.
That is why I am so pumped for the Super Bowl. Everyone is going to be all over Metro Detroit, people are going to be going to Summerset, Lakeside, Great Lakes, all the great Downtown areas. Too bad Detroit cannot reflect anything good other then the Ren Cen, Greektown, Co Pa and Ford Field
The last time they had the Super Bowl in Detroit, wasn't there snow up to everyone's asses and massive traffice jams?
Wasn't that Minnesota?
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