For years following its heyday, Detroit’s auto industry went into a slow decline that nearly turned catastrophic during the global fuel crisis of the 1970s, prompting more and more drivers to favor fuel-efficient imports from Japan and Germany.
“As the city lost that huge manufacturing base, you can imagine the impact of that loss,” notes urban planner and Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) Programs Coordinator Desiree Powell. “That’s just a huge literal and figurative gap to fill and it led to the downward spiral of Detroit.”
That spiral continued unabated through the final decades of the last century and into the 2000s, eventually resulting in the city declaring bankruptcy in 2013. That same year, the Motor City’s mayor was convicted of 24 counts of corruption and sentenced to 28 years in prison.
But then, something happened. Detroit, albeit slowly, started to turn itself around…
