More from Corner Side Yard:
A Personal Segregation Story
CSY at Forbes: Turning Vacant Land and Buildings into an Asset
Can Detroit's Suburbs Survive the City's Rebirth?
Anyhow, a couple of years ago, my wife and I spent a couple of weeks in Los Angeles. A week of that was in her old stomping grounds, the San Fernando Valley. I've said it before, as have others online -- before the 1960s, not only did Detroit and Los Angeles grow at about the same rate, but also a similar form. It's very noticeable in the Valley, with major arterials every mile, one-story taxpayer-style commercial buildings, a prevalence of entry- to middle-end single family houses, and enclaves of more expensive housing. Both have extensive freeway systems. The Valley, like Detroit, was even the setting for speculative premature subdivision in the 1920s.
So, why did the Valley (and Los Angeles as a whole) prosper, while Detroit declined? Just a few wild-ass guesses, while I have a few minutes to spare:
* LA is LA, duh. Los Angeles was dominated by growing industries -- entertainment, aerospace, logistics, and skilled manufacturing. Detroit was the base for declining industries -- auto manufacturing, auto parts manufacturing, machine tools, and general heavy industry. The Detroit metro continued to grow after the 1960s, but not at the rate of LA. Unlike LA, Detroit wasn't a city that anchored an entire region; for the Great Lakes, Chicago took that role. Detroit wasn't a gateway to the United States, and it has little tourism to speak of. LA was also one of America's first "lifestyle cities" -- a place where people moved because of the lifestyle, not because of easy employment.
* Los Angeles has geographic constraints to growth that limits land supply close to employment centers -- mountains, government-owned land, military bases, and so on.. Southeast Michigan is flat, and there's no constraints on urbanization except the St. Clair River.
* Blacks displaced whites throughout Detroit, where there was already a culture defined by tension -- poor labor relations, ethnic tensions, previous race riots, racial covenants, hostile neighborhood improvement associations, and the like. Detroit had few barriers to define the kind of "east side/west side" or "black-and-white cookie" form found in many other Rust Belt cities, and the tension and effect of racial transition was felt almost citywide. In Detroit terms, Los Angeles' black community was concentrated in the equivalent of Downriver. Working-class blacks settled at the south end of the city, and ts lower middle class southern suburbs. There were several barriers to northward expansion -- the wealthy Baldwin Hills area, even more expensive Westside neighborhoods, the Inglewood Oil Field, LAX, and the Santa Monica Mountains. Few people north of the 10 or Ballona Creek were afraid their neighborhood would "turn", and homeowners continued to invest in their properties.
* Detroit strip-zoned most of the mile roads for commercial development. There was an oversupply of commercial alnd, resulting in low land prices, and low end development. In LA, land along many of the section line roads was zoned residential, Commercial land was more concentrated, and its scarcity compared to Detroit led to higher land values.
Development along Van Nuys Boulevard through a working class part of the Valley has the exact same form as a Detroit mile road, but there's a big difference -- all the storefronts are full, they're not dominated by mechanical commercial or exploitative businesses, and there's people on the sidewalks.
