Pete's thoughts on Detroit and Seattle

Back in September, I announced that I was working on an upcoming book called Detroit vs. Seattle: Stories and Analysis of the Powerful and Empowered, co-authored with Mike Ducker. It looks at two cities that started in similar fashion (lumber centers, ports and shipbuilding; benefiting from early heavy manufacturing but experiencing devastating downturns) but diverged in the latter third of the 20^th century. Few people today would notice the early similarities between the cities.

As I’m working on this, I’m realizing the differences between Detroit and Seattle may have as much to do with how and when their population and economic booms happened, and how the people and economic growth shaped the cities. Prior to the explosion of the auto industry, Detroit was quite similar to Milwaukee. But Detroit had truly explosive population growth between 1900-1930, jumping from 286,000 to 1.6 million in just 30 years. Detroit grew 5.6 times its previous population over that period. The timing of that explosion is important; it happened when immigration from Europe was at its peak, and the Great Migration drew Black rural Southerners to big cities. It was a tumultuous time for cities, and with the explosive auto industry, Detroit simply did not have time to create a good foundation.

Seattle was quite different. It saw rapid population growth during the same period, going from 81,000 to 366,000 between 1900-1930. That’s an increase of 4.5 times Seattle’s 1900 population. But it started from a smaller base, and its relative isolation from the rest of the nation kept it from growing much faster. During the Jet Age that Seattle and Boeing helped to kick off after World War II, Seattle was able to continue modest growth throughout the rest of the 20^th century, despite a population drop in the 1960s and 1970s.

Seattle had more space to think about how its city, its society, would develop. Detroit was drinking from a firehose.

Without Henry Ford, William C. Durant, or the Dodge brothers in its midst, Detroit probably would have followed a very different demographic and economic trajectory. It would’ve grown more modestly. It would’ve perhaps grown more sensibly. Modest and sensible growth would’ve allowed Detroit to develop quite differently in the 20^th century. Instead of bringing together unskilled laborers into a combustible social environment, without much early thought into the consequences of its choices, it could’ve created a very different city.

It could’ve created a city that built on the same factors that established it – the port, the timber access, the Great Lakes shipping. It would’ve kept its position as the largest city in the moderately large state of Michigan. It would’ve had a chance to diversify its economy earlier. It would’ve followed a similar demographic and economic trajectory as Milwaukee, which never approached the highs nor the depths that Detroit experienced in both cases.