Challenge: Keep Detroit from Dying

I'm only asking to avert the core problems of American economic decline, and specifically Industrial and Production decline. Not hard, right?

Detroit was once the 4th biggest city in the nation. Now it's 11th, and whole sections are abandoned and left to crumble and the city forced to plan downsizing. The economic decline, which has been massive, also brought with it white-flight and social decline. If you've never seen the ruins of Detroit, I recommend looking at them. Some things I've heard mentioned for why Detroit declined was mayorial mismanagment and alienation, the Unions and Auto-companies becoming short sighted and preventing things needed to keep Detroit competitive like efficiency standards, as well as Union guidelines for pay removing competition for a worker base since everyone payed the same, and of course there's the Japanese automobile companies and other imports competing with Detroit.
 
I'm only asking to avert the core problems of American economic decline, and specifically Industrial and Production decline. Not hard, right?

Detroit was once the 4th biggest city in the nation. Now it's 11th, and whole sections are abandoned and left to crumble and the city forced to plan downsizing. The economic decline, which has been massive, also brought with it white-flight and social decline. If you've never seen the ruins of Detroit, I recommend looking at them. Some things I've heard mentioned for why Detroit declined was mayorial mismanagment and alienation, the Unions and Auto-companies becoming short sighted and preventing things needed to keep Detroit competitive like efficiency standards, as well as Union guidelines for pay removing competition for a worker base since everyone payed the same, and of course there's the Japanese automobile companies and other imports competing with Detroit.

People always talk about the unions as a problem, and they certainly were part of it. But uaw workers were paid about the same as eg toyota workers. But where toyota had one middlemanagement guy per assembly line worker, gm had one for every worker!!! And those management types werent cheap. And consider, too, the cost of the upper management and their obcene salaries.

The other huge difference was healthcare. Gm was paying one dollar in benefits, largely health insurance, for every dollar in wages. Japanese companies, with national health insurance, didnt have that expense.
 
If you've never seen the ruins of Detroit, I recommend looking at them.

Holy SHIT! :eek: I've read some things about Detroit but that is unbelievable, it's just like everyone got up and left one day. As to how to prevent it, either the end of WW2 is much worse for Japan and it never has its OTL economic miracle, or simply have the American Auto industry take the Japanese far more seriously far earlier and get serious about improving build quality and making cars that are more economical, this won't prevent Detroit losing share but it probably won't be on the same scale as shown in that photoalbum. But for that you're going to need a complete change in the management culture of the Big Three to stop them being so complacent.
 
The other huge difference was healthcare. Gm was paying one dollar in benefits, largely health insurance, for every dollar in wages. Japanese companies, with national health insurance, didnt have that expense.

Not sure if that's as big an issue as the craziness of things like 1 manager per worker though. Toyota and other foreign companies operate factories in the US South and SW which still do better financially than the Detroit factories despite having the same no nationalized healthcare costs.
 
Holy SHIT! :eek: I've read some things about Detroit but that is unbelievable, it's just like everyone got up and left one day. As to how to prevent it, either the end of WW2 is much worse for Japan and it never has its OTL economic miracle, or simply have the American Auto industry take the Japanese far more seriously far earlier and get serious about improving build quality and making cars that are more economical, this won't prevent Detroit losing share but it probably won't be on the same scale as shown in that photoalbum. But for that you're going to need a complete change in the management culture of the Big Three to stop them being so complacent.

How about having have the Japanese car companies come earlier, say the height of Detroit's OTL dominance in the 1950s and '60s so they never have their de facto monopoly in cars which led them to become so lazy and complacent? Detroit might never grow to the heights it did but we probably avoid the massive crash.
 
most of it boils down to that the US automakers have to be better prepared for the gas shortage in the 70's... which requires a degree of prescience that borders on ASB... basically, they have to be ready with a line of small economy cars ready to hit the showrooms when gas prices start surging up...
 
Maybe have a "bigger" Detroit that annexes the suburbs when post-war suburbanisation starts. That prevents Detroit becoming majority-minority and going into a death-spiral as it's tax base deserts it leaving only the poor and the minorities in the shell of a city. Keep all those white middle class taxpayers and Detroit might be able to pull off a New York style renaissance.
 
I'm from Michigan and I think keeping Detroit from falling apart is a pipe dream.

That's probably because you're thinking of it in terms of cars and trucks and other motor vehicles alone.

I agree that Detroit should have looked forwarda little more. Less pain from the oil crunch would definitely help to alleviate the pain. So, too, would some management changes.

Ironically, looking ahead and accepting public transportation in places like Los Angeles might help. Think of how much money the automakers could make constantly building and refurbishing public transportation as it was desired in more and more cities. Public railways aren't premanent, and every bus will also have to be replaced eventually, too. As it would become more common, you might get smaller cities also wanting them.

But, whether or not the above would have helped or not, it's still part of a one word solution that, if not public transporation, would require them to go into something besides cars.

That word: "Diversification."

Let's face it, even if there was little foreign cometition, we'd still have problems with prices and people not being able to afford gas like they used to. You'd still have had the problem of companies having problems because tehre are no demands for gas guzzlers anymore, so they lost a ton of money on those when the economy went south. And so on. Yes, Detroit might not be quite as bad off as it is now, but it would still be hurting. Badly, most likely.

I'm not saying the Big Three needed to get into toasters, refrigerators, and toher consumer appliances, or sofa, love seats, and other furniture. But, what I am saying is that - in response to a changing society in late 1970s - Detroit should have been thinking ahead. There's computers in cars coming up? Hey, why can't we be part of a computer market? Let's invite an American company to come to Detroit, work hand in hand with the carmakers to put computer chips in cars, and then also create computers for other thigns? Same with cell phones. When my uncle got the first cell phone or one of the first in our county in 1987 (doctor in very important field) it wasn't called a cell phone. It was called a *car* phone. "Hey, Detroit,"someone shoudl have said, "Those will be big things. Work with the car phone makers and maybe someday everyone will want one of those."

Woudl it have been hard to lure people away from "Silicon Valley"? Sure. But it could have been done.

If the Big Three are willing to take chances, and the leaders of Detroit willing to diversify and insist on the Big Three workign with these new companies they lure to Detroit, with things like computers and cell phones, Detroit still might struggle. I doubt it'd still be 4th, there was a flight from cities coming anyway. But, it would probably be no worse off than, say, Philadelphia, another big union town which has had its share of problems, has similar problems of bad weather in the winter and an aging infrastructure. But, it's survived.
 
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The first and most important thing is to stop the two biggest problems that hammered Detroit in the 1960s-1980s:

1) The flight of middle-class residents from the city, taking with them many of the jobs and doing severe damage to much of the commercial sector;

2) The massive decline of the American auto industry being 1970 or so and the late 1990s

The second point may be easier than the first. The first time imports first showed up in numbers in America was in the 1950s, and in 1958 they had grabbed a rather large share of the market simply because traffic congestion and a fairly slow economy had led to people buying smaller cars. Detroit fired back with its small car attempts - the AMC Rambler, Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant and Chevrolet Corvair. Now, the Rambler, Falcon and Valiant were pretty typical small cars, but the Corvair was anything but - and its rear-engined, air-cooled design and independent suspension had a great result. It's handling issues, however, led to a bed reputation - and within GM, it more than anything killed the idea of doing anything new, fearing more of the losses and bad press that resulted.

Fixing this is easy - you make the Corvair have the four-wheel independent suspension that the 1965 and later models had, and have a few engineering improvements and better body fabrication make it a better car. The Corvair then becomes a major sign of things to come, and is a massive success that GM emulates across many other lines, forcing the other American automakers to improve their own designs. By the oil crisis in 1973, Detroit has the cars to take on the incoming Japanese cars head-on, massively slowing the penetration of Japanese cars into the American market and keeping Detroit humming in a big way through the 1970s and 1980s.

Beating white flight is harder. The best I can give on this one is for the massive number of black servicemen in WWII reducing racism in America by a very large degree, and many more black GIs coming into police forces in America after WWII. Many of the transit systems dismantled after WWII aren't but are instead rationalized and modernized, giving the inner cities better transit. The civil rights movement still happens (that's inevitable), but many of those who fled the cities decide point blank that they will not leave behind the places where they live out of fear, and these people spend the 1970s and 1980s rebuilding their neighborhoods and beginning gentrification. Detroit in this world fares worse than some, but it bottoms out in the late 1970s and rebounds in the 1980s and 1990s, in a similar way to how New York has since rebounded from its nadir then.

DTF955Baseballfan's points are very good ones, too. The Detroit Three had more capital and production capacity in the post-WWII era than many nations did. It dovetails with what I talked about, but if General Motors could advance science somewhat with its cars it would benefit. With my above scenario, if by 1970 Detroit small cars all had independent suspension, disc brakes, overhead-cam engines (Shit, Soichiro Honda borrowed a Vega in the early 1970s and developed for it a cylinder head that increased power and reduced both its fuel consumption and emissions. Whatever genius at GM didn't use that head needs to be sent straight to automotive purgatory), air conditioning and perhaps even plastic or aluminum bodywork, then you'd quite possibly have had Japan fearing Detroit by the mid 70s rather than the other way around.

I have often thought of and researched ways of keeping America's industrial sector on top. The biggest problem for them, and this is not by any means a problem limited to the auto industry, is that both management and labor got lulled into a sense of security, feeling that the way things were now would go on forever. Combine that with the civil rights movement and the fact that the younger generation that migrated into the marketplace and the workforce in the 1960s and early 1970s were at best apathetic didn't help matters, either. They needed to keep up the technological advantage they had built up during WWII and into the 1950s. Most people forget that GM was a pioneer of fuel injection in cars, and their technical guys made some amazing things in the times. Hell, GM's first concept car powered by hydrogen fuel cells was shown publicly in 1966. (That's right - 1966.) If their technical guys had kept up the good work in the engineering departments, then Detroit would almost certainly have tumbled as far and fast as they did in the 1960s and 1970s.
 
I have often thought of and researched ways of keeping America's industrial sector on top. The biggest problem for them, and this is not by any means a problem limited to the auto industry, is that both management and labor got lulled into a sense of security, feeling that the way things were now would go on forever. Combine that with the civil rights movement and the fact that the younger generation that migrated into the marketplace and the workforce in the 1960s and early 1970s were at best apathetic didn't help matters, either. They needed to keep up the technological advantage they had built up during WWII and into the 1950s. Most people forget that GM was a pioneer of fuel injection in cars, and their technical guys made some amazing things in the times. Hell, GM's first concept car powered by hydrogen fuel cells was shown publicly in 1966. (That's right - 1966.) If their technical guys had kept up the good work in the engineering departments, then Detroit would almost certainly have tumbled as far and fast as they did in the 1960s and 1970s.

It's a massive problem but it's inevitable, convincing 1950's American exec's that "those little yellow bastards" were going to beat them at their own game is like convincing 1850's English industrialists that Krupp and the "sloppy Germans" were going to overtake the "workshop of the world". Getting cocky and overconfident is simply the unavoidable result of being No. 1.
 
It's a massive problem but it's inevitable, convincing 1950's American exec's that "those little yellow bastards" were going to beat them at their own game is like convincing 1850's English industrialists that Krupp and the Germans were going to overtake the "workshop of the world". Getting cocky and overconfident is simply the unavoidable result of being No. 1.

I agree, but General Motors' executive class in the post-war era were all veterans, and I think its quite possible for them be guys who believed in the advancement of their products through technology and engineering. The Corvair, as I wrote, could have been the ultimate benchmark for it, too.
 
That's probably because you're thinking of it in terms of cars and trucks and other motor vehicles alone.

I agree that Detroit should have looked forwarda little more. Less pain from the oil crunch would definitely help to alleviate the pain. So, too, would some management changes.

Ironically, looking ahead and accepting public transportation in places like Los Angeles might help. Think of how much money the automakers could make constantly building and refurbishing public transportation as it was desired in more and more cities. Public railways aren't premanent, and every bus will also have to be replaced eventually, too. As it would become more common, you might get smaller cities also wanting them.

But, whether or not the above would have helped or not, it's still part of a one word solution that, if not public transporation, would require them to go into something besides cars.

That word: "Diversification."

Let's face it, even if there was little foreign cometition, we'd still have problems with prices and people not being able to afford gas like they used to. You'd still have had the problem of companies having problems because tehre are no demands for gas guzzlers anymore, so they lost a ton of money on those when the economy went south. And so on. Yes, Detroit might not be quite as bad off as it is now, but it would still be hurting. Badly, most likely.

I'm not saying the Big Three needed to get into toasters, refrigerators, and toher consumer appliances, or sofa, love seats, and other furniture. But, what I am saying is that - in response to a changing society in late 1970s - Detroit should have been thinking ahead. There's computers in cars coming up? Hey, why can't we be part of a computer market? Let's invite an American company to come to Detroit, work hand in hand with the carmakers to put computer chips in cars, and then also create computers for other thigns? Same with cell phones. When my uncle got the first cell phone or one of the first in our county in 1987 (doctor in very important field) it wasn't called a cell phone. It was called a *car* phone. "Hey, Detroit,"someone shoudl have said, "Those will be big things. Work with the car phone makers and maybe someday everyone will want one of those."

Woudl it have been hard to lure people away from "Silicon Valley"? Sure. But it could have been done.

If the Big Three are willing to take chances, and the leaders of Detroit willing to diversify and insist on the Big Three workign with these new companies they lure to Detroit, with things like computers and cell phones, Detroit still might struggle. I doubt it'd still be 4th, there was a flight from cities coming anyway. But, it would probably be no worse off than, say, Philadelphia, another big union town which has had its share of problems, has similar problems of bad weather in the winter and an aging infrastructure. But, it's survived.

I think you're onto something with diversity. Detroit has always struck me as a one industry company town that happens to be the size of a major city. You don't even need the Big 3 diversifying, just the city having industries and money making besides the Big 3 and cars. It shouldn't be too hard to do that, most US cities the size of 1960s Detroit have fairly mixed economies.
 

FDW

Banned
Okay, here's a crazy idea: Prevent WWII. With no WWII, you don't see the development of massive bubble in employment in the Detroit area as a result of WWII and it's immediate aftermath. With no GI Bill turbocharging the development of the 1940-50's era suburbia, you also keep more people in the center city by simple restriction of the housing supply.
 
Okay, here's a crazy idea: Prevent WWII. With no WWII, you don't see the development of massive bubble in employment in the Detroit area as a result of WWII and it's immediate aftermath. With no GI Bill turbocharging the development of the 1940-50's era suburbia, you also keep more people in the center city by simple restriction of the housing supply.

Suburbs and cars were already growing in the 1920s so I don't think you avoid them with no WWII. I'd say post-war boom of suburbs and cars was more making up for the years of depression and war and returning to the old pattern. Now with no WWII and presumably Japanese and European industry undestroyed you can see Detroit having foreign rivals to have to deal with from the start so you avoid the massive shock of Toyota's arriving in the '70s.
 

FDW

Banned
Suburbs and cars were already growing in the 1920s so I don't think you avoid them with no WWII. I'd say post-war boom of suburbs and cars was more making up for the years of depression and war and returning to the old pattern. Now with no WWII and presumably Japanese and European industry undestroyed you can see Detroit having foreign rivals to have to deal with from the start so you avoid the massive shock of Toyota's arriving in the '70s.

I know that Suburbs and Cars were already around (I said 1940's-50's suburbs, not suburbs in general). By avoiding WWII, you avoid the massive surge in family savings that occurring during the war, and also the subsides from government (in form of Loans and other financial assistance) that enabled the suburbs to grow so fast during this period. While you would still see the development of somewhat more Car-oriented suburbs during ITTL during this period, they won't be as quickly growing, which keeps some life in the city. Also, without WWII to severely wear down Mass Transit infrastructure, you might see a wave of investment in mass transit systems ITTL (As opposed to the massive contraction of OTL). With this in mind, the new suburbs you'd see might be more evolutionary than revolutionary during this period.
 
get a shakeup in detroits management in the 80's

it's no surprise that when people with outside ideas came in and ended the hothouse atmosphere that things started getting better (look at mulally with ford)

it wouldn't take any great leap of genius starting in the 80's to see what toyota and honda were doing; producing inexpensive, reliable, effecient cars that looked ok and to see that as an idea worth following

the new management would have to not give the farm away, both the UAW and to the white collar managers; and those same people would have to talk the financial ignoramouses out of buybacks and dividends and instead maintain a regime of funneling money back into R&D to increase competitiveness

something like ford's sync program for hands free calling can exist by 2000 without any special POD's other than a little foresite and investment
 
I think you're onto something with diversity. Detroit has always struck me as a one industry company town that happens to be the size of a major city. You don't even need the Big 3 diversifying, just the city having industries and money making besides the Big 3 and cars. It shouldn't be too hard to do that, most US cities the size of 1960s Detroit have fairly mixed economies.

Detroit happened to be a boom town where instead of being based on a commodity, the city was based around a single industry. Once the car industry left, it's no wonder Detroit became a ghost town. It's no different from Flint, Michigan or Gary, Indiana in this respect. It just happened to be bigger.

The only way for Detroit to survive is for it to develop a diversified industrial base.
 
get a shakeup in detroits management in the 80's

it's no surprise that when people with outside ideas came in and ended the hothouse atmosphere that things started getting better (look at mulally with ford)

it wouldn't take any great leap of genius starting in the 80's to see what toyota and honda were doing; producing inexpensive, reliable, effecient cars that looked ok and to see that as an idea worth following

the new management would have to not give the farm away, both the UAW and to the white collar managers; and those same people would have to talk the financial ignoramouses out of buybacks and dividends and instead maintain a regime of funneling money back into R&D to increase competitiveness

something like ford's sync program for hands free calling can exist by 2000 without any special POD's other than a little foresite and investment

Shakeups in Detroit in the 80s happened at Chrysler and Ford anyways (Chrysler came to within a hair of biting it for good in 1979-80 and Ford wasn't far off by the mid 80s, if the Taurus had flopped Ford would likely have needed bailout in 1988 or 1989), but it didn't change matters that much. If you really want to keep Detroit flying, you need to go earlier than that.

Making the Detroit automakers into conglomerates might help with the diversification part, too.
 
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