Challenge: Keep Detroit from Dying

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Would that effect US cars though? I thought the US was operating mostly on New World rather than Mideast oil until the '70s?

But prices around the world rise and fall in sync. Unless you have pierre trudeau trying to play canute and stop the rising tide of gas prices.

 

[Shurik]

Wow...
3 pages on the US auto industry, and no one has brought up getting rid of Deming / Deming being more received in Detroit yet.

Statistical methods were widely applied during World War II, but faded into disuse a few years later in the face of huge overseas demand for American mass-produced products.
...
In 1947, Deming was involved in early planning for the 1951 Japanese Census. The Allied powers were occupying Japan, and he was asked by the United States Department of the Army to assist with the census. While in Japan, Deming's expertise in quality control techniques, combined with his involvement in Japanese society, led to his receiving an invitation from the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE)

It'd be fairly easy to keep him out of Japan, and in the employ of someone else. While statistical methods fell out of use, they'd be picked up again eventually, (more aggressive US policy of pushing US products overseas = demand greater output?): he get's more intertwined in US manufacturing, Japan never get's the major kick-in-the-pants, and we end up with the Ford/CGM/Dodge Production System instead of the Toyota Production System.

 

[BlairWitch749]

I can see it coming out much worse than OTL. The list of companies destroyed by the guys you mentioned is extremely long. If they had taken over one of the big Three in the 1980s, I'd wager money that company would not exist now - it would have been broken up and sold off. Buffett I can see doing better, but his largest acquisition ever (in 2010) was the $26 Billion takeover the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, and that kind of money is nowhere near enough to buy a Detroit automakers. There is a good reason why when Kirk Kerkorian showed up to make buyout bids for Chrysler in the mid 1990s and GM ten years later that the company in both cases fought the bids bitterly.

Tearing down the unions as you say is going to end up with humongous strikes in the mid 1980s - we're talking strikes that cripple the company here. Scabbing out strikes will result in at the very least huge lawsuits, at worst dead bodies and damaged plants, and in both cases an abysmal PR disaster. (That's not a joke. I know of one case of a man who set up a Nissan dealer in Metro Detroit who made the mistake of driving past a strike picket line. He was dragged from his car and beaten half to death.) The UAW gave GM what they wanted in 1982 and it came back to bite them in the ass big time, leading the members kicking out the boss of the UAW at the time in 1984 and two years later to a major split between the UAW and the Canadian Auto Workers union. Considering Detroit's problems with assembly quality, having the labor force go militant on you is the last thing you want. Shuttering dealerships is also quite hard because of state and federal laws on franchises, as all three Detroit automakers discovered in the last few years. Getting a lower cost to Toyota and Honda requires America getting its health care system in order, because by the 1980s this was one of their biggest costs, one which the import makers didn't have to pay at all because most of their nations had UHC by the 1980s. Get UHC for the United States and you can make that point real, but if you can't get that then the idea of knocking costs down the level of the imports requires either enourmous salary cutbacks (possible but in the 1980s highly unlikely) or huge cuts in the cost of parts, and either way causes huge problems with vehicle quality.

What GM needs is better environmental conditions for the business (i.e. the health care issue solved most of all) and better management. If they can get those, the UAW will see the light at the end of the tunnel and go along, and Detroit will be able to move forward more smoothly.

Ford's market cap during their financial problems in the early 80's was such that Buffet or Bain could always have bought enough stock to enact a hostile take over if they wanted; although that is not Buffet's style. Bain on the other hand could leverage up; buy the stock to gain controlling interest and then force sell the company to themselves to take it private.

If they were able to successfully privatize the company (which would be fought bitterly; however like I said earlier it was open season on the unions) then they would have much more flexibility in terms of breaking the workforce and replacing them with scabs or alternatively forcing concessions which give much lower salary and benefit structures to all new employees from then on (unions have always preferred protecting the pensions of their retired former members than not butt fucking new hires)

in terms of selling off parts; at GM and ford that would be a good idea if they could find someone stupid enough to buy pontiac and mercury which were such wastes of money and resources (buick too for that matter) which would free up a lot of cash to market and develop the core brands better

i can't imagine a buffet or bain allowing dealerships to just sit on huge inventories; large inventory is cyrptonite to wall street because it begets markdowns/profit killing incentives; so even if closing the dealerships is a slower process (which I agree would take a decade to ~rightsize~) they would at least tailor production and distribution so that the dealer's lots are not over stocked and so that they are not having to offer huge incentives in cash back or cheap financing on every vehicle at the end of the year

going through the pain of rightsizing in the mid and late 80's would see the companies emerge much more effective in the 90's and with the more reasonable salary benefit structure they would probably add more headcount during the late 80's and throughout the 90's during the boom which would help detroit considerably

 

[TxCoatl1970]

I'm with Dathi and TheMann on this

My thoughts on Detroit's decline- distilled from several other sources, believe me, echo what's been said before:

Detroit was a boomtown grossly dependent on the auto industry enjoying a massive boom during WWII when most of its possible competitors got wiped out and took until the 1960's to recover in quantity and thanks to Deming's work in Japan, quality.

Since nowhere else had the abundance of resources at hand or assured access of deliver whatever as the USA, it was recipe for complacency because Detroit built to suit the US market, and if anyone else wanted some, we'd make it happen, but that wasn't the bread-and butter of the business.
Long story shorter, if the US automakers focused on exporting to a wider market, they wouldn't have been caight napping as badly.
When American tastes shifted away from what the Big Three wanted to make, it was disastrous.

Detroit also had the same problems many Midwestern cities had- St. Louis had this problem as well where where their population started declining in the 1950's due to suburbanization.
The Midwestern cities were left with a lot of dilapidated housing stock that got worn to peices by a horde of migrant workers during WWII surrounded by cheap farmland it was easy to buy and develop into Levittowns that had no real relationship with the central city.
Suburbs promised space, everything up-to-date, and tranquiility, not the dirty urban hustle plus business-friendly zoning boards.
After WWII, people were tired of the intrusive govermental presence ostensibly for the greater good. Suburbs promised it'd be on a scale they could affect in their favor.

Part of that's a failure of urban planning and part of it's just folks pursuing opportunities to suit their interests. Also the attempts to desegregate urban neighborhoods prompted a lot of whites to go to the suburbs. By the 1960's blacks were economically and socially marooned in ghettoes.

The Big Three shot themsleves in the foot in a myriad ways. IMO between planned obsolescence taking hold in the 1960's meaning you didn't build cars to last when you planned for folks to be buying new every 3-5 years and
not having much of a coordinated reponse to the oil shocks of the 1970's,
it gave the Japanese and Europeans plenty of opportunities to penetrate the market with cheaper and arguably better cars.

GM became an object case in top-heavy management which meant ideas had a lot of stops before they reached the executive suite. The SATURN experiment was a demo of GM-doing-better that should have been company-wide but wound up being perceived by management, dealer network, and customer base as a toy train instead of the wave of the future.

So, what to do?

Deming's ideas of statistical analysis led to kaizen in Japan, continuously analyzing reject rates and getting management and labor working together to improve results.
That happened here twenty years late and really didn't shake up the industry enough IMO to quit building comfy, semi-luxe tanks for near-retirees, sports cars and SUVs.
As mentioned before, they were totally tone-deaf to dealer preferences as to what sold and what didn't. Listening to their feedback would've helepd a lot of folks stay in business.

The Big Three getting the message in the 1970's about quality of products, adapting newly-developed and foreign concepts to the American market, and right-sizing cars to suit the new economic conditions would've been nice.
I'm also with Dathi re: diversifying and building buses, rolling stock, locomotives, etc for mass transit as well would be a great idea.
WI they also got into making components for RO/RO freighters too?

Anyhow, it just seems there were multiple opportunities to do better.

BW's idea of corporate raiders "right-sizing" the Big Three would've been an unmitigated disaster. .
You might see 1/5-1/8 of folks making parts for foreign manufacturers or just making boutique cars, but the Big three would've been butchered and left to rot.
Detroit would make the set of Robocop look like utopia by comparison.

 

[Bob in Pittsburgh]

Some thoughts

• North America (US and Canada) were the only industrialized areas not devastated by World War II. That created an economic condition that could not last as the rest of the world rebuilt.
• The Big 3 blew it big time on quality but probably less so on vehicle size. The soccer moms, and dads, wanted and still want minivans and SUVs.
• The real killer was not quality or anything product related. It was and is trailing liabilities for employee pensions and health care and environmental cleanup. The rest of the world doesn’t impose these on business.
• A Lot of cities including to some extent Pittsburgh are seeing migration back into the city. That doesn’t seem to be happening in Detroit.

 

[TxCoatl1970]

I agree with you that there were a ton of employee-related costs that made thngs difficult for the Big Three.

Health-care became a competitive disadvantage in the 1980's onward, which wasn't why Detroit imploded in the 1970's.

Pensions were underfunded b/c the # of employees needed to produce the run of vehicles requested dropped significantly between 1960 and 1990.
Also, lifespans thanks to better health care and safety rules, have lengthened.
From 1945-1965, you expected a fifty-five year old retiree to be dead in ten years. US Men are living to be seventy-seven on the average. So they're drawing pensions for 10-12 more years. They contributed for thirty.

Even though the folks still around make $40/hr, it doesn't help when you have 10 folks drawing (at current rates) for every contributing member. No pension fund can survive that mismatch between income and payments.

As to the burdens of environmental compliance being a significant factor, I
don't have any hard figures to dispute that. I seriously doubt they had much to do with the decline of the auto industry though.

Environmental and consumer safety movements aren't unique to the US. They're quite active in Germany and elsewhere in the developed world.
However, their lobbies are just used as excuses to impose tariffs and restrictions on "non-compliant" foreign goods on both sides of the pond.

Pittsburgh diversified. New York cleaned itself up. Philly has a lot of things going in its favor to revitalize itself.
Detroit has suffered such an implosion in its tax base that barring somebody public or private betting big on it coming back, it's got a lot of obstacles to coming back.

It's not impossible. I recently saw an article about Brooklyn gentrifying itself into hipster heaven b/c they're close enough to Manhattan but not having to pay full-price to live there. Plus, there's enough going on you don't have to leave.
Whether Detroit can get cachet as the cool place for bohemian gentrification or hip place to start a business IDK. You certianly have the cheap space. It's the infrastructure and sense of opportunities to exploit that get people and complanies to move there.

 

[FDW]

snip

Two of my main ideas for reviving detroit are: Building Light Rail, and merging Detroit and Wayne County at a minimum, and possibly more.

 

[The Kiat]

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.

Why would any company have so many managers? Is the corporate world in love with having fifteen layers of management?

 

[Killer300]

Why would any company have so many managers? Is the corporate world in love with having fifteen layers of management?

Well, the 1980s was when corporations become obsessed with managers, so yeah, I'd say corporations are, to distract from issues with how they treat the workforce at points.

 

[The Kiat]

I've read some things about Detroit but that is unbelievable, it's just like everyone got up and left one day.

I now know where Konami got their modeling for the Silent Hill series.

 

[Killer300]

Heck yeah, some of those buildings are terrifying in their own right, with quite a few making it onto a top ten scariest buildings list.

 

[TheMann]

I've pointed that out, avoid the Second World War. The Second World War, and the economic boom that it created after the war was what turned Detroit into such a hothouse that eventually collapsed from it's own weight. If you avoid it, you might very well see foreign competition from the undamaged European Industry, which would keep the pressure on Detroit and force it to use it's resources more smartly. By having Detroit somewhat smaller and less dominant, you'll also end up with a fall (that will come in some form) that will also be smaller and less debilitating.

The problem here is that nobody else had an easy time in the US market. Avoiding WWII won't change much, because all of those companies tried to supply the US market using their cars, and more importantly, their people. What the Japanese (and Volkswagen to a lesser extent) got right was they used American dealers in big numbers. Most European car companies never did that, and more to the point, Americans even by WWII had gotten used to bigger and more luxurious cars. Short of making the Europeans design cars in the mold of what Detroit built in the 1950s (which would be totally unsuitable for the European markets, and thus not likely to ever be built), you won't get them heavily involved in American car markets.

Avoid WWII won't reduce GM, Ford or Chrysler's size and influence. You want to avoid that, you gotta go far before WWII, like aftermath of WWI here. As I said, by 1921 (when William Durant was booted from GM for good and replaced by Alfred Sloan, who built GM's trading-up scheme) the die was cast. Butterflying WWII will save the auto infrastructure in Europe, but that doesn't change Detroit's dominance of the American car market.

 

[TheMann]

Long post that I totally agree with

It's quite true that while there are structural conditions to the problems faced by Detroit, 75% of the blame for it falls right squarely on the shoulders of management that didn't know or care to change things, to do things differently. The idea of Deming working for an American company would in itself be a big POD, assuming that he could beat the idea into the heads of Detroit to get quality right.

I once started on a TL where Detroit DID do things differently, because of the Corvair bit I mentioned earlier. Essentially, it goes like this: GM goes radical with the Corvair design, and it proves to be a massive smash hit, loved by small car consumers - the sedan versions end up selling well all over the world and the sporty versions, particularly the turbocharged Monza variant, end up becoming sports car terrors all over the world. GM is struck dumb by this, but loves it, and so technological advancement becomes a regular bit with GM, so much so that by the time the oil crisis hits in 1973 GM's smaller cars (both in North America and outside of it) are in the right place at the right time, which allows them to stay big and powerful. The 1960s sees independent suspension and four-wheel disc brakes becoming de rigeur on Detroit cars, with the post-oil crisis era adding forcing Detroit to build lighter and more efficient cars, which leads to extensive use of turbocharging and fuel injection on American cars, as well as aluminum and plastic body panels. The C4 Corvette (introduced in 1981) pioneers a bonded aluminum chassis with its fiberglass body, and technological advancements become a regular occurence in Detroit, with most of the world paying attention to what rolls out of the labs in Michigan. This auto industry also has the clout to push for changes in its own environment, both in terms of costs and regulations.

Anyways, that Detroit would look very different than this one and probably a lot better. I'll have to chew on that a bit and see what happens.

 

[FDW]

The problem here is that nobody else had an easy time in the US market. Avoiding WWII won't change much, because all of those companies tried to supply the US market using their cars, and more importantly, their people. What the Japanese (and Volkswagen to a lesser extent) got right was they used American dealers in big numbers. Most European car companies never did that, and more to the point, Americans even by WWII had gotten used to bigger and more luxurious cars. Short of making the Europeans design cars in the mold of what Detroit built in the 1950s (which would be totally unsuitable for the European markets, and thus not likely to ever be built), you won't get them heavily involved in American car markets.

Avoid WWII won't reduce GM, Ford or Chrysler's size and influence. You want to avoid that, you gotta go far before WWII, like aftermath of WWI here. As I said, by 1921 (when William Durant was booted from GM for good and replaced by Alfred Sloan, who built GM's trading-up scheme) the die was cast. Butterflying WWII will save the auto infrastructure in Europe, but that doesn't change Detroit's dominance of the American car market.

You write two paragraphs on Detroit's influence, but completely ignore the role WWII itself had on the development of suburbs and the decline of mass-transit.

 

[TheMann]

You write two paragraphs on Detroit's influence, but completely ignore the role WWII itself had on the development of suburbs and the decline of mass-transit.

I don't disagree on the role it had to play, but I would imagine that to some extent the development of suburbs was inevitable. Mass transit's decline wasn't, but I was focusing specifically on your assertion that you could use butterflying WWII to reduce the influence of the Detroit automakers, which I don't think is true at all.

Even if you do manage to butterfly WWII (and thus probably have the depression continue to some extent for a while longer), you're not butterflying the problems that US cities had. WWII didn't wreck them - the depression caused many of the problems, and while the GI Bill and the War Plants allowed for suburbization to explode, it was going to happen to some extent any way you look at it. Improving suburban growth into a pattern less reliant on cars won't have much of an effect on Detroit, for that matter.

 

[FDW]

I don't disagree on the role it had to play, but I would imagine that to some extent the development of suburbs was inevitable. Mass transit's decline wasn't, but I was focusing specifically on your assertion that you could use butterflying WWII to reduce the influence of the Detroit automakers, which I don't think is true at all.

Even if you do manage to butterfly WWII (and thus probably have the depression continue to some extent for a while longer), you're not butterflying the problems that US cities had. WWII didn't wreck them - the depression caused many of the problems, and while the GI Bill and the War Plants allowed for suburbization to explode, it was going to happen to some extent any way you look at it.

Not nearly to the extent that you're thinking of, and there are plenty of ways of ending the depression sooner than OTL that don't involve war. And you're really overestimating the possibility of a suburban boom happening on anywhere near the scale of OTL without WW2. And without a war and suburbanization to suck capital away from the center cities, they might rot to the same extent they did.

Improving suburban growth into a pattern less reliant on cars won't have much of an effect on Detroit, for that matter.

Yeah it would. Bringing American Public Transit usage up to levels found in most developed countries (about 25-33% of trips) knocks out at least a fifth of the potential car market in the US, possibly more.

 

[TheMann]

Modifying what I had written in a previous topic about this last fall, I'll add up the pieces in two parts - the first being what changes in Detroit:

Fixing Detroit has a best POD in the late 1950s. I'm thinking that the Chevrolet Corvair is better-built and had the handling quirks ironed out, and scores B-I-G in the American car market, with at least three million made between 1959 and 1964. This convinces GM that better tech can work, and while they are beaten to the punch by Ford with the Mustang, when the Camaro comes out, it comes out with real overhead-cam V8s and fuel injection. The Corvair stays in production as GM's smaller sedan until 1981, through two redesigns. GM's tech binge causes them to be the vanguard of American car manufacturers, and even stuns the Europeans. Radial tires, disc brakes, independent suspension, fiberglass bodywork, aluminum engines and other innovations are wholesale taken up by GM, and Ford and Chrysler are effectively forced to follow.

AMC produces the Spirit, starting in 1970. Instead of the overweight, not-particularly-efficient Gremlin, the Spirit is a gem of a car, with a fuel-efficient engine, excellent handling, solid assembly quality and excellent amenities. Ford produces the Pinto similar to OTL, but owing to its antiquated design and serious flaws, it lasts just four years, and the Escort comes out for 1975. Chevrolet redesigns the Corvair in 1972 to match the Spirit, and switches to water cooling. When the energy crisis hits, AMC and GM have the right small cars, Ford and Chrysler don't, and it shows. Chrysler goes bankrupt in 1977, and is saved from the heap by Peugeot, which takes in a major share in it, wanting access to its dealer network. Ford gets hit hard as well, but counters fast. The energy crisis turns AMC from an also-ran into a major player, and their line up of cars in the 1970s is impressive.

In 1978, Lee Iacocca is hired to run Chrysler, with the approval of the French backers. Iacocca's turnaround of Chrysler is one of the biggest such actions in history, and despite Iacocca's personal eccentricites, Chrysler emerges from the 1980s back in full form. The Minivan, a Chrysler invention, proves to be the car for the 1980s, with rivals from GM (Chevrolet Lumina APV), Ford (Ford Transit) and AMC (AMC Walker). Peugeot's return to the US market is successful, and Iacocca is appointed to lead the entire company when PSA and Chrysler merge in 1986. Peugeot's tiny 205 hatchback becomes a major hit in North America in the 1980s for its incredible handling, and the Peugeot 405 and Chrysler Intrepid share the same chassis from their launch in 1987. Their successors, the Chrysler Intrepid and Peugeot 406, share chassis but are very different looking from 1993 onward. GM continues its technological prowess through the 1970s and into the 1980s, though some of these bite back, such as Cadillac's infamous V8-6-4 of 1982. But the majority of them work just fine, and when the technology and traditional big engines mix, the result can be awesome - the Corvette Grand Sport of 1984, with its 5.7-liter V8 engine producing an unbelievable 445 horsepower, being one such example. The Corvair is replaced by the Cavalier in 1982, with a 16-valve, 2.2-liter engine that makes 155 horsepower, again amazing for the time. The Cavalier is a blowout hit, moving 300,000 units in the first 12 months. GM ups its stake in Toyota to 33% in 1985, which leads to rumours of a buyout, but GM instead sells off its stake in February 1989, making a gargantuan profit on the deal owing to Japan's bubble economy. Ford starts the process of importing European models to run with its American models, and does alright. Not as advanced as GM is with regards to technology, they do fair in any case, and the Escort is a steady seller. Ford's "Fox body" cars of the 1980s are strong sellers. The Taurus, introduced in 1986 to replace the aging LTD, is one of the most popular sedans of the 1980s, and the LTD Crown Victoria goes into the bin in favor of the Falcon, nearly identical to its Australian counterpart, in 1991. Ford's tendency to make models for across the world pays off in the 1990s and 2000s. AMC's 1970s success gives them the resources to make other vehicles. Their highly-successful Jeep line and small car lines make up for the loss of the middle to Ford and technological lead to GM. With Detroit flying high, the imports struggle in the 1980s, to the point that several of them leave altogether. Japanese manufacturer Daihatsu never gets off the ground, and several others struggle. Toyota never gets as big a market share as it has IOTL.

This is what I said about the American auto industry, which I'll add to.

Here, the Corvair is a smash hit all over North America and in many parts of the world, and as such GM's technological push (and the muscle car era, which the Pontiac GTO kicks off) leads to the American auto market also evolving. It is discovered by all of Detroit that better handling does not have to come at the cost of a less comfortable ride or reduced durability. The Corvair comes in four generations (1959-1965, 1966-1971, 1972-1977, 1978-1981) and switches to water cooling for the third generation, but remains rear-engined and with its flat-six to the end, and is almopst universally regarded as one of the best small cars of the 1970s in America, while it is a regarded as a very good mid-size sedan in Europe, as well. The Mustang is originally countered by the Corvair coupe, but GM realizes quickly that it needs a real pony car to truly battle the Mustang - hence, the Camaro arrives in 1967, based on the chassis of the Nova mid-size and powered by V8 engines right from the off, namely General Motors' excellent Buick 215 V8 (This unit was not a big success for GM and the design was sold to Rover in 1966......who used it until the company's bankruptcy in 2005 and sold millions of them. Oops) and its increasingly-good small block series of V8s. As the Camaro and the big-engined Chevelle get popular in the 1960s, the Corvette goes upmarket in price, amenities and performance through the 1960s.

AMC is fastest to rival the Mustang, introducing the Javelin in 1966, as an excellent small coupe. The Javelin proves to be an enduring legend, continuing in production to this day. Along with their good mid-size cars and the spectacular arrival of the Shadow in 1970, AMC's first half of the 1970s are a sales bonanza which sees them blow Chrysler back to fourth in 1973 and very nearly catch Ford for second. The company's headquarters moves from Kenosha, Wisconsin, to Chicago in 1976 partly as a result of this. Chrysler's bankruptcy at first hurts, but Peugeot's buy-in winds up being highly beneficial for the company on a variety of fronts.

Ford swings for the fences by replacing the troubled Pinto with the European Mark II Escort in 1975, and it works well for them, though not to the scale of the massive hit in the AMC Spirit and the excellent Mark III Corvair, but it puts Ford in the game, and their strong truck and van sales keep them going long enough to keep them afloat. Lee Iacocca's bouncing from Ford in 1978 by Henry Ford II causes an inside revolt, forcing Henry Ford II's retirement in May 1979. Philip Caldwell, his successor, proves to be amazingly successful at the turnaround of the company, introducing the "World Cars" in the Escort and Sierra to America in 1981, and presides over the Fox Body cars being big successes, and the Taurus being a big hit as well after its 1986 launch, one of the results of this being the solidification of their second-place status. The Australian-developed EB Falcon replaces the LTD in North America in 1991. The Ford Explorer is a big sales hit in the early 1990s, but the follow-up 1997 Expedition, based on the F-150 chassis, is rather less so because of its lower fuel mileage. The second-generation Expedition, launched in 2004, uses smaller-capacity V8s and diesel engines to improve its fuel economy dramatically. (The SUV boom is much more muted, as a result of CAFE laws being applied to SUVs and light trucks, though with a separate category for them to take into account their greater weight and size. Full-size pickup trucks still sell in considerable numbers, but smaller pickup trucks like the Chevrolet S-10/Colorado, Dodge Dakota and Ford Ranger end up being much bigger sellers.) Overall, Ford recovers well, and with Chrysler's merger with Peugeot in 1986, Detroit stays strong.

Now, for the city itself, I wrote this:

The end of Coleman Young (following gridlocked's plan here) and the beginning of gentrification leads to Detroit beginning to regain much of its former status, but the 1980s are a turbulent decade.

Reagan's controversial firing of the nation's air traffic controllers in 1981 touches off a series of massive rolling strikes across the nation. Hamfisted responses to this by management see Roger Smith shown the door by GM's board. New management realizes the problems that a militant workforce can cause and spends much of the 1980s trying to fix that. AMC is fastest to follow, with Ford and Chrysler tailing along. The "Year of Discontent" of 1981-82 is a mix of major economic problems and civil unrest. Detroit is not immune to this - no Midwest city is - but big riots do not ever break out, and in several cities, including Detroit, black rioters frequently found themselves facing off against black citizens angry about the mayhem, which has a psychological impact as well. The problems with traffic from the outer suburbs lead to the beginnings of gentrification. (Again, gridlocked's plan works for this.) Reagan loses the 1984 election to the Democratic ticket of Ted Kennedy and Henry M. Jackson, the latter used to steal a lot of strong arm voters from Reagan. The 1980s see new manufacturing grow up in the United States, focused on quality and innovation, and in many cases with smaller businesses. Detroit is not left out of this. America's social and economic development in the 1980s and 1990s is very marked.

The 1981-82 riots had one unanticipated side-effect - as in New York following the blackout of 1977, many stolen pieces of electronic equipment are part of the base of a major music scene. Motown Records returns parts of its operations to Detroit starting in 1984, and as the city's music scene comes back, so does its number of labels. House music, which was born in Chicago, explodes across the Midwest in the 1980s and has a strong sub-culture, the Detroit Sound, born in the Motor City. This is followed by many musical acts out of Detroit in the 1980s and 1990s, from soul group Boys II Men to rapper Eminem. The diversity of the entertainment acts gives new life to Detroit's music community, which when combined with fixing windows theory-based law enforcement work, demolition of abandoned properties and the growing creative class, leads to people returning.

The vibrant arts communities, reduced crime, shorter commutes and economic prosperity sees the long flow of people to suburban regions completely reverse in the 1990s. Tens of thousands of old houses are rebuilt, abandoned warehouses are turned into condos, clubs, shops and smaller industries. Several large apartment buildings are built in the mid to late 1990s to house poorer residents, and middle-class residents are able to stay in the city center. Many of Detroit's landmarks are rebuilt, with such places as the Fox Theatre and Michigan Central Station massively rebuilt. The architecture of the city becomes a high point, with storefronts of the 1850s mixing with 1990s towers. Detroit's city population grows massively in the 1990s, from just over 1.1 million in 1990 to nearly 1.6 million in 2000. This has a few negatives, particularly with regards to cost of living, but the city's growth is put forth as an example of America fixing its problems and building a 21st Century city.

The 2000s are taken up by improving the infrastructure of the area. From the waterfront to the city's growing system of above-ground transit (and light-rail surface transit, starting in 2004) and buses, the city's transit system improves markedly in the 2000s, further helping the growth of the city's inner areas, including several areas which become loaded down with middle-class residents, many of them working for the automakers. Detroit blows past its 1950 peak population in 2005, and the 2010 census records a population in Detroit 2,107,455, 250,000 people above the 1950 peak. The average income in Detroit is still considerably below New York, San Francisco or Boston, but higher than Chicago (or indeed, any other major Midwestern city) and higher than most. The city's entire urban area has a population of 6.4 million, the fifth largest in the United States (behind New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston) and seventh-largest in the North American (those five, plus Mexico City and Toronto).

Which I stand by, because it works and I still believe it.

 

[TheMann]

Not nearly to the extent that you're thinking of, and there are plenty of ways of ending the depression sooner than OTL that don't involve war.

There were, you are correct. But are they possible in the mid-1930s? Would anybody in America seriously chase those? FDR is a legend in American politics for the reason that he got done what needed to be done. Avoiding Smoot-Hawley would be a good place to start, but that could backfire as well. As for it not damaging cities, they were starting to get redeveloped at the time. New York got as much infrastructure built in the 1930s as it did because Robert Moses had already planned a lot out and had both the money and political influence to do what he wished. Even if you butterfly away the depression, there was most of highway schemes being worked on in the country in the 1930s.

And you're really overestimating the possibility of a suburban boom happening on anywhere near the scale of OTL without WW2. And without a war and suburbanization to suck capital away from the center cities, they might rot to the same extent they did.

They might not rot to same extent, but you're not gonna stop suburbanization. It's a part of car culture, and without stopping that car culture, you're gonna get it to some extent. The depression and the times around it also brought a lot of black people into several major American cities, which adds a racial element to it - and if anything, not having WWII and the millions of black servicemen during the war may make said racial tensions worse. Stopping the rot just isn't possible, though it can be reduced to a large extent.

Yeah it would. Bringing American Public Transit usage up to levels found in most developed countries (about 25-33% of trips) knocks out at least a fifth of the potential car market in the US, possibly more.

Getting 25% of trips done by mass transit is possible in New York or San Francisco (or other terrain-challenged cities like Seattle or Boston or ones with very dense city centers like Philadelphia or Washington), but in a city like Los Angeles or Houston or Miami or Atlanta or Chicago or Detroit, forget it. If you get 10% of trips you'll have knocked down the traffic congestion considerably, but even with massive improvements in mass transit infrastructure, getting that amount of mass transit usage to that level in North American cities is nearly impossible without laws favoring intensification or very high fuel prices, neither of which is anywhere near likely in 1950s America, World War II or not.

 

[FDW]

There were, you are correct. But are they possible in the mid-1930s? Would anybody in America seriously chase those? FDR is a legend in American politics for the reason that he got done what needed to be done. Avoiding Smoot-Hawley would be a good place to start, but that could backfire as well. As for it not damaging cities, they were starting to get redeveloped at the time. New York got as much infrastructure built in the 1930s as it did because Robert Moses had already planned a lot out and had both the money and political influence to do what he wished. Even if you butterfly away the depression, there was most of highway schemes being worked on in the country in the 1930s.

It depends on the type of people who get into office, I mean despite FDR's prestige in the present day, it was still rather touch and go during his time in the 1930's. If he hadn't tried to roll back the New Deal after 1937, unemployment numbers might've continued dropping down, reaching maybe 10% by 1940. And abroad, the rise of Stalin in the Soviet Union, Militarism in Japan, and Nazism in Germany were hardly a sure thing in the 1920's, and it wouldn't be especially difficult to butterfly all those in a manner that leaves the 1940's peaceful.

They might not rot to same extent, but you're not gonna stop suburbanization. It's a part of car culture, and without stopping that car culture, you're gonna get it to some extent. The depression and the times around it also brought a lot of black people into several major American cities, which adds a racial element to it - and if anything, not having WWII and the millions of black servicemen during the war may make said racial tensions worse. Stopping the rot just isn't possible, though it can be reduced to a large extent.

I've never said anything about stopping suburbanization, just slowing it down and changing it's character without the billions of dollars in subsidies and capital that caused the boom OTL.

Getting 25% of trips done by mass transit is possible in New York or San Francisco (or other terrain-challenged cities like Seattle or Boston or ones with very dense city centers like Philadelphia or Washington), but in a city like Los Angeles or Houston or Miami or Atlanta or Chicago or Detroit, forget it. If you get 10% of trips you'll have knocked down the traffic congestion considerably, but even with massive improvements in mass transit infrastructure, getting that amount of mass transit usage to that level in North American cities is nearly impossible without laws favoring intensification or very high fuel prices, neither of which is anywhere near likely in 1950s America, World War II or not.

BULLSHIT. And I'll say it again BULLSHIT. It's all about the amount of support cities were willing to give, which was very little until the past 40 years.

First, Los Angeles is actually a very dense city, it just has a shitload of parkland and low-density areas within city limits than deflates it's density somewhat (Several of the cities neighboring LA are better indicators of LA's density than LA's average, the metro area as a whole is also surprisingly dense). Secondly, while it's geography is inferior to cities like San Francisco and New York in favorability to transit, it does a fair number of geographic "pinch points" that give boosts to Public Transit, and it's Downtown has the fortune of sitting of sitting at the exact center of the metro area, with nearly all major corridors feeding into it. Thirdly, LA had a tremendous mass transit system in the form of the Red and Yellow cars that could've very survived had they not been brought under control of people who sought to dismantle them, and with them, LA could've easily had transit ridership several times that of OTL.

Secondly, Detroit and Chicago were very dense cities that also had well developed streetcars systems, and Chicago's streetcar system actually extended into the suburbs, and was one of the largest in the world, carrying more than three times as many passengers as the L did (about 1.9 million to the metro's 660,000) , with even more on bus and rail. If that system was modernized properly (connecting the Commuter lines and Streetcar lines with subways under the central area), then getting ridership up to proportion I suggested would be simple.

Houston is a special case, as they were one of a few major cities that abandoned their streetcar systems before WWII. And with the type of POD I'm mentioning, it's possible that Miami might not be a major city TTL, even so Miami too actually has favorable geography for Mass Transit, as like Salt Lake City, the Urbanized area is a narrow strip of land running North to South. And Atlanta might not even be as big as it is if wasn't for WWII, which caused it to turn into a major industrial hub.

 

[BigWillyG]

Getting 25% of trips done by mass transit is possible in New York or San Francisco (or other terrain-challenged cities like Seattle or Boston or ones with very dense city centers like Philadelphia or Washington), but in a city like Los Angeles or Houston or Miami or Atlanta or Chicago or Detroit, forget it. If you get 10% of trips you'll have knocked down the traffic congestion considerably, but even with massive improvements in mass transit infrastructure, getting that amount of mass transit usage to that level in North American cities is nearly impossible without laws favoring intensification or very high fuel prices, neither of which is anywhere near likely in 1950s America, World War II or not.

Even if you get that would it do anything without changing how much of the US was settled in the 19th century? Even in the '20s & '30s you have a good chunk of the US population living in small towns or outright rural areas which aren't amenable to efficient mass transit due to the small population density. This population is also embrace car ownership fairly early on as seen with pictures of Dust Bowl era Okies and Arkies traveling in Model T's and Model A's to California. Having just small town and rural people embrace the car en mass is still going to produce the sort of market which will feed healthy growth for car companies and might encourage suburb growth and a universal car culture despite more mass transit.