Article Report: Thomas J. Sug

In Thomas J. Sugrue’s chapter, “The Damning Mark of False Prosperities: The Deindustrialization of Detroit”, the city of Detroit over the last fifty years has become a symbol of the American urban crisis. What was once “the heartbeat of the industrial metropolis in the 1940s”, Detroit has quickly become run down permanently reducing their work forces and relocating to other parts of the country. The 1950s mark a turning point for Detroit with the introduction of deindustrialization. Industries were moving to rapidly growing areas in the urban west where more federal dollars were exposable and new markets were emerging. Technological advancements, especially in transportation, made industrial decentralization possible. The growth of the national markets led automobile manufacturers like Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler to expand westward building new plants and facilities in every major city along the way. Capital mobility reshaped the landscape of industrial mobility with the expansion of the big three automobile manufacturers. The decentralization of automation can be best understood from a long-term perspective. Capital mobility was by no means a quick movement, but rather a long long-term plan to restructure the site of industrial America. Sugrue sheds light on the deindustrialization of Detroit and how the long-term benefits can at times outweigh the short-term costs in hindsight. This innovative plan created a ripple effect throughout the country creating industries that couldn’t have been imaginable without the use of railroads. With the movement of automation all across the country to a high demand for location in “urban cities”, innovation was at an all time high. By decentralizing a specific industry, one can visualize the forward progression in a society transforming the nature by which we live.

            Thomas J. Sugrue was born 1962 in Detroit, Michigan and currently is an American historian of the 20^th century United States at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently at David Boies Professor of History and Sociology. His areas of expertise include American urban history, American political history, and the history of race relations. He has published extensively on the history of liberalism and conservatism, on poverty and public policy, on civil rights, and on the history of affirmative action. This chapter is an excerpt out of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, is the first book by historian, Thomas J. Sugrue. He examines the role of race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit. He also argues that the process of deindustrialization, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor saving technologies. The book has won multiple awards including a Bancroft Prize in 1998, just two years after it was published.

            Thomas J. Sugrue's short study of Detroit, from the late 1930's through the 1970's is an attempt to understand the structure of Detroit's decline in racial, political, economic, and sometimes-spatial terms. Through analysis of all these factors, Sugrue creates a cogent explanation of why so many formerly industrial cities of the United States are increasingly poorer, blacker, and more hopeless about their future with every passing year. The intended audience is one that wants to study the effects of urban decay and the history of a city that was set up to fail. The audience received the article in a manner that was quite critical of the development of Detroit. Massive deindustrialization by the automotive industry and the industries attached to it coupled with chronic unemployment and discrimination and racism in nearly every facet of life did a great a deal to make Detroit the wasteland it is today. Many people enjoyed the book and found it quite relatable to their impoverished upbringings.

           

“Detroit: An American Autopsy” by Charlie Leduff touches on many similar themes in Sugrue’s book. Both growing up in Detroit, they saw their beloved city struggle with unemployment, illiteracy, dropouts, and foreclosures. Once the vanguard of America’s automobiles age, it has turned into one of the most dangerous cities in America. While the automobile age decentralized, Leduff sets out to uncover what other components contributed to the destruction of his city.