The Emptying of Detroit

Last one out please turn off the lights:

The population of Detroit has fallen back 100 years.

The flight of middle-class African-Americans to the suburbs fueled an exodus that cut Detroit's population 25% in the past decade to 713,777, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. That's the city's lowest population level since the 1910 census, when automobile mass production was making Detroit Detroit.

The decline, the fastest in city history, shocked local officials, who had expected a number closer to 800,000. Mayor Dave Bing said the city would seek a recount.

"If we could go out and identify another 40,000 people that were missed, and it brings us over the threshold of 750,000, that would make a difference from what we can get from the federal and state government," Mr. Bing said at a news conference Tuesday.

In all, the city lost more than 237,000 residents, including 185,000 blacks and about 41,000 whites. The Hispanic population ticked up by 1,500. Meanwhile, the black population in neighboring Macomb County more than tripled to 72,723, constituting 8.6% of the county's population in 2010, compared with 2.7% a decade earlier. Oakland County's African-American population rose 36% to 164,078.

Detroit's population has fallen steadily since the heyday of the auto industry in the 1950s, when it peaked around two million, but the declines have accelerated in recent years as manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the mortgage crisis has devastated even stable, middle-class neighborhoods. The number of vacant housing units doubled in the past decade to nearly 80,000, more than one-fifth of the city's housing stock, the Census Bureau reported.

"For those of us who have been out in the neighborhoods, we knew that the foreclosures and the abandonment were really extreme and accelerating," said Lyke Thompson, director of Wayne State University's Center for Urban Studies. "The question is, can you put a bottom under it?"

In 1950, Detroit was the fifth-largest city in America, behind New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and it was in the top 10 as recently as the 1990 Census. Now, Detroit is likely to fall to 19th, behind Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio.

I spent a week in the Detroit area in 2009 and the contrasts in that city are astounding. You've got the sparkling Renaissance Center right on the water and just a couple of blocks away abandoned building after abandoned building.

There has been talk about razing thousands of structures and shrinking the city down to a more manageable size. Unfortunately, what you'll have left is the worst of the worst in a city that has no prospects for growth and expansion. Those days are gone.

By the way, Detroit isn't the only major Rustbelt city to take a dive in population.  Beltway Confidential has some other numbers:

Chicago:

2000 population: 2,896,016
2010 population: 2,695,598
Change: = -6.9%

Cleveland:

2000 population: 478,403
2010 population: 396,815
Change: -17.1%

Duluth:

2000 population: 86,238
2010 population: 86,265
Change: +0.03%

Erie, Pa.

2000 population: 103,718
2010 population: 101,786
Change: -1.8%

Toledo:

2000 population: 313,619
2010 population: 287,208
Change: -8.4%

Milwaukee:

2000 population: 596,974
2010 population: 594,833
Change: -0.4%