Patrick Cooper-McCann is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University. He is currently researching the intertwined histories of depopulation and deindustrialization in Metro Detroit, from the early twentieth century to the present, in comparison with other metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada. His most recent publication, co-written with Andy Guinn, explains “Why Windsor Deindustrialized Differently Than Detroit.”
Project statement : The Origins of Deindustrialization
Together with Andy Guinn, I am investigating the timing, location, and causes of deindustrialization. The term deindustrialization is most often used to describe the restructuring of national or subnational economies, especially since the 1970s. However, urban historians have argued that cities in the United States Rust Belt began deindustrializing in the 1950s, as firms moved their factories to the suburbs and adopted labour-reducing technology. Others have argued that particular industries and regions, like Pennsylvanian coal and New England textiles, began to decline by the 1920s, and that the trend of industrial suburbanization had begun by then as well. Synthesizing these arguments, we argue that the starting date of deindustrialization hinges on the scale at which it is studied. Our argument derives from a study of industrial restructuring in Metro Detroit since the early twentieth century down to the scale of individual industrial districts. We examine restructuring not only within the auto industry but also within legacy industries like cigars, stoves, rail cars, ships, and pharmaceuticals, tracking the growth, movement, and closure of firms from 1900 onward. We find that jobs began to decrease in the industrial districts along Detroit’s riverfront by the mid-1910s. By the late 1920s, restructuring within the auto industry led to the diminishment of employment in districts located further from downtown, including Milwaukee Junction and Highland Park, and the geography of deindustrialization continued to expand outward in later decades. Our research challenges the usual periodization of deindustrialization and highlights a broader set of causes beyond capital flight and automation. In future work, we will extend our study temporally and compare the unfolding of deindustrialization in Metro Detroit to dynamics in other metropolitan areas in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. We are also researching the connection between industrial restructuring and neighbourhood change.
