Headline:
DETROITERS MOVING OUT, LEAVING CITY WITHERED SHELL
by John Creecy
At a surprising speed, Detroit is moving out of town.
It is leaving behind a withered shell.
Even in the face of a severe housing shortage, the central portion of town is losing population and sections moderately far out are barely holding their own.
Only on the city's outer fringe is there growth in building and popoulation.
Soon - very soon as it looks now - even this must end.
There will be no more growth, or virtually none, within the city. The area will grow, experts say, but seven-eighths of the growth will be outside the city limits.
as this situation develops, it is going to become more and more important to YOU.
It will make a difference in where you live, where you work, where you shop, and - particularly - how much you pay in taxes.
The outlook is that this hard-worn city of Detoit will continue to be the center of a great and growing industrial community.
This means that Detroit must be expensively maintained and improved.
But the outlook is also that proportionately fewer and fewer of the community's population and idustries will be within the city limits and paying taxes for the upkeep of Detroit.
Each Detroit taxpayer wil have to shoulder more and more of the burden - unless some change is made in city boundaries, or something is done to force the suburbs to help support their parent city.
Delving into city plan commission files, you get this picture of what has been going on:
- The so-called "inner core" of Detroit - inside Grand Blvd.- has lost 17.3 per cent of its population in the last 25 years. The decline would have been much greater but for the housing shortage
- Downtown property, assessed at $352,600,000 in 1945, (Assessment boosts for 1948 make it somewhat higher now). There has been virtually no building downtwon since the 1920s.
Use Up Vacant Land
During the postwar building boom, Detroit has been rapidly using up its vacant land suitable for homes.
If building continues at the present rate, all land available for one-family homes will be used up within three years.
Upshot of all this is that census statisticians expect Detroit's population to remain almost stationary for the next 20 years, while surrounding area grows rapidly.
Detroit's estimated growth in this period is 51,000. It is expected that the surrounding area will gain more than seven times as many people - or about 365,000.
The same trend exists in industrial buildings.
Within the last 10 years, the Detroit area has added 17 plants, each employing 1,000 or more persons.
Only five have been within the city limits.
A quarter century ago, nearly half of Detroit's population lived within the area surrounded by Grand Blvd. Now less than 20 per cent of the people live there.
Main recent growth has been in what the plan commission calls the "outer ring."
This is the area west of Greenfield, north of McNichols and east of Conner and Clairpointe. In 1920, this area held only 4 per cent of the population; now it has more than 30 per cent.
In between the "inner core" and the "outer ring" lies the section which the plan commission calls the "central belt". The "central belt" has reached a point where population increase is almost negligible.
Right now, of all houses being built in the metropolitan area, only a little more than half are within the Detroit city limits.
The annual rate of home building in the city stands at 6.2 homes for each 1,000 population.
For the remainder of the area, it is 12.0 homes for each 1,000 population - just about twice the city rate.
Suburban cities and villages in the area are in much the same boat as Detroit.
Their building rate is 8.8 per cetn. But in unincorporated parts of the area - where residents pay only township taxes - the rate is 20.0 new homes fore each 1,000 inhabitants.
SHOCKING SITUATION REVEALED:
HAMILTON HORSE HORROR SOLVED
By Elmer Williams
Detroit Times Milk Wagon Correspondent
If it hadn't been for Alonzo, the new milk wagon horse, nobody would have ever solved teh Hamilton avenue mystery.
It seems that Alonzo, fresh and frisky from the lush, green meadows, became the successor of a long line of milk wagon horses on the Hamilton area route.
The reason Alonzo had so many predecessors was that one after another they all refused to corss Hamilton at Oakman boulevard.
Report Strange Things
Milk wagon drivers reported strange thins to the people in the front office.
"It's no use," they would say. "I can't get old Joe to cross Hamilton. Every time we approach that intersection he acts like he's seen a ghost. He just lays his ears back and hightails for the barn. yesterday he clipped off a fire hydrant and two fenders."
So old Joe would be replaced the next day by Gloria, or Barney, or Fanny, but one after another they proved themselves unable to dope with that eerie corner.
Along Came Alonzo
Until along came Alonzo, full of oats and enjoying his first sights in the big town.
"Giddap!" yelled the driver and Alonzo stepped forth gaily into Hamilton.
There are many schools of opinion over whether Alonzo turned two complete somersaults or just one.
Anyway, he went high in the air and then came down in the shafts with a fearful crash. Alonzo lay on his back, with his hooves aloft, looking very much like Primo Carnera about the third round.
Pretty soon he rolled over and got his front shoes in contact with the pavement again, very much like Primo after the count of 10.
A friendly gas station attendant came out and offered to help the driver get Alonzo back in the perpendicular.
"I'm an old farm boy," said the volunteer. "You grab his head and I'll twist his tail."
It Looked Easy
"Upsadaisy!" yelled the former tiller of the soil, but the rest was silence. Both the driver and his helper were sprawled out on the pavement, wondering why in heck somebody didn't turn off the switch.
Pretty soon they were helped back on their feet and poor Alonzo was hauled off to his oats in a big truck.
The he denouement didn't come until Edison engineer J.J. Mulhavey surveyed the scene and discovered DSR workers had left low voltage wires exposed to the under-pavement when streetcar tracks were removed.
Alonzo's iron shoes did the rest.
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