Detroit, Michigan
According to existingcountries, Detroit is the largest city in the US state of Michigan and the tenth most populous city in the US. It has a population of roughly one million, but the entire metropolitan area is home to more than 4.8 million people.
The city was founded in 1701 by the French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. Originally, there was only a small settlement with a fortress and a few houses, which was named Fort Détroit. The settlement and the fortress were handed over to the British on November 29, 1760. They shortened its name to Detroit, which is also the name of the river that flows through it. Detroit was annexed to the United States of America in 1796. In 1815, it was officially declared a city and at the same time became the capital of the state. At the end of the nineteenth century, the city became recognized for its exhibition architecture and the newly electrified main street, which is why it earned the name “Paris of the West”.
Currently, Detroit is one of the most industrialized cities. The automotive industry is mainly represented here, there are three car manufacturers – Ford, Chrysler and General Motors (which declared bankruptcy in 2009). The city is therefore often called “Motown”. This nickname is also used in the name of the local record company Tamla Motown. There are four thousand factories in and around the city, around which entire suburbs grew up in the past. Despite having so many large companies offering plenty of jobs, Detroit has a relatively high unemployment rate. Almost one third of the population lives even below the poverty line. Crime is also associated with this, which is one of the highest in the US in Detroit. American study published in the journal Children’
However, the city is not only an industrial center and a world car manufacturer. There are also many museums in the city – for example, the Detroit Museum of Art, the Detroit Museum of History, the Charles W. Wright Museum of African-American History, and others.
Like every American city, Detroit was divided into racial neighborhoods. White and black. Belgians, Germans, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks lived peacefully side by side in the white neighborhoods of Detroit. During World War II, however, the city saw an influx of colored residents from the South. This caused resentment and major race riots. After World War II, blacks began to push into white areas and their arrogance grew. This resulted in the most famous and largest race clash in American history – the “12th Street Riots”. From the late 1950s, the white population began to move away from Detroit, to separate satellite towns.
As late as 1930, Detroit’s population was 92% white. In 2008, whites made up only 10.5% and blacks 82%. In Detroit, the phenomenon known as white flight was probably significantly manifested – the more blacks came to the city, the more the white population moved away (the total population fell by almost half between 1930 and 2008: from 1,600,000 to 916,952).
The city’s climate is influenced by five large lakes in the vicinity. The winters here are cold and the summers, on the other hand, very hot and sultry. The highest temperatures in July reach 30°C and in January the average temperature is around 1°C.
