🕒 The time-lapse history of Detroit in 8 minutes 🕔

Early settlers: 0:22 Auto age: 2:32 Urban decline: 4:00 Reverse time-lapse: 7:03 Credits: 8:33

This film traces Detroit’s evolution from its origins as a French trading post in the 1700s, to its explosion as a metropolis, followed by its precipitous decline as a symbol of America’s post-industrial urban landscape. The film weaves in details about the city’s politics, population, and technology – all of which influenced the city’s geography and built environment. At each phase in urban history, the built environment grew and was modified in direct response to political events like racial segregation, population changes like the Great Migration, technology developments like the mass-produced car, and government interventions like urban renewal.

Created in gratitude to the University of Michigan’s PhD program in architecture
Music by Philip Glass, "Pruitt Igoe" from the 1983 film Koyaanisqatsi

[bobbeezel]

I grew up in Detroit in the 70s and 80s. My grandparents immigrated from Italy there in the 30s and what a huge difference there was from when they owned their first home in 1945 vs. me having to enter high school as one of THREE WHITE kids in 1988! Good times...good times for some...not especially great for me till I got out of there in my twenties

[Pro-Deo]

In the 1800s Detroit was labeled the most beautiful city in America. I used to have a 1st hand edition of the book made back then by Silas Farmer, the cities Historiographer and published in 1884. It had the history of Wayne County and Detroit and illustrations of every house on Woodward, Jefferson Ave and so many other streets including their addresses, who lived there at the time the book was made and year the house was made. It also had businesses and illustrations of them and their addresses and even more like wars, battles, manners, customs and marriage laws. It had over a thousand illustrations and over 1400 pages. The book was completely mind blowing. Especially the illustrations of the houses. There's perhaps 4 or 5 of the houses still in existence from back then.

[mrpotential]

The voice at the end scared the hell out of me 😂

[johnpenley]

Outstanding!
I'm a hobbyist Detroit historian.
Utterly love this clip.👍🏽

[AndrewLachowicz-ri]

Detroit is perhaps the coolest American City. It has a well laid out downtown with iconic Woodward enveloping Campus Martius Park with music in the air, right downtown, surrounded by a free monorail, very green too. Bundle this in with Strait and the boats and the ever present sound of Motown in the back ground there is nothing else like it. Perhaps most of all Dtwah has captured the imagination, why we still talk about it so much.

[junkman]

I think you summarized things well. There are SO MANY HEAVY HITTER THOUGH that I wish you could include soo much more. 1943 riots were a big one too. I really loved when the music intensified with Henry Ford's quadricycle. That was a nice touch. Also, wish you had a map that showed the location of Fort Shelby over the wagon spoke map. It's pretty cool to see where it once was.

[timfronimos]

Read,
"Slaughter of Cities, " by E Michael Jones to understand how a city like Detroit was
brought down.
It wasn't merely race, white flight, and loss of the automotive industry but deeper policies that ruined this city.
Read the book to see what federal policies undermined American middle class traditional families An american industry.
The American Dream WAS real and lived my millions of Detroiters.
At 1 time, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America.
Detroit had the most privately owned homes.
The most corporate headquarters.

[hazchemel]

Really well done. Strong example of a narrative lens along a timeline. It's not history though, because history doesn't strap you into an amusement park pod riding along a rail. This is more like The History Experience, The Story of History.

[thezenarcher]

What an immense work. Really terrific.

[ManicMindTrick]

Outstanding job on this video. Keep it up.
Shame it only garnered 15k views in a year but good quality work will eventually find an audience (unless youtube shadow-bans your content).

[KCCardCo]

Starting in 1915 the demeanor and tensions of the South started coming north. In 1900 Detroit was a peaceful and prosperous place. Cultures weren't fighting with each other. Read the last chapter of "The Morans 150 years in Detroit" by John Bell Moran.

[jackjohnston]

It's interesting that the song is called "Pruitt Igoe" which was an urban housing project in St. Louis (where I live). I noticed a lot of similarities between Detroit and St. Louis in this video, and the Pruitt Igoe building and its destruction exemplify that similar history.

[AIvey-qsso]

Wow, very interesting (my family lives near Detroit but I never have)
I thought the time lapse maps were very well done 👍

[edworld]

Amazing video! If you ever do one of Rio de Janeiro, i would be forever grateful.

[badpiggies]

Grandkids of those of us living there: “So that forest way outside of town used to be part of the city?”

“Yes”

[cameronb]

Hahahha instantly recognized as the GTA 4 Theme Song

[RayPointerChannel]

Being a Michigan native descendant, it needs to be made clearer that the majority of the White Pine was located in Central Michigan. Detroit was not, and is NOT the entire state. When Michigan became a state, it sold off the pine forests for much needed revenue for operations. The White Pine and well as Oak was sent down to Grand Rapids for processing into lumber that was sent out for construction during the western expansion. The rest was used in the manufacturing of furniture. After the land was scalped of the trees, it was transformed into agricultural use by settlers from Ohio and parts of Europe. Many of these Setters were Free Blacks and mixed race people. You may be interested in further details of this story that can be found in THE MECOSTA-MORTON VIDEO TOUR and A NATION WITHIN ITSELF, which is also on YouTube.

[HowardBeale]

excellent work, with a tinge of the ted kaczinski

[cheaserceaser]

How come there's a correlation between black population percentage and population and urban decay?

[antonioguglielmetti]

Crazy how the city flipped from white, to black, to no one