Detroit
Fur trade strait became assembly-line capital, then bankruptcy case study. Population finally growing again; EV transition tests whether Motor City can evolve.
Detroit exists because of a chokepoint. In 1701, French military leader Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac built Fort Pontchartrain at the narrowest stretch of water between Lake Erie and Lake Huron—le détroit, 'the strait.' Whoever controlled this passage controlled fur trade between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic. For 150 years, Detroit remained what its geography dictated: a strategic garrison where French, British, and Native peoples traded pelts and watched each other warily.
Then Henry Ford arrived, and geography became irrelevant. In 1913, Ford's Highland Park plant introduced the moving assembly line, cutting Model T production time from 12 hours to 93 minutes. Detroit's transformation from trading post to industrial colossus had nothing to do with its waterway—it happened because Ford happened to be born nearby. The Big Three (Ford, GM, Chrysler) drew workers from across America, especially the South. Detroit's population peaked at 1.85 million in 1950. The city didn't just make cars; it became cars. That monocultural specialization proved catastrophic.
The decline arrived in stages: automation, suburbanization, Japanese competition, globalization. Workers left as factories closed. By 2013, Detroit became the largest American city ever to file for bankruptcy, its population halved to 680,000. The city epitomizes what ecologists call catastrophic succession—a system so specialized it couldn't recover from disturbance.
Today, Detroit shows tentative signs of regrowth. Population grew 1.7% from 2022-2024—the first sustained increase in decades. The metro area produces $276 billion in GDP (16th largest U.S. metro), though light vehicle assembly runs at just 60% of 2019 levels. The EV transition adds uncertainty: Ford now abandons the traditional assembly line for an 'assembly tree' approach. Over 234,000 regional jobs depend on Canadian trade, making Detroit uniquely vulnerable to tariff politics.
By 2026, Detroit's test remains what it's been since bankruptcy: can an ecosystem specialized for one thing learn to do another? The straits still flow, but the fur traders are long gone. Whether the automakers follow depends on whether Detroit can become something more than Motor City.