Autopia's End: The Decline and Fall of Detroit's Automotive Manufacturing Landscape

Abstract

Since the 1980s, Detroit’s once- monumental building stock of historic automotive manufacturing facilities has mostly disappeared. Demolition, redevelopment, and abandonment have left little to mark the city’s twentieth-century history as the world capital of the automobile industry. Planning and policymaking have been complicit through publicly subsidizing destructive redevelopment and by failing to argue for retention or preservation. Even today the city calls for the demolition of one of its last remaining historic auto factories. This paper surveys the disappearance of Detroit’s auto factories, and documents the histories of three of the largest complexes: the Chrysler-Chalmers Plant, cleared for a redeveloped factory; the Cadillac Plant, cleared for a failed economic development project; and the Packard Plant, slowly abandoned over 60 years. The paper calls for a revised theory and practice of preservation that accommodates the weak markets, imperfect condition, and informal uses that characterize abandoned industrial buildings in shrinking cities.