When I was younger and living in the Detroit area, there was a mall on the outskirts of the city (EVERY mall was on the outskirts of the city). Northland. For those of us unable to get to Northland by bus, it represented sort of a young black paradise. Because we'd heard that most of the young girls who hung out there on the weekend were fine. Given that my wife lived around the block from it and hung out there herself, we weren't that far off the mark.
But what we didn't know was that Northland signified a much larger dynamic in the creation, and eventual destruction of the twentieth century city. While folks blame black power and Coleman Young for white flight, places like Northland had a lot to do with it.
It would be interesting to put white flight under a new microscope these days. I've long been a student of Joel Garreau and very interested in cultural geography. I agree that white flight was some degree of push and some degree of pull. How much of each seems impossible to guage without some context of migration patterns and housing availability.
David Brooks' Patio Man goes a long way in describing what I think is apt and true about contemporary middleclass geographic mobility. However his 'Poeple Like Us' goes a bit too far in suggesting that it's pure consumerism as I mentioned Here before.
Posted by: Cobb at March 19, 2004 01:46 PM
Excellant LKS,take it from old school ;I'm tired of hearing white flight being blame on 67 rebellion or Mayor Young.Now marriage an aricle you did ,covering Black youth and Mall of America and Fairlane.I digress a little.Detroit is also unigue because of the automobile ,no mass transit.
Posted by: tootsie at March 19, 2004 11:42 AMtootsie