Welcome to Detroit. In the era when the US led the world in auto manufacturing, Detroit was one of the richest cities in the world. The vast majority of the city's workers relied upon the United Auto Workers and related unions to look out for their interests. The result was a prosperous middle class who could afford to buy the merchandise they helped produce. But when white middle class workers began to flee the city for the suburbs, a large part of the city's tax base disappeared. Things got much worse for the city when European and Japanese cars began to flood US markets in the early 1970s. In order to compete, the Big Three began moving production overseas and to other regions in the US where they wouldn't have to pay union wages, leaving Detroit the nation's most disastrous example of deindustrialization. The city's mostly poor, mostly African-American residents were left without jobs, and the city lacked the tax base with which to do much about it.Today, Detroit is embarking on a revitalization campaign aimed at taking the city in new directions. This tour will take you from the center of Detroit, once just a small village by the river, along its most famed avenue to New Center, where automakers created a second city center to connect downtown with their factories further north. Along the way, you'll see Detroit's impressive heritage as one of the great US cities of the 20th century, as well as some of the competing ideas for its future.  Licenses:Photo “Aerial View of Downtown Detroit and Rennaissance ” by Robert Thompson is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0