Analysis of the degree of mutual influence between the evolution of the automotive industry and the metropolitan socio-spatial domain. The case of Detroit, Michigan

The thesis aims to investigate the mutual influence between the evolution of the US automotive industry and the metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan, the latter examined in its spatial and social constituents. The analysis has been articulated according to specific space and time frames. On the one hand, a cross-scalar “spatial frame” has been chosen to examine the intrinsically reticular nature of the US automotive realm while, contemporarily, allowing to investigate the rather “areal” and “linear” dimensions characterizing the metropolitan socio-spatial domain. On the other hand, an appropriate “time frame” has been selected according to a twofold purpose: first, the entire time-span considered has to be sufficiently extended to include all crucial stages of the US automobile industry’s evolution (thus allowing for extrapolating long-term patterns as well as minor trends and counter-trends); second, the temporal frame needed to be sub-divided in shorter periods to carry out more analytic investigation. In order to meet these criteria, the whole period covered by the dissertation runs approximately from 1880 until the early 2010s, where the two extremes correspond to the initial stage of the US industrial revolution and the present time, respectively. Then, the 130-year time span has been further sub-divided into shorter “phases” (and/or “sub-phases”) assuming as breaking-points between subsequent phases economic recessions and/or wartime periods. Ultimately, the body of the thesis has been articulated into 3 major phases and 5 sub-phases; in addition, this sub-division have been adopted for organizing the internal structure into chapters. In particular, Chapters 1 and 2 refer to the 1880-1900 period, while Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 analyze the rise of the US automotive industry and the evolution of the socio-spatial domain until the recession of the early 1920s. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the interwar decades, including the Great Depression which followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 document the patterns of continuity and change in the US automobile industry and the metropolitan socio-spatial domain during World War II and the postwar period. Chapter 9 investigates the major changes occurring in the US automobile industry following the 1973-1974 oil shortage, while Chapter 10 attempts to provide an overview of the principal trends characterizing the last decades. Finally, Chapter 11 examines the evolution of the Detroit’s socio-spatial domain over the entire 1973-2010s phase. Moreover, for each given phase and/or sub-phase, events have been analyzed by making use of “analytic categories” and “sub-categories” which offer valuable interpretation keys allowing to exit the chronological description of facts as well as providing a set of guidelines used to assist interpreters in rapidly identifying features and tracing evolutionary patterns. If necessary, for each sub-category has been determined a set of “indicators” which have been applied for monitoring the trend of a selected variable over time. The group of analytic dimensions employed for investigating the “automotive realm” comprehends: a) agents of change; b) processes and operations (i.e. product development and product manufacturing); c) organizational structure (i.e. intra- and inter-corporate relations; corporate-suppliers relations; labor-management relations); d) geography (i.e. national, regional, and local scale). The sub-categories and indicators used for tracing the evolution of the socio-spatial domain include: a) metropolitan form (i.e. population change, metropolitan expansion, population density and building vacancy rate, metropolitan structure; land use); b) social morphology (i.e. ethnicity and race, educational attainment, employment and unemployment rate, jobs by occupation, jobs by industry, income, poverty rate); c) local government policies and corporate management interaction. Finally, two sets of preliminary conclusions are discussed: the former focuses on the metamorphosis of the US automobile industry, by making a specific reference to the main technical, organizational, and spatial changes illustrated for each phase; the latter reasons about the hypothetical correlation existing between the major shifts occurring within the industry and the socio-spatial evolution of the Motor City.