Detroit Playlist: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hdxyabyDxKjHqIE.html American Hoods Playlist: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ns-DaMyWq8fPfoU.html Michigan Playlist: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ns-DaMyWq8fPfoU.html Chandler Park: 0:00 - 1:25 Connor Avenue: 1:25 - 2:53 How the Auto Industry Ruined Detroit: 2:53 - 23:10 Packard Plant: 23:10 - 30:22 Nicer Neighborhood (Pingree Park): 30:22 - 32:47 ==================================================================== EVERYTHING THAT I USE IN THE FIELD: Main Camera: amzn.to/3iS4vvF Side Cameras: amzn.to/2WuCYIs Media Mod for Camera: amzn.to/3j7CMGF Lav Mic: amzn.to/3lsMkz9 Drone: amzn.to/3ITcKBV SD Cards: amzn.to/3C2co9O Camera Mounts: amzn.to/2UXVR6p Cables Required for Longer Recordings: amzn.to/3BYnr3Q Computer: amzn.to/3787b2j External Hard Drive: amzn.to/3lb23Tf WHAT I USE AT HOME: Computer: amzn.to/3rKIdiN Sound Mixer: amzn.to/3C15Ubx Microphone: amzn.to/2VaCjvo Microphone Accessories: amzn.to/3v7A35Z INTERACTIVE MAP that shows you all of the places that I've made videos on: (Doesn't always work on mobile devices. Will always work on PC.) www.google.com/maps/d/u/2/edit?hl=en&mid=1Lhzf04ocimPu-ROkg4cfXEYEvKMNnlI5&ll=43.06219876674538%2C-83.82163216337808&z=10 SOCIAL MEDIA & CONTACT INFO: Email: ChrisHardenYT@Gmail.com On Twitter: twitter.com/Chris_Harden55 On Instagram: instagram.com/c_harden7/?... On Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisHardenYT/ DISCLAIMER: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you. As an Amazon Associate I do earn a small commission on qualifying purchases. As always, thank you for supporting my channel!

I was born on the East Side of DETROIT, in 1958. No matter where I go on the face of this earth, I'll never LOVE anyplace like DETROIT.

When the Better Made factory is frying up some chips, you can smell it for miles.

I used to go to "raves" at the Packard plant in the late '90's.

The older multi-level auto plants were not flexable for changing manifacturing processes. Thats why since the 40s all factories have been a sprawling single story building.

One problem with detroit is its 1 massive suburb. The $ to maintain all those roads, water, sewer and other infrastructure, and public services over all those square miles when population starts falling is a downward spiral.

I grew up on the EastSide of Detroit. I’m familiar with this entire area. Van Dyke and Gunston, was an area we hung out at. We had fun times at house parties on the weekends in these areas. We went to after hours on the EastSide all the time. 2am until 8am in random buildings. I performed my first show at Chandler Park. I don’t watch these videos with fear. I watch to remember and reminisce about the fun times i had growing up in Detroit on the EastSide.

I feel sorry for the abandoned pets.

The Packard Plant is now famous - should be kept as a tourist attraction. Like the Roman Coliseum.

I live in Oakland county, crazy how things are different right down the street

This is professional documentary level material. Very informative and entertaining. Excellent job!

When I see these videos and all my old stomping grounds, all I see is how robust and lively Detroit used to be. All my memories is Detroit from the 80's

This man is using his gas so we don't have too. What a gentleman.

You can place blame for the Packard plant on the Packard family. The infighting in that family is what caused the plant to sit vacant for decades. If they had been able to come together and sell the plant back in the late 50's early 60's, it could have been re-purposed.

Chris I grew up in and around Detroit in the 60,s and 70,s. To date this is the BEST VIDEO I have seen on the causes of the downfall of Detroit!!!

Would be cool if you did a followup video on the state of the Packard Plant demolition. May 12th is in 6 days. Hopefully the mayor means business and will have heavy equipment out there tearing it down very soon.

I really enjoy Chris's videos! Well edited and entertaining. Thanks for making them.

Global manufacturing has caused many locations throughout the USA to become dumps.

Very impressive work -- the visuals, narration, subject matter, and music. Beautifully done!

We lived in warren my dad worked at GM he made us leave in 1980 due to a coming disaster he saw coming he said this would happen and we left before it was too bad I wonder if we had stayed.

Trees growing on the roof and inside of the packard plant...mother nature reclaims everything.

Nice job, Chris! I really like that you discussed the reasons behind the automotive plants leaving Detroit.

When a union job in Michigan moves to the suburbs from the city, the job is still a union job. The relocation of plants did not change the employees pay rate. In many cases the big 3 were willing to pay their workers more to travel to those new locations.

My heart truly breaks for places like Detroit. A once thriving community turned into ruins, all in the name of God and country. That's the criminal part of it all. If these leaders and big business types cared, places like Detroit could stand tall forever. But they never are interested in the welfare of others.

Thanks Chris, Very well done. I left MI in 1980 due to lack of jobs. The manufacturing company I worked for was established in the late 1800's.The steel workers union went on strike. I came back to work with a dollar an hour raise. With in a year the company went out of business. I moved to the desert SW and worked for GM's R & D as a contract making a quarter of a GM employee. I see both sides of the union/company profits. Also the quality of the GM vehicle's was shameful and they built 5 of each models competing against each other in the market. Management wasn't real smart and slow to turn the company ship around. Very sad. Keep up the good work and quality vids. Boe

I know this area pretty well. My families old business property is near (shoemaker&st.jean). I appreciate this journey and your excellent overview of the varying problems that got this neighborhood to crumble - you do a very succinct and respectful overview a long the way. Excellent work! --- side note I'd love to know, roughly, where you're from. You did awesome work in your research! Throwing down details and stats that I was unaware of, I used to think I knew a lot when I only knew a little. I remember as a kid being able to smell the fried chips from better made which was about a mile away but the freeway was between us.

Packard wasn't killed by workers seeking fair compensation for their labor, it became an outdated brand, stuck in a 30's mindset when 50's customers wanted forward-thinking, futuristic models. Employee compensation is a small fraction of these corporation's costs.

WOW! I've never heard so much UAW basing on a Detroit base video before. While I'll agree with most of it I have to point out this: Chris stated multiple times that the auto companies musted to the suburbs to avoid "union wages" but failed to mention that when the companies opened new plants in the suburbs the UAW followed them. I will also agree that GM equal "Gross Mismanagement".

Since the 80s the US has had 2 auto industries. The uaw represented domestics in the north and the non-union foreign automaker plants in the south. The uaw has tried since Nissan opened their Symra TN plant to organize them. Theyve had elections at most of them, multiple times. Toyota honda nissan mercedes bmw vw kia hyundai... The outcome is always the same NO UAW.

Your videos are really interesting, I have subscribed! I particularly like that you show the street names as you go.

"unskilled labor" no such thing. If someone is paying you to do it, its a skill. Even if that skill is putting up with the bullshit of someone asking you to do something they don't wanna do

One thing that I have noticed in several cities. When you start seeing a lot of trash on the ground you know your in the bad part of town.

Excellent documentation----Thank you!

You keep saying that moving out of the city allowed the companies to not pay union wages. That's not how it works. They moved to suburbs for cheap land and lower taxes. Those suburban factories were still unionized and did very well until foreign competitors were able to break through America's protectionist tariff system. Packard failed due to leadership failure when they pivoted to other car market segments and dealt with merger debt.

Grew up all over the city southwest west side east love the city Puritan and Livernois Plymouth and Wyoming all over 💙 great video

This is interesting I use to deliver sheet plastic back in the I think it was the 80,s to that old packard plant I think it was the only thing still in there I walked through it while they unloaded my truck that took over an hour it was fasinating and spooky at the same time to see it falling apart its really mind blowing to see it now

I once lived across the street from Chandler Park on Dickerson near Warren. Growing up I rummaged through the desolate Packard Plant on Conner Ave, and my dad owned a Packard after WW2. The UAW killed Detroit’s auto industry. I saw the writing on the wall and moved to the South.

would be cool to see some before pictures since detroit looks so different now

Chris.....planned a trip to Detroit in October and your videos have been fantastic. I'm fascinated by the rise and fall of the City...and love abandoned buildings. I will definitely be in Highland Park thanks to that video!

I've been to the River Rouge Plant. They let you go around the different parts of the factory to watch F-150s get assembled. It's really cool, but they don't let you take pictures.

The only thing that should have Young's name is a prison with a large photo of him saying "I live(d) here". Those neighborhoods around Van Dyke sure went to crap. They were old back in the 70s and early 80s but nothing like now.

Thanks again for the footage ( getting teary eyed happy of course ) Mannnnnn keep up the good work ! 👍 I remember all them streets ( I'm 54 years old live out west 👌 growup on Dexter and job rd community ( if possible can you do some footage on the old kronk gym ✌️

The two schools shown at the end were previously known as Joyce Elementary and the larger school was Barbour (Magnet) Middle School. It was previously known as Barbour Junior High and Barbour Intermediate. I taught music there from 1979 to 1998. Barbour and Joyce closed around 2010 and Joyce later became a charter academy.

That's where I grew up, on co concord. My grandfather use to go to that grocery store behind that building up until they closed down. Damn, East Grand BLVD

I’m glad I came across this channel. Nicely done videos. I live in the suburbs outside Detroit and would never dare drive through a lot of these places.

Something Chris didn't mention, WW II had a lot to do with the auto industry spreading out. The US government contracted with the auto companies to make war machines and didn't want the majority of the plants located in one area in case Germany and Japan actually invaded the US mainland.

Funny how GM moved everything out and now we pay three times more for a crappy car

At one time it was farm land, and you can't blame unions for wanting more money, the owners wanting profits over people's life quality, someday the same will be said about Amazon and other big corporations!!!! I was UAW in the 80s and my hourly rate was $7.65 locked in for 3yrs!!! In the oil fields I was over $10.00 hr. In the late 70s and early 80s!!!! 2022

Great video sir👍🏻👍🏻

It is a shame what happened to Detroit over the years. It was a wealthy and prosperous city when I was coming up there. There were plenty of jobs and beautiful neighborhoods. Now most of it is poverty strickened with the exception of downtown, midtown and Palmer Woods.

Point of clarification. The moves to the suburbs were not to avoid a city mandated union wage. EVERY auto plant in Michigan is fully UAW. You did not mention the sweetheart tax abatement made by the cities that the big 3 moved to. If it wasn't for union wages, the non union plants in the south would not have nearly the wage scale they have today.

Packard/Studebaker cheapened their cars and lost to Cadillac because of it. Cadillac had UAW workers with pensions too. It wasn't the union that brought Packard down, it was a bad business decision to stray away from luxury.

How tragic. Packard was the primary manufacturer of the Liberty L-12 in WWI and more importantly the Rolls Royce Merlin engine used in P-51 Mustangs in WWII.

Packard was the closest thing the us had to mercedes benz. They focused on high quality percision built luxury, not fancy planned obsolessence with wild styling like cadillac. Its too bad because as the germans and japanese showed in the 70s 80s and 90s quality matters more and the big 3 learned the hard way customers that get burned by poor quality dont return.

Manufacturing will always drift to where labors cheapest while still being able to support maucaturing operations. Heres an earlier example, Lowell Massachusetts in 1850 was the textile capital of the nation but by 1900 as wages became higher and higher the mills started moving to the southern states to take advantage of cheaper labor. 50-60 years later they began moving overseas for the same reason. When I was in college I explored ruined Lowell textile mills that had been sitting empty for decades. It was sad and exhillerating at the same time. Like being in a time machine to when it was closing, machinery gone, unshipped product but at the same time youre watchinf your back for homeless people that lived in the mills.

My father worked at the GM Tech Center in Warren, starting in the late 50's. The Tech Center employed thousands of workers, and those that were not management/professional, were union, and well paid. General Motors didn't build their tech center there to avoid paying their workers a union wage. They built there because a massive amount of land was available at a price they found attractive. What people don't realize is that most of the early industrial growth in Detroit happened in the same way. That old abandoned city factory was once a patch of farmland, just outside of the city limits, until someone built there, and the city annexed the land.

Great job, Chris!

There's no question that the Packard Plant has been seen as the epitome of blight in Detroit for years. It's talked about, joked about, and seen as a reason to lose hope that the area will ever be developed. Therefore it will be a blessing once the entire complex is demolished and trucked away. 40 acres of empty space will be a welcome sight compared to the shell of what once was.

the monster chip maker, Frito Lay, was located in Detroit until 1980, when they left for Plano Texas.

there are many reasons for the failure of detroit...and the auto industry....

The city of Detroit has made fast improvements City wide to many of its parks, roads, and freeways as of 2023 March. Bridges have been torn out and replaced, building like the old packard plant being torn down and many abandoned homes boarded up and torn down city wide. The downtown river walk is constantly being expanded which is a major draw. But these missing neighborhoods where the houses are gone but the streets remain is depressing even though they are being taken out. In 2016 I did a series of videos on KZfaq called Detroit Bike Blight Patrol where I did narration on many issues about blight.

On the last block between Leander and Lyford, which you pass at around 9:20, a dumped dead body was found a couple of years ago.

An interesting look at areas of the city.

I read that an EF 4 tornado hit Detroits east side and did 5 million dollars worth of improvements…

I was just 2 years old when my mother took my sister and I to see the Packard Plant on the last day of operations. I have no idea why she did that but I've never forgotten that day. The people streaming out of that plant. My Dad worked at Jefferson Ave Assembly at that time.

What destroyed Detroit was a combination of several issues the car industry, local government.... and the people

The biggest decline in the US auto production happened after 1978. Foreign companies, mostly Japanese, had fuel efficient, high quality cars, during the various oil crises. US automaker market share has declined since. They are still declining today.

The down fall of Detroit had a lot to do with automation too. It takes a lot less hands to build things today.

It started falling apart back in the 80’s. That is why I left Detroit.And I have not returned. What was is forever gone. DmYhe City would do whatever it has to to build up Downtown. But the side residential areas they just thumbs down on it and never brought it back to what it was.

Sad how its all abandoned. The one thing I will say is these Detroit neighborhoods have some beautiful trees.

Such a shame & such a waste, not to mention the human damage to nature itself. I find these video enlightening. I watched another video on Detroit & how the actual city area is changing for the better. Would be nice if the local government paid some attention to the outer areas, whether that be programs with the homeless working with contractors to rebuild & give jobs, or to actually turn these run down areas in to nice parks & nature reserves whilst getting rid of the left over human waste ( a lot of those bricks can be reused) The whole area is just asking for some kind of revival

Such a waste and incredibly depressing. Sad.

I don't mind the political commentary because you are reporting it correctly. I prefer to hear dialogue with videos when the person has done their research, which you have. I guess I didn't realize the Packard plant has been vacant since 1956. This was a great video & I enjoyed watching it.

Chris Thank You for these fantastic videos! Have you done any on the Grixdale farms area? Total destruction between 6&7 Mile East of John R.Road

The City doesn't even look half as bad as it did 10 years ago, since they've torn down much of the abandoned and burned up structures, it's not the same.

It’s crazy to me how much I’ve learned, even having been to Detroit many times. Downtown is wonderful, extremely extremely nice. But as soon as you get outside of 75/275 and downtown, you get scenes like this. Working with what they’ve had, I’m proud of the 313, but as we can all see, they really still do have a long way to go. Interested/worried to see how that will turn out

you know you can go to any large city in the US and find areas that need to be cleaned up. The problem is these are private property, and it can take the city along time and court cost to force the owner to clean it up or tear it down.. I live outside Detroit in a very small conmmunity and we have areas of blite and it is a struggle to get owners to correct it. Detroit is working on this area but there are laws you have to follow.. We do live in a free counrty and owners do have rights..

good job

The Packard plant is the largest abandoned industrial complex in the world. That it stands today is a tribute to the rugged construction used when it was built. Dismantling it will be a formidable and expensive undertaking. I hope someone has money. It's a tragedy what happened to Packard.

My Mom grew up on West Beaubien at 5 or 6 th streets back in the 30s and 40s. She went to school with the Buscemi's boys

I am a typical car guy lol, I think the Packard plant is a very big part of our automotive history in this country and should be preserved. I can not understand why it matters to the Mayor of Detroit if the Packard plant gets demolished or not with all the other derelict buildings there are in the area. Sounds to me like there is some personal thing going on against the Developer that owns the plant currently.

You started in part of my old neighborhood. A friend of mine lived on Grinnell one block off Van Dyke but on the east side. I lived on Morgan just off Van Dyke near Lynch Road. I recognized nothing since just about everything is gone. I'm glad a lot of the dilapidated houses in this video are torn down. It looks better, even if empty. I was 10 years old when the '67 riot happened. That was when people left Detroit in droves. My family stayed behind. Another reason for Detroit's failure was racism and also ethnic hate. I left Detroit permanently in 1983. I didn't want to raise my children in an atmosphere of violence. Denver isn't as nice as when I first moved here but it still beats the heck out of Detroit.

The Detroit News had 1 million customers in 1969! They hired their first female District manager of paperboys in 1975. I was it!

Just subscribed..... I was last in Detroit in the mid 80's, it was nothing like this.

Stop hating on the UAW. The union protected the workers and now cooperates with management.

I never lived in Detroit nor even been but this is very depressing.

I just went walking through a part of the Packard plant last weekend. Gonna rip my quadcopter through it.

Detroit Michigan brands like Bettermade potato chips, Kowalski Sausage Company, and Gardin Fresh Salsa (Ferndale), Honey Baked Ham, are absolutely superior to those produced in other states and demonstrate a few great things about this city. Detroit is making a comeback, it just needs time.

I had a question about the streetlights in those abandoned neighborhoods. Do they actually light up at night?

Full grown trees growing from the roof of the Packard plant

There was a TIGER found in that plant some time back.

A vast majority of the reduction in Union Labor came from automation and engineering design principals which reduced the amount of labor required to build a car. in 1980, GM had 300,000 people working on assembly lines. Today, it's 57,000. GM doesn't build 1/5th the number of cars. It also takes a lot less people to design them, and their assembly lines.

On your detroit video. What time was it. I didnt know much traffic

How old is this footage? A year +?

Wow! Detroit is so Beautiful!!! I can watch this All Day !!!

Flew in from the UK to Metro airport. Parents came down to pick me up from Canada. They went to the wrong airport and had their car stolen lol....

Not a fan of the way you talk about the decline of the city as if the Auto industry didn't do well due to labor costs and city taxes. It is a lot more complicated than that and you just kind of leisurely drift in and out of the reasons. Heck, my Father-in-law moved to Detroit to work at GM HQ and was told to look for a home in the suburbs in the mid 60's. Why? Because auto companies were fans of people DRIVING and it naturally made sense to drive a bit to and from work rather than mass transit of rail or bus. It was part of the American dream with the whole house and picket fence. Yep, the city looks crappy at times and has some interesting bits of hope, I'm a fan, I live in the suburbs and have worked in the city for years. We need to encourage all kinds of interesting ideas to bring in people and work to the area.

I'm somewhat surprised that the crims haven't stripped the power cables or CATV cables - it's starting look like S'th Efrica.

It's not the $$$ that draws corruption, it's the power that gets them extra $$$.

It's always puzzled me why unions thought putting their employer out of business with increasing demands was a smart move. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. The auto industry's reluctance to deal with the unions in good times didn't help.