1967 riots
Detroit was the fifth largest U.S. city in 1950. The decline of the auto industry hastened the population loss already diminished by the 
 that precipitated white flight to the suburbs. Approximately 23 percent of the city’s living quarters are now empty. To reduce the city's size there is a program in progress to demolish 10,000 abandoned or vacant buildings and turn the land into farms or countryside by 2014.
Detroit’s population drops by one-fourth in the last decade