People originally clustered in the cities because that's where the jobs were. Rural areas were generally poor and under served. Some of the territory around Cheboygan didn't even have electricity until the 1950s, and a few homes still didn't have running water when I first moved here. Most rural people were farmers but, by the time you and I were born, farming was already becoming so competitive that the small guys were being squeezed out. My grandparents raised four kids on ten acres, but they all moved to Chicago when the grew up because there was no future for small farms like that. Even if there had been, ten acres divided by four kids comes out to two and a half acres per kid, and anything that small wouldn't have made it even in the old days.
World War II gave a temporary boost to agriculture, but it also brought farm kids to the cities to work in the defense plants. No new cars were made for civilian use during the war, so there was a lot of pent up demand afterwards. The defense plants reverted to peace time manufacturing and business was booming for awhile. Europe and Asia were flat on their asses, and the only source of the money and materials needed for rebuilding was the good old U.S.A. Our government loaned them the money, and they sent it right back to pay for manufactured goods.
Meanwhile, the city streets were getting crowded with all those new cars. I don't think that a lot of city people owned cars before the war, and those who did didn't drive them all that much. Remember how the garages in our old neighborhood opened into the alley? It was tricky getting your car in and out because you had to make a tight turn to avoid hitting the garage on the other side. Alleys were not snowplowed in the winter, which must have made it even more difficult. I don't think the city planners anticipated the time when people would just jump into their cars and take off several times a day.
The suburbs, on the other hand, were designed with the automobile in mind, probably because, if it wasn't for the automobile, there wouldn't have been any suburbs. Even in the areas that had rail service, the wife would drive the old man to the train station in the morning and pick him up in the evening. There was no place for him to park the car downtown and, besides, she needed it to do the shopping and take the kids to all their after school activities. People criticized and made fun of suburban life, but lots of people found it attractive nevertheless. It was quieter, safer, and prettier than city life, and you didn't have to put up with those nasty colored people. It didn't appeal to me, of course, but neither did city life.
Interesting that your downtown is still booming while the rest of the city is in decline. I have read that the situation is similar in Detroit. I remember when General Motors was going through bankruptcy, every time they talked about it on TV they showed a film clip of those two fancy glass towers that house their headquarters. I thought at the time that, if they would sell those buildings and move their offices into more modest quarters, they might not need to go bankrupt after all.
I remember when bankruptcy used to be considered a failure, but now it's a normal business tactic. They just weasel out of their debts and keep right on operating. Our local paper mill did that a year or two ago, and the owner wasn't even ashamed of it, bragging to the newspaper that it was a "new beginning for Great Lakes Tissue". He's been pulling shenanigans like that ever since he took over in 1993. He's been in trouble with the law a couple of times and managed to somehow weasel out of it. Once he promised to sell the mill to a different owner if they dropped the charges. He claimed that he had a buyer all lined up, but they were reluctant to close the deal with those legal issues hanging over the mill. Well the charges were dropped, and then the buyer backed out anyway, allegedly because they couldn't get their financing. That was when banks all over the country were in trouble and crying for Uncle Sam to bail them out. Funny thing, we must have a half dozen banks around Cheboygan, and they were all advertising that they had plenty of money to lend, in spite of the banking crisis that was allegedly gripping the nation.
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