Government action and the reaction:
No major American city has failed at the same level as Detroit, whose population dropped from 1.85 million people in 1950 to about 630,000 today. Move over Detroit, here comes San Francisco, which lost 6.3 percent of its population between 2019 and 2021, a rate of decline larger than any two year-period in Detroit’s history and unprecedented among any major US city.In 1964 the Democrats put the Model City Program in place. It was meant to show what innovative government programs could accomplish. Detroit was a model city. A lot of Federal money and "help" for Community Action went into Detroit. The 1967 riots -- a type of community action -- followed. Those who sponsored the Community Action then wrote a report blaming the results on systematic racism (other people's systematic racism, of course).
It's the model for Democrat Party governance they've followed ever since -- blame everyone else for your screw-ups. Comparing dynamic Detroit in 1960 with its current husk, to sleepy D.C. then with its bustling (and budget-busting) "farms into office-parks" present, explains why this approach -- an apparent failure for ordinary Americans of every color and belief -- persists.
https://www.hoover.org/research/san-francisco-falls-abyss