To understand why Detroit and the surrounding region look the way they do today you cannot just chalk everything up to factories closing and the mismanagement of local government. Not to say those aren't important, but the systematically racist policies on the Federal and state level (combined with private sector trends that pushed those policies), especially with regards to housing (e.g. redlining) and transportation (e.g. the freeway system and its destruction of Black neighborhoods), played a huge role in creating the problems the city and region now face.