Detroit

About Detroit

Detroit is the largest city in Michigan, with 639,111 residents at the 2020 census across 142.89 square miles. It sits on the Detroit River, the strait that gave it its name — *détroit* is French for "strait" — directly across from Windsor, Ontario. The crossing is the second-busiest international border crossing in North America, and a quirk of the geography means Detroit is the one major American city that looks *south* into Canada.

The French founded it in 1701 as Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit under Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, and it was incorporated as an American city in 1806. What made it was the motor industry: Ford, General Motors and Chrysler built their business here, the assembly line was refined here, and the city grew to nearly two million people by 1950. It has been shrinking ever since, and in July 2013 it became the largest American city ever to file for bankruptcy, leaving it in December 2014 with about $7 billion of debt cut away.

The other export is music. Motown was founded here in 1959, and the city later gave techno its start. Downtown holds the Renaissance Center and the Fox Theatre; the Detroit Institute of Arts holds Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals; Michigan Central Station, empty for thirty years and the emblem of the city's decline, reopened in 2024 after Ford restored it.

rules.city collects practical civic information for Detroit, verified against official sources, including rules, fees, transport and local services.