Here’s a question: is the crisis in Detroit simply a function of the industrial decline of the U.S. heartland, or is it about internal developments within the metro area that have produced a uniquely bad outcome? I think a useful comparison can be made with Pittsburgh, another city that once had an iconic monoculture economy — based on steel, not autos — that also took a terrible hit, but seems to be in a much better position now.

This divergence is fairly recent, at least at the aggregate metro level. The 80s were terrible for both cities; we have comparable employment data (again, this is for the metropolitan areas, not the city proper) since 1990:

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As late as 2005 or 2006 — that is, until the eve of the Great Recession — you could argue that there wasn’t a whole lot of difference in aggregate performance between greater Pittsburgh and greater Detroit. Obviously, however, Detroit’s central city has collapsed while Pittsburgh has had at least something of a revival. The difference is really clear in the Brookings job sprawl data (pdf), where less than a quarter of Detroit jobs are within 10 miles of the traditional central business district, versus more than half in Pittsburgh.

At this point, as the chart above makes clear, Pittsburgh is showing a lot of resilience; it seems to have managed to diversify its economy, and in fact is more than matching national employment performance. Detroit, despite the auto rescue, isn’t — and, of course, its center did not hold.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that greater Pittsburgh, by taking better care of its core, also improved its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. In that sense, Detroit’s disaster isn’t just about industrial decline; it’s about urban decline, which isn’t the same thing. If you like, sprawl killed Detroit, by depriving it of the kind of environment that could incubate new sources of prosperity.