171–180 of 182 posts
Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and so on got absolutely destroyed after all the mills were shut down. The bar for reviving is incredibly low. Those that could leave, left. The very people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the same people who left. Detroit has UM, Cleveland has Case Western, Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon which are all top-flight schools. In a strange way, the…
Hi I'm from Detroit, I love seeing my city talked about. A lot of people are claiming decline of residents as a lack of proof of revival. Heres a counterpoint: https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/07/10/detro... Detroit is spectacular for many reasons. We have retained and nurtured our resources from before the decline such as our art museum, libraries and ISPs (not the consumer ones). In the midst of our…
Do you work for the city, a university in Detroit, etc?
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What is "wealth"? If car built in a factory is useful for 10 years without repairs, but useful for 30 years with repairs, the mechanics add 20 years of useful life to the car. Does that not increase wealth?
I'd argue it increases utility, not wealth. It'd increase wealth if that vehicle was used in a business to generate income.
> Suppose you own a beat-up old car. Instead of sitting on your butt next summer, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. In doing so you create wealth.[0]
I have often cited the NYT Interactive team for creatively designed articles, but this one has serious problems. On a modern Android phone, I can't see all of the article text, with an undetermined amount being cut off at the bottom. Swipe back doesn't work if you don't start the swipe from the center of the page (which is unnatural and not the same for swiping forward). There are no obvious affordances to indicate t…
One thing that most peeps from the East/West coast don't realize about Detroit is how big it is, compared to it's population size. The city limits of Detroit proper encompass about 143 square miles. While it's not that large of a city compared to others, you can fit the cities of San Francisco (46.7 sq miles), Boston (89.6 sq miles), and Manhattan (22.8 sq miles) within Detroit city limits. While you process that, th…
Sure, but Boston is only a part of what people think of as Boston. When Paul Graham talked about Boston in "Cities and Ambition", he meant Cambridge.
If you add the cities and towns with a T stop:
- Boston (89.6) - Cambridge (7.13) - Somerville (4.2) - Quincy (26.87) - Malden (5.1) - Revere (5.9) - Braintree (14.5) - Brookline (6.8)
...you have a 'city' encompassing 160 sq mi, which is bigger than Detroit.
That standard doesn't generalize -- I grew up in the DC area, and the metro there goes all the way out to Rockville, which is generally considered to be an exurb, practically flyover country. (IMO, that's an unfair assessment, but it is what it is.) But it seems about right for Boston.
Does Detroit have central parts that aren't part of the city proper, the way Boston has Cambridge and Somerville and San Francisco has Berkeley and Oakland?
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>Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that. Maybe by pointing to blue collar work that still pays well. A buddy of mine is an auto mechanic and is the sole income earner for his family…
I totally agree. My parents own a 'cabin' in a development in the mountains, and the biggest cabin in the development -by far- is owned by a a plumber. He has done very well, and I doubt he writes much, if any, code.
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> A buddy of mine [...] is an auto mechanic [...another...] is a pipe fitter for gas pipelines [...] next time you call a plumber. Noted without comment that these are all predominantly white, male occupations. Would you say the same thing about dish washing, fruit picking, house cleaning or school teaching? Does that alter your thinking about whether or not "trades" make money? Does it make you want to argue about w…
I'm not American, and maybe that skews my opinion on the matter, but I've never seen construction trades as being predominantly white. Predominantly male, yes, but ethnically a very diverse field. Also: Dish washing, fruit picking, and house cleaning are not trades. They are not skilled occupations. Being a chef is, so is being an orchardist or a farmer.
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>and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. You can scream at a TV all you want, but that's never going to turn you into a horse. On a more serious note, the industries that made these cities what they are are mostly gone now, and they're not coming back. The thing that made these cities attractive for these industries is no longer all that relevant: their location on the water. These days,…
> the industries that made these cities what they are are mostly gone now These cities often have attractive qualities for other industries, and with enough foresight these cities can position themselves well to succeed in the future. Many have been; e.g. Pittsburgh shed its steel roots and now is home of a leading health care industry, and a burgeoning tech one.
I'm guessing that if you want to predict a city's ability to transform to a haven for new industries (like tech), you need to look at how much of a college town it is. Carnegie Mellon is a top-ranked private university with 13,500 students (so not a tiny place), and just one of many large universities there. They also have a lot of nice cultural stuff there, largely thanks to Mr. Carnegie, such as the museums. Most other rust-belt cities can't boast these features. Cleveland has CWRU (11,300 students), but I can't think of a whole lot of academia in cities like Detroit, Buffalo, and definitely not Toledo or Flint.
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I totally agree. My parents own a 'cabin' in a development in the mountains, and the biggest cabin in the development -by far- is owned by a a plumber. He has done very well, and I doubt he writes much, if any, code.
You’d be surprised! My dad is a builder, and programs his own utility software (in Access and other systems) to make his life easier (like work diaries, log books and so on)
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I grew up in Michigan and attended UM. I can say anecdotally that very, very few people I knew (mostly from math + engineering) stayed in Michigan after graduating. On the other hand, many people I knew who graduated from Michigan State ended up taking jobs in and around Detroit. I found an article [1] which claims that 40% of UM's living alumni currently live in Michigan. I would wager that the rates for recent grad…
UofM EECS '08 graduate working for Plex Systems in Troy, MI. Plex (plex.com) makes ERP software, like SAP/Oracle. We're focused on the manufacturing portion, while SAP/Oracle focus on financials. I grew up in Troy, MI - '04 Troy High. I now live in downtown Detroit, right off of Grand Circus Park. Plex generates $115 million in ARR. Plex and Duo Security are the largest 'pure SaaS' software outfits in Michigan that I…