81–90 of 177 posts
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To be pedantic, Rome wasn't in ruins in 400AD. The Visigoths wouldn't sack it for another decade and the Vandals plunder and raped the city proper more than 50 years later. The last nominal imperator was dethroned by a barbarian in 476AD.
Hey, doesn't your username mean "skull fucker"? EDIT: This isn't linked to your post at all, just wondering.
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I assume when you mention world class universities you're referring to UM Ann Arbor -- maybe Kettering too. Is there a lot of cross fertilization between the city and the schools? Do a lot of UM students live or move to Detroit?
I'm a UM student and I can't say there's much alumni activity in Detroit itself. Grads generally either work in Ann Arbor, Metro Detroit (Birmingham, Royal Oak, etc.) or leave the state entirely. This graphic from Forbes is pretty telling: http://goo.gl/4uBr
My brothers run a property service company that maintains foreclosed homes in Detroit and parts northwest of it. When they need extra help, I ride along with them. Detroit and Pontiac are not the kinds of places that one would care to go by oneself, even for muscular young men. On more than one occasion, we would be approached by "youths" (one of them wasn't even that young) who were clearly drug dealers. One of my b…
I live in downtown Detroit. I do not want to live in the suburbs.
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Since you tend to go there only when dealing with foreclosed homes, perhaps you aren't seeing some of the nicer places? I have plenty of friends who live in Detroit and love it. I used to live there myself and loved it. Yes, there is ruin porn a-plenty, and many nasty areas. But there are also neighborhoods where you can live for really cheap and be part of a great, caring community. Of course, I'm sure my thoughts o…
Dibble's First Law of Sociology: Some do; some don't. Accentuating the positive is cold comfort. Tenth-century Rome hosted the development of Gregorian chant and papal charters for the first universities. Focusing on those positive developments doesn't change the fact that Rome was a step or two above a cow town compared to contemporary Constantinople or, better yet, first-century Rome. Of course Detroit has nice pla…
In my opinion, most of the credit goes to better policing, everything else follows the drop in crime.
I grew up in the suburbs and will be moving downtown in a month. A lot of people, my parents, my girlfriend and some of my friends think I am crazy. When you see pictures like this, it is hard not to blame them. But once you get past the empty buildings and wasteland, there is something magical about the city.
Not a single person who lives in Detroit does so lightly. Everyone loves this city and firmly believes in its future. It provides opportunities unlike anywhere else. For example, there are 6 bars within 500 feet of my front door. I can see Comerica Park from my bedroom. The prospect of a Tigers playoff run makes me extremely excited. No where else can I get this experience for the amount of rent I am paying.
It certainly has its problems, largely created by 30 years of inept city government and the collapse of the auto industry. But we have smart people running the city and the state and a large, well-funded, group of people who have a contagious belief in its future.
If anyone from HN is ever in town and wants to grab a beer downtown, I'd be glad to show them around.
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There are a few abandoned buildings in Detroit that might count as having grandeur, like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Central_Station , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Army_of_the_Republic_Buil... . I agree that acres of rotting single-family homes isn't so impressive.
My real point is this: Detroiters are in denial. They all cry that the media and the world doesn't portray them properly while pretending that nothing is wrong with the city. Celebrate the beauty that exists (Michigan Central was actually what I was thinking of with the Rome comment) and take advantage of the rest. Do you know how cheap it is to live in the city? Yes: there are acres of abandoned rotting land, but wh…
What's missing is the things start-up employee type of people are looking for in a city: density, diversity, transit, food, Asian girls...
My brothers run a property service company that maintains foreclosed homes in Detroit and parts northwest of it. When they need extra help, I ride along with them. Detroit and Pontiac are not the kinds of places that one would care to go by oneself, even for muscular young men. On more than one occasion, we would be approached by "youths" (one of them wasn't even that young) who were clearly drug dealers. One of my b…
Today it's Detroit that looks like it was nuked. Except it was the inhabitants that nuked themselves, with quaint festivals like Devil's Night.
No one has the courage to say what ruined Detroit, or Rhodesia, or South Africa. You have to pretend like it just happened. People get far more angry at those who state why it happened than they do at the drug dealers and criminals who've ruined the city.
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Dibble's First Law of Sociology: Some do; some don't. Accentuating the positive is cold comfort. Tenth-century Rome hosted the development of Gregorian chant and papal charters for the first universities. Focusing on those positive developments doesn't change the fact that Rome was a step or two above a cow town compared to contemporary Constantinople or, better yet, first-century Rome. Of course Detroit has nice pla…
New York and Newark are nothing like Detroit right now. Both are going through a great revival. There are a lot of reasons why, but it really has nothing to do with machine politics, ivy league educated people, or anything else you mentioned. In my opinion, most of the credit goes to better policing, everything else follows the drop in crime.
Detroit's crime rate has plummeted since the 1970s along with the rest of the US, despite no widely-celebrated crackdown. [1] Indeed crime rates have continued their drop from even the early 2000s despite a police department that was rapidly shrinking and increasingly mired in corruption/abuse investigations over that same time frame.
What's holding Detroit back, imo, are uncompetitive services caused by too few funds to cover too much sprawl. Even as the downtown enjoys a modest revival, the neighborhoods are non-options for anyone who wants to own a home. Particularly when functional suburbs with lower taxes and great schools are less than thirty minutes down the highway.
The city needs consolidation.
[1] The only anti-crime campaign I can even recall, was the mid-90s community effort to combat Devil's Night.
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Detroit is crime-ridden and cold. Why not just move to another part of the US?
Sure it's cold, but it's cheap and apparently still has decent facilities. I'm not sure on the crime -- how much is that story a media beat-up? Are there other parts of the US where you can be near a large urban centre and pay virtually nothing? (It's an honest question! And yes, I could probably look this up somewhere.)
In most cities, this sort of thing (major police operation, shots exchanged between police and armed member of public, street closures, etc.) would have been big news; that night, none of the local news broadcasts even mentioned it (one traffic report that afternoon did mention the closure of Jefferson, but didn't go into details). No headlines in the paper the next day, either.[2] My point here is that this sort of thing was apparently commonplace enough that it wasn't considered to be a newsworthy event, and none of my Detroit relatives seemed particularly surprised or concerned.
1. Notably, the particular chunk of neighborhood in question was at least half-abandoned (judging from the amount of ivy covering every second house).
2. Technically, by "the paper the next day," I mean the Detroit Free Press's website. At that point in time the DFP wasn't printing week-day paper editions.