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Detroit in Ruins

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Re: Detroit in Ruins

#141

Post by winestock »

gnosis wrote: post #138
winestock wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother has more experience in the business and has been in the area far more than me. He called them drug dealers. I trust his judgement on the matter. The smell of marijuana was, like I said, an added tell. EDIT: grammar

You don't have to be a dealer to smell of pot. It's also pretty hilarious to hear you being scared of kids because they "smell of marijuana". Of course, they probably did smoke pot. But this would earn them a big "so what?" from me, rather than a panicky exit. And if they were giving you "the evil eye", that would make me wonder if you did anything to deserve it. Were you sporting bald heads, combat boots, suspenders…

How very droll of you. Maintaining foreclosed properties requires workers to take photographs of the property and secure the building, among other things; especially if the house has been broken into.

By the time we get to a property in a high-crime area, the copper is often long gone. Broken glass isn't uncommon. The amount of destruction done to some of these houses is impressive. There are holes in walls and even holes in the floor. Toilets ripped out, shattered, and left to one side.

I'm left there asking myself: Why go to all of this effort to destroy these things? What destructive impulse must some people have? It's one thing to argue about it in an Internet forum, it's something else to find it in many houses over the course of months.

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#142

Post by jeffepp »

jjm wrote: post #128
jeffepp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear you don't know "all about" Detroit, it's nice that you quote a few articles though (especially one from 2009). The opportunity that I mentioned is not in residential (yet) although I would be a buyer of raw land near downtown. There are some truly awful areas, but there are also some really great areas of Detroit -- especially Midtown -- where there are very low vacancy rates and an influx of colleg…

Well being a billionaire means you knew how to make money from a market yesterday. It doesn't really mean they know how tomorrow. Odds will be better as you have resources to try but everything is a gamble. Knowing the odds help. And so with that, I say the odds aren't so good in Detroit. The market is constantly shrinking. That is fact (see the wiki link). This spills over to exports as well. The last saving grace a…

When you 'forge' your own path with fellow entrepreneurs who are learning -- will you grant more weight to those who have proven to succeed?

How about those who built more successful (at least from a financial perspective) than 99.99999% of the world and have the power and resources to enact real change?

Haven't you heard, a recent article [1] gives 13 reasons there is a comeback, and it has some interesting nuggets:

- unemployment is 11.3% (not 50%) - high tech jobs growing over 100% yoy - ranked 46/150 for growth (opposed to 146 previously)

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/detroit-comeback-2011-3

Rents, land, & costs of living are super low -- these are all significant advantages in any competitive business landscape.

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#143

Post by shabble »

I'm surprised at some of the remains, especially in the public health section - hospitals and clinics. There are rooms full of medical records, along with drugs, surgical equipment, and (possibly) radioisotopes. Probably not the latter, and they're just old x-ray machines, but the Goiânia accident[1] is what might happen if there are.

It seems almost like a desperate evacuation over hours and days, rather than, as I seem to find, over years. There's strong parallels with the photos from Pripyat in terms of the stuff left behind.

Did the city lose big chunks of population near simultaneously, or was it a constant trickle away? Why didn't the building owners make some sort of planned move? At least that way they could rip out the valuable stuff, and destroy things like medical records.

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_...

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#144

Post by homosaur »

burgerbrain wrote: post #116
klous wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in the Metro Detroit suburbs, and downtown Detroit is the spot right now. The ability to get whatever you need, yes even groceries, within walking distance is a reality. Walking to Tigers games, enjoying the nightlife, eating at amazing restaurants, and enjoying the city are a regular part of life. I live in downtown Detroit. I do not want to live in the suburbs.

"The ability to get whatever you need, yes even groceries, within walking distance is a reality." No offence, but having lived in about 4 major US cities (Detroit not included), that seems to be setting the bar awfully low. Being able to buy groceries is just a basic necessity, and restaurants/nightlife is something every city has.

Tell that to the folks living in downtown St Louis. We finally got a grocery store downtown last year. Not that it's a major city though.

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#145

Post by [deleted] »

gnosis wrote: post #137
arthurwellesley wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The viewpoint that will (rightly) get you shunned is the one that says "black people" were a factor" Do you shun that viewpoint because it is false and slanderous? Or do you believe that it is true, but that it must not be talked about, because the wrong people might exploit the history for undesirable ends? It seems to me stunning that anyone can dispute the statement that "black people played a role in the decay o…

Looks like stormfront has finally discovered HN.

[deleted]

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#146

Post by homosaur »

temphn wrote: post #109
tptacek wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were Rhodesia and South Africa ruined by a sudden and deliberate demographic shift that decimated the region's tax base and created dysfunction in the regions politics, followed by three decades of setbacks for core economic engine for the region mixed with offshoring? Because I thought that's what did Detroit in. Not drug dealers. We have those in Chicago too, but also Boeing and stuff.

The "sudden and deliberate demographic shift", also known as white flight, may indeed have happened because whites were and are irrationally racist. This is certainly the conventional wisdom. And by the end, there was surely no dearth of white racists, especially among the Polish community after the confrontation with Coleman Young. But is it legitimate for people to state that there may be other factors as well, in…

There's cities all over America that were devastated by white flight, including my neighbor across the river, East Saint Louis. If you go to downtown ESL, the base architecture and infrastructure is really cool. It has these wide boulevards and all these old style 40's and 50's architecture you don't see too much in St Louis proper. ESL High used to be an all white school, which explains the strange mix of black kids and old white people at the football games. Integration happened and the whole thing started to fall apart.

However, things really didn't start getting bad until all the BLACK people with money started leaving too. The whites moved out to St. Charles and the blacks moved out to the Illinois suburbs. Commerce (and Busch Stadium, let's be real) kept gangs from totally taking over St Louis during crack fever era, but the same did not happen in ESL. Now it's basically unfixable. The corruption, schools, and law enforcement is too awful to have anyone consider moving back there.

At least in St Louis if you have some money you can send your kids to private schools (and you would, the public school system is atrocious) in the city. Old North City has even sprung back to life with some redevelopment, and this was one of the most run down marginal neighborhoods in town a decade ago. (If you've ever been to the world famous Crown Candy Kitchen, that's the neighborhood it's in.) I live in Lafayette Square, formerly known as Slum D, which was one of the most violent neighborhoods in the US 40 years ago. My old doctor grew up there and vividly remembers what that neighborhood was like a few dozen years back. The difference between these two things and places like ESL and Detroit is the proximity of services. Even when Lafayette Square was at its worst, if you could solve the crime, downtown and Soulard were only blocks away.

Detroit and ESL are essentially urban deserts. You can live in the desert because you grew up there, but you're going to have a hard time convincing new people it's the place to be.

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#147

Post by Natsu »

arthurwellesley wrote: post #140
gnosis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like stormfront has finally discovered HN.

I'm no stormfronter. I grew up progressive, went to progressive schools, I've volunteered in inner city neighborhoods mentoring kids and fixing up houses. I live in a neighborhood that's mostly middle class black, I play pick up football with kids from the projects, and I even have the cliched black roommate. I studied the issue of urban decay because I spent a lot of time living near and walking through these neighb…

I would simply object that the division of blame along black/white lines is arbitrary and serves no useful purpose. I'm sure that people of every different skin tone have had a role in Detroit's decline, I just don't see the point in trying to figure out which skin tones are to more blame for what, any more than I would think it sensible to partition blame according to how much bread people ate, as if to set the bread-eaters against the rest.

Or to put my point more succinctly, a person's skin color doesn't tell us anything about them, and we shouldn't treat it as if it does. But I realize that the fundamental attribution error is deeply engrained.

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#148

Post by mturmon »

Duff wrote: post #130
tptacek wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids play with 5 other families on my block, and we know many, many more of our neighbors than that. I'm literally a stone's throw from one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago. Here's a suggestion: instead of blaming your alienation from your block on the breakup of old racist† '60s ethnic enclaves, reach out to the people on your block. They'll appreciate it. Set up a block party. Collect email addresses from y…

I'm glad that you're so progressive, but you happen to be the exception. You also are reading what you want to, and not what I said. The nationwide trend is that social interaction between Americans has been in decline substantially in recent years. This is pretty much across the board. Again, read Bowling Alone, or skim a review of it. These are quantifiable facts. You can apply whatever judgement that you want, but…

The review I remember reading of Bowling Alone contrasted its example of declining urban bowling leagues with the surge in urban soccer leagues.

Commentators since de Toqueville have observed that Americans are remarkably strong at forming leagues and clubs around their interests. Some go away and are replaced by others. Isolating half of this process ("some go away") as some kind of indication of social rot is purely in the eye of the beholder.

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#149

Post by Luyt »

shabble wrote: post #143

I'm surprised at some of the remains, especially in the public health section - hospitals and clinics. There are rooms full of medical records, along with drugs, surgical equipment, and (possibly) radioisotopes. Probably not the latter, and they're just old x-ray machines, but the Goiânia accident[1] is what might happen if there are. It seems almost like a desperate evacuation over hours and days, rather than, as I…

That story about Goiânia made my neck hairs raise. I wonder, did the radiological therapy machine not have any 'radiation danger' signs on it? Or maybe the scavengers ignored it, or didn't recognize it as such.

Re: Detroit in Ruins

#150

Post by dreww »

winestock wrote: post #31

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…

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 brothers confirmed this to me. The smell of marijuana smoke was another tell.

pro tip for suburban residents: not all black people who smoke marijuana are drug dealers, despite what your brother 'confirms'.

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