Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving • Hacker News Board

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#41

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #36

dizzystar wrote: post #22

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…

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowada…

To clarify, the people working by staring at computers are also seen as a cost to be repressed and not a service to be rewarded. Supply and demand has made the cost resistant to repression up til now, but the economic system is hard at work finding out how to change that.

One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor costs going down.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#42

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

sremani wrote: post #39

jacquesm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private and charter schooling is doing a great job of fixing that, giving parents a choice Free private schools? If not they are giving parents that can afford it a choice. Just like wealthy expats tend to place their kids in good private schools in poor places because they can afford it. As long as education isn't good for everybody it's just another way to stack the deck.

I would be really interested what you did with your kids'(if you have any) education. Tell us what you practiced.

They went to public schools where ever we lived.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#43

Post by padobson » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #25

trisimix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/07/10/detro...

> Take this at face value: Detroit has 50% more venture-backed startups than it did three years ago. This comes from a study from the Michigan Venture Capital Association (MVCA) which found there are 35 active venture-backed startups in Detroit. Sure, that’s not a huge number compared to other regions, but the growth is notable. The actual change here is "Detroit had a net gain of 12 startups over three years". That,…

The relevant PG essay on submarines: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#44

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

dizzystar wrote: post #22

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…

[deleted]

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#45

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #27

dizzystar wrote: post #22

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…

I'm sorry I have to do it; Detroit does not have U of Mich. U of Mich is 45 minutes west in Ann Arbor. Some U of M grads go over to Detroit, but it's not like U of M students live in Detroit. They are very separate. Detroit is mostly reviving because Ann Arbor, where U of M is, is way too expensive. The Ferndale area of Detroit is becoming what Ann Arbor was when I grew up in the 80s; all about its local community an…

People are moving from Ann Arbor to Detroit, really?

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#46

Post by ocschwar » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

dizzystar wrote: post #22

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…

> Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food.

From looking at my FB feed, I've mostly surmised that computer gaming is largely a passtime for people with blue collar lives.

So you're wrong on one of these.

And FWIW, even though I'm at ground zero for Boston's hipster influx, I'm still a short walk from a lot of places where you can drink cheap beer and yell at a TV showing sportsball.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#47

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #36

dizzystar wrote: post #22

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…

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowada…

[deleted]

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#48

Post by sremani » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #42

sremani wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be really interested what you did with your kids'(if you have any) education. Tell us what you practiced.

They went to public schools where ever we lived.

Thanks for sharing. My kid is not yet at school age, but even though I live in suburbia which is good ISD, people are sending their children to Charters. At some level its a status thing, but for me I am for charters for one reason, because I do not believe in one-size-fits all education.

To be honest the gap between public schools in good ISD and charters is in the eye of beholder and mostly subjective.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#49

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #19

rayiner wrote: post #6

Weird that the article does not cite a single economic or demographic indicator to support its assertion. For example, Detroit's population has declined so far this decade at about the same pace as it declined from 1990-2000 (though not at the disastrous pace it declined from 2000-2010, when the city lost a quarter of its population). Sounds like far from a revival.

This is a pretty weird article, without some kind of further support it really smacks of a manufactured narrative. As you say, the population - which the article insists is the key factor - shows no sign of recovering. It's simply ceased the plummet it was in during the economic crisis and preceding years. The rate of decline might be a bit slower than the 90s, but the second derivative is still 0. (If you made me of…

> Detroit was never all impoverished

Eh, it was pretty close. What neighborhoods are you thinking of? Places that are actually independent cities like Grosse Pointe don't count. Palmer Woods, maybe, I guess? Anything else?

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#50

Post by magduf » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

dizzystar wrote: post #22

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…

>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, there just isn't much to make these cities attractive for new industries, except maybe cheap real estate, but you can get that in many other places in the US while not being burdened by 1) terrible weather and 2) crumbling old infrastructure that's going to cost a fortune to modernize. I think these cities can reinvent themselves to a degree, taking advantage of the many old buildings and such, but I don't think they'll ever get back to the population levels and economic statuses they had in the past, just like Rome is probably never going to be the leading city in Europe again.