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Comment by jordache | Hacker News Reader

This article is such filler material. The quality of life in metro Detroit is horrible compared to the Bay Area, SLC, or Denver/Boulder.

Sure the type of work singularly may attract some people from out of state. What else does it Detroit have going for it?

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> The quality of life in metro Detroit is horrible compared to the Bay Area

I don't know about that... I pay less than 1200 for my own apartment in a literal mansion in downtown Ann Arbor--11ft ceilings, marble fireplace, etc. My friends are UM grad students and staff, I walk five minutes to work at my job at a YC company's HQ, shop at a local food coop across the street, fly anywhere out of DTW, and spend my free time boating on the river that's a 10m walk from my front door.

Can you do that in SF?

Ann Arbor is not Detroit.

It's a quicker commute than many bay area residents make.

It is effectively (if not technically) Metro Detroit, though, which is the phrase that GP used.

Only in a limited definition of effective metro areas. There is a swath of extremely low population agricultural land that you must travel through to get from Ann Arbor to towns like Canton which are clearly in the Detroit metro. By some definitions, this would place Ann Arbor in its own metro. Another interesting factor would be the commuting ties between the areas.

> By some definitions, this would place Ann Arbor in its own metro.

This is why I added my parenthetical. I lived in Ann Arbor for several years, so I'm familiar with the area.

By boating you mean canoeing/kayaking on the Huron River, yes?

yup!

Cool. I thought I'd check because "boating" means something very different here in Seattle, and I wondered if I missed some new development in A2.

AA is nice but nothing to write home about and no one will mistake AA as a travel destination.

If you work in tech and likely earn enough to live comfortably in bay area or the other places I mentioned, the quality of life isuch better

Attractive travel destinations are not the same as highly livable places.

Southeast Michigan (where I have lived and worked for many years) has some good tech opportunities and some pleasant and affordable places to live, just not in Detroit proper. I won't work in downtown Detroit, if I have a choice, because the commute in and out is a traffic jam through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Some gentrified communities among the blight are livable, if you don't have kids. Detroit public schools are a disgrace that no child should be allowed to attend.

Dan Gilbert bought up a bunch of Detroit at fire sale prices and uses PR like this so he can flip them to make a quick profit.

lived in Detroit burbs and went to school in AA. Yeah there are always worse places in the country.. but blah.. compared to the tech hubs out west, SE MI is such a boring place to live. it's all relative though of course

By what metrics (subjective or otherwise) is the quality of life in metro Detroit worse than the areas you mentioned, assuming a reasonable income? For instance, specific suburbs have schools that are at least as good as those in the other areas, partly thanks to a massive concentration of engineers and STEM professionals, and they are otherwise suburbs like any other American suburb.

Also, do you include Ann Arbor in your definition of metro Detroit here?

I was going to reply to that but then I realized that the comment is probably coming from someone who doesn't know the area and to get into it will be to get into a pissing contest. I just came back from SF 3 days ago and I'll hold my comments and opinions. I'll just extend an offer for anyone that doesn't know the area and is in town and wants to link up to reach out.

Uninspiring landscapes, lack of diverse or superlative outdoor activities, climate.

There is a reason those places I named are tourist destinations to a much larger degree than Detroit / SE Michigan

Thanks for clarifying your reasoning. I would agree that the landscapes and climate along the west coast are fabulous for tourist destinations and nice to have otherwise, but they don't seem to be as strong of metrics for daily quality of life, at least from speaking to my family members who have lived in multiple areas that you mentioned. There are a lot of resort towns (including in CA, among other states/countries) that excel at these but are otherwise poor areas to live in.

Then again, some of the family I was referring to are moving back to the west coast, so I completely understand that we can value different things.

Exactly. There may be a ton of people in that diamond area, but I've lived inside it and Detroit is probably third backup at best for anyone looking for IT work. It's going to be a toxic area for a while.

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