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Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

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 and full of young people trying to do new stuff.

A big reason is that Ferndale was very cheap to live in, and while it's come up a lot it's still a lot cheaper than Ann Arbor (and a lot of other parts of Michigan.)

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Check Zillow right now -- Ferndale is not particularly cheaper than Ann Arbor these days. More importantly, my Ann Arbor Area to Detroit-ish commute is shorter (in time, not distance) than my friends working in the same building coming from Ferndale. When Ferndale was "cheap," I could have bought a literal mansion in Detroit with my sophomore intern money, cash in hand.

To the GP's comments, Detroit has done a lot to come up in the world on its own, though I'm not sure I like the idea of Ford buying the old train station, nor am I entirely in love with the $2~3000/mo apartments in midtown and I kinda wish it still had more of its grunge pricing to go with the definite grunge feeling that still lingers...

To argue more specifically with the parent's point, the statistical area certainly counts Ann Arbor, and that count is no less reasonable than Oakland being counted with SF. Commute times from Ann Arbor <-> the rest of Metro Detroit are entirely reasonable compared to the rest of the major cities in the country. Whether you're willing to accept any commute longer than walking across the street is a personal decision, clearly a significant fraction of the population will accept it.

Saying "statistical area" doesn't give the whole picture because it doesn't tell you what kind of statistical area. Detroit and Ann Arbor are only in the same Combined Statistical Area, not the same Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Detroit—Warren—Dearborn, MI and Ann Arbor, MI are separate MSAs in the Detroit—Warren—Ann Arbor, MI CSA.

This means that while there are some interlocking commuting patterns between Detroit and Ann Arbor, they are much weaker than the commuting patterns within a single MSA.

On the contrary, Oakland is part of the same MSA as SF: San Francisco—Oakland—Hayward, CA. Though most of what was traditionally considered SV is in a separate MSA: San Jose—Sunnyvale—Santa Clara, CA. And both are part of the San Jose—San Francisco—Oakland, CA CSA.

Sorry, I'm something of a census nerd, and I even built a site using machine-parsed census data just so I could drill down to various levels.

Some links:

http://zaidan-x.org:8192/csa/220 (Detroit)

http://zaidan-x.org:8192/csa/488 (SF)

That's quite a lot more than I knew about statistical areas! Thanks for keeping me honest and informed.

I mostly mean that in the following sense: due to some historical Michigan laws, the "City of Detroit" is vastly poorer than, say, Houston. However, the actually equivalent comparison due to Houston's absorbing its own suburbs over the last hundred years is to Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties. This does eliminate Washtenaw County that Ann Arbor is in, but the idea is that the "Detroit Metropolitan Region" is actually not on hard times and hasn't been any more so than any other major city in a very long time. It's just that no one wants to pay Detroit city income taxes, so they live literally across the street in Ferndale or Dearborn. Or, like me, they suck it up and commute from Ann Arbor so that they live somewhere with lower crime, but the job still counts as that region.

I’m giving you the experience of someone who grew up in Ann Arbor and has lived and worked in this area for 40 years. Outsiders like to conflate the two but they are not really that tied together. There’s influence but Ann Arbor is largely economically and culturally independent of Detroit.

> Detroit is mostly reviving because Ann Arbor, where U of M is, is way too expensive.

I wouldn't say "mostly." It's mostly due to huge numbers of job moving to or being created downtown by Dan Gilbert's umbrella of companies(mostly Quicken Loans). Additionally, many businesses in metro detroit are moving from the suburbs to downtown.

I'm not so sure Detroit is any cheaper than Ann Arbor these days, either. At least not in the downtown & midtown areas.

Different sections of Detroit have different costs, Royal Oak isn't very cheap. But some sections are way, way cheaper than Ann Arbor.

The part of Ferndale my good friends live in is still much cheaper than Ann Arbor even though it's about 3x more than it cost ~5 years ago.

Posting from Ferndale and some super seriously expensive commercial real estate. I'd say it used to be cheap, but Ferndale is long past cheap now. Hip? Yes, and we pay on par with Troy commercial rent for that coolness in a former industrial building turned office. Residential is pretty much the same now.

Your point about Ann Arbor relative to Detroit is spot on. Detroit doesn't really have UofM. It has Wayne State, but neither UofM or Michigan State can be claimed by Detroit.

People are moving from Ann Arbor to Detroit, really?

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 graduates are even lower, since moving away from family has become more common, but I couldn't find data.

> [1] http://www.annarbor.com/news/where-u-m-alumni-live/

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'm aware of.

If you're interested in working for Plex, shoot me your paperwork/Github username - akarpowitsch at plex dot com

I'm not in need of a job at the moment but I just wanted to say that Plex was a primary sponsor for my high school FIRST robotics team! Indirectly your company influenced my life in a big way, so thank you :)

Yeah, downtown is really on the upswing.. There are a number of places listing (and renting) $2,000/month apartments and a ton of $500k condos moving through the market.

Correct. They are largely overpriced though.

My younger brother did about 15 years ago. He eventually moved on to Portland, OR, but it does happen. If you're at the school, it's the nearest large city, so why not?

Not necessarily from, but are choosing it instead of. But yes young people who grew up in Ann Arbor are moving out to Detroit for sheer cost of rent/house reasons.

U of M still has a Dearborn campus that's closer to Detroit, doesn't it? Looking at Maps, it's only a few miles from downtown Detroit. I grew up in Flint and the U of M campus there was a big part of the city.

UM Dearborn is largely a separate entity. They're related but when people talk about UM it's not what they're referring to. It has its own much smaller student body and faculty, etc.

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