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Comment by ethank | Hacker News Reader

What bugs me about the poverty-porn you see from Detroit is that if you really wanted to, you could do the same documentation in the wealthiest segments of Los Angeles, just by going a few blocks over.

If I really wanted to, I could take my DSLR over to Canoga Park in Los Angeles and make it seem like I'm in a third world country. It's less than a mile from my home.

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Sure, you can do that in certain parts of LA. But you can see these ruins almost everywhere in Detroit. It's really one of the most depressing cities I've ever been to.

Yea - Detroit is a sobering experience. I was honestly in shock the first time I went downtown. Bad parts of town and abandoned or nearly abandoned plazas are not new to me, but the scale of decay in Detroit - 20,000 people on the streets! - is overwhelming and depressing.

Just down the street from me is a house that has been abandoned for a few years. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.172165,-118.634398&ll=3...

If I wanted to take some photos it'd be nice ruin porn. Of course the properties to the right and left are million dollar homes.

I get your point that there is "ruin porn" in almost any city.

I don't think you get my point though. Detroit is almost entirely "ruin porn", there are no million dollar homes next to any ruins in Detroit, I doubt there are any million dollar homes in Detroit at all.

This is essentially a "Tu Quoque" -- other cities have bad parts, so how can we point fingers at Detroit?

It's ok for both LA and Detroit to have bad parts. But I think it's disingenuous to pretend that Detroit's downfall is anywhere near that of other cities (unemployment, scale of abandonment, population decline, etc.).

This is essentially a "Tu Quoque" -- other cities have bad parts, so how can we point fingers at Detroit?

Looks to me like it's questioning the process by which we here conclude that Detroit is a hellhole.

I have lived in both LA and Detroit. These are really different animals. I read somewhere that you could fit the entire city of San Francisco in the vacant lots of Detroit.

Also, you can easily find lots of property in Detroit for 5000 USD or less. I was at an auction where abandoned homes were going for less than 500 dollars.

I have no doubt that LA and Detroit are very different. Just in raw statistics they are very different.

The point is, if your view of any city is from reddit/hackernews/tumblr/cracked/digg-bait sites, it will be a skewed view on a city. With Detroit, its post-apocolyptic ruin-poverty porn.

Not exactly the same neighborhood, but there's already a documentary that covers poverty in LA, although there's an obvious focus on the history of racial tension and gang violence: http://www.cripsandbloodsmovie.com/

But yeah, you can find ruins in most major US cities. I grew up in Upstate NY and abandoned factories are just background scenery to me. What's interesting about Detroit is the scale of what's happening. Personally that's why I will often check out the "ruin porn" when I see it (and I'm usually disappointed), because I want to get an idea about what it's actually like there, I don't just want to gawk at the devastation.

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