Detroit’s revival takes shape after decades of decay | Hacker News Reader

Detroit’s revival takes shape after decades of decay

theguardian.com

145 pointsPaulHoule168 comments

30 miles West in Ann Arbor, there are tech gigs but not tons of them. If you are apart of the University of Michigan, there are tons of opportunities via the college and the groups there, but if not there aren't tons of openings.

Detroit itself is an amazing city, but it isn't a tech hub, nor is it for everyone. It is the shell of the automotive companies that started to move their operations of out the country in the 50s-70s. Check out the book "Origins of the Urban Crisis" to get an understanding of the decay in Detroit and other large cities who the Big 3 have abandoned for a profit.

All of my friends that I have brought to the D are always weirded out by how big the city is, yet how few people you actually see outside of the entertainment district. The streets and sidewalks can be fully empty, with a 6 lane road that has so many holes that it is more pothole than road now.

This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert.

I was in Detroit for a big tech event a couple years back. The more or less universal consensus was that, yes, the Riverwalk during the day (and the Convention Center there) were quite nice. But people felt uncomfortable away from large groups of event-goers at night and there were a few incidents. It definitely felt different from other events I've been to. Some of this is admittedly probably a matter of familiarity; I generally know to just avoid the Tenderloin for example.

I'm curious if Lansing, the capital of Michigan, offers opportunities for government contractor work due to its proximity. With Lansing, Detroit, and Ann Arbor relatively close to each other, semi-remote roles might be feasible.

I lived in Lansing 10 years ago. Honestly, it was pretty depressing. We lived in an old neighborhood between the downtown area and south Lansing which while not conventionally dangerous, was an area I always avoided driving or walking around at night if I could avoid it. The west side is fine but bland, a mix of suburban and apartment living. East Lansing is more interesting due to being a college town. The outlying towns are bedroom communities with fairly high property values.

Work-wise, there were mostly small businesses or branches of large national brands. I tried to get into government work several times but never made it. There were LOADS of non-profits (some government affiliated) who would take just about anyone with a pulse but the pay was quite low as well.

After about a decade there, we moved 45 minutes east and never looked back.

> We lived in an old neighborhood between the downtown area and south Lansing

Too late for me to edit but in case someone comes back and reads this later, I want to be clear that south Lansing was the place I'd avoid at night, not the neighborhood I lived in.

Lansing has been the epitome of what the rust belt means for decades already.

I really love my state, but lansing is just as bad as anywhere else. Outside of a more rural situtation or Ann Arbor, everywhere here is decayed.

> fully empty

Like that.

St. Louis is similar: you can walk from downtown to empty grass-filled blocks in about fifteen minutes.

My favorite story is the origin of the City Museum (which, shoutout to the City Museum, it's awesome). The City Museum building is in a former factory, it's about 11 stories tall and fills a city block. It's on the edge of downtown about a dozen blocks from the Arch. The artist behind the museum bought the building in the '90s for something like $700,000. That's a whole-ass industrial building, walkable from anywhere in downtown St. Louis, for under a million dollars.

I think most US cities are like that in the “downtown to disheveled in 15 minutes” sense.

I'm not quite so sure. The amount of demolished blight in Detroit has left this eerie urban meadow feeling to a decent amount of areas in the vicinity of downtown. Walking the empty streets with empty lots and a few normal or a few burnt out houses is peaceful and fun in a way you wouldn't expect. I haven't seen it in a lot of cities.

I've lived in Los Angeles, Seattle, D.C., New York, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Boston. I've spent time in Phoenix, San Francisco, Kansas City, Chicago, Miami, Portland, Atlanta, and Orlando. None of them come close to what you see in St. Louis. As a disclaimer, I always tell people, every bad thing you hear about St. Louis is true, and worse than you've heard -- but also that the many, many good things about St. Louis are never mentioned, and that's a shame. It's a long list and the City Museum is high on it.

But that said, check out this completely empty block on Delmar and 21st [1], and remember that with the Arch, that's less than 20 blocks from the river. And five blocks north of there is the former site of Pruitt Igoe, which is basically six or so blocks of wilderness behind a chain link fence. I don't doubt there are cities in worse shape (Detroit probably being one of them), but none that I've explored.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZWrwkK6CytcQRNmU6

Many cities have bad areas. But few have that 15 minute dynamic. OK maybe SF with the Tenderloin but even Howard St. isn't as bad as it used to be.

Most older pre-war cities have a core that is hollowed out with more affluent areas nearby creating a stark contrast. Newer cities that developed with automobile sprawl have that more diffused.

In some smaller cities like Savannah that gradient shift is a matter of blocks.

I lived in New Orleans for a bit and a dynamic you have there is that you have streets that were the historically nice homes and you have nearby--even adjacent--streets that were where the slaves lived and remnants of that dichotomy can still be seen in a lot of the housing quality.

I spent a long weekend in Soulard to see Brittany Howard last year. Outside of the immediate mile radius of the neighborhood, my partner and I constantly asked ourselves “where the hell is everyone?”

Ive been everywhere in the US but the Dakotas and never seen a city of STL’s size feel so big yet so empty.

They also filmed Escape from New York there in 1981 so they didn't have to spend any money on making a post-apocalyptic cityscape!

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/arts/how-a-1976-st-louis-fir...

> This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert.

For an outlet that “thanks to our reader-funded model, what we cover isn’t dictated by the algorithms of the tech titans” they did manage to cram a surprising number of ads in there

I was there about a year ago with a couple of friends, stopped for a night while driving through Michigan to go up north. It was just so eerie throughout the entire day. Incredibly wide streets, but sometimes you would walk for 5 mins before you saw a single soul. Maybe because it was a bit of a chilly day as well, but it felt like the city was built for way more people, and there just isn’t enough now.

Other people makes a big difference.

Even back when NYC was a lot more iffy than it is today in general, I never really felt uncomfortable walking down somewhere like Fifth Avenue late at night because there were enough people at night. Various midwest cities can be pretty eerie--especially after business hours. The downtowns are often not that busy during the day and they're deserted--except maybe some local pockets--after dark.

This is an interesting point. In the 1980s Amsterdam was dirt poor but it was never empty. In fact it attracted all kinds of people who wanted to live an "alternative" lifestyle in cheap real estate. Communists, artists, gay people.

New York no matter what happens will always be located in the most densely populated part of America.

It’s a commuter town: people drive in at 8am and leave at 5pm. The greater Detroit area is massive.

I've found that in some Midwest cities that weren't even necessarily blighted. I remember Kansas City at an event years ago where there was basically no one in the downtown at night. The same is somewhat true of even someplace like the Financial District of Boston after hours but there are enough people pretty close by it doesn't feel the same.

I wish it were true of Detroit

I've actually looked at Ann Arbor before as I adore college towns and was looking at trying to find one in the great lakes region as a forever / retirement destination. Given you're from the area would you have any others to recommend?

Things I'm mainly looking for:

* A climate change refuge

* No 'lake effect' snow

* Continuing education opportunities (i.e. auditing classes as a retiree)

* A good public / uni library system

* Walkable density

* Reasonable cost of living (yea, this is gonna be higher in college towns)

I realize that moving to the great lakes region and wanting to avoid snow are naturally in conflict. I have a disability so I'm just bearing in mind my balance and ability to shovel snow in my old age.

You might want to look at Kalamazoo.

I have an alternative proposal to Ann Arbor for this that hits every single one of your criteria, but with a plus-minus (with a caveat, but i will elaborate on that later) regarding reasonable cost of living. That would be Seattle area.

I will go point by point.

The good:

* According to their own Climate Vulnerability Assessment[0], the region is fairly resilient to the impacts of the climate change.

* There is no lake effect snow (despite being adjacent to multiple fantastic lakes). I’ve lived there for 7 years, and the amount of snow was much less than even in places like Atlanta. The amount of rainfall is ridiculously small too (despite the stereotype), and it is usually just drizzle that doesn’t necessitate even an umbrella 99% of the time. It got nothing on typical east coast rains that just pour like hell. I was able to commute to work on motorcycle for about 90-95% days of the year. For any east coast city I’ve been to (ATL/NYC/DC), I don’t foresee that number being even above 50% (most of the time it would be either too cold or too hot or too rainy/snowy/dangerous).

* UW is a very popular and common option for continuing education opportunities. Had friends who would take classes there for fun outside of work, just to fill gaps in whichever topics they were curious about (typically math). Seems like there is a large population that does this, and UW is a great school.

* Public library system is the best I’ve experienced hands down. Free, many accessible locations, and libraries even have stuff like 3d printers and hackerspaces available for anyone’s use.

* Had plenty of friends who lived there with no car for years, and they have zero plans to ever buy one. Especially with the public transit lightrail having some really significant expansions completed recently (with many more nearing the completion; the lightrail to eastside is something i am personally excited for)

The mixed:

* Reasonable cost of leaving is the one plus-minus I mentioned. The minus is that it isn’t cheap. It is much cheaper than Bay Area/NYC/etc., but it is still a major city area. The plus is that there is no state income tax. So, in retirement, your 401k withdrawals would not get any taxes skimmed off on the state level. This point is by far the biggest potential concern I have as far as Seattle being a good suggestion for you.

The bad:

* While the weather is amazing temperature/precipitation-wise year-round, clear skies and sun outside of summer are not that common. Grey skies for more than half of the month during winter eventually got to me.

Bonus points:

* If you are into outdoorsy stuff (skiing/snowboarding/hiking/kayaking/lake stuff), I cannot think of a better area. So many options within just a couple of hours. Hell, Discovery Park (calling it a park feels like a misnomer, because it is a massive cliffside forest, fields, and a beach) is just a 15 min drive from downtown.

* Flying to asian countries is much faster and cheaper than from east coast (13 hour non-stop flight to Japan from NJ vs. a 7-8hr flight from Seattle).

0. https://seattle.gov/documents/departments/opcd/seattleplan/s...

There is no state income tax . . . yet. But the "soak the rich" band is already tuning up, and with the cost of living being what it is out here, "rich" will probably include anyone who can afford a house.

I would not be too worried about that. Washington legislators just outlawed income tax last year. While those who want earned income tax are vocal, the support for the initiative against income tax was so widespread that the politicians did not want it on the ballot for fear of voters being swayed to vote for the other ballot initiatives.

https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_2111,_Prohibit...

I wasn't just referring to income tax, but things like capital gains and so forth. The state Supreme Court ruled an excise tax on capital gains was not an income tax, and though the limit is like $250K currently, that could change. And the party that runs Washington is the one that's currently on the warpath about "rich tech bros."

Yes, that (and the LTCi payroll tax) was some nonsense and does bring into question the integrity of the leadership. But the 2111 legislation gives me hope that they aren’t stupid enough to get rid of the states’ most attractive feature for a young, productive workforce.

Especially in a future where young, productive people are going to be in shorter and shorter supply.

They’ve been on that warpath since the glory days of msft and amazon (i.e., for multiple decades at least). All with that same party running things back then in WA. All they’ve accomplished is shooting themselves in the foot here and there, without any meaningful progress.

But note that support of the ballot initiative to repeal the capital gains tax was not widespread. 63% voted to reject it and keep the tax.

There are attempts at it at least once every decade, and every time they get squashed in the very end, even if they are passing the vote and get pretty much to the finish line. Any form of taxing it is against state constitution, and the state struck down any previous attempts at loopholes around that provision of the constitution.

I agree with the sibling comment that this is not something to realistically worry about at all.

> Any form of taxing it is against state constitution

The WA state constitution says non uniform property taxes are not allowed, and 1930 WA Supreme Court ruled income was property.

A flat income tax would have been allowed, until last year when income tax was outlawed, but not with enough votes to amend the state constitution.

I'm confused by this. I live in Michigan and have been paying state income tax ever since my first job.

I think the parent is referring to Washington State, not Michigan.

I had previously looked at the PNW. I adore seattle , but the earthquake / tsunami / wild fire risk projections are extreme. I know they're retrofitting a lot of infra and housing there, but a cascadia fault quake / tsunami is gonna be a bad time even if fema's 'everything east of I-5 is toast' is overhyped.

At some point, you need to do the pro/con analysis. If you add minimum natural disasters risk, based on when I knew something about datacenter siting details, you were looking at maybe Las Vegas area (which also has access to Hoover Dam power). But, now, you're in extreme desert heat (predictably) in the summer and probably don't tick off a lot of other considerations either.

Seattle to Japan is 11 hours. (It's 15 hours from nyc) Were you thinking of Hawaii?

The west coast isn't near anything. Most of Asia is 16 hours away, which is the same for NYC.

Grand Rapids and Traverse City might meet your criteria, but it's hard to say given how subjectively they are worded. If you want to live in a town with a large university, then obviously just look at the top three universities by size in each state.

Yeah, I'd look at university towns and small cities generally in the northern end of the country. Though it's probably not just the largest universities--there are smaller schools that caan still give a place a feel of a university town. Then pick some climate metrics like average inches of snow. Create a shortish list and go from there. I suspect some of the criteria are also less important than others.

Continuing ed opportunities are probably actually one of the tougher things. There are often things you can do informally with unis if you know the landscape but it's not something that's routinely offered as part as I know. There are community colleges and nightime continuing ed but, honestly, I'd probably mostly look online for that sort of thing.

Re: continuing education: I just wanted a way to take some classes and gain access to the university library. Technically I have access to lifetimes of material online via books, papers, MOOCs, etc; but it would be really nice take a philosophy class and actually be able to have in depth discussions, or check out some book that's never been published on kindle.

The in-depth discussions part (i.e. things like seminars) is probably difficult without registering for a class in some manner—which, in turn, is difficult at a traditional university without enrolling, outside of some continuing ed program. My undergrad university library is also accessible (at least if you look like you belong) post-COVID in the sense that you don't have to card in but even I (as an alum and moderately large donor) would almost certainly have to pay an annual access fee to check something out. It also has some generally accessible activities in January but you need to know where to look.

Universities/colleges are a pretty good source of cultural activities and other things in a town but their classes, and to a lesser degree libraries (it depends as some libraries let people just walk-in though not check-out material; others control access pretty tightly), are not really public resources.

Lots of lake effect snow there.

You probably need to decide if you want no "lake effect" snow specifically or just don't want a lot of snow. It still snows a lot in places that aren't Buffalo or Syracuse. Just in New York state Ithaca is pretty much out of the lake effect snow belt but it still snows quite a bit.

I have cerebral palsy. I'm from the south, and the few experiences I have with snow and ice have not been great, lol. A fall that might just bruise a hip in your 30's might well break it in you 70's and at that age, it's often a serious hit to your quality of life or even 'game over'. I want to be far enough north to rarely deal with dangerous heat, but far enough south that I'm not basically 'snowed in' given I seem to struggle with icey sidewalks.

As someone else commented, you're probably talking about Pacific Northwest (Washington or Oregon coastal regions) then. It's not completely snow-free and can get fairly hot in the summers. But it's probably the best compromise between mostly snow-free and not-too-hot. Pretty much anyplace else in the North that (usually) doesn't get too hot in the summer gets snow, if not the consistent heavy snowfalls of places in the lake effect belt.

In addition to the larger cities, you have places like Corvallis where Oregon State is located.

This is basically what every human on Earth wants. Which is why the entire west coast is so expensive, because it's about the only place in the US that fits that bill.

Plenty of people are fine with snow and ice in the winter—certainly relative to places where the alternative is >100 degree F summers. But I don't really disagree that many people like a Mediterranean climate (that the coastal PNW also largely has except for the non-summer grayness) which tilts the scales. Also generally good outdoor recreation options for the most part.

Im not sure how easy or hard they would be to put on and take off for you, but one thing a lot of people ignore in the winter that can help, simple crampons/ice cleats. They make ice basically a non-issue if you are wearing them. The downside is some stores might not like you walking on their floors with them on, but of course parking lots and store walkways are pretty well salted so you might only need them at your house or if you walk around residential areas.

With the heat issue though, Michigan is surrounded by water and half the state is swamp, so yeah it might not be quite 100 degrees out, but if it is 95% humidity out it might as well be well over 100 degrees out. It is definitely something to consider if you want to avoid the heat.

Michigan really only has lake effect snow on the western shore

But in the Winter, the entire state does suffer from persistent lake effect gloom. I grew up in central MI and had no idea how much sunnier it was elsewhere in the US (esp. along the eastern seaboard) when seasonal daylight gets short.

The CityNerd, Ray Delahanty, just published a video on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcn77OwF9XE (You can safely increase the speed of the video to 1.5x. He speaks slowly.)

If you don't feel like watching the entire video, I'll just recommend Iowa City, Iowa. It ticks all your boxes except maybe climate change refuge. But with all the money you save on housing, you can buy a vacation cabin/bunker further north.

Charlottesville, VA!!!

The area between UVA's campus and downtown is walkable and continues to develop. Charlottesville has mild winters and beautiful falls. UVA has a gorgeous campus and lots of programming.

The town punches above its weight with respect to the food scene and is surrounded by wineries. The Shenandoah mountains are close by. There is an airport in the town that makes it less remote.

I lived in Ann Arbor for about a decade. I’ll do my best to answer some of these.

* On climate change, I think the Midwest is generally pretty good, and the models show Michigan as a green zone last I looked (especially moving a bit more north). But I don’t know that I’d make this a major buying decision.

* I’ve always felt the idea of lake effect snow was overblown I spent several years on the west side of the state, everyone warned me about the lake effect snow, and I honestly didn’t notice a major difference vs the Detroit metro area. You will get snow, but even now it doesn’t snow like it did when I was a kid.

* I’m not sure what options U of M has for auditing classes, but I’m guessing there is something. You’d also have Washtenaw Community College, and Eastern Michigan University over in Ypsilanti. I took some a Unix course years ago at WCC to fill the empty time in my schedule many years ago. It was pretty painless to sign up. Ann Arbor also has a lot of classes for seniors through the rec center. And of course private business… I took a knife skills course and some cooking classes at a local place there.

* The Ann Arbor library system is pretty decent and has several branches. UofM has several as well. I’m not sure what public access is like for UofM, as I never tried while I was living there, but I do remember going there in high school to find a rare book I needed. I tried to pop in to the Library at Harvard recently, when I was in the area, and it didn’t seem open to the public, which is the only reason I’m questioning of UofM would give you trouble.

* Ann Arbor is probably the most walkable city in the area, which makes sense due to the university. Also, the freeways on all sides bound it to prevent too much sprawl. Though you will want to be adjacent to the downtown area for prime walkability. They have also been putting in some protected bike lanes if you’re into that. Some of this, and more big apartment complexes downtown have left the city feeling more congested, it doesn’t feel quite as quant as it once did, but still has some of its charm.

* For cost of living… for Michigan it’s high, but if you’re coming from a coast, it probably won’t feel too bad. It’s really housing that is the main expense.

On the topic of snow… a lot of people from Michigan become snow birds as they get older. They spend most of the year in Michigan, then head down to Florida for a couple months in the winter. My dad has been doing this for the last 5 years or so (using something like VRBO). He also recently started hiring out to take care of snow removal. Or, if you choose a condo over a house, it may not be an issue at all. Just keep parking in mind, and getting to and from the car, if you’re looking for something like that near downtown. If you haven’t lived around snow before, a good hack is to walk on the grass to avoid an icy sidewalk.

The temps hovering around freezing, like they are now are the worst for ice. If it would get cold and stay cold, it seems much safer. But downtown Ann Arbor usually does a pretty good job keeping things clean.

I live in this area, and feel qualified to comment.

> climate change refuge

Not totally sure what that means, but we get anywhere between 2-4 weeks of (usually non-consecutive) high heat (90F plus) per summer and 7 months of cold, as judged by whether or not I ride my motorcycle. If you mean will you have to swim through your house after the polar ice caps melt, no, I don't believe so.

> Continuing education opportunities

You're in luck, there two major universities, a community college, and branch locations for other universities and colleges, all within probably 10 minutes of each other.

> A good public / uni library system

The AADL and Ypsilanti libraries are amazing. Thanks to Melcat, you can borrow any book at any other Michigan library.

> Walkable density

As long as you're okay renting. Ann Arbor property values and property taxes are reasonably ridiculous and Ypsi is getting there. That said, I live in a suburb north of Ypsi and there are enough sidewalks and trails here to keep me happy. (But I do have to drive for all of my errands.)

> Reasonable cost of living

I consider AA/Ypsi to be on the low end of medium COL. Everyday living stuff (groceries, gas) is pretty typical compared to other places around the state but housing and entertainment are higher. As an upside, there is no local income tax, only federal and state.

> As long as you're okay renting. Ann Arbor property values and property taxes are reasonably ridiculous and Ypsi is getting there.

In fact, A2 housing prices are simply insane. Even a 1000 sq ft hovel without garage sells for upward of $500k; I kid you not. Nowhere in MI is the housing market more expensive, even the tonier resort spots like Charlevoix. A2 prices rival upscale neighborhoods just outside large US cities, but the houses in A2 are smaller and relatively downscale.

In the past couple years the fraction of A2 homes bought with cash is very high, so there seems to be an influx of emigre coastal urbanites driving the demand.

I built an app that I input these preferences in to find your ideal matches based on data[0]:

Iowa City, Lawrence Kansas, Lincoln Nebraska, Champaign Illinois, and Omaha Nebraska seem to best fit.

[0] https://www.exoroad.com/us/counties?wildfireRisk=Not%2520App...

I'd say don't give up on Ann Arbor yet. It's a great place to live in and there are plenty of jobs in a commutable distance within Metro Detroit.

I grew up in Detroit during the fifties and sixties. Afterwards I watched the city decline for a good forty years. Around the time of Detroit's bankruptcy it started to be reborn.

Dan Gilbert gets a lot of the credit because he bought Detroit real estate when no one wanted it. Skyscrapers that had been empty for thirty years or more. People wouldn't consider coming downtown or moving their offices there because of the crime. In response Gilbert formed his own police force and put cameras everywhere. They coordinated with the Detroit force and crime plummeted downtown.

Then the complaints were that sure it was nice downtown but no where else. Then projects started all over the city. Detroit is a very large city which makes fire and policing difficult. There are huge swaths of empty area thanks to federal funding that allowed abandoned and burned down houses to be torn down.

The critics will point out there is still no shortage of crime although the overall numbers are declining. But it is relatively safe downtown, midtown where the sports teams are located. Detroit was at one time the richest city in America, yes ahead of even New York City. Detroit also had the best public city school system in the U.S. at one time though they are near the bottom now. There are a lot of world class museums and architecture. The city is being discovered and rated a top destination by dozens of publications. I'd urge you to make a trip there and discover for yourself.

As for tech, Detroit is only second to Ann Arbor in the state for the number of startups and venture capitalists. Unlike the rest of Michigan Detroit and Ann Arbor are the only cities in Michigan where entrepreneurs run the local community events. Everywhere else in the state its run by economic development organizations that do not understand startups and hinder their forward progress.

I live in A2 as well and I don’t even bother looking for gigs here. Duo used to be the tech company to work for here but they were bought by Cisco which is not really my vibe. Barracuda is another big name but other than that I cannot name many others.

Isn't Techsmith (Camtasia) down there somewhere?

East Lansing, where MSU is!

In Ann Arbor the name of the game is small startups, often derived from U Michigan professors. There are enough of those you can make a career there, though it's wise to expand your network to include other towns within 30 minutes (like Plymouth or Novi). You won't want to rely on only UofM for work, though I know a few who have worked there in computing for decades.

> who the Big 3 have abandoned for a profit.

I don’t think anyone left Detroit willingly; they were forced out due to race riots, threats to their life, and the UAW. The big 3 lost billions trying to revive the city in spite of the local politicians

If your book implies or says it was somehow due to greed, you should respectfully find a new book.

That's cool. Feel free to leave a reference or something. From the Wiki description:

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit is the first book by historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue in which he examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit. Sugrue argues that the decline of Detroit began long before the 1967 race riot. Sugrue argues that institutionalized and often legalized racism resulted in sharply limited opportunities for African Americans in Detroit for most of the 20th century. He also argues that the process of deindustrialization, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor-saving technologies. The book has won multiple awards including a Bancroft Prize in 1998

Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" has a much more nuanced thesis, and part of it is that people were leaving well before the 1967 Uprising, part of it was broader economic changes, part of it was governmental policies (especially with regards to housing and transportation).

The causes of the decline of Detroit's population are complex, not something that can be distilled in an HN comment honestly. But the idea that no one left Detroit willingly is not correct. I know people who did, even interviewed someone who said their family left due to simple racism: a Black family moved to their neighborhood so they left. Of course, in many cases choices could be weighted by other things like, say, you wanted to purchase a house but couldn't get a mortgage in the city due to extensive redlining but could easily get one in the suburbs.

My family left the city in order to raise children. We tend to forget that cities can turn bad fast when there is an economic crash. They are the first places to be hit with drugs and crime.

There is also the secular trend. Detroit's dominance in the auto industry wasn't an accident. Iron was mined in the Iron Range in Minnesota and shipped across the Great Lakes to Detroit. It was natural for manufacturing to occur there. Other GL cities had similar advantages, but e.g. Alabama wasn't a realistic competitor. Coal was also shipped, mostly from the Allegheny region, west across Lake Erie.

Today, less iron is refined domestically, and cars are made of more aluminum and less steel. Most coking-quality coal is now mined in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. On top of that, the US shipbuilding industry has become less competitive globally, which together with the Jones Act has resulted in a significant drop in shipping on the Lakes. See Figure 2 on page 2:

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47550.pdf

I watched a YouTube video recently about Detroit's rebirth with a focus on old architecture being renovated.

What I mostly noticed, from the Arial drone shots, was how spaced out the buildings were, it looked to be about 70% car parking.

I always say that Detroit feels like an European city in the late 1940s, i.e. a dense city that suffered a bombing campaign. It's really weird. And it's a shame, because what's still there can be jaw-dropping.

I live in the greater Detroit area and would love for it to become a thriving tech community. While articles like this portray a thriving tech scene here, it’s not entirely accurate. Many automotive companies claim a need for tech talent but establish labs and locations in the Bay Area. For instance, Rivian’s vehicle software isn’t developed in Michigan, despite being HQed here.

The prominent tech employers in our area are Rocket, United Wholesale Mortgage, and GM. I believe our tech talent lacks the competitiveness of other tech hubs. I hope the state of Michigan can take proactive steps to enhance the appeal of our state and Detroit as desirable tech locations, but we must acknowledge that we are not yet a thriving tech hub.

The tech company I work for is listed on the NASDAQ and headquartered in Birmingham, a few minutes out of Detroit - originally it was in Rochester. There is a lot of money in Michigan. The main issue I can see is that you have to be in the right circles - there is definitely a class divide in the state, and it's pretty brutal.

Yeah class divides are weird in Southeast MI.

At smaller shops it leads to a lot of hubris from management. I've worked at more than one shop where circles of UofM grads insist on outsourcing everything new and having in-house employees only do maintenance or minor features. If you didn't go to UofM your opinion is worthless.

Leads to incredibly toxic shops and terrible software.

I've seen that kind of thinking by some grads of MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, too. I think it's a minority of them, but not-unusual.

My position is, if you want a lifestyle company (and maybe a self-congratulatory echo chamber), then maybe it's fine to be a "<school> shop". But if you want to hire the best people, and be informed by a d-v-rs-ty of perspectives and experiences, then you really need to not be so insular.

I suppose that's the irony.

UoM has produced some of the best engineers I've worked with but the worst engineers-turned-managers I've ever seen as far as mindset.

Which is kind of funny since you're talking about UofM, not Stanford or MIT. It's a good school but there are literally hundreds of good schools in the US.

In my experience lots of folks educated at top top tier institutions are pretty humble about it, and acknowledge places where other institutions are as good or better than their alma mater. A coworker of mine recently got his MBA from Penn which is not only Ivy League but consistently ranked top 2-3 MBA programs in the country, and currently tied with Stanford for #1 according to USNWR. He never brings it up, doesn't really talk about it much when it does get brought up, and I don't think I've ever heard him criticize anyone's education or experience unfairly (we've sat on several hiring panels together).

The problem is when you go to a good-not-great school. If the top 10 schools for a particular program are considered "Tier 1" the people who went to #15 or #20 are going to be absolutely horrible to work with. It's like they think they need to prove they could have gone to a better school but didn't for whatever reason.

I avoided this trap by only going to small schools nobody has ever heard of.

I have refereed basketball at a very high level (think Div 1 College, NBA G-league/minor league), and in my earlier days I did a lot of junior high-level games, and I noticed very much the same, although more "vocal" with the parents than players. There seem to be three tiers:

1 - the low-level games, where it's fun, and no-one thinks it is more than it is, and everyone is generally chill. 2 - the very high-level games, where even the parents know that the last thing their kid or the team needs is them messing with the referees, etc.

But most of the issues came in between. The kids who were absolutely talented, but were never going to play professionally. But they were still well ahead of the first group. Those were the troubles, where parents, coaches, and players felt that they truly belonged in group 2, but the only thing holding them back was the referees or whatever else and had a need to prove themselves. Never has a quote been more appropriate from Top Gun, "Son, your ego is writing checks your body can't cash."

The basketball thing can be such a shit show. As a parent of a kid that fell in love with basketball, did travel AAU basketball and ended up playing for a D3 college, I've experienced parents at all levels showing their full ass.

Examples... Their coach at a rec league for 9 year olds was assaulted by the opposing team's coach at the end of the game. I've seen the cops being called to protect the refs and parents being escorted out of the game after threatening the refs. It goes on and on.

All that's to say that the steaks don't seem to matter. Folks are passionate in a disproportionate way when their children are involved.

> Examples... Their coach at a rec league for 9 year olds was assaulted by the opposing team's coach at the end of the game. I've seen the cops being called to protect the refs and parents being escorted out of the game after threatening the refs. It goes on and on.

Oh yes, I lost track of the number of times I was threatened with being met in the parking lot after a game.

We never had to call the cops to eject parents - usually all it took was "That's fine, we'll just end the game as a forfeit to the other team" before you got some poor beleaguered kid saying "Dad, just go to the car. Please."

I quit (and this was probably 20 years ago) when I reported a player for "attempted striking a referee" during a fight, when he swung a closed fist at the head of one of my partner referees, who instinctively pulled back. The league believed that calling it attempted striking (which had a potential ban of 5+ years) would be "excessive" and downgraded it to "attempted assault of a referee". My argument was that the player -was- attempting to punch the referee (caught on video and all) and that the referee's reflex in dodging the contact shouldn't downgrade the severity of the offence.

I think part of your experience with people from top schools is they know the stereotypes already exist and don’t want people outside the inner circle to use it against them.

I’ve known plenty of people from UofM who don’t talk about it either. I had a coworker get his degree from UofM. I’m not even sure how we found out, as he never talked about it, and even after getting the degree he just kept chilling in the entry level job he was comfortable in for years.

As a native (suburban) Detroiter (who departed 20 years ago), I don’t want to throw shade but articles like these rarely give a good sense of the size or scope of decades of decay. There are still miles (and miles) of apocalyptic looking neighborhoods. As a teenager, we had our pick of hundreds of abandoned warehouses to party (“rave”).

I'd love to see it flourish, and maybe if the area could get past its car addiction, I’d even want to call it home again one day.

*Removed inaccurate statement about the city’s size.

There are some serious attempts at removing the car addiction. The qLine rail goes down Woodward avenue providing a rather nice alternative to the bus systems, and the I have heard recently there are talks to expand the People Mover as it was intended when it was designed. I'm hoping that the bus systems make efforts to bounce back and start serving the suburbs better.

Were those talks to expand it post-QLine? I'd like to see it expanded, but I thought QLine kind of took over a lot of what was intended for it.

I really thought the major "rust belt" cities were going to blow up after the big COVID WFH push. Why spend 2-10x as much to live in one of four coastal metros when you could get the same pay while living somewhere much cheaper. The biggest issue with these cities in the last 50 years has been a lack of high paying jobs and WFH tech jobs essentially negate that issue.

There are a ton of American cities that have fallen from their former glory but are full of cheap housing, interesting things, and lots of history.

Shame it doesn't seem like that has panned out much.

It seems evident that people, by and large, don’t like freezing temperatures.

That and you don't get the same pay by living somewhere cheaper.

Maybe. Lots of companies don't localize their pay, or localize it based on country. Even those that do if you're comparing, for example, Pittsburgh and NYC/SF, you're unlikely to come out ahead in NYC/SF especially after you factor in state income tax.

NYC, Boston, and Toronto are still bustling. The uncertainty of work from home with RTO mandates popping up at a moments notice keep people from making the jump.

It is better to use nationwide migration statistics over large periods of time rather than selectively choosing a few metros as a data point.

As I understand, it might also simply be biology that older bodies like higher temperatures because it results in less pain.

I'll take the cold over water shortages, wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, or excessive heat any day.

I wonder if we'll see more people coming to the rust belt as the climate gets worse.

"Just move north" is a common refrain from people who don't understand what climate change means.

Could you expand on this point? Are climate refugees not expected, at least in the short term?

It's a byproduct of the naïve belief that climate change means it gets hotter (and little/nothing else), to which "just move north" is a logical conclusion. The truth is closer to climate change means more extreme weather happens everywhere, and things get hotter up until -- and here's where my knowledge of science may be much less up-to-date -- a critical mass of ice at the poles melts, and which point the temperature plummets.

By definition a lot of areas will be hit hard and some areas will be hit less hard but it's not going to be along a north-south axis.

IMO it should be called "climate destabilisation".

I see a lot more people complain about the potential of freezing temperatures than they really are bothered to do anything about it. Ive seen this same thing from many people, but using my mother as an example, she has complained about ice and snow for the past 40 years ive been around, always claimed she wanted to move farther south to not deal with it, but she never has, and has even in the past few years thought about moving even farther North because unless you enjoy winter sports or work outside, you spend most of the winter time indoors where it doesn't actually matter that much.

It is happening, but it takes time as those cities can only grow as fast as palatable housing stock comes online. The largest percentage growths in home values, with short days on market, have have been in Rockford, Akron, Fort Wayne, Lansing, etc. There is new construction in all of these markets, but much of it is from rehabbing old manufacturing buildings, another limiter, or from a mix of public and private money that city government can only consider so quickly. Economic growth is mostly in services to support the remote jobs. Building new primary businesses (sell out of local market) might never happen. So they look just as sleepy as ever even though there’s a lot of activity in housing and new transplants.

I live in Rochester NY, grew up in Buffalo. Housing markets here were nuts the last couple years, probably due to this effect (although laughable compared to SF I'm sure) and pent up demand. I'm not sure I really want it to "blow up" any more, although I'm not much of a big city guy - I like going to the same diner every Saturday and reading at home. Life is pretty good.

Yep, I know a guy who moved to Rochester metro from the NYC metro post COVID. I was kinda shocked to see the high prices of housing there.

The sun belt took wind out of their sails. And even they are starting to see softening demand. Miami just cancelled an A-class commercial high rise due to weak demand. In Austin, rents are tanking.

It’s very hard to revive a town or city when the tax base is way down. I thought Detroit was going to succeed but they simply have too much ground to manage with their revenue. And there isn’t a way to shrink a shrinking city.

Insurance premium increases have killed a lot of the housing cost advantage that Florida used to have.

And Canadians have been shedding property in droves due to high cost (USD-CAD), your comment on insurance and general antagonistic policies at a Federal level.

Why are the premiums going up? Hurricanes?

Many large insurance companies leaving Florida. Their last-resort insurance, Citizens Property Insurance Corp, is perpetually one bad hurricane away from insolvency. Well technically they cannot be insolvent but they are allowed a premium surcharge on everyone, including those who do not have their insurance.

Increasing hurricane risk yes, but also a dysfunctional insurance market. There's a business model where roofing companies will approach homeowners telling them they have hurricane damage and are eligible to receive a free roof. The hurricane might passed through years before, but any damage that was overlooked is still the responsibility of the insurance company. The homeowners are surprised to learn that their roof has damage, since they haven't noticed anything wrong (and there is in fact no damage), but free is free, so they sign the contract. The roofing company files a claim, the insurance company denies it, the roofing company sues, and since a lawsuit costs more than a roof, the insurance company backs down. Then after this has happened repeatedly, the insurance company raises their rates or leaves the state.

We did this. Hail damage. There wasn't no damage. We'd had a hail storm. But... we've had them before. The root was 17 years old at that point, and... the last storm sort of tipped things over to the "needs repair" side of things. We may have been able to leave it a while longer, but do we wait until it's leaking, causing more damage? Insurance company sent an inspector, took pics, etc. Interestingly, they denied the claims of many of our neighbors, but ours was 'bad enough' to justify replacement. This still cost us several thousand of of pocket - it wasn't like it was 'free roof!' time.

>It’s very hard to revive a town or city when the tax base is way down. I thought Detroit was going to succeed but they simply have too much ground to manage with their revenue. And there isn’t a way to shrink a shrinking city.

That's one way to look at it. The problems of decades of urban decay make these places unattractive to outsiders, so it's a catch-22.

> And there isn’t a way to shrink a shrinking city.

You could probably disincorporate parts of the city, but I assume that would require consent of the owners/residents and the county. Of course, reducing the incorporated area also reduces revenue, so it might leave you with similar revenue vs cost mismatches, but a smaller area.

The decline in rents in the Austin area is due to building more housing, according to this article:

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/22/austin-texas-rents-f...

It also stopped growing rapidly: https://www.austintexas.gov/news/new-census-data-austin-metr...

Weather is a thing, along with infrastructure.

Most companies will cut your pay based on where you live, though.

You aren’t usually paid the same. That isn’t the norm.

Secondly and probably more important is there is zero guarantees that WFH will be supported by the work places they can support it will, we have seen a huge RTO surge. I’d hate to be in one of these cities and get that call.

If WFH opportunities had legal protections and incentives it’d be a different story I imagine

Whether or not locality-based pay is the norm is an open question. Every place I've ever worked had a budget for the role and that was that, but most places I've worked only hire folks within the US who don't need visa sponsorship so that's already a smaller group than "anyone who can type JavaScript into a computer."

Would you rather live and rent in NYC and work from home for 4 years until asked to commute again, or live and rent in Detroit or Pittsburgh or Indianapolis and take that $50-400k you saved and move?

Moving is easy and if you need to move to support an RTO mandate, especially if you were hired remote and weren't local you can almost certainly negotiate some relocation assistance. It's not a big deal to move unless you have kids in school which if you went remote during COVID and had a kid basically immediately is still likely not a huge issue. Moving in middle school or high school can be impactful, moving during kindergarten or first grade is a nothingburger.

Even if there aren't location-based salaries as such, there's a lot of "ROFL, we're not going to match your Facebook offer." I worked for someone who eventually ended up with very few California employees and, I believe, eventually closed their relatively small office there.

>Moving is easy

I disagree with this. If you have a relatively small number of possessions living by yourself in an apartment, maybe. But, as you say, with a partner and even kids with an established circle of friends—and maybe a house, is definitely not easy.

Yes, in some cases location-based pay is a thing.

But $150K in Detroit feels a hell of a lot richer than $250K in SF.

Yeah, that's part of the reason I haven't left NYC.

I've wanted to leave here for a couple years but I have been afraid that if I moved to a more rural area, I'd have trouble finding work if there was ever a huge return to office, in which case I might be forced to move back to a big city and I'd have to buy a house for a lot more than I paid.

That did start to happen, but rent near downtown Detroit is >$2k/month, which pushes out most of the people that want to live there.

Generally, people like to have fun and will pay premiums to live in cities where stuff happens. Cheap housing and money aren’t the only motivators, otherwise we would have a different landscape.

That said, cheap housing/warehouse space often leads to an explosion of art and music in sufficiently populated cities.

Generally is doing a lot of work there. There are vast suburbs (including Silicon Valley) and exurbs in the US even before you get genuinely rural.

I can drive an hour into some large cities where "fun happens" although I have lots of activities around where I live too.

Housing is cheap because the job market is poor. Should enough remote workers choose to relocate to the same rust-belt city we’d see higher housing prices in that city. The challenge is that rust-belt cities are just not desirable enough for enough remote workers to reverse the decades of decline. Furthermore, there is no reason that remote workers would cluster by geography other than fear of loosing their remote job and having to return to office, so I don’t think remote workers will be able to turn the tide of the rust-belt.

>Furthermore, there is no reason that remote workers would cluster by geography other than fear

Amenities. Some things (and communities) just aren't available elsewhere. And some people just value their local identity too much to move.

> Amenities

Yes, but what amenities do rust-belt cities have exclusively, that other cities can’t compete with?

> … [Some] people just value their local identity too much.

Sure, but I assume that there just aren’t enough of these types to stop the decline of the rust-belt, otherwise we’d see more resilience of their populations.

> Why spend 2-10x as much to live in one of four coastal metros

I think you answered your own question: it’s not (entirely) an economic decision. Weather, culture, nature, civic amenities. There’s a lot in life that money can’t buy. Sure I could own a McMansion on a palatial plot of prairie, but what if the square footage of my house and acreage of my yard isn’t what’s important to me?

Being surrounded by Christian conservative Trump voters is not how everyone wants to live their life.

HN probably consists of a lot of people who are perfectly content spending their entire life looking at a screen perfectly oblivious of what is going on.

There's a major issue in American cities that is unmentionable in polite society: the so-called Curley Effect [0], named after a Boston politician who drove the old Boston Brahmins out of their city by taxing them out of town and pandering to Irish immigrants, making the city as a whole poorer. It turns out that politics is not so straightforward as to reward politicians who improve their cities: instead, a politician can leverage group (ethnic, racial, whatever) differences to reward supporters with largesse designed to render them dependent on the politician, while driving out those who, by nature of their independence, could oppose the politician. In effect, there is a substantial likelihood that American cities decay because politicians consolidate power through the kinds of high taxes and poor services that drive away high earners.

WFH workers are very independent: they could move to a city or from it with no regard for the job market. That makes them prime targets for eliminating from a city under the Curley effect.

[0] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effe...

I was really hoping for this too.

I love WFH and I hope I never have to work in an office again. I was hoping the obvious financial efficiency improvements would have made the concept stick more and enable more mobility in the US

unfortunately it looks like we couldn't get over our need for employee control even for types of work that is largely online anyways. I'm still sad that it isn't likely to grow much.

Rochester NY is seeing an influx of people driven by the high CoL elsewhere. The region's housing stock has been severely undervalued for decades. Now migrants and REITs are snapping it up for comparatively cheap causing locals to have a lot of anxiety over the rapid run up in housing costs. The region ranks high on safety from disasters and resource shortages so, in the long term, it and the entire great lakes will see more migration once the "glamour" of scurrying between air conditioned spaces wears off in the places due to become desertified or flooded.

In my experience, companies based in Michigan pay 20-50k lower and do not have staff/principal roles available. You have to find a remote role to stay competitive wage wise. Some companies are not willing to pay as much for Michigan workers as they are NY/SF/elsewhere workers, too.

I think the reality is Columbus and Chicago are growing quicker than Detroit. The relative increase here might be "buzzing" but in absolute terms, it's desolate.

Don't you think the delta in cost of living between Michigan and NYC/SF is a lot more than $50k/yr?

I live in Ann Arbor and I think you would be surprised by the CoL here. I’m not claiming sf/nyc numbers but it’s pretty close to Chicago numbers

2 bed 1k sqft condo downtown will costs you $800k-1mil

To be fair, there are also a lot of rural areas not far outside Ann Arbor that are still fairly cheap, although obviously not as cheap as more rural areas farther north.

Ann Arbor has always been a pretty unique place that pushes pricing up above normal. UofM is a large college that has lots of international draw, it holds the best medical facilities in the entire state, and have uniquely liberal laws within the city and the city itself puts an effort towards keeping out state cops. In I believe 1972 they made marijuana possession a mere $5 fine within the city, while the rest of the state would bring the hammer down on people for it, and so it was de facto legal there and the city held Hash Bash ever year since with people all smoking up in public while the rest of the state had people worried about cops finding a single seed or roach in their vehicle.

This is a pretty interesting take.

Anyone concerned with cost of living should not be considering a condo downtown. Overall the COL in detroit is around 45% lower for real estate and over 25% cheaper groceries versus new york. There will always be overpriced condos available.

Isn't everyone concerned with cost of living? Isn't there a whole game of life where we all find some comfortable CoL and salary balance?

That's why salary via CoL never made any sense to me. It should be based on how hard people want to work.

These "it's cheaper in Michigan" ideas -- yeah you can come up with a boring lifestyle that is dirt cheap. I'm just in Michigan already. It's hard to leave. I'm a global dude. I travel domestically. I invest. These things don't have Michigan prices.

It looks like the big issue with Ann Arbor is supply. I just pulled up Chicago Zillow for this criteria (1-1.25k sqft, 2 bed exact, 1+ bath, condos only, for sale not rent) and am having trouble finding one for more than $700k. Lots in the $350-400k range. Overall there are hundreds, with almost every block having at least one in the "nice" downtown area.

Leaving criteria the same and switching to Ann Arbor, I see four, with only one of them actually being downtown, for $725k (but the other three are all under $300k). I would consider Ann Arbor more expensive than Chicago, at least for this type of unit, but not necessarily because there's more demand.

A2 has surprisingly high demand for small condos. Many affluent parents like to buy them for their children while they attend UofM, or as alumni to attend college sports events (since UofM is a big sports Mecca), or as retirees to be close to campus/city activities and amenities.

> companies based in Michigan pay 20-50k lower

I think this happens in a lot of second-tier cities and it’s really frustrating. I’m currently interviewing for neuralink and they pay 30k less in Austin (which isn’t even really a second tier city) compared to Fremont; frankly I’d rather live in Austin but Fremont is more desirable with the pay boost.

Whoever thought up the line “it costs more to live here so we deserve more” was a genius. Logically you should get less if you live somewhere expensive since the companies rent and operating expenses are also more expensive, but I guess not

There's a lot of good stuff going on in Detroit. I've worked in tech in Detroit for quite some time. The NewLab building that opened a year ago next to the recently-rehabbed, stunningly-beautiful, gigantic Michigan Central, is one-block by one-block and several stories tall and an amazing innovation hub. GM and Ford are two of the largest companies in the world, and - this isn't obvious because of their main industry - each employ 4,000-6,000 tech and software engineers. Dan Gilbert is an ultra-successful, entrepreneur genius, and he and his companies support an entrepreneurial culture and ecosystem in downtown Detroit.

If you're a ycombinator type person, and you move to Detroit, you're going to live in a cool neighborhood like Woodbridge, Corktown, Hubbard Farms, Midtown, Milwaukee Junctions, etc; go out for drinks at Ladder 4, Motor City Wine, Kiesling, etc; go out to eat at Ima, Baobab Fare, Batch, etc; go out for entertainment at Spot Lite, Lincoln Street Art Park, Outer Limits etc; and enjoy all of the culture.

Detroit is buzzing because it’s gone through a complete and total deflation. Things are up because they went so far down, not unlike say… Argentina today or the rest of the US in 3-5 years.

Pretty much. At some point there is nowhere to go but up. Still, it's nice to see.

Dead cat bounce.

There is some truth to this, but i worry detroit is just doing the same thing that blew them out last time (overdependence on a small group of extremely rich businessmen that can leave at any time). Hope this works out for them, Detroit has really suffered since the automakers left (and the riots)

I interviewed for an internship at Ford in probably 2015. It was striking to me that they spent basically half the interview hyping up Detroit and convincing me that it would be a fun city to spend time in. It was clear that the company knew one of its biggest challenges to hiring was the location. Glad to hear things are improving but the reputation of Detroit still has a ways to go.

I left Michigan about 3 years ago after living around Detroit for 7 years. Tech jobs there are primarily with the Big 3, and the cult known as Rocket. There are places like Ann Arbor, but again, the opportunities are limited.

As for Detroit itself, I feel like I've seen this headline every year for the past decade. I'm not saying that Detroit hasn't made progress (it absolutely has, go visit the refurbished train station), but compared to other cities it's still lagging.

Detroit’s homicide rate as of January is about 4x the national average, 31.9 per 100k vs 7.4 nationally.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/20...

Like any city most of these would happen in easily avoidable areas and there's no reason to live in fear about it unless you're one of those people for whom it's a hobby.

"easily avoidable areas" as if criminals don't have cars?

Law enforcement is not equally distributed so criminals also avoid certain areas to commit crimes in because they know they will get caught or killed by police if they do. But that also means they know certain low population density dilapidated areas that cops (and most everyone else) avoid, where they can easily get away with crimes, because not only are there no cops anywhere near, but the few people in those areas know not to talk to the police and help them catch you because they know they have basically zero protections living in that area from retribution.

Detroit is a very expansive place, and there is basically zero reason to go into the run down dangerous areas unless you are also dirt poor or involved in criminal enterprise.

Not “like any city,” that’s the point. Other cities do have areas like that and still manage to have a fraction of the homicides of Detroit.

“It’s a revival!”

“Isnt crime still super high?”

“It’s a revival in the nice neighborhoods!”

The Detroit Exodus quickened after the racial riots.

There was a police unit enforcing the racial oppression (STRESS).

It was disbanded after a certain event: Southern Airways Flight 49 hijacking.

3 individuals, intimidated by the local Detroit government decided to take matters in their own hands: hijacking a plane (which was common up to the ~70's, since people were allowed to bring their weapons on the plane, back then the reasoning was that its more cost effective to deal with zest-for-life hijackers in the air), but not just hijacking a plane, they threatened to crash it into an Oak Ridge nuclear reactor (or more plausibly the surface storage). After a few back and forths they got a few million, some bullet proof vests and some parachutes. At some point a gun was fired and one of the pilots got hit in the arm. They tried to land in Cuba but were sent back by Fidel Castro (accepting these highjackers was figuratively radioactive), after refuel and some more flying around they tried landing in Cuba again. This time they were allowed to land, but then immediately arrested and went to prison in Cuba for ~7 years, then extradited to the US, sat in prison for another ~7 years.

Shortly after this event: the STRESS police unit was disbanded, US airports finally installed metal detectors and X-ray scanners.

According to interviews the hijackers were willing to die and were serious about the threat to crash the plane and cause release of nuclear materials if their demands were not met.

Were they civil rights activists or violent terrorists?

That is a false dilemma, one can be both at the same time.

I used to roam that city in my youth some twenty years ago. And if you told me then it would eventually be what it is today, I would have laughed in your face. I'm impressed with how much Detroit has reinvented itself and continues to grow again.

I wonder how the tariffs will affect this given how integrated Windsor is into Detroit's auto manufacturers.

I don't get to Detroit much but do live in another rust belt town in Michigan and things do seem to be looking up a bit. There is noticeable investment downtown and property values in the city limits (as opposed to the surrounding white flight townships) are rising for basically the first time in my life (though another way to say this is that housing is becoming less affordable).

There is still a long way to go though, and while I moved back from Austin once my job went remote during COVID, none of the other bourgeois high achievers from my public magnet school have done so -- as you'd expect they are all in NYC, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, etc. Brain drain is a real problem and WFH doesn't really seem to be helping.

I don't think people outside the Midwest understand what a disaster the last ~50 years have been for the industrial heartland. I don't know what the answer is, but even if it's whatever is happening in Detroit, it will be decades before these cities feel anything like whole.

Unfortunate timing for this to front page here given that Detroit and Michigan in general are going to endure some extremely rough times in the coming months and years. Detroits revival just took some direct hits.

How do you mean? A lot of things have stayed pretty consistent here over the years. What are you expecting?

Michigan's economy is tied to a lot of things that just received a tariff like manufacturing and agriculture. Michigan's largest exporter by far was Canada and 20% of the state's GDP comes from Canada, Mexico, and China imports.

Michigan relies on fast trade with Ontario. Anything that interrupts it hits Michigan hard.

Detroit and Windsor are one city, with a country border down the middle. The new tarrifs will be really bad for both cities.

I guess my question is, are all these startups going to Detroit because of the positive vibes, or are they actually getting compelling direct subsidies / credits / etc from the government?

(Not that there is anything wrong with giving or taking subsidies necessarily, but that might paint a more accurate picture of the incentives in place)

Grew up in the burbs. Downtown has transformed into a fun, walkable, thriving area. Covid took some of the wind out of the sails, but it’s still chugging along. Overall, it’s a good city.

all the apocalyptic stories about Detroit’s decay after the ‘08 collapse and one thing that stuck with me was that there were serious discussion about razing entire empty neighborhoods to deal with the fact the city was a lot smaller than it used to be.

In my area, there are a lot of communities that have also gone through decades of contraction and are now sparsely populated with a lot of dilapidated structures. It’s depressing and requires keeping around a lot of infrastructure that these areas can’t afford to support.

I’m torn between thinking a) we should raze these unusable buildings, tear out some roads, eventually revert to nature OR b) start a massive reinvestment program to give stuff away and bring in some new blood to revitalize.

> after the ‘08 collapse

Detroit's problems go way earlier than that. RoboCop was made in 1987, and by then the state of the city was already a national stereotype. Most people will say the race riots of 1967 were the turning point, but decay probably started earlier than that.

Spoiler: it’s probably not

I work at a hyperscaler, for autos, in Detroit.

It’s the worst it’s been since 2020 imo. Stella is cost cutting and just lost their ceo, ford is attached to google, GM literally just left the rencen.

The t1s are being canabalized.

This article is a joke.

Everything in that long, Guardian article is true

What is a hyperscaler for autos?

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