Detroit by Air | Hacker News Reader

Detroit by Air

nytimes.com

209 pointsprostoalex96 comments

Detroiter who works at a tech startup here in the city: great bit of photography and a really interesting message, but there is one notable absence in the contrast between the haves and have-nots is in the city of Detroit. There's a huge wealth gap between Detroit and the surrounding suburbs, but there's a pretty big one in the city as well.

There's plenty of investment and activity happening in the "Downtown Development District" than the surrounding neighborhoods, which were hit the hardest from population decline. There's plenty of money and attention that goes to typically young and white tech startups that have recently located (myself included) while other (typically minority) entrepreneurs are left out of the narrative of the "rebirth" of Detroit. It's a lot about race, politics, and access to capital, but it's going to be readily apparent in a few years which areas have been given preferential treatment from state oversight (and tax-write-offs) and local investment.

It's a lot about race

You just made it about race, but really it's talent pool and demographics and education/skill levels. If a software group moves to downtown Detroit, it seems destructive to hold that as a negative, as if having some bright spots is somehow a negative because that software group doesn't hire the pipe fitter with the a grade 7 education.

No. The story of Detroit's decline and it's comeback has been about race for decades. Talent pool, education, demographics, and skill levels in Detroit are a function of race, which dylanbox has experienced first hand and shared.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit#Race_and_ethnicity

The context of this discussion is the "rebirth" of Detroit, not race riots or the 1950s. If Detroit's rebirth is a high-skill, high-tech industry, the exclusion of many Detroit residents has everything to do with skills and education, and absolutely nothing to do with race.

Quoting Wikipedia: "Detroit remains one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States."

This is about today, not about the 1950s. The rebirth of Detroit depends in part on the racial conditions that led to today, and the racial conditions we have today.

"De facto educational segregation in Detroit (and by extension elsewhere) was legally permitted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974).[42]"

How do you expect skills and education to have nothing to do with race when Detroit's education system is bounded and defined by race?

This is an absurd extrapolation. By this definition we can say that literally everything is "a lot to do with race". Is that useful?

If true, then yes, it's useful to note, and to say.

One thing you definitely see is the problem with professional networks. They're pretty racially divided. You walk around the tech hubs in Detroit and you'll find that one is primarily white, and another primarily black. Networking events are often pretty similar. I don't think a lot of the lack of hiring of minorities in Tech Startups in Detroit is anything malevolent, but more a product of a lack of awareness of people who exist outside their professional networks. There are a number of great colleges in the Detroit area (Wayne State, Lawrence Tech, UofD Mercy) but I've rarely seen people get hired out of those colleges and into the tech startups around town. It's often the interpersonal networks which tend to align themselves around the race and class of the person hiring.

tl;dr It's not about racism, but about personal networks that often align with race

It also heavily depends on the customers you are selling to in Detroit. Basically all state/local government agencies and a large percentage of big local business have "minority owned business" preferences written into their purchasing process. As a result, you'll find a number of small shops whose sole purpose is to be owned by a minority and then subcontract out jobs to other companies who might not otherwise be able to compete for those contracts. Alternately, I've encountered companies entirely staffed by non-minorities but the company is "owned" by the wife of the CEO who happens to be Asian or whatever.

Michigan has a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) certification process to attempt to reign in some these shenanigans (used by MDOT for road construction projects) but I still see this sort of thing all over the place.

I'm not sure about numbers of those business, so I can't really speak to how prevalent that is, but I'd imagine that sort of fraud is pretty small in both number and dollar value compared to the higher-profile and the larger tax breaks given to the Ilitches and the like. There just isn't the same amount of money going to minority business owners/neighborhoods vs. white business owners/white(r) neighborhoods in a city that is 92% Non-white.

My younger brother recently graduated from college and got a software development job in Detroit. It's nice to see pictures that provide a feel for what Detroit currently looks like.

From what I've heard, there is a trend for bootstrapped startups to move to Detroit to take advantage of the low cost of living. Unfortunately the lack of public services in some places is scary, but it seems like things are improving post-bankruptcy.

Off topic question - i've seen the phrase "bootstrapped startup" at lot, but am unsure of it's meaning. I'm familiar with the web-template 'bootstrap', but not sure how it sets one startup apart from another. Does it mean that they are they funded and out of "stealth mode", or that they specifically use the bootstrap template (meaning low cost, potentially unfunded)?

Refers to a startup that is funded by the founders and from reinvesting the profits of the startup, rather than funding from angels and VCs. It comes from the term bootstrap used in computing.

I think it may actually be from the idiom "to pull yourself up by the bootstraps" meaning to succeed depending solely on yourself: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pull_oneself_up_by_one%27s_boo...

That is precisely where the term comes from in computing. A computer that is booting up is starting itself up.

That sounds risky. Chances are, someone who's good at what they do isn't going to want to move to somewhere like Detroit, so they are going to have to replace staff. Sure, salary there is probably a pittance, but the talent pool for any skilled work would also be small.

Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans is trying to make Detroit into the new SV. I'm a comp sci student in one of the upper middle class suburbs of Detroit and I'm tempted to get a job with them and move to the city. The downtown area is very nice already and Quicken Loans will pay you something like 20k if you buy a house in the city limits and a much smaller stipend monthly if you rent an apartment as opposed to commuting.

Hm, I will have to break one of my rules regarding leaving personal matters outside of HN, but I absolutely loathe Quicken Loans.

I recently wanted to refinance one of my properties. I work in tech but have a degree in applied mathematics, with an emphasis on financial engineering.

During the call the quicken loans agent said everything he could to make the sell. Once I got the paperwork in the mail and went over it closely I was furious. Every single thing he said was a lie and every number was way off. He kept trying to spin it as my misunderstanding and later as his missing a small detail.

Needless to say I went with a different lender and am happy with my loan. Overall, however, I would say avoid Quicken Loans at all costs.

Oh I have no idea on how they are as a loan provider, but I have heard very good things from many people in the area about how they are as an employer. I'm sure it's possible to be a great employer and terrible loan provider at the same time.

Detroit seems to be turning the corner at the bottom of a decades-long economic slide, but there are also some interesting long-term environmental trends that I think bode well for it and many smaller rust belt towns. Most pressingly, a lot of those towns are directly on arterial waterways and receive copious amounts of rain. So you get extremely cheap transportation of goods, and you also just have a water supply in general.

There may have been a great migration to the Southwest over the last 40-50 years, but it's hard to picture a scenario where that area's ecological budgetary chickens don't come home to roost at some point. Then, Detroit and other communities like it become significantly more attractive.

One major issue for Detroit, assuming it can emerge from bankruptcy and state management, is how to provide reasonable levels of services to a vastly-reduced population density. Other Michigan cities (like Flint) are facing similar issues.

Check out https://motorcitymapping.org and http://report.timetoendblight.org/ - good ways to see the scope of the problem.

Totally. Their in-the-ground infrastructure was built to serve a completely different kind of population. I'm just thinking even longer term.

This Planet Money episode[1] does a great job painting a picture of the back and forth between residents having their water shut off and finding ways to turn it back on.

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/08/08/338068996/episode-...

> "assuming it can emerge from bankruptcy and state management"

Assuming? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/05/detroit...

Edit: I'm downvoted for pointing out that the exit is all but finalized and thus "assuming" is an unnecessary qualifier?

I didn't downvote you, and your point is valid. Relevant: http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/12/governor...

So some good news!

I haven't read much on plans for restructuring the city and the various city services once all the vacant structures are removed. Anyone else?

> is how to provide reasonable levels of services to a vastly-reduced population density.

You don't. Populations shift, and Detroit has clearly lost that battle. Sure, it may be a "rising tech hub", but most people aren't going to move to Detroit for a job if they can avoid it.

Incentivize residents to leave sparse housing for more dense housing near the core, raize the old properties, and explore urban farming. Cheaper then attempting to maintain a vast network of infrastructure for a dwindling population that can't afford it already.

Those blocks with one or two houses are so weird. Looks like sim-city.

The Packard Plant caught my interest so I looked it up [1]. Most of the plant is structurally sound: Renovations started in October to turn it into a mixed use art / manufacturing facility [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Automotive_Plant

[2] http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/demolition-and-rehab...

You might find this interesting:

http://vimeo.com/39346092

Detroit was hit very hard by the 2008 real estate collapse. Here's a blog showing pictures before and after. You can see a stretch of houses that were occupied and doing fine in say 2006 and just a bare stretch of ground five years later.

http://goobingdetroit.tumblr.com/

The city of Detroit was in a financial crisis back to at least 2004. I believe that it was the 2004 Census that put the city below 1M people, which lost them a lot of Federal dollars.

It's reasonable to look as far back as the 1970s/1980s when the net population of Wayne+Oakland counties stopped increasing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_County,_Michigan#Demograp...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_County,_Michigan#Demogr...

The decline didn't quite start then, but the drop in population is certainly one of the big contributing factors.

A few random thoughts reading this as a St. Louisan. Similar views can be had here:

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6349498,-90.2105613,1547a,20...

That same neighborhood from the ground:

http://instagram.com/p/qZ9CXbhAXu/

Also, noticed some tags that are present here, too. For example, the REFT in that shot of the Eastern Market District. Here's one from St. Louis:

http://instagram.com/p/vMiNSnhAT-/

As a local, it is encouraging that what the pilot sees from the air, I also see from the ground:

> From the air today, the decline appears to be slowing. The spaces once covered in rubble are cleared and mowed. Open green spaces, along with new community gardens and orchards, look almost bucolic against the downtown skyline. From my plane, I sense the potential for resurgence in these areas.

> I think that the inner ring of Detroit will win out in the long run, as cities are and will continue to be the greenest places to live on a per-capita basis.

It is really, really hard to bring a city back from this, but it is happening here.

As I live in Australia, to see a city like this in such a state is saddening. Of course, everyone has heard stories of Detroit's issues but to see them so starkly pictured is pretty confronting. What's the current economic state of Detroit? Is it still in decline or is there reason to be optimistic?

The city government is just beginning to emerge from bankruptcy, so there is some hope there. But they still have a chicken and egg problem: the city has to provide a reasonable level of services to attract businesses and their workers, but they need the tax base to provide those services. What the solution to that will end up being is anyone's guess.

That was my assumption. It appears Detroit could potentially be reliant on a wealthy entrepreneur to take a "leap of faith" or have a third party offer some sort of financial incentive to encourage businesses back. I'm not too well versed on US law but is the federal government able to help in this vein?

Dan Gilbert is likely that wealthy entrepreneur [1]

Also, it is worth noting that the suburbs surrounding detroit include some of the wealthiest in the country. There is certainly an investor base

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Gilbert_%28businessman%29#D...

Detroit will recover due to its history as a hub. It is a cheap place to live that has direct flights to Europe, Asia, South America, and almost any city in the US.

Also, Detroit has plenty of wealth. It just all sits in the suburbs. The article even shows a mansion in Grosse Pointe and another with 23,000 square feet in West Bloomfield. These people are definitely executives at businesses in the Detroit area.

Yep, and that's what puts Detroit in a better position than Toledo or Youngstown.

And the double-problem is that given the pictures, they clearly have 5-10 times more streets, sewers, electric poles, to maintain than they would have with a compact city.

A good map to sum this up:

http://detroitography.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/detroit_po...

They've lost an additional 250k people since the year 2000 as well, so just add to the misery.

Yes, looking at the pictures, I couldn't help feeling sorry for all this immense infrastructure going to waste.

That is definitely a huge problem. If the city had money, I wonder if it would be efficient in some areas to try to buy out the remaining residents so that they could essentially "shut off" entire neigborhoods.

> so that they could essentially "shut off" entire neigborhoods.

Just to add to the complications: they'd almost have to–due to either social pressure or environmental pressure–demolish the streets/poles/etc as well, else they still pose a maintenance requirement and an eyesore.

I was born there. It's sad, but hopeful.

The "Renaissance Center" (celebrating the rebirth of the city) was built in 1980. The last 34 years, I've heard stories of the "inevitable rebirth" of the city.

It's just so sad. For 34 years, a few people are hopeful while the city still declines.

Detroit has so many good things going for it: An international border. A water trade route to the Atlantic. More fresh water resources than any other state. Rail lines that are well connected to Chicago and the East Coast.

What's really sad for me, personally, is the realization that for so many other challenges, like the CA drought, Global Climate Change, etc, we need tons of capital and work. But IMO, for Detroit to get "fixed", we just need a change of MIND (which can be more difficult than getting sustainable energy, but seriously, could change in 1 day, for free, if we had MLK Jr. type people on the ground).

So, in short, it's people's minds that are killing Detroit. We desperately need to change minds there. In Silicon Valley, all races collaborate, live & work together, and we thrive. Please let's try to export that culture to Detroit soon.

"Detroit has so many good things going for it: An international border. A water trade route to the Atlantic. More fresh water resources than any other state. Rail lines that are well connected to Chicago and the East Coast."

TIL Detroit would be an awesome capitol city in Civ V.

But...how much do those things matter in a modern world?

I think I agree with the basics of your assertion about racism playing a role in what's wrong with Detroit. But, I think you have rose-colored glasses about Silicon Valley. There is class warfare happening in the Bay area, just like in every major city, and poor people of color are coming out with the short end of the stick.

In SV, it's less about color, and more about education. Yes, that's IMO, not fact, OK? But, seriously, I've worked with 1,000+ people in Silicon Valley, and >50% of them are not white. So, Indian, Chinese, and other "colors" can be extremely prosperous here. The market doesn't care about "color", as much as their education, passion, and collaboration. To raise people out of poverty, it is more about attitude than physics. The attitudes in Detroit are far more toxic than the minor class warfare in SV.

> To raise people out of poverty, it is more about attitude than physics.

Actually, it's just about money.

So, what about hispanic and african americans?

There's a world of difference between the kids brought up to choose between pre-med and pre-law, and kids brought up to stay away from the cops.

Those two ideas aren't mutually exclusive. Education is the way out of poverty. America provides more opportunities than most other countries.

> The attitudes in Detroit are far more toxic than the minor class warfare in SV.

Currently live downriver from Detroit - I disagree that the attitudes are more toxic. We have yet to have protests in front of our busses (then again, we don't have very many buses, and the 'mugger mover' only goes in a circle). Unfortunately racial tensions still exist (especially when you leave the downtown area), but anecdotally I believe things are getting better.

  But...how much do those things matter in a modern world?

I think they're going to start mattering a lot more in the future. The drought in the west is likely to continue to get worse. Water isn't exactly abundant in many cities in the south and west, either. Other metro areas that are built on endless sprawl like Phoenix or Atlanta are in trouble when oil gets expensive again (and it will). They have no natural resources and no strategic reason to exist. Detroit does.

Detroit has the same sprawl with no public transit issue as Phoenix, and unlike LA, Dallas, Miami, etcetera, isn't doing anything to fix it. If it's about water and natural resources, along with an urban environment and car-free lifestyle, Chicago is really the only place to be.

> So, in short, it's people's minds that are killing Detroit.

Or it's people like you who grew up there and decided to abandon it.

Do you still live here as well? And to what version of MLK Jr do you refer -- some sanitized and vague liberal hallucination, or the radical Christian egalitarian he was?

A lot of things have hurt Detroit. Include corporate malfeasance, changing labor markets, political corruption, bad planning. But I beg you to clarify if you must insist it is minds.

You were born in Detroit, or in the suburbs, like me?

(And I don't mean born at Sinai Hospital and then taken home to the suburbs).

> But IMO, for Detroit to get "fixed", we just need a change of MIND (which can be more difficult than getting sustainable energy, but seriously, could change in 1 day, for free, if we had MLK Jr. type people on the ground).

Yea, care to explain?

- In Silicon Valley, all races collaborate, live & work together, and we thrive.

I'm a Detroit-area native here, living in the Bay Area for over a decade. I once had the same impression about the Bay Area - that it had figured out harmonious race relations. In fact, it was one of the things (in addition to the tech industry) that drew me out here from Michigan.

But I have come to the realization over the years that it was an illusion, and beneath the surface are actually highly economically/racially segregated zones (SV/E.PaloAlto & East SJ, Central SF/Bayview, Oakland Hills / Flats, etc). All these are juxtaposed by signifiant race and class divisions (I'm speaking in aggregate, we all know plenty of individuals who are exceptions).

I'm always surprised at how unwilling many folks in SV are to acknowledge the historical racial dimensions the of current inequality crisis in the Bay Area.

I attribute a lot of it to well intended idealism that is uninformed (as I was) about the tumultuous racial history of the Bay Area, which included many of the same factors as Detroit: white flight, inner-city disinvestment, corrupt governance, manufacturing decline, division/destruction of communities by freeways, and suburbanization.

Detroit is the perfect microcosm of the US wealth polarity trend. Only a few miles from the "ruin porn" live suburbs like Bloomfield Hills - which has the fourth highest income out of any suburb in the US (1).

I'm hopeful that the Retroit movement (2) finds traction with young entrepeneurs. There's certainly a cachet that the city has within the popular imagination. Just look at what foreign vodka companies are doing to cash in on Detroit's "authenticity" (3).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_i....

(2) https://re-urbanization.squarespace.com/

(3) http://www.mlive.com/business/detroit/index.ssf/2014/08/ourv....

I think every major city has the wealthy suburbs nearby like that, industries grow and the wealthy owners leave the cities for more space. Bloomfield Hills is ~20 miles away from Detroit. LA's rich and poor cities are much closer than that, and in NYC it's practically neighborhood by neighborhood with the absurdly wealthy cities farther out.

Substitute Grosse Pointe for Bloomfield if you want an extraordinarily wealthy suburb within single-digit miles of deeply poor neighborhoods.

> Detroit is the perfect microcosm of the US wealth polarity trend.

Au contraire, Detroit is a perfect microcosm of absolutely abominable government and culture. Sure, this has led to wealth disparity, as anyone with the means to get out, has. But the root cause is awful governance.

So you realize that "anyone with the means to get out" of Detroit started doing so 1968ish after the riots, and it in fact is what caused the population and economic decline of Detroit?

One really did come before the other, and it was the exodus of white people (followed by the auto companies) before it was the collapse of the city or any accusations of 'abominable government' (and 'culture', what?).

It's kind of just what happened.

They only left when the politicians forgot their job and instead served to stir up resentment and worse. They served themselves instead of the people, Detroit like many similar cities is an example of where politicians and government employee unions put themselves first before the citizens. However unlike cities like New York the money ran out.

Politicians have learned to use diversity to drive a wedge to keep and gain more political power. The divide us, hyphenate us, and make victims, all so they can keep their power.

I'm not from Detroit so would it be possible for someone to provide references to any claims? People are just offering opinions. Having watched the news all my life, all I saw was that Detroit followed the auto industry, which did well when big cars did well.

There were riots in Detroit in 1967, as in many American cities in the late 60s (Detroit's was actually one of the first of that trend). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot

A white exodus from Detroit immediately followed. You can see in the wikipedia decade-by-decade population statistics that Detroit's population loss began between 1960 and 1970, and continued -- and further, with the racial breakdown, that the population loss was almost exclusively white people, with the black population actually continuing to rise through 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit

Although, in fact, you can see in the figures above that white (but not black) population of Detroit had actually already started to drop between 1950 and 1960, it accelerated significantly, and amazingly quickly, after 1967.

Here's a good popular article on the history of race relations -- and white disinvestment and abandonment -- in Detroit, blaming white abandonment for Detroit's current distress. http://www.epi.org/blog/detroits-bankruptcy-reflects-history... I strongly recommend this short readable article.

Coleman Young, the first African-American mayor of Detroit, served as mayor from 1974 to 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman_Young

As that wikipedia article says, "Young's tenure as mayor has been blamed in part for the city's ills, especially the exodus of middle class taxpayers to the suburbs, the emergence of powerful drug-dealing gangs, and the rising crime rate." The accusations you see in this thread of 'government mismanagement' began with Young's long tenure. Whether they are right or wrong (I'm not a huge fan of Young myself), in fact white flight (which is the entire nature of Detroit's population decline, as the wikipedia demographic statistics show -- black population continued to rise for decades as Detroit's overall population plummeted) began long before Young's election, so can't be a response to any mismanagement from Young's administration.

Shivetya's claim that "They only left when the politicians forgot their job and instead served to stir up resentment and worse," is typical (and is typical in being about race while avoiding using racial words; 'abominable culture', oh? Sadly, I don't think he means an abominable culture of white supremacy. 'stir up resentment', eh? Gee, what could black people in Detroit have had to be resentful about, unless it was artificially 'stirred up'? I suspect people saying such things feel similarly about Ferguson) -- but gets the order of history of wrong. I suppose you could blame Young (or subsequent black mayors) for not managing to reverse the disinvestment trend (although, then, the U.S. auto industry started shrinking and what was left leaving municipal Detroit, which was going to be a problem no matter what; although the fact that the auto industry too increasingly moved to the suburbs is actually part of the 'white flight' story) -- but it's simply a historical fact that the disinvestment trend pre-dated black control.

If the people in this thread blaming bad municipal government really mean pre-1967 white municipal government they should say so and explain what they mean -- but generally the people making these arguments (with barely coded racial terms) mean the post-1974 Coleman Young administration -- but by the time Young took power, the white exodus was already massive, which is what led to his election in fact.

Nobody's gonna read this tldr post in deeply nested not highly rated part of this comment thread, but you asked, so I give you what you ask for, cause this shit pisses me off.

Well I read it. The situation in Detroit sounds remarkably similar to the situation in Memphis. Instead of race riots sparking massive white flight, we had desegregation and busing. Immediately, there was a huge exodus to the suburbs. Within 5 years of busing, Memphis had the largest private school system in the country. .

Interestingly, Briarcrest, which is the private school in Memphis that "The Blindside" is based on, is a Southern Baptist school founded immediately after busing. Its legacy is one of overt racism, which I thought was nicely whitewashed in the movie's narrative of white saviours rescuing Michael Orr.

Additionally, Memphis' first black mayor, Willie Herenton was mayor from 1991 to 2009 and has had much of the city's slide blamed on him. The extent of his influence on that is arguable, but there was certainly a great deal of mismanagement that happened under his watch. We've had some reinvestment in our downtown, but we've still got lots of problems.

Yep, it is a common situation in the U.S.

Detroit's mismanagement goes back long before 1967. It goes back at least to the 1920s and very likely much farther than that. The success of the auto industry in the area just papered over those problems for a long time.

Similar to Oakland. Everyone knows Oakland is full of riots and crime and whatnot. Not everybody knows it completely encircles Piedmont, one of the richest cities in the country. It's all a matter of drawing lines.

Grosse Pointe is extremely wealthy and literally a stones throw from some very rough neighbor hoods of Detroit. I live in a middle class suburb of Detroit and my family and I will drive up and down lakeshore drive every christmas admiring the extravagant light displays that the rich folk put on. You can immediately tell when you have left Grosse Pointe.

A lot of it actually looks really nice, almost like it's in the country or a very small town. If they can keep tearing down the completely blighted areas, it seems like they can actually turn it into something quite pleasant.

I was also struck in the same manner by the green spaces. They seem like a plus, but the tax base resulting from such a low density population does lend itself well to running city services.

They seem like a plus, until you see the remaining houses up close. They are usually in terrible shape, and decent ones are targets for crime in a city where emergency service response is often measured in hours.

A recent Jim Jarmusch & Tilda Swinton film, Only Lovers Left Alive, was set partially in a decaying Detroit mansion as the perfect home and city for ancient vampires wanting a quiet home. I found it an interesting commentary on Detroit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Lovers_Left_Alive

I saw Alex MacLean (the photographer) give a talk about his aerial photography in at the lincoln library last century. It was great, not only are the images great, but he takes time to explain why they are significant. From the air is an interesting way to analyze.

He's got more on his website:

http://www.alexmaclean.com

We see a lot of the most blighted areas, but out of curiosity: what's the best neighborhood inside Detroit city limits?

There are probably seven or eight nice neighborhoods in Detroit. If I was to pick two it would be Indian Village or Palmer Park which both have their own private security 24 hours a day. Big well kept houses with narrow streets.

A few more better than average would be downtown, Corktown, N. Rosedale, S. Rosedale (where I grew up)and Sherwood Forest. I tell people to think of Detroit not as a big monolith but as a series of villages, some are OK to visit and others are to be avoided at all costs.

Midtown is doing well now as well. Lived there for three years and just visited again for the first time in 6 months or so for Noel Night. I saw a handful of businesses there that had all been established since the time I moved out. Lots of stuff to do, and it's pretty safe. Response time from the WSUPD is just a couple minutes, and they take calls for a few mile radius outside WSU's campus. http://www.livemidtown.org/ is a decent marketing site with more info on it.

It's interesting that Indian Village, Palmer Park, and Midtown all benefit from a police force alternative to Detroit PD. I wonder if there are other services like this? I would assume private schooling would be common, but what about things like public works?

There is Navut[0] for Canada and Neighborhood Scout[1] for US to answer that.

[0]: http://www.navut.com/finder#/metro [1]: http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/mi/detroit/crime/

Have there been proposals following this bankruptcy to split Detroit out into sub-"cities?" The actual definition of a city is somewhat arbitrary. In Australia for example, the official "city" unit that manages municipal services is actually not Melbourne or Sydney it's smaller units usually encompassing a population of 100k or so.

The division of responsibilities between federal, state and city is different but I think the takeaway is that while "Detroit" is a geographical and cultural unit, it doesn't mean it has to be a municipal one.

Maybe such a change of paradigm would be helpful here. The thought of rehabilitating a new entity comprised of suburbs, but not the downtown (or via versa) might be a less daunting task. It;s easier to move the needle.

Bankruptcy seems a good time to do something like this.

I tried to understand the law on this a bit during a previous discussion. In Michigan, cities are established by a municipal charter. That charter can more or less only be amended by a vote of the people living in the city.

I think would be very difficult to make such a proposal that did not end up drawing economic lines (in some sense, such lines are natural). People on one side of such a line would be strongly incentivized to oppose it. So it's likely to be impossible politically.

For any radical community building idea (like a cult or a commune) Detroit poses some interesting possibilities.

It seems like an urban acreage with a bunch of houses or other buildings could be bought for the price of an average house. I'm imagining some sort of new age Amish colonizers.

EDIT - This was kind of a joke. But after writing it, I actually think it's it's an interesting idea for some sort of kibutz-ish urban village project.

You may be interested in reading Bolo'Bolo by P.M. or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Widmer

I've taken a lot of inspiration from this for future plans.

I was just talking about the potential reinvigoration of Detroit this morning, because of this NYT article from yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/arts/galapagos-art-space-w...

This is a really unique, innovative venue for the arts that has been operating in Brooklyn for almost 20 years. A long time for a venue to exist in NY, and a testament to their founder.

They are headed to Detroit because of how high rent has become. If Galapagos can recreate what they had done in NY, it's a real win for the area that they are moving into.

Brush Park features in a lot of those photos (just up from Ford Field and Comerica Park).

There are beautiful historic buildings with great swaths of vacant land. It's a designated historical district, so the city is making it tough for a layperson to buy a lot. For example, all available tax foreclosed lots in the area were removed from the treasurer's auction.

I suppose they're trying to prevent ugly condos being built, but then you get a situation like this where an area very close to downtown is so sparse.

I can see cars, buildings,greenery but I could not see a single person in any photo. Why is that? Why there are no people on roads?

Is this the new model of urban decay? There is a large trend towards urbanism, but not every city is a winner.

The Economist recently published a contrarian article claiming that suburbs are the real winner on a global scale.

Interesting. Link? I see some suburbs winning and some losing but don't have an aggregate view.

http://www.economist.com/suburbs

Of course - how obvious. :-)

Who mows the lawns on the empty lots?

No paywall: https://archive.today/nbdzT

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