Detroit

[THE HCP]

I don't quite know where to start. This isn't a new topic by any means. I love architecture, and am always checking out websites and reading articles about it. Found one on the city of Detroit, Michigan. Started digging and reading about what is happening to this place. It is basically a third world country within our borders!

It's the only major city without a major grocery store chain. People have to go to the suburbs to buy food. People are planting gardens in abandoned lots to grow food. RIGHT IN DOWNTOWN DETROIT!

There are so many dead bodies turning up in these old run down buildings and so few cops and paramedics that they sometime go years without being found.

I was wondering if any of you are from there or have any knowledge on what went down and why this can be allowed to happen in the United States. It's like a post apocalyptic town. They said the city is filing for bankruptcy.

Just can't believe it.

 

[Natebishop3]

We allowed our companies to take their work overseas to China, India, etc.

Blue collar towns like Detroit lost all their work.

 

[Further]

I don't have any answers for you, but I'll be flying into Detroit for Halloween. My sister lives in a smaller town 45min away called Plymouth, a very charming town that's thriving. I won't spend anytime in Detroit proper. I have driven through and gone to a couple of bars in decent areas, but just gettting to those bars is freaky, passing blocks without electricity, I drove past one house that had a hole in it you could drive a van through, I have no idea how that happened.

It's sad as hell. I heard that there is 49% illiteracy in Detroit. Those that had the means to leave have left. Those that remain are broke and lacking marketable skills. That's a big generalization but you get my point.

 

[porkchopexpress]

There is a whole foods going in pretty close to downtown, so I'm sure there are other grocery stores somewhere. I was there last fall and they were building it. It was right next to some big hospital. Across the street from the hospital was a nice coffee shop. 3 more blocks and it was...abandoned projects.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

Dude, where have you been? This is old news.

You can buy a 2000 sq ft house for like, 500 bucks there.

 

[porkchopexpress]

btw, that abandoned train station is pretty neat to check out. You can't get inside without hopping a fence though, so i didn't get a real good shot of it.

 

[Natebishop3]

Dude, where have you been? This is old news.

You can buy a 2000 sq ft house for like, 500 bucks there.

Shit, I'd just buy a whole block.

 

[porkchopexpress]

This was the oddest/scariest part of Detroit that we saw. It was a whole neighborhood that is abandoned and turned into...art. We drove into it, not knowing what to expect. I thought we were driving into a horror movie, ha.

I only spent part of a day in the city, but it seemed like there was some attempted at a revival going on. That coffee shop would have been at home in Portland (was better than any I've been to in San Diego for sure) and there was a big farmers market that we walked through that was pretty good. It was just in between these nice spots were blocks and blocks of empty projects that need to get torn down.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

Shit, I'd just buy a whole block.

Right? However, apparently all the houses have been stripped of anything that can be sold, so they're basically just frames. Also there are sometimes dead bodies in them because people can't afford to have their family members processed when they die, so they just leave them in abandoned houses.

 

[mobes23]

Actually, I think a lot of the problem in Detroit goes back to a couple Supreme Court decisions involving desegregation in schools. If I remember right, one decision basically said that desegregation in schools needed to be viewed broadly across a metropolitan area and the view couldn't be restricted to the Detroid city limits. In other words, HCP might've been bussing to Lake Oswego under that approach. If that approach had held, there likely would not have been nearly the amount of white flight problems in Detroit. Instead, another case followed (just looked it up and the case was Milliken v. Bradley) and the US Supreme Court held that you had to handle desegregation in the city limits. In short, HCP might dump Grant and ride the bus to Cleveland High, but he couldn't live his dream of being a Lakeridge Pacer.

The impact of this decision was that anyone with money (largely white, but not all white) slowly but surely took off for the suburbs. Other cities in the 70s had similar problems on a smaller scale, but Detroit was ground zero for the impact of the decision. I won't ever forget my first and only trip to Detroit...I went to one of the last games at old Tiger Stadium and was there for the weekend. HCP does not exagerate when he says it feels like a different country...it's like you'd stepped into a post-apocalyptic world or something. As I was leaving town, I was in a cab and the cabbie asked where I was from. I told him Seattle and he said, "Well, you don't live IN Seattle but near it, right?" He couldn't believe a city existed where people chose to live in the city instead of the suburbs. I mentioned the CEO of Starbucks lived in the city and he couldn't believe it.

Like everything, the truth is more complicated than my summary, but I think it's basically right. Hell night and other things have happened, but I don't think Detroit would be where it is today if not for those court cases.

 

[THE HCP]

It's just sad to see those amazing mansions that all the GM bigwigs lived in.......now just abandoned and falling apart.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/for-sale-5-br-detroit-manse-8995/

5 bedroom/3,500 sq ft.......$8,900

 

[THE HCP]

10s of thousands of stray dogs...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/29/us/michigan-detroit-stray-dogs/index.html

 

[THE HCP]

How can they fix all this shit?

 

[THE HCP]

He's one way......bring in goats!

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/09/goats_in_detroit_councilman_ex.html

 

[Natebishop3]

Right? However, apparently all the houses have been stripped of anything that can be sold, so they're basically just frames. Also there are sometimes dead bodies in them because people can't afford to have their family members processed when they die, so they just leave them in abandoned houses.

Blood is thicker than water...

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

White flight.

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

 

[jlprk]

Why doesn't the City just allow successful bordering suburbs to expand across the city borders, and incorporate the land into the thriving suburbs? This could be done over many years, a few blocks at a time.

 

[mobes23]

Artists and hipsters with not much cash (looiking for a cheap start) need to move in and make it cool and quirky.

 

[Draco]

Well if I get a bunch of guns and body armor and bullet proof glass would I be safe there? Hmm I could probably save enough money in the next few months to retire in one of those mansions.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Artists and hipsters with not much cash (looiking for a cheap start) need to move in and make it cool and quirky.

Hipsters don't really touch black neighborhoods until the blacks move out to follow the whites and mexicans move in to take their place.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

more on white flight/detroit

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...713628_1_white-flight-riots-first-black-mayor

 

[mobes23]

Hipsters don't really touch black neighborhoods until the blacks move out to follow the whites and mexicans move in to take their place.

Huh, they do in Seattle, but maybe that's just Seattle. On the other hand, you're maybe assuming an LA model. Unless it's change since I lived near the Great Lakes, there isn't nearly the hispanic population going on there.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Very little police, lots of abandoned buildings and creepy people.

Dexter would have relocated here instead of Oregon. A serial killers paradise!

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Huh, they do in Seattle, but maybe that's just Seattle. On the other hand, you're maybe assuming an LA model. Unless it's change since I lived near the Great Lakes, there isn't nearly the hispanic population going on there.

replace mexicans with white trash I guess then.

Black neighborhoods are not up for gentrifying, hence, hipsters won't touch them until there is black flight starting and rents/property values start going up. They are still too dangerous for the "kill whitey" phenomenom.

 

[THE HCP]

How about this homeless person they found....

Sent from my baller ass iPhone 5 FAMS!

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

There was actually a few concerted efforts to "hipsterize" detroit the last few years. From making sustainable urban farms to documentaries and the like.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I'd be down for an urban farm there, if safety and weather weren't issues.

 

[DaLincolnJones]

the numbers are staggering

"The suburbs continue to grow, but the population of the city itself has plunged from a high of 1.9 million in 1950 to 710,000 in 2010, with the non-Hispanic white element falling from 816,000 to 56,000."

"The 1970 census showed that whites still made up a majority of Detroit's population. However, by the 1980 census, whites had fled at such a large rate that the city had gone from 55 percent white to only 34 percent white in a decade.

Economist Walter E. Williams writes that the decline was sparked by race-based city policies which caused more affluent whites to leave the city (sometimes known as "White flight"), reducing the tax base, and leading to fewer employment opportunities and customers in the city.[11] The departure of middle class whites left blacks in control of a city suffering from an inadequate tax base, too few jobs, and swollen welfare rolls.[12] According to Chafets, "Among the nation’s major cities, Detroit was at or near the top of unemployment, poverty per capita, and infant mortality throughout the 1980s."[13]"

A major change in the racial composition of the city also occurred over that same period; from 1950 to 2010 the black/white percentage of population went from 16.2%/83.6% to 82.7%/10.6%.[24] Approximately 1,400,000 of the 1,600,000 white people in Detroit after World War II have left the city, with many going to the suburbs.[25

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 50 largest cities in the country, Detroit has the highest unemployment rate, at 23.1%.[26]

According to Detroit officials in 2007, about 65 to 70 percent of homicides in the city were drug related.[39] The rate of unsolved murders in the city is at roughly 70%.[40]


I could go on and on...the place is a wasteland

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

http://www.fastcompany.com/1571975/demolishing-density-detroit-can-farming-save-motor-city

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

In the last decade that city has lost 25% of their population. Like New Orleans, only worse.

When do other cities (Portland?) start to try and steal one of their pro teams?