The median sale price on a house or condo in Detroit < $10,000

[BridgeRunner]

Detroit has a cancer and it's inoperable. Their are no bad "parts" of town, but there are still some good parts where the cancer hasn't metastasized.

Well put.

[crawdaddyjim]

Watched April Wine at Cobo Hall 1981 I think. Came out to find my friends car stripped right next to the curb. Called home and waited for an hour for my older brother to come get us. It was down right spooky watching people watch us. Watched the baddest drag race on the street ever on gratiot ave. 1969 Buick stage III against a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda. The Cuda had skinnier tires than the Buick and he had to roll off the line. The Buick was smokin fast until the Cuda got rolling. He hit the gas in second gear and it was all over but the crying. Unfortunately the guy in the Cuda couldn't stop and went through the intersection and T-boned a delivery truck. DOA.

Detroit was killing people at a high rate back in the late 70s. According to my relatives that still live around there. It hasn't slowed much. I read somewhere that the cities population has fallen below 1 million as of a few years ago. Democrats didn't kill Detroit. Unions did.

Jim

[FTA84]

"Yes, certainly, Detroit isn't That Bad at all, and when sociologists, doing multi-year studies use the words "beyond help""

Numerous cities have been described as being "beyond help" over the years.

That seems to be a rather favorite catchphrase in the urban planning industry for "bulldoze the entire thing and put in an interstate."

It's funny, though, that many of the urban areas that have been described as being "beyond help" have made rather dramatic turnarounds.

Newark, New Jersey, is in the middle of such a transformation.

Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have both been written off in the past, and both have made amazing turn arounds.

Right.  They are only "beyond help" to the extent that people want their old jobs (which due politicians buying the votes from the union, were forced to pay them way too much) to come back.  They don't realize their collective mindset (getting greedy and abusing what their parents/grandparents had set up to battle deplorable conditions) had priced their employers right out of business.  Basically, they had a handout job which paid good money for little skill, little production, and mandatory breaks. It is easier to sit around, cry and drink on welfare, than to work hard and get a real job (which will be harder and pay less).

(Before anyone gets on me, I worked union and non-union jobs putting myself through college so I have seen the difference first hand.  Getting hired at a union shop requires an in (usually a parent) but no real definable skill set. People with skills are denied because space is limited to people 'in the club'.)

I come from a town in the now called "Rust Belt" and every year politicians (Democrats mostly) come rolling in saying they're going to bring back the old jobs at the old wages.  What a bunch of lies.  There is hope to turn around a city but little hope to bring back steel/auto jobs.  One has to create new jobs and new industry much as Philly and Pittsburgh did.

[taurusowner]

The only non-shiaty parts of Detroit are the parts where truckloads of $$$$ have been poured into them to make it attractive to outsiders who don't intend on spending much time there.  Yeah you have the Casinos, the Red Wings and Pistons, the Auto Show, and Super Bowl XL.  But these are the only things outsiders see.  It's all centered in a small area of Detroit that has been deliberately painted over to make people think Kwame was doing good.  Before Super Bowl XL particularly was when it was most obvious where Detroit expected tourists to go, and where they didn't.

So yes there are some "good" parts.  But don't pretend that they are naturally good.  They would be just like the rest of Detroit if not for the efforts of Kwame and his gang to make things seem better than they really are, for the sake of tricking outsiders into thinking the city isn't ruined.  He basically devoted 99% of the cities resources into "fixing up" 1% of the city.  The rest is a burned out crime ridden husk.  And it's very obvious where one ends and the other starts.  You can go from Motor City Casino and all of it's flash to what looks like Somalia in 1 city block.  It really is that bad.  I only live 20 minutes from Detroit.  If it really is that big of a deal to APS, I can grab a battle buddy from my Guard unit who also has a CPL, and go drive around with a video camera to show you what it's like.  I won't go there alone though.  At least another guy, both of us armed is the minimum.  I even go out of my way to drive around Detroit to get to some of the better haunted houses this time of year.  It's not hype.  Detroit really is like little Mogadishu.  And Kwame was pretty much Aidid.

[BridgeRunner]

C'mon now, Detroit   was pretty messed up, and had some ok spots whitewashed over, long before Kilpatrick. Archer was a brief respite.

[taurusowner]

I know.  But Kwame is responsible for the most recent, especially all of the Super Bowl XL fiascos.

[roo_ster]

Is Detroit worse than other major cities?  Why?  Too heavily-dependent on a now-sluggish auto industry? 

I was just looking at a French map of the Tsushima Strait, and found out what "detroit" actually means.  Very fitting.   

Just like there are failed countries (Haiti, Somalia, etc.) there are failed cities.

Detroit surely looks like one of them, given the data.

For instance, it has lost half its population since 1950 (1,850,000 to 917,000 today).  In that same time, Atlanta has increased its population by 60% and Dallas by 300%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas

I dunno, but if you have to develop terms like "urban prairie" to describe what is occurring when entire neighborhoods have been bulldozed, I think something is more amiss than in your average big city.
http://detnews.com/specialreports/2001/elmhurst/thulead/thulead.htm