
Detroit is Dying… Quickly  - cwan
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/23/detroit-is-dying-quickly/
======
ssharp
As a lifelong resident of the Rust Belt, stories detailing its deterioration
are hardly new, sadly, so these stories aren't of particular interest to me.
What I do find interesting are the people who are sticking around, trying to
rebuild the city they grew up in. Although these stories are rarer (and
riddled with narcissistic entreporn fodder for INC magazine and its ilk), they
do offer some hope.

This article mentions that Pittsburgh has also seen significant decreases in
population over this decade. Pittsburgh is often used as the model city for
rust belt rebirth. They were the big player in steel, lost the steel industry,
and were able to rebrand themselves. They are considered by most to be the
most tech-friendly city in the rust belt. I'm sure a lot of that has to do
with the fact that Pittsburgh did a better job in attracting businesses
outside of steel when they still had the luxury of steel.

Having Carnegie Mellon doesn't hurt either. Most cities in the Rust Belt
cannot worry about attracting talent because they are hemorrhaging talent.
Instead these cities have to focus their attention and resources on retention.
With CMU, Pittsburgh gets the benefit of bringing in some quality students who
may stay within the community after graduation.

------
mfarris
The US Census version of "Detroit" is the area within the city limits. It has
been "dying" since since the '68 riots, due to a combination of white flight,
decline of manufacturing, and subsequent decline in retail, services, and
civic engagement. All of which leads to more people leaving -- often going
just 5-20 miles, into the suburbs.

In real life, to most southeast Michiganders, "Detroit" is a much larger area
encompassing dozens of neighboring suburbs. That Detroit continued growing
into the late '90s. The effects of the economic downturn were visible there
long before the big 2008 crash (mostly in housing prices and boarded-up
storefronts on suburban main streets), but its overall population decline has
been much less dramatic than 25% in 10 years.

The "dying" talk is overblown. Cities ebb and flow. Manhattan in the 1970's,
anyone? This is a very low ebb for the Detroit area, but it'll come back. All
the way? Probably not -- being the central hub of a world industry was a bit
of a historical fluke. But there's a foundation of engineers, designers, and
other educated white-collar types -- along with the vestiges of a blue-collar
middle class -- to build upon.

When I moved to Los Angeles ten years ago, the Hollywood area was a wasteland.
So was downtown. Old Town Pasadena was gang territory. Echo Park is where you
went to get shot. Now all of those areas -- and many dozens more -- are
bustling and in various stages of gentrification.

~~~
arepb
It's overblown until we get the 2010 data for the tri-county Metro Detroit
area. In 2000 that pop was 3.9M. If it rose in the last 10 years I would be
very surprised. BTW I am a former Oakland County resident.

~~~
mfarris
I, too, would be surprised if the Metro Detroit population rose, based on what
I've heard from friends still in the area. But I'd be even more surprised if
it declined by 25%.

Not saying that the area's not in trouble. It is. But the difference between
"in trouble" and "dying" is significant.

------
shasta
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_profile_of_Detroit>

~~~
dog_dog
he's implying that black people are killing detroit. Look at the population of
whites to blacks from 1820 to 2000.

~~~
mkr-hn
That was my assumption, but also why I asked for clarification. I try not to
take the worst possible interpretation as truth. But if that's the case, I
would just point out Atlanta. It's half-black and doing fine. So it'd be silly
to claim.

"Blackness" seems like a poor metric for economic vibrancy.

~~~
dog_dog
When I moved from Europe to America, my neighborhood went black. White flight
seemed to kill all the businesses around my neighborhood. The "Blackness" of
an area can't be ignored but it doesn't account for Detroit's problems.

~~~
baguasquirrel
America has "black" problems that Europe may not have.

~~~
shareme
look Europe has a problem in accepting non western cultures, lets not enter
into that useless debate here on HN..

~~~
baguasquirrel
Europe does. But I realize the way that I put it was not constructive.

There is no debate. In Europe, they have a problem of communication between
classes. In America, we have a problem of communication between communities.
One society is not better than the other. That is same tired old "debate" that
we should avoid here.

------
evo_9
...Or possible Detroit is the first of many American cities to go through an
as yet unpredictable transformation. Stories like this discount the
potentially positive effect this kind of 'reset' can have on a city. Let's
face it - Detroit had lost its way a long time before all this economic
turmoil sent many of us in a tailspin.

But of course sensational headlines like this get the most attention.

~~~
billybob
Yeah, I heard a story this morning saying that Detroit now has enough empty
space that some other large cities could fit inside it.

The first thing I thought was "what a great opportunity to create parks and
greenways!" Even if they don't have the money to develop them right now, the
land will be super cheap. Doing some of this and announcing plans for more
would surely draw some business and development. "Look, you can have offices
here, and workers can ride their bikes through a forest from their homes!"

~~~
arohner
I know you're trying to be positive here, but this is one of my biggest
sticking points when talking about Detroit.

The collapse of detroit is a catastrophic failure in what is supposed to be a
well-run country. There's no real consensus on what went wrong and how to fix
it, and worse, most people don't really seem to care.

In some neighborhoods, house values have dropped to $300. "Enough empty space
that some other large cities could fit inside it". With that kind of exodus
and drop in value, you'd think there was a Chernobyl there, but there wasn't.
Just a completely unexplained failure of management.

So yeah, parks and greenways are great, but don't overlook the massive failure
that allowed that. Chernobyl is now an amazing wildlife preserve.

~~~
prawn
I don't think I'd be the only person outside the US to be thoroughly intrigued
by the opportunities provided by $300 houses. I'm in Adelaide (AU) which is
about as far from anywhere in the world as most places and house prices here
are crippling.

I know a $300 house is going to be a shithole in the middle of nowhere but you
could buy 1,500 of those shitholes for the land value alone of one place in a
mid-range suburb here!

Does anyone else dream of buying up a suburb, fencing it off and creating a
CoD Nuketown-style paintball arena?

~~~
danteembermage
$300 plus $4000 per year in taxes, that's the real story here

~~~
mkr-hn
That's equal to $333/month in rent. It might not be such a bad deal if
utilities are reasonable.

~~~
mkramlich
Rent and utilities are only part of the story. I'm reminded of that old saw
about what are the most important factors in real estate:

1\. location

2\. location

3\. location

Location effects many important things, including the number and quality of
neighbors, what sorts of things happen after dark, and generally what will be
considered "normal" in the local culture. You can change a lot of things about
a property after you buy it, do a lot of fixups, remodelling, heck even
totally tear down and build up a new house on the land. But you'll have a much
harder time changing the sorts of neighbors and larger community you'll have.
Especially over the short/medium term.

~~~
prawn
When the house next door is also $300, I can quickly become my own
neighbour... ;)

------
markkat
Great link-bait headline, but nothing more than the census numbers. I'm in
Detroit. I just ate lunch at Slows, which was packed as usual. Detroit goes as
does manufacturing, and the last decade was harsh. However, the city has
increasingly more to offer, and it is coming back in bioscience, tech, the
arts, and manufacturing, automotive and non-automotive.

The city might look like rock-bottom to outsiders, but something is brewing.
In 5 years, the headline will be 'is Detroit making a comeback?'.

~~~
blhack
I actually think Detroit is about to see a _huge_ resurgence. From what I
understand, there are a lot of young, artist-type people moving there right
now, which is _exactly_ the type of people I think Detroit should be trying to
attract.

~~~
jeffepp
This is true, many college grads and creatives are moving into the city. In
addition, Quicken is moving their entire company downtown.

There are also some great incentives to live in the Midtown area, which is
home to Wayne State University.

~~~
swaits
I think you're referring to Quicken Loans. Intuit, developer of Quicken
software, don't seem to have any presence in Michigan.

~~~
jeffepp
Yes Quicken Loans, is known as Quicken around here. I am sorry if that was not
obvious.

------
kenjackson
_In 1960, it had the highest per-capita income in the U.S._

That's striking. It's almost hard to imagine that the city could have been so
strong in the past.

~~~
jeffepp
Why? The city was HQ to the 3 auto companies. Oakland County, in the "Metro
Detroit Area" is still one of the nicest + wealthiest counties in the Country.

It was in the top 5 a few years back, I am sure it's gone down a few spots
since then.

Check out this video, pretty cool referencing the rise and fall (and rise
again): <http://vimeo.com/11021663>

~~~
baguasquirrel
Does anyone else here this and then think about Silicon Valley?

Maybe it's just paranoia...

~~~
rmason
I've long maintained that Detroit was the Silicon Valley of the first half of
the twentieth century. It was where enterpreneurs that wanted to make things
settled.

My dad tells me stories of when he was a little boy in the twenties when the
city was the best place on the planet to start a company and it was just
bristling with entrepreneurs.

Sadly the city lost its way but it's starting to get it back. The destruction
of Detroit is the easy story for the media however and the city's rise isn't
being widely reported.

~~~
SwellJoe
"the city's rise isn't being widely reported."

Where is the evidence of its rise?

I'm honestly curious. I plan to buy a plot of land, maybe a house, somewhere
in the next year or two, and Detroit has been in consideration because of its
incredibly low prices (I don't plan to live there full-time; I live in a
motorhome and travel, but it'd be nice to have a plot that I own and know I
can always go park on for as long as I like if I feel like settling somewhere
for a month or two). Detroit has a cool history, in terms of music. But, it
also seems to be a bad investment, right now...no matter how cheap something
is, it can always go lower, and Detroit seems to still be trending downward.

~~~
rmason
If you want to get a taste watch this video series: <http://bit.ly/aO1wFm>
There are a lot of entreprenurial groups and funds that just weren't there
twelve months ago.

If you want a more boots on the ground feel attend Maker Faire this summer.
I've spoken to some of the O'Reilly folks who were very nervous about last
years Faire and were quite simply in their words "blown away" by Detroit in a
positive way. Tim O'Reilly compared the Henry Ford museum to the equivalent of
the Louvre.

Houses in Detroit are already selling for $1, How much lower can they go?
Chinese investors are snapping up hundreds of houses. Locals are even buying
them and flipping them to outsiders.

[http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/17/rtr.detroit.opportunity/ind...](http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/17/rtr.detroit.opportunity/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)

You have to decide for yourself if that sounds like a market that can still go
lower.

~~~
SwellJoe
"Houses in Detroit are already selling for $1"

Where can I find these one buck houses? Hell, I'd pay at least twice that.

Seriously, though, the lowest prices I see on craigslist right now, in the
city, for an actual house, actually for sale, is $9900. Now, I'm not one to
complain about a $9900 house on a reasonable chunk of land, but this one
happened to have a gang tag on the garage door when I looked it up on google
maps.

Sure, a can of paint is only ten bucks, but I can imagine a $9910 house going
down in value. And, I don't want to park my motorhome in a place where it'll
get vandalized...it costs a hell of a lot more than ten bucks to repaint a
motorhome.

But, let's assume I come to Detroit this summer (I've been considering it) to
look at houses. Where should I be shopping? What neighborhoods are centrally
located, and coming up rather than going down? I kinda imagine the ideal
neighborhood would be one filled with old folks. Old folks usually take pretty
good care of their houses, they don't spray paint gang signs on garage doors,
and they're mostly likeable mind-their-own-business sorts of people. A lot of
the best neighborhoods in cities I've lived in have been older neighborhoods
with older residents, that became hipster neighborhoods as the old folks
passed on. That may just be selection bias...just the neighborhoods I liked
and have seen grow (like East Austin, or the Montrose in Houston).

~~~
detst
I'm not the most qualified to comment on this but I'll offer what I can:

In the city proper, I don't know that the 'old folks' thing will work well.
The old folks still in Detroit in decent neighborhoods will not be areas with
the cheap houses you are looking for (yes, there are some really nice areas in
the city). The others probably left for nice areas outside of the city.

You'll probably want to look where the current wave of young people are moving
to. I really don't know what these areas are but I'm sure you can look some
up.

Midtown, with Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center, is
probably a good area. Don't know too much about it but Tech Town[1] is at WSU.
They are offering incentives to get employees to move and live in Midtown. I
don't know that you'll find any super cheap housing there.

You could also look somewhere like Ferndale. It's just on the other side of 8
mile and maybe a 10-15 minute drive from downtown. You won't find the super-
cheap $300 houses but you can find a really good deal. It's a nice, young,
liberal town just on the border. It's also next to Royal Oak, a little more
expensive area where you'll find a lot of young professionals. So that covers
centrally located, safe and cheap, not super-cheap, but also not in Detroit
proper, which also means lower taxes (as far as I understand).

I guess it all depends on your motivation. Finding something super cheap,
centrally located and safe will probably be difficult.

[1] <http://techtownwsu.org/>

~~~
SwellJoe
"In the city proper, I don't know that the 'old folks' thing will work well.
The old folks still in Detroit in decent neighborhoods will not be areas with
the cheap houses you are looking for (yes, there are some really nice areas in
the city)."

I don't mean "old, rich folks". East Austin was poor, mostly black and
hispanic, and crime-ridden for decades before a resurgence began in the early
00s. But, a lot of the residents are still old folks who've lived through the
whole process of decline and rebirth. Houston experienced white flight, and
then began to recover in some of the older neighborhoods surrounding downtown
(as far as I know downtown Houston is still a graveyard at night, and may not
be fixable because there is no housing, the ground level streets are non-
porous and have no shopping or nightlife). Same story, lots of older home
owners that never left; their kids were grown when white flight happened, so
they didn't feel as compelled to follow the good schools or were too poor to
move or just didn't want to leave their home and stubbornly stuck around.

But, the rest of your answer is awesome, and is exactly what I was looking
for. I don't actually need a house to cost $1 to consider it a good deal. But,
it would take a really good price to get me to buy property in a place with
weather as bad as Detroit. Hell, the place is unlivably cold six months out of
the year, as far as this Texan is concerned. But, I'd consider buying to have
a cheap summer parking place in a cool and interesting town, and if it happens
to come with a house built in the 40s or 50s that I could renovate a bit,
that's gravy.

~~~
detst
Just thought of someone that might be a good contact for you to help scout out
the area: Emily Doerr. She's opening a Hostel in Detroit. She's young and
seems to be passionate about the city and bringing others in. I read an
article about her in the Detroit Free Press but can only find a picture
gallery on their site now.

Other people you could get in contact with are those doing urban farming.

Links:

<http://iamyoungdetroit.com/index.php/2011/03/emilydoerr/>

[http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=C4&Date=...](http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=C4&Date=20101214&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=12140803&Ref=PH)

<http://www.modeldmedia.com/devnews/hosteldetroit110910.aspx>

<http://www.facebook.com/HostelDetroit>

<http://twitter.com/hostel_detroit>

<http://www.hosteldetroit.com/>

------
jeffepp
There has never been a better time to invest in Detroit. I believe we have hit
bottom. Billionaires are investing in the city again and we have competent
leadership for the first time in decades....

Detroit is within 90 miles of about 6 major Universities, the lack of talent
argument is lame.

~~~
tjsnyder
I'm not sure. There are sparks happening right now in Detroit but it's going
to take a lot more entrepreneurs and businesses than Slows to revitalize
Detroit.

SE Michigan does have one of the highest rates of engineers in the country.
It's great for manufacturing but Michigan needs more business sectors. As it
stands, Ann Arbor is the only tech hub in the state and even then, plenty of
talent is leaving for Silicon Valley.

~~~
jeffepp
There is a lot going on in the West Side of the State. There is an incubator
<http://momentum-mi.com> and we are having a Lean Startup Conference
(<http://leanstartupmi.com>) there as well.

In Detroit, I am helping with FutureMidwest (<http://FutureMidwest.com>) and
FundedByNight (<http://fundedbynight.com>).

There are a lot of Michigan ex-pats so to speak, it's a matter of showing them
we can create a tech community (that unites AA + Detroit) and get then pool
our resources.

------
blhack
Here is an awesome documentary about Detroit that was made really recently.

<http://www.palladiumboots.com/explorations>

It made me want to move there. It also plugged omnicorp, which is a pretty
cool hackerspace located there.

------
cschmidt
There's a beautiful photography book called the "Ruins of Detroit" that
conveys this:

<http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html>

~~~
billybob
Wow. That is really cool.

------
olalonde
Wow! I had no idea Detroit was only 10.61% white. Is this an exception case in
the U.S. or is this kind of ethnic disproportion common across cities?

~~~
minus1
This can be somewhat misleading for someone who isn't familiar with Detroit.
When people say 'Detroit', they often mean the sprawling metropolitan area of
the city of Detroit and the surrounding suburbs. The Detroit metro area has
4.4 million residents. The _city_ of Detroit has only 700k. This article
refers only to the _city_. And yes, the city has very few white residents. It
is overwhelmingly poor and black.

It's not unusual, in the U.S., for urban centers to have a high minority
concentration, but I believe this is much higher than most major cities.

------
saidulislam
I wouldn't say it's "dying". It has been bad but it's time to get more
efficient and maybe that's what the city is trying to do. Also, not all of
Detroit is that bad

------
BenSS
'Consolidating' is probably a more apt descriptor. Much of the outer sections
are sparse and neglected, but other people have noted it still has an active
core.

------
bravura
According to friends, you can buy beautiful houses in Detroit for $100 a pop.
It's the Warren Buffet strategy. Buy long.

~~~
jerf
What concerns me (and I would appreciate comments from people who may know) is
that I might be buying something with a great deal more than $100 in
liabilities for cleanup or something. There's no fun in buying ten houses for
$100 each if in five years you incurs thousands of dollars of obligations each
to bring them up to some code or become liable because someone trespassed and
died there or something. Even for a house in Detroit this is ringing my "too
good to be true" bells; if it were just a fun thing to buy and see increase in
value I gotta think it wouldn't have been that cheap in the first place.

------
Ainab
look the trend Detroit, Cleveland, ... this is the result of shipping jobs to
china. I bet, bay area will loose 10% of its population by 2020.

~~~
mikepmalai
Actually those jobs in Detroit/Rust Belt are moving to the southeast.

Southern states are offering tax breaks, state funding to train workers, low
cost labor pool, low rates of unionization, etc.

~~~
_delirium
As an explanation for the rust-belt as a whole that seems inaccurate; the
south today is not nearly as industrialized as the northeast was in its
heydey. Certainly the steel industry, one of the dominant industrial sectors,
has not moved to the southeast, which has almost no steel industry; it's done
a mixture of just shutting down entirely, and moving to China. The automotive
industry is closer to being accurate, though I don't think the number of
automotive jobs created in the southeast is actually particularly large,
certainly nothing on the order of the change in Detroit's population.

