
Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving - rmason
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/30/us/detroit-come-back-budget.html
======
dizzystar
Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and so on got absolutely destroyed
after all the mills were shut down.

The bar for reviving is incredibly low. Those that could leave, left. The very
people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the
same people who left.

Detroit has UM, Cleveland has Case Western, Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon
which are all top-flight schools. In a strange way, they all have great local
resources, but these are all, culturally, working class blue collar cities,
and there is really nothing wrong with that. These cities ought to do better
to embrace that identity.

I'm from Cleveland. The city was fighting hard against the impending collapse
by building out the Rock Hall, rebuilding the Browns stadium and discouraging
the Dog Pound, along with and other things to make it more like a major city,
ripping out the soul along the way. When LTV steel went under, the dominoes
fell one after another, which destroyed the day and night life of the flats.1

Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and
eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers
in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they
are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while
holding each other's calloused hands at the alter.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's,
and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3
beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until
they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while
holding each other's calloused hands at the alter.

Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowadays, "working-
class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-
collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor
as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure
how much I can do about that.

~~~
SquirrelOnFire
>Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if
"working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which
designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be
rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that.

Maybe by pointing to blue collar work that still pays well. A buddy of mine is
an auto mechanic and is the sole income earner for his family. They do just
fine in St Louis (another city like Detroit and Pitt). Another friend of mine
is a pipe fitter for gas pipelines who works 3-6 months a year and earns
~150-200K depending on contracts. Spends the rest of the year surfing and
diving.

Trades do, in fact, make money. Pay attention to how much you spend next time
you call a plumber.

~~~
mbesto
> Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber.

Anecdotal, but the average quote I got for electricians in the bay area was
$200/hour. This is also consistent for electricians in the wealthy suburbs of
Chicago (just had a friend recently get work done at that price). I recently
paid $2k to get a transmission done, of which $1700 was labor alone (took 3
days).

Point is - these trades are no joke when it comes to earning income,
especially if you're talented.

I'm a serious proponent of promoting vocational jobs. Even in an "AI world"
you're still going to need mechanics. Basically anything with moving parts
needs labor.

~~~
TomMckenny
Where did that $2k come from? While it's nice there is some way to
redistribute wealth in this way, unfortunately service sector jobs don't
create wealth: you can not have a city solely of repairmen and realtors.

Less skilled factory work would generate wealth, but unfortunately those are
the exact jobs that left.

~~~
ghshephard
If you have a $35,0000 truck with a blown transmission, then your repair-
person just created $35,000 - $2,000 -
whatever_that_truck_would_have_worth_as_scrap_parts.

Electricians, Plumbers, Roofers, Drywallers, auto-motive repair to some
degree, are the one who actually create/repair/restore the only physical
infrastructure that actually matters. My Twitter, Facebook, Instagram could
all disappear, and it would probably have no (real) impact on me. But take
away electricity, water, roof, walls, transportation - I'll notice within a
few minutes.

In my mind, those are the people who create _real_ wealth.

~~~
derekp7
I think what the parent poster meant was if the whole town is filled with
service providers, their customers must also be from the same local area. But
if there are no other jobs for those customers to work at (to bring outside
money into the community), they won't be able to afford those services. Local
trade with each other (mechanic selling services to an electrician, the
electrician doing work for a roofer, and the roofer putting a new roof on the
the mechanic's workshop) falls apart when you don't have money flowing into
the area from outside (i.e., building trucks to sell to people in other
cities).

Edit: After seeing the downvotes on the parent post, and a couple similar
ones, I think people are reading "creating wealth" vs. "not creating wealth"
as value judgements on the people in those industries. Whereas in this context
I think they mean in the purely economic / accounting sense, similar to "cost
centers" and "profit centers" in businesses. Without profit centers, the
business would crumble, but without the value that the cost centers bring to
the business, the profit centers wouldn't be able to function.

So just like Silicon Valley needs to find a way to not price service workers
(janitors, mechanics, etc) out of the area, other places need the same healthy
balance of money flowing into the area along with a local economy to
distribute that money around.

------
rayiner
Weird that the article does not cite a single economic or demographic
indicator to support its assertion. For example, Detroit's population has
declined so far this decade at about the same pace as it declined from
1990-2000 (though not at the disastrous pace it declined from 2000-2010, when
the city lost a quarter of its population). Sounds like far from a revival.

~~~
Bartweiss
This is a pretty weird article, without some kind of further support it really
smacks of a manufactured narrative.

As you say, the population - which the article insists is the key factor -
shows no sign of recovering. It's simply ceased the plummet it was in during
the economic crisis and preceding years. The rate of decline might be a bit
slower than the 90s, but the second derivative is still 0. (If you made me
offer a theory, I'd say 2008-2011 prematurely drove out people who would
otherwise have left more gradually.)

I also noticed the line " _Dreams of a house for a few thousand dollars seem
like an old memory in some areas, where buildings can list for more than a
million._ " The phrasing is circumspect; it carefully avoids saying that there
are actually specific areas where home prices have gone from thousands to a
million, and equivocates oddly between houses and buildings. Detroit was never
_all_ impoverished, and I have a sinking feeling that this sentence is
comparing the current prices of Downtown Detroit to the past prices of
northeast Detroit.

Certainly there are some bright spots in Detroit, the city's budget is less
disastrous and the projects in bulldozing, resettlement, and urban forestry
are a fascinating experiment. But all the evidence I can see says that a plan
for Detroit which depends on a rising population anytime soon is basically
doomed, whatever the changing look of the city.

~~~
_rpd
> This is a pretty weird article, without some kind of further support it
> really smacks of a manufactured narrative.

On the other hand, an article like this can contribute to the hoped-for
revival. The media has considerable power. It seems ungenerous to criticise
them when they use it for good, manufactured narrative or not.

~~~
passivepinetree
What? It's absolutely fair to criticize the NYT for manufacturing a narrative
regardless of intention. That's just dishonesty. It's not reporting, it's
creating a story, regardless of if you think what they're creating is noble or
not. If it's not lying to the public, it's pretty damn close.

------
SlowRobotAhead
Detroit is an odd place.

For years of going there for work it was tough to find locally owned
restaurants in favor of chains, it’s do-able but you might end up in weird
places like a polish restaurant literally in the basement of a house a few
blocks off Woodward.

The people who identify with Detroit really do so. There is at first an
inexplicable pride of being “from the D”, but it’s nice, there are really
diverse art scenes, I’ve had great food, and really most people are quite
friendly for being eastern half of the country.

It’s an odd place.

~~~
hpcjoe
Mario's[1] for excellent Italian food. Xoxhimilco[2] for excellent Mexican
food. Antonio's[3] in the burbs. New Peking[4] in GC for excellent Chinese
food.

I've lived in Michigan 30 years now. Came here for grad school, first at MSU,
then down to Wayne State for Ph.D. Never left.

There is something about this place. Even when we are getting the crap kicked
out of us ... we don't give up.

It took a long time to get rid of most of the corrupt city management. Some
are still there, and the city council are generally throwbacks to the bad
time.

Detroit school system is still ... crap. Private and charter schooling is
doing a great job of fixing that, giving parents a choice, and forcing the
schools to compete for students. This helps.

There are many other anachronisms throughout the region and state. Some of
these are quaint, some of them are incredibly frustrating, off putting, etc.

If we could only attract more money to the area, this would be a great place
to form small companies seeking to be large companies. Low burn rates/costs.
Lots of talent that wants to escape the autos, and other failed regional
initiatives (life science corridor anyone?). Ann Arbor has a nascent/tiny
startup scene. Should be bigger.

[1]
[https://www.facebook.com/detroitmarios/](https://www.facebook.com/detroitmarios/)

[2]
[http://www.xochimilcorestaurant.com/](http://www.xochimilcorestaurant.com/)

[3] [https://antoniosrestaurants.com/](https://antoniosrestaurants.com/)

[4] [http://newpekingusa.com/](http://newpekingusa.com/)

~~~
jacquesm
> Private and charter schooling is doing a great job of fixing that, giving
> parents a choice

Free private schools?

If not they are giving parents that can afford it a choice. Just like wealthy
expats tend to place their kids in good private schools in poor places because
they can afford it.

As long as education isn't good for everybody it's just another way to stack
the deck.

~~~
sremani
I would be really interested what you did with your kids'(if you have any)
education.

Tell us what you practiced.

~~~
jacquesm
They went to public schools where ever we lived.

~~~
sremani
Thanks for sharing. My kid is not yet at school age, but even though I live in
suburbia which is good ISD, people are sending their children to Charters. At
some level its a status thing, but for me I am for charters for one reason,
because I do not believe in one-size-fits all education.

To be honest the gap between public schools in good ISD and charters is in the
eye of beholder and mostly subjective.

------
werber
I live less than a mile from my job downtown, and ended up hospitalized this
winter while walking home because the city still doesn't take care of the
streets (let alone the sidewalks). The downtown core and some adjacent
neighborhoods (Corktown, Midtown, Lafayette Park, Brush Park, Cass Corridor,
among a few others) are rapidly changing, but it feels like outside of the T
shape that those neighborhoods make ( [https://mogodetroit.org/system-
map/](https://mogodetroit.org/system-map/) , the bike share system doesn't
extend outside of this) you're in a completely different city. When I go for a
walk at night and there isn't a weekday sports event, the downtown is still
incredibly quiet and mostly empty. I have this constant nagging guilt about
the revitalization of Detroit being for people like me (young white tech
professional) and not the people who stayed and didn't give up on the city,
because I had no faith I'd ever be back a decade ago. The artsier people I
know are already moving to the edges of the T into places like Hubbard Farms
and the North End, and it feels inevitable that people will be displaced by
the "rebirth".

------
walrus01
I am really skeptical of the financially strapped detroit city government's
ability to maintain water and sewer services to many of the mostly razed
blocks. People who own hosues that are the only remaining occupied, in good
condition residences on entire city blocks may need to be prepared to go fully
off grid in the future. The tax base just isn't there to support the scale of
the city's street, sewer and water infrastructure anymore.

From an ISP perspective: very sparsely populated areas are also going to see
the cable TV company (DOCSIS3.0 or DOCSIS3.1 based cablemodem internet) and
POTS/Copper phone line ILEC (ADSL2+, VDSL2) ISPs abandon or neglect their
infrastructure. It does not make economic sense to maintain an aerial coaxial
cable plant and DOCSIS3.0 CMTS systems throughout a region of a city that has
only a few houses per block. Expect to be required to DIY your own internet as
well.

------
curiouscat321
I grew up in the Metro Detroit area and moved out to the coasts after
graduating from Umich a couple years ago.

There’s more excitement around Detroit than I’ve seen at any point in my life.
As somebody from the suburbs, my family would actively avoid Detroit unless we
were going to a baseball game.

That’s changed. There’s many great restaurants and downtown feels more like a
real city.

But, all of my friends still left the state. If you’re college educated,
there’s a 60/40 chance you’ll leave Michigan right after graduation. Even
worse if you graduate from UMich, which is scary since it’s the state’s
flagship university.

The white-collar jobs are there, but they can’t compete with the jobs in other
parts of the country. I graduated CS and I can’t name a single friend that
didn’t move to the west coast. Even after the COL differences, you still come
out ahead by leaving the state.

I want Detroit to grow and I’d love to move back. I just need some solid jobs
to attract me back.

------
jessriedel
What are the economic indicators that things are looking up? The place is
still losing population as of last year, and it's not even clear if it's
slowing down.

[http://www.dailydetroit.com/2017/05/25/detroit-continues-
los...](http://www.dailydetroit.com/2017/05/25/detroit-continues-lose-
population-according-new-census-data/)

(2016 appears to be the last year census data is available.)

~~~
trisimix
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/07/10/detro...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/07/10/detroits-
startup-scene-is-exploding/amp/)

~~~
jessriedel
OK, that just says that the number of VC-backed startups in Detroit went from
23 to 35. This doesn't tell us much about Detroit as a whole.

------
helipad
I lived in Brush Park and still walk through it on the way to Tigers games.

What's interesting about the handful of Victorian restorations is that there
are large apartment buildings behind built around them, sometimes directly
adjacent.

When they were being restored there were green vacant lots around, within a
couple of years they could be in the shadow of the new buildings.

In walking through the neighborhood, I wondered if I'd move back there. I
doubt it. It's still a bizarre city where there is very little downtown
shopping, eerily quiet to walk around, almost no grocery stores. With the new
bars and restaurants popping up, everyone said they wanted to live there, no-
one I knew actually did it.

------
dopamean
I make several trips to Detroit each year (entirely music related) and after
every visit the voice in my head that says "move to Detroit" get's louder and
louder. The place is definitely still having a rough time but it feels so much
more promising over the last couple of years and I'd love to be there
permanently. Just have to convince my wife...

~~~
wpietri
For those in tech, I recommend checking out TechTown Detroit:

[https://techtowndetroit.org/](https://techtowndetroit.org/)

A former colleague from decades ago runs it, so I visited it late last year. I
was really impressed. They are very interested in enabling all sort of
entrepreneurship in Detroit, including that of the tech kind.

For personal reasons, I'm pretty tied to San Francisco. But if I were starting
a new business, I'd look hard at Detroit. In 1998, SF/SV was the heart of
something new and different. But the Internet's success over the last 20 years
means that much of what was then specialized local knowledge is now available
everywhere.

Michigan's universities produce a steady stream of graduates; UMich Ann
Arbor's CS program is well ranked. For hiring established talent, being able
to actually afford a house is a big draw, and for those not tempted remote
work is getting ever easier. There's plenty of educated non-tech labor; you
could open a customer service center there or in one of many medium-sized
towns nearby for prices that seem ridiculously low.

I think the only real drawback is that the shiniest VCs seem very reluctant to
invest in companies that aren't in shiny places. But given what a devil's
bargain VC money is, and given how much of it goes right into shiny-place
prices, I suspect that many could have better odds of long-term success by
taking money with a local or long-term focus.

------
trisimix
Hi I'm from Detroit, I love seeing my city talked about. A lot of people are
claiming decline of residents as a lack of proof of revival. Heres a
counterpoint:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/07/10/detro...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/07/10/detroits-
startup-scene-is-exploding/amp/)

Detroit is spectacular for many reasons. We have retained and nurtured our
resources from before the decline such as our art museum, libraries and ISPs
(not the consumer ones). In the midst of our decline for some reason downtown
detroit developed some kind of renaissance, despite the decline people decided
to cling harder to things like the eastern market, architecture, and art. We
are full of things like artistic movie theaters, plays, public displays,
interesting cuisine, and startups. Yet you will not find a theater showing
avengers, or a traditional supermarket until you get to around dearborn. There
are also many quirks in the worse parts of Deteoit, a huge spread of people
instead of concentrations, and many people taking what we have left behind to
make something. I have visited every major city in the US outside of
california and New York and I have never seen anything like detroit. We have
somehow through disparity been blessed with the ability to be almost
meritocratic, the amount of opportunities and equality In have experienced
coming from a lower class, and the genuine people that remain is what I
imagine to be higher than other cities. Anecdotally of course.

~~~
unit91
Do you work for the city, a university in Detroit, etc?

~~~
trisimix
I am a peer leader on Wayne State, the university inside Detroit, I dedicate a
lot of my time to trying to organize students to come together and accomplish
tasks. However no, I do not work for the city of Detroit, why do you ask?

------
probably_wrong
When my country faced crippling recession, I remember someone mentioning that
even bankrupt countries don't go anywhere - it's not as if someone will take
the country and annex it. A failed country just lingers around until things
eventually get better.

For that same reason, I've always regretted not having money to buy real state
in Detroit. No matter how bad things are, a city this big is bound to rebound
sooner or later. I wonder how long it will take before "Detroit
gentrification" becomes a thing.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Not necessarily on a timescale that can benefit you. Population decline,
crappy weather, pollution, water supply, politics, war, so many things can
influence the value of land.

There's a reason no one is clamoring to buy land in Somalia.

------
BubbleFett
One thing that most peeps from the East/West coast don't realize about Detroit
is how big it is, compared to it's population size.

The city limits of Detroit proper encompass about 143 square miles.

While it's not that large of a city compared to others, you can fit the cities
of San Francisco (46.7 sq miles), Boston (89.6 sq miles), and Manhattan (22.8
sq miles) within Detroit city limits.

While you process that, the 2017 population of Detroit is about 672,000
people, compared to the 3.12 million people who live in SF(860k), Boston
(618k), and Manhattan (1.64M)

While it's growing for sure, if you get off the highway you'll see really fast
that Detroit is still a ghost town.

There are entire neighborhoods/subdivisions with streets lined with houses
except all of those houses have been abandoned. For DECADES. It's like the
Walking Dead minus the zombies.

I'm psyched for Detroit (I grew up in the Detroit suburbs) and am rooting hard
for it's recovery. With that said... the city of Detroit has lost 61% of it's
population since it's peak in the 1950s.

61 PERCENT! While I remain optimistic, I'm also realistic. I'm psyched that
Detroit is on an upswing, but there's a long way up to go.

~~~
80386
> While it's not that large of a city compared to others, you can fit the
> cities of San Francisco (46.7 sq miles), Boston (89.6 sq miles), and
> Manhattan (22.8 sq miles) within Detroit city limits.

Sure, but Boston is only a part of what people think of as Boston. When Paul
Graham talked about Boston in "Cities and Ambition", he meant Cambridge.

If you add the cities and towns with a T stop:

\- Boston (89.6) \- Cambridge (7.13) \- Somerville (4.2) \- Quincy (26.87) \-
Malden (5.1) \- Revere (5.9) \- Braintree (14.5) \- Brookline (6.8)

...you have a 'city' encompassing 160 sq mi, which is bigger than Detroit.

That standard doesn't generalize -- I grew up in the DC area, and the metro
there goes all the way out to Rockville, which is generally considered to be
an exurb, practically flyover country. (IMO, that's an unfair assessment, but
it is what it is.) But it seems about right for Boston.

Does Detroit have central parts that aren't part of the city proper, the way
Boston has Cambridge and Somerville and San Francisco has Berkeley and
Oakland?

------
sneak
Certain parts of Detroit have seen rents double or triple in the last 3 years
or so. I am hesitant to say that the city as a whole is “back” but downtown
and other parts are definitely worlds more viable now than they were even just
a few short years ago. There are fair numbers of (mostly white) people moving
into the city to capitalize on this. Police/911 response times are way down
and the halo of Gilbert/Quicken businesses have certainly made downtown a lot
more livable (eg Rocket Fiber lighting a bunch of condos and apartments
downtown).

I swore for years I would never go back to my hometown, and I just bought a
(still cheap, thankfully) condo there (although not as my primary residence).
It’s much better than it ever has been in my lifetime (I’m 35).

------
emodendroket
It would be nice if that's true, but how many times has more or less this
exact story been written?

------
gilbetron
Detroit seems to be no longer in freefall, certainly. And, I suppose, it is
technically reviving, but the upward progress is slow, especially in
comparison to the depths it has fallen. My nephews like to go down there with
their friends, but only to a small portion heavily protected - and that's
cool. But they have been taught by their father on the places to avoid and
what to do if you accidentally get in one - he owns a business that is
downtown and that business often gets robbed.

Feel free to take a view of a summer night in Detroit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztGzzvchcUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztGzzvchcUQ)

------
dyeje
Surprised by all the skepticism in this thread. As someone who grew up in
Metro Detroit, moved away, and came back it is very obvious that Detroit is on
the rebound. I'm not sure what metrics show it, but it's real.

~~~
randcraw
But the rebound is very uneven and not yet walkable. Unlike other rust belt
urban centers like Pittsburgh which _is_ walkable (especially near the
universities), Detroit's layout was shaped heavily by the priorities of the
automobile, which famously have impeded pedestrian friendly ecosystems
everywhere.

Until Detroit can carve out car-free zones that attract hip daytime hangouts
that combine residential with retail, its urban costs will continue to
outweigh its urban charm.

------
venning
I have often cited the NYT Interactive team for creatively designed articles,
but this one has serious problems.

On a modern Android phone, I can't see all of the article text, with an
undetermined amount being cut off at the bottom. Swipe back doesn't work if
you don't start the swipe from the center of the page (which is unnatural and
not the same for swiping forward). There are no obvious affordances to
indicate that tapping on the left brings me back. And an un-dismissible
subscription dialog appears, obscuring almost all remaining text.

I'm just assuming that it renders perfectly for iPhones. Serious question: is
testing for Android just not done?

~~~
indemnity
Same problem on iPhone X.

------
bischofs
There is a rebound, but it's very slow. The big issue is that automotive money
has always been channeled outside of the city and there is little to nothing
that will replace it.

Everyone is convinced of their ideas of what Detroit needs but I really think
it needs to have some new industries and an economy that is diverse enough to
support it in tough times.The problem is the only real industry to bring the
kind of wealth the city was used to in the mid 20th century would be the tech
industry and the Midwest is a bit too homey to be the next SV. People here
deep down are still weary of sitting in front of a tube all day.

------
ChuckMcM
I talked with a friend who lives 1/2 time in Detroit and 1/2 time in the bay
area last week and they were not very hopeful about the future of that once
great city. They said it was not uncommon that once a property didn't have
anyone around for a couple of weeks people would come in during the night and
strip it. It sounded sad and dystopian.

------
dsschnau
P sure its just DG and the Illitch family exploiting it and calling it a
'revival'

