
Tough, Cheap, and Real: Detroit - samclemens
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/taking-back-detroit/see-detroit.html
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karpodiem
I've lived in Detroit my whole life, in both the suburbs and the city. If you
take the time to read the stories and literature of Detroit from 1915-Today,
you'd find that Detroit was the original Silicon Valley at the turn of the
20th century - we owned mechanical engineering and industrial operation
engineering/mass production.

Today, in summary - Detroit has a long way to go to be considered at the same
level as a Chicago or Boston, from a domestic/international reputation
standpoint. And that's ok! Those cities have their own problems, and we have
the opportunity here to re-build a city using 21st century urban planning and
engineering knowledge. But Gilbert and Ilitch can only take it so far.

Would be nice to see some Fortune 500 companies relocating to Detroit. It's
all about having a downtown where the 20-somethings meet their spouse and have
families. SF/LA/SEA/CHI/NYC/BOS/DC have that down pretty well. Is there room
for Detroit? Maybe. There's still 4+ million people here in Metro Detroit, so
there's a blank entertainment canvas that the two billionaires have been
constructing.

Cool to see Rocket Fiber deploying FTTH Downtown, Midtown, and
Woodbridge/Eastern Market.

One little dirty secret - the levels of arsenic and heavy metals in the soil
on ground they've torn down buildings is like nothing you've ever seen (75-100
years ago they didn't quite grasp that some chemicals shouldn't be used in
building materials). It's toxic. Kim Worthy (city prosecutor) has a small
project looking at the crime rates and lead exposure.

The old Fisher Body Plant had cyanide (yes, cyanide) baths for metal plating.
Yeah.

~~~
samatman
Fellow near-native here, long gone though: We weren't the Silicon Valley of
anything, because "Silicon Valley of" wasn't a meme yet. We were the Motor
City, man. Silicon Valley is just the Motor City of computers.

Now it's another frozen cog in the Rust Belt. The Bay would do well to
remember that: prosperity, and property values, do not always increase.

~~~
shostack
Fair points, but you are comparing apples and oranges in many ways.

The Bay Area as a geographic location outside of industry-related trends is
objectively considered much more desirable to a larger percentage of
individuals. You have _amazing_ weather mostly year round, great food,
interesting culture, many activities to do in neighboring areas (Tahoe, wine
country, etc.), much closer to asian countries, etc. I get that there are
reasons to live in Michigan (I grew up in Chicago), but the above reasons
combined with the limited buildable land strike me as not really being a
competition at all.

I feel like there are many more reasons to want to live in the Bay Area, and
those reasons coupled with the very real limitations on housing will keep
positive pressure on prices for quite some time even if the tech industry were
to eventually tank.

~~~
karpodiem
Yeah, about the lack of water in California... (I get that a vast majority of
it is used for agriculture and can be re-diverted for personal consumption,
but that is going to cause some serious upheaval for the local
populace/economies in CA.

~~~
shostack
That's the main worry I have in terms of long-term impact on home values. If
the Bay Area turns into a complete desert, that would be problematic.

But that's really the big environmental disaster I can think of. If there was
an earthquake that didn't level the entire Bay, I actually think that wouldn't
do much other than cause people to say "oh, people are scared, I'll bet prices
will be down, I should buy now!"

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munificent
This makes Detroit sound a lot like a Peace Corps for millenials—a place for
young people with tons of energy to make a corner of the world better.

I think it says something about the relative lack of opportunity in the US
today that people are moving to Detroit to do this. People want meaningful
work that they can devote a portion of their lives to, and that's increasingly
hard to find in the normal workplace.

It makes me sad to think that twenty-somethings have to move across the
country to a forsaken, blighted city to find something they feel has meaning,
but I'm happy that they have.

It will be interesting to see if Detroit can build on that wave of energy into
a sustainable metropolis. Energetic twenty-somethings are great, but they
aren't enough. You need a whole lifecycle of people, and that means parents.
Until Detroit addresses crime and education problems, it's no place to raise a
family.

~~~
Kluny
Well, twentysomethings become parents sooner or later, most of the time.

~~~
rayiner
At which point they move to the suburbs. My wife and I live in downtown
Baltimore. At one point we seriously considered renting a house and moving her
mom and teenage brother from the west coast. But the school/safety situation
was just a deal-breaker. We've got a nice little bubble for a few blocks in
each direction from where we live, but beyond that it's just miles of abysmal
schools and gang violence. Twenty-somethings will put up with that. Parents
will not.

~~~
bmelton
"We've got a nice little bubble for a few blocks in each direction from where
we live, but beyond that it's just miles of abysmal schools and gang violence"

So, you're in Canton then?

~~~
irishcoffee
Canton, Fells, Fed Hill, Actual Downtown, Bolton Hill/Mt. Vernon, Pigtown,
Hampden, I could keep going.

Baltimore is a checkerboard. Turn down the wrong street and you're fucked.
Canton is no exception.

~~~
bmelton
Yeah. I was trying to think of anywhere in Baltimore that gave a 2-mile
buffer, and Canton was the best I could come up with.

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ams6110
Detroit fascinates me for some reason. That a major city could disintegrate so
thoroughly is sobering. But we should not lose sight of the fact that this
nacent, yet-to-be-proven-viable recovery is only happening because $18
_billion_ of incompetence, negligence, misdeeds and corruption by at least
five decades of municipal governance is just being wiped out. And if they
continue to run the city the way they have, it will happen again.

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dandanisaur
These articles always crack me up. This sounds great on paper, but the city is
still messed up (and probably irreparable in my lifetime).

The article is talking about Downtown Detroit (as in 3-4 square miles).
Detroit itself is a MUCH larger city... 130+ square miles. Not to mention...
you only have 600k residents living in those 130 square miles. Focusing on 1%
of the area (for the white and rich) is not going to help the rest catch up.

~~~
karpodiem
At some point you have to cut your losses and tell those people to relocate or
pay for services outside the footprint the city is able to serve. Or let those
residents incorporate into a new city and break Detroit up into 6 or 7 new
city municipalities and have the State reboot it.

It hasn't come to that yet since the bankruptcy case has closed, but without
the state of Michigan serving as a financial backstop, I am generally
skeptical that Detroit City Council can manage a pool of money without going
bankrupt. By the way, keep an eye on the pension funding levels for city
employees, that is the next shoe to drop.

Downtown has to thrive and be a destination so Detroit can be a place for
companies to relocate so that it can compete with other cities throughout the
country for talent.

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bruceb
Accelerator in Detroit funded in part by Dan Gilbert (Quicken Loans)
[http://bizdom.com/](http://bizdom.com/)

Detroit is cheap though downtown vacancy rate is very low. Finding a cheap
apartment downtown would be challenging. Though would of course be much
cheaper than SF/Bay Area

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slackstation
Why do we think cheap rent is such a factor in making a tech city? Innovating
and inventing new tech is expensive. Everyone in the chain knows this,
Founders, VC, tech workers. You pay them well (or in the case of Founders
sacrifice alot) but, it's worth it in the end because the gains from that
initial work are so large.

What makes a great tech city is access to a large pool of highly trained
people. SF has this, LA (in theory) has this, Austin, NYC and other places in
the US has this. Tech cities also should be places people want to go. Weather
is a huge consideration. Detroit is cold. SF and LA are warm. I don't care
that my rent is $500/mo if I'm freezing. I'll gladly pay $2,500 for the same
place for 75F degree sunny weather year round.

Culture is another big aspect. When I'm not working, I want to find
interesting things to do, places to visit, food to eat, people to interact
with. I think this is why NYC would be a decent startup city despite it's
terrible weather.

Density has a role to play that we don't fully understand. Austin would be a
great example that checks all the boxes (and has a low cost of living to boot)
but, hasn't exactly exploded as far as startups are concerned. Miami too as it
has actually tropical weather and beaches.

Detroit is lacking is so many areas. Density is going to be a problem. Weather
is a huge problem; most of the country is warmer and more temperate than
Detroit (which is also on the lake so added windchill factor). Detroit is
blighted which means unless you are 22 and like warehouse parties or some
young hipster and enjoy the early stages of gentrification, Detroit isn't for
you. Also, who wants to raise kids in Detroit? Lead in the soil? No thanks,
I'd pay the extra money to live someone where my kid's IQ isn't stunted
irreversibly.

My question is why are people _still_ in Detroit? If you are going to try to
make a new startup city, why not try Miami or Orlando or Austin or Dallas or
San Diego? Why freeze your ass off, just so you can brag about it later? What
is the city council going to do that's so freeing to your ability to write
software?

~~~
acheron
I still do not understand people who care so much about weather. We're not
talking about moving to the Gobi Desert or, I don't know, the South Sandwich
Islands.

Besides, even if you do care about weather, I would pick Detroit over Florida
or Texas any day. Cold in the winter is normal; 100 degrees in the summer
sucks.

~~~
hueving
It gets colder in Detroit than it does on the South Sandwich Islands...

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CountHackulus
Autoplay audio, nope.

~~~
monochromatic
Seriously, who thought that was a good idea? Novel isn't the same as
worthwhile.

~~~
ExpiredLink
In this context it's a good idea.

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justonepost
Love to see Rand Paul's ideas on economic free zone applied to Detroit.

~~~
rmason
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has proposed that the Feds allow 50,000
additional visas for highly skilled immigrants if they're willing to live in
Detroit for five years.

Priority would be given to graduates of Michigan universities. Despite
widespread support from both parties in the state the Obama administration has
yet to rule on the request.

[http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140123/NEWS/140129933...](http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140123/NEWS/140129933/snyder-
seeks-50000-work-visas-to-lure-immigrants-to-detroit)

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
This would require a constitutional amendment. We have free movement in
America. It's not the Soviet Union.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This would require a constitutional amendment.

No, it probably wouldn't.

> We have free movement in America.

On a constitutional level, that's not necessarily true of immigrants. The
states generally can't impose such limits on immigrants because regulating
immigration is Constitutionally a reserved federal power, so it would be a
Supremacy Clause issue. The feds, however, almost certainly can impose place-
of-residency restrictions on immigrants without a Constitutional amendment.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
That's not how it would work. The feds clearly won't even impose "are you here
legally in the first place" restrictions. Bush and Obama have made that
perfectly clear.

Anyway, the whole idea stinks of shit like the propaganda line "jobs americans
won't do." You really think Americans are some sort of idiots that couldn't
make use of the land and infrastructure in Detroit given proper reforms?
Apparently we're too dumb and need some foreigners to lead the way.

~~~
dragonwriter
> That's not how it would work.

How politically things are likely to work is a different question from what is
Constitutionally required.

EDIT: also,

> The feds clearly won't even impose "are you here legally in the first place"
> restrictions. Bush and Obama have made that perfectly clear.

George W. Bush's administration engaged in some of the most extreme uses of
every federal power available (and more)over immigrants since WWII in the wake
of 9/11.

They may not have used that power where you want them to, but that's a
different issue.

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intopieces
I'm surprised that Google Fiber hasn't made a bid to move into Detroit - it
seems like the issues they have with digging up yards and such would be
minimal.

~~~
nols
It's really spread out, and broke. Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor both tried to
get Fiber when they were having their contest.

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thomasnno
Should have a warning: Starts playing loud noise when entering page.

