By the way, I totally fixed Detroit in Sim City 3000. Cleaned the place up, crime was non-existent, best schools in the nation…
Boston is about 2/3 of a Detroit. San Francisco, more plausibly, is 1/3 of a Detroit.
Oh my … do people realize the chemical contaminants that is in urban soil from decades of ignorant [and occasionally deliberate] dumping of even common household chemicals? :eek:
If one had the money to actually buy say half a block, clear it of the ruined houses and put up a reasonable sized home [not a mcmansion, but something reasonable for the family size] and a job that allowed telecommuting and more people joined in, one might be able to slowly start reclaiming the area. Sort of bringing the suburbs into the city.
I always thought that we would do much better with the equivalent to a company town system … a planned community surrounding a town center, with some form of micro area commuter transport like a closed loop tram line, and the community factory at one end, and a small shopping function at the other [i hate to use it as an example but like a super walmart, where it has both food and durable goods]
I used to live in Craccock which was an early planned community, though we could design better currently. Craddock had a small town center shopping area, but nowdays people expect more choice in brands and items when shopping. If we replaced decaying urban centers with planned communities with integral employment we could also decrease commuter time, and carbon footprint. Imagine if you had an entire Craddock that was based on telecommuters so there would be no need for an actual central employment building and therefor no commute for people other than the community services employees [cafe, bar, boutiques, shopping and community support/town employees]
The report I heard about it on NPR said they truck in soil from outside the city and plant the crops in boxes for that exact reason.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that was Flint. Just as much of a shithole – Remember Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me”? – but much smaller. Still a worthy accomplishment, though! 
I’ve often joked about having my own feudalistic setup in Detroit by basically doing what you suggested (though, of course, I’d buy all the land and people would be my vassals :D).
In theory, it sounds nice. But where is the infrastructure, the stores, anything? And the number one issue that gives a lot of people pause is DPS (Detroit Public Schools). The schools are absolutely horrible in 99% of cases and people are not going to want to send their kids to them if they don’t have to.
You’d want to find an area close to a highway on ramp, and indeed there are some. (I’ve been looking on Google maps.) You don’t need to live near infrastructure - after all, lots of rural people don’t.
Get back to us when you have a proposal for getting everyone to pronounce the city name uniformly and maybe we’ll talk. 
Hm, I always thought central[ish] Detroit had city water, sewers and some form of electricity. I guess they must have all had wells, septic tanks and their own generators
Craddock actually had its own school building. Nothing says you cant actually have your own private school system in your enclave. All it takes is staff and building and equipment to get set up once you have the licensing. I would be willing to bet there are a few unemployed teachers around that are looking for work. Since it is a small enclave, you might be able to get away with a lot fewer teachers than a public school system - I went to a private school that had a fairly small staff. Also a private school means you can restrict the students to ones that live in the enclave and are actually interested in getting an education …
Simple. Just admit it was misspelled in the first place and reflag it, “DeTroytte.”
Detroit Picked To Hold 2016 Thunderdome.
It’s funny because it’s true.
It’s not a single block of houses. It’s a series of unrelated houses that are bordered up or abandoned.
It’s strange cruising through Detroit on Google Streetview. In some places you’d swear you were in a rural area, then in a few blocks you come out in the middle of a city. I almost feel like taking screen caps, posting them somewhere and asking people to guess where they were taken.
“I wanted to see Detroit win. I’ve been there. It’s like God took a shit on a parking lot. They deserve some good news.”
9:13 AM Oct 8th from web
From here:
So, as you may know, I’m working on my masters in public policy at the University of Michigan. My focus is on international development and I don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about urban renewal. But I’ve tagged along with field trips to Detroit a couple times, once in February and once earlier this month.
I like Detroit. I’d go there more often if there were good public transit, but Michigan, unsurprisingly, wants everyone to have cars and isn’t really conducive to those of us who don’t.
These pictures are on Facebook; I’m not sure if you’ll be able to see them if you don’t have an account.
Pictures from a couple weeks ago. Some of the pictures here are from a very pleasant neighborhood that I’d be happy to live in, btw.
Missed the edit window. To clarify, that first group of pictures were taken in February of this year. Not January.
To build the kind of infrastructure required to support public transit in Detroit would take billions of dollars. Which is all fine and good if you’ve got a growing, flourishing city. Unfortunately, Detroit is a decaying city slowly flushing itself down the toilet with corruption and stupidity. If someone were to make liberal use of eminent domain, and not care a lot about political fallout, you might be able to simply wipe a lot of decayed land and buildings off the map, but you still have to haul all the detritus somewhere, and that is going to take a lot of money as well.
But, if that could be done, I’d say Detroit could be on its way to a start of rebuilding. But you’d be displacing a HUGE amount of poor people…and where would they go?
First, Detroit does have public transit. I’m sure it’s terrible, but I see buses when I go there. And while I’m sure that that explains why it’s difficult to get from place to place inside the city, but not why it’s so difficult to travel between Detroit and Ann Arbor.
Actually Detroit tried exactly that once too.
Well you also have to make to sure these refugess have jobs, otherwise they’ll be just as poor, hopeless and unmotivated to keep their properties up as the people who aleady live there.