I assumed you were talking about the kind of public transit on the level of Chicago or another thriving city. Yes, there are SMART (ha!) busses that go all over around here, but nothing on the level of other cities, and no supplemental systems like subways or el trains to go aong with them. Not to mention transit to the 'burbs. Amtrack goes from AA to Detroit, and that’s about it. There are communities surrounding Detroit, and even now, with huge unemployment in the city, and businesses moving out or closing regularly, traffic SUCKS to get into the city, or even near it. That problem has to be solved, and it is not going to be cheap. Billions of dollars.
Detroit is roughly 1 million people large living in an area designed for 3 million. It’s possible, but that’s insane to wrap my head around.
Does it? I was under the impression that Amtrack goes to the Detroit suburbs, but not to Detroit itself.
Come on Dopers! I know we can all pitch in and fix Detroit with the power of our brains! Or make it worse! Either way! 
I know its all about the money in most things, but if we were really serious about rebuilding and improving that city, and already going through the political fallout of eminent domain, how about this: give the poor the houses. Just let them live there, tax free, for maybe a year. If the choice is between a run-down shack and rubble or poor people living there for free, I’d rather eat the money and give them the house for a while.
Back in the first century of America’s existence, the governmetn used to give people money and land as long as they would go reclaim the wilderness and live out west. Detroit could be a smaller scale version of that. If the government was paying for fixing up the houses and infrastructure while giving out free houses to people, I bet everyone will stampede in.
Yes, Detroit is, in general, in horrid shape. They need to quarantine large sections of it to save on city services therein because they are providing effectively no tax base but taking police, fire, and other city services. While people are able to buy up homes very cheap, the homes are basically worthless. You would have to buy up the whole neighborhood, demolish everything, haul it away, and start over. That’s a big investment when the city’s main industry base is teetering on the brink of collapse.
There’s a few nice spots, even some very well kept old homes in what would be prestigious neighborhoods if they had a different address. There’s even a very nicely kept housing tract of small ranches that look to have been built around the 50s on the east side somewhere that I was quite surprised to see when driving randomly through it one day - it looked identical to the suburbs just north of it. The cultural centers are very nice, as is the very core downtown area. But in general, vast swaths of residential and light industrial areas should be bulldozed and completely rebuilt; starting small farms on all that abandoned land is an interesting start.
On the list of stations on the Amtrak website, it lists Detroit, Ann Arbor, Birmingham, and Dearborn. Dearborn is about a camel-spit from Detroit, and Birmingham is a tiny little rich town where it is fashionable for execs of Detroit area companies to live, but doesn’t really have much of a need for public transit.
There are other stations, but they are located in areas that cannot be countes as detroit suburbs (East Lansing, Holland, K-zoo, Traverse City, G-Rap…)
How are the basic utilities in these areas holding up?
If you were some ultra-rich multi-billionaire who owned a company with 10,000 employees what would be a cheaper course of action:
A) Relocate your company to Detroit and rebuild from the ground up city blocks of new development over the exsisting crap (and already in place utilities) that’s there?
or B) Build everything from the ground up in some empty farmland in the middle of nowhere?
That’s all you think it’d take to fix things? There are already squatters in tons of run-down shacks in Detroit. I’ve seen people living in houses where there’s a big hole in the roof or outside wall, for god’s sake.
Depends, where do you get the biggest tax break? Which areas are more likely to fill up with qualified workers?
Until about a year or two ago, I used to describe myself (when travelling out of Michigan) as being “from Detroit,” with a later explanation – if warranted – that I really wasn’t from Detroit proper. Most of the people I know used to do that. Now, we just go with “southeast Michigan,” since out-of-staters don’t know where Roseville or Mt. Clemens or Highland and so on are. Detroit was a good reference point, but it’s not useful as a point of reference any more.
Detroit has a lot of problems (obviously). A powerful office of the mayor, which has often been occupied by corrupt people. Somewhat more importantly, however, is the composition of the city council, which is elected at-large, as opposed to by any type of district. Why does this suck for the poor city? Well, the vast majority of the city population is poor, black, and uneducated, and their superior numbers will ensure that there’s never any council representation for anyone that doesn’t fit that same demographic. Changing the city charter to fill positions by district would at least allow some representation for the parts of the city that are legitimately good. And really, there are nice parts of the city, and nice neighborhoods.
A second major problem (shared by many of Michigan’s decrepit cities!) is their tax structure. Detroit actually has its own city income tax, and has an outrageous homestead property rate compared to more desireable areas.
Both of these serve to prevent well-to-do people from returning to the city limits. Detroit’s income tax rate is a flat 2.5%! Even if you don’t live there but work there, you’re on the hook for 1.25%. Property taxes (in permill or “mills”) are about double what most of us pay in the suburbs. If I’m in the market for a $200,000 house, why would I pay $5000 per year for Detroit’s inferior service, when for $2500 per year I get supurb service? Pile that income tax on that, and there’s no reason for anyone to move back into the city limits.
Why fix it? The Upper Midwest has dozens - if not hundreds - of dead towns that were once thriving communities but have now outlived their usefulness. Other than the occasional PBS special or National Geographic photospread no one cares much. What makes Detroit different? Because it’s so big? What’s wrong with letting a city die?
I grew up not far from Detroit before I high-tailed it to Arizona 15 years ago.
I was just back for a business conference last week. The fall was even worse than I’d envisioned, and remember, Detroit was known as “The City of No Hope” even before I headed west.
The one thing that really got me was in talking with my driver. I mentioned the $8,000 home price thing, and he said, as noted above, that’s only in the city limits. In the suburbs, he said, you can spend as much as $50,000 if you want a big McMansion.
Here in Phoenix, in the depths of the IIRC second worst real estate crash in the country, $50,000 will buy you a condo in a very sketchy neighborhood.
Even in the more prosperous suburbs like Troy, where I was, the downturn is evident. I don’t see there being any hope for a recovery, not just in the immediate future, but ever.
I don’t know what you’d call a McMansion, but I’d not want to buy most $50,000 houses in any of the Detroit suburbs. Well, buy to live in, that is. If I could get a McMansion in Macomb or Oakland counties for anything under $200,000, I’d jump on it in a minute, and strategically abandon my sensible house, and hope that no one pursues a deficiency judgment.
Yeah, housing values in the suburbs suck right now, but it’s not quite that sucky yet.
http://www.realquest.com/rq/default.aspx# Here is a site that can give you what you need. Just type in a Detroit zip mostly in th 482xx . Then zoom in a little and flags will come up showing the foreclosures. That will tell you all you need to know. You can pan around with the arrows. it does not get better.
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In Toronto, you might be able to get some kind of condo for $200,000, if you’re lucky, but it might be just a bachelor apartment, er, I mean, “studio”. A house? No way. Even the handyman specials are more than that.
I typed in zip code 48200 and was presented with a map of the Basque Country in Spain. Is this some kind of conspiracy by Nava? 
The housing market in Michigan is shitty. REALLY shitty. I live in Ann Arbor, which is somewhat protected from the shittiness by its university-based economic bubble, but a lot of the state is in terrible economic straights, and the housing market reflects that.
From this article (dated 10/13/09):
If that doesn’t sound crazy enough, you should know that Ann Arbor is RIGHTNEXT to Ypsilanti. They’re squashed up against each other. The difference in housing prices between the two is seriously wacky.
I live about 40 miles from Detroit, btw.
Well I dont know about all that. There are many well-to-do black Americans living in Detroit, and many educated people as well.
Be that as it may, there is nothing “wrong” with Detroit.
Its just different, it just has different “demographics”, as it should, from other cities.
Detroit is not full of French-americans, so Detroit is not like Paris,
it doesnt have any cowboys so it doesn’t look like Jackson Hole Wyoming.
it doesnt have any farmers, so it doesnt look like Fargo North Dakota,
It is not Nashville so you wont find any country bars nor hoedowns in Detroit,
it is not Las Vegas so you wont find any nightclubs nor big name entertainers,
it doesnt have any Irish, Germans, Polish, Swiss, English, Scottish, or Ukranians either.
Detroit is mostly, almost entirely, an African-American and Arab-American city.
If you dont like African-American/Arab-American cities, then just dont visit it, but I dont see anything intrinsically “wrong” with Detroit.
…and it isnt strange for houses in Detroit to sell for $8000, because there is really no reason why a house in Detroit should cost more than $10,000.00.
Toronto is an artsy, fartsy, metropolitan, multi-cultural, cosmopolitan city, it should have condos that cost more than $200,000.00. Toronto has theater/plays, dance companies, opera, and the complete variety of different culture bars, restaurants, neighborhoods, etc.
Detroit doesnt have anything like that, and it is not a multi-cultural cosmopolitan city.
Nobody moves to Detroit for the cultural arts, or for the multi-cultural environment, because it doesnt have any.
Toronto is about as opposite from Detroit, in every way, as any town can be.
Try 48127 . My zip is shared by Meunster ,Germany. Apparently there are not enough of them.