Does Tennessee normally attract lots of liberals? The techy people this is aimed can be very liberal. Tennessee voted for McCain. Huge embarrassment to the crowd this is aimed at.
Do you have massive Japan levels of bandwidth like I’m proposing?
Other advantages are proximity to Canada (there’s things you can get in Canada without the legal risks you can here). Michigan’s natural beauty, Ontario’s natural beauty. (granted you have to leave the city for that.)
Also what kind of services does Tennessee provide? What else do you tax? Do you tax food? How about property tax? What else do you get taxed on? What about fines? Does your state get any significant amount of income from fines?
I assume you have to pay Federal tax and social security in Tennessee so your claim that you “get to keep all your pay” is false.
How hot does it get in the summer? Some people enjoy cooler climates better.
The suburbs are no longer vibrant and thriving, sadly. Detroit and Metro Detroit are separate (though connected) entities, but neither are doing very well at all.
There is still a lot of tension between blacks in Detroit and whites and blacks who moved to the suburbs, to bring up another point. People left in Detroit are very defensive about the city. Even if they aren’t able to afford to leave, it still means they haven’t “abandoned” the city while others have.
There’s a very strong attitude that anyone not living in the city has no business giving their opinion or trying to “help”. It’s understandable, since they’re the ones who are dealing with the crime, the blight, the unemployment. But if you want to draw back people who can help out (and it’s not just whites I’m talking about), you have to welcome them back.
And yes, I’d say DPS is one of the huge reasons people won’t move back. Even if you got say, a big neighborhood where you had suburbanites move back, fix up the houses, have block parties, etc… they’re not gonna send their kids to Detroit Public Schools. The education that you receive there is atrocious. My co-worker went to Cass Tech, which has long been known as a bright shining beacon in Detroit schooling. And he got a decent education there, but he found out, when starting college… there was so much that Cass didn’t teach him that everyone around him had learned at their high schools.
They’ve tried to build up downtown and get luxury loft apartments there to stimulate growth, but the problem is that other than perhaps working or entertainment, there’s not much to do. I know people who live in the downtown lofts, and they can’t do any of their errands where they live. They have to drive out to the suburbs to go grocery shopping, go to hardware stores, go to electronics stores, things like that. Those stores just aren’t in Detroit (especially around downtown). What’s the point of living downtown in a city if you have to drive out to the 'burbs to get your groceries?
Well, there is Eastern Market. That is a big downtown city area where you can get fresh vegetables ,cheeses and meats. Buy in quantity and it gets real cheap.
Neighborhood stores in downtown are a lot more expensive and limited in choice.
I’m going off on a bit of a tangent, but I find this an interesting analysis. I didn’t know about the Kentucky/Detroit and West Virginia/Cleveland split. Can you provide some cites?
I can hazard a guess as to why the West Virginians in Cleveland got along better with blacks - many of the WV whites came from coal towns, which were diverse by the design of the coal companies (1/3 native white, 1/3 European immigrants, 1/3 black). My father, who came to Cleveland from West Virginia in 1953, was about as tolerant a white guy as you’ll find from that era. We lived in an all-white town outside Cleveland (towns around Cleveland used to be overwhelmingly white or black; there were no integrated areas unless you were rich and lived in the Heights), but he bent over backwards to make sure I had some normal interactions with actual black people he knew from work instead of forming my opinions based on what was on TV.
As you say, the race problems in Cleveland were not driven by rednecks. They were overwhelmingly driven by white ethnics. (That’s the other side of my family.)
Forbes says that Vegas edges out Detroit for Most Vacant City, determined in part by rental rates and empty houses. Chicago/Naperville came in at number 12.
*Detroit’s population swelled from 285,000 in 1900 to 990,000 in 1920, reaching a peak of 1.8 million in 1950.
But starting in the 1960s, Detroit began a precipitous decline. Detroit’s population is now 900,000–half what it was in the middle of the century–and many of its neighborhoods languish in varying states of decay.*
I live in a suburb of Detroit that is halfway to Ann Arbor. It gets named quite often as one of the best 50 or 100 places to live in America. When I pay my taxes and water bill at the township office they have these banners and citations displayed naming them as such. And it is a wonderful place to live.
Good question Kid.
I lived on the far westside of Detroit for ten years (six blocks from Redford) then to Westland for four years then to Plymouth. I am happy here and do not think about moving.
Plymouth is more metro Ann Arbor than metro Detroit, to me (and to my co-workers, whom I just asked). Trust me, the suburbs I know/have lived in/around (St. Clair Shores, Roseville, Royal Oak, Clawson, Warren, etc.) aren’t doing well at all.
you are an east sider it would seem by the places you named.
Here is a story told to me by Neal Shine, former head man at the Detroit Free Press and a Detroiter through and through who knew as much about the city as anybody who ever live here.
During WW2 he was stationed in Europe and on all night gaurd duty at a US base. His job was to walk the perimeter of the base and every 20 minutes or so he passed his opposite going in the other direction. So when they pass they stop for a few seconds and talk. On one such pass they find out that they both are from Detroit. Shine say he gets really excited and cannot wait for the next 20 minutes so they can talk about their joint hometown and share Detroit stories through the rest of the night. So 20 minutes goes by and they approach again and the other guy says “Detroit - east side or west side?” Shine replies “east side”. The other guys says “oh”. They pass many times the rest of the night and never say another word.
btw - we do not consider ourselves as a suburb of Ann Arbor - but something in between – I can get to either place in about the same time - 30 minutes or so depending on traffic.
Drat, missed the edit window. Another thing is that if you and yours are doing okay, it’s easy to figure that the whole area isn’t doing all that bad, minus a few incidents/people affected. I’d still feel we weren’t doing awful because I have a steady job that’s not in danger of being cut, in a nice apartment I just chose, doing better than I was a year ago (which was better than a year before that, and repeat for another year). But my dad was laid off, and as a 58 year old mechanic, he isn’t finding any job. My aunt and uncle lost their house and my uncle’s laid off, another uncle is terrified his entire company is gonna go under any second. My aunt had to take a pay cut. I’m lucky that I’m doing pretty good, but there are a lot of people who aren’t.
Ann Arbor actually has a 30 mile gap from Detroit. Other “suburbs” are distinguished by signs that say now entering Warren, Royal Oak , Westland etc. They are contiguous. They are Detroit.
When I was in Detroit, I was staying in a motel in Farmington Hills, near the plant. At times, I would go as far as Novi or even Commerce Lake. What’s that area like now?
When were you here last? Novi has built up a lot. Commerce Lake has built up more, but it’s safe to say that Novi is much busier than it was when you were last here.
Fun fact: Novi is called that because it was the sixth stop on the train (back when there was one).
That’s an urban myth, though a fun one (and invariably the first thing people say when talking about Novi, if they’ve already mentioned the mall is there.) The township of Novi got its name long before the railroad was built through it.
Toronto has a huge hinterland given the size of Ontario, population wise, and a good portion of the West, its its location as a Great Lakes transportation hub and its resultant diversity.
Chicago much the same.
Detroits hinterland is constricted by the size of Michigan and the proximity of Chicago and other out of state Lake Erie cities. It came into its own on the back of a monopoly of the US auto industry which has been failing for years and there is no other reason to prefer investing in its future. The history of towns and cities born on single industries in North America does not bode well for the future of Detroit.
I think Detroit’s decline is so deep because while all American cities got hit with some problems in the last fifty years, Detroit got hit by all of them. It’s the perfect storm of urban crisis.