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If you live in Ann Arbor, you probably will never consider it part of Detroit. However if you live in Detroit Metro, you probably want to claim Ann Arbor as part of the Detroit Metro area.
It is a tough call. Is Plymouth part of Detroit Metro? Most people say it is. However Plymouth is as much a part of the Ann Arbor Metro as it is Detroit.
What about Ypsilanti? Again I think most people include as part of Mertopolitan Detroit. South Lyon which I think may be further away from Detroit than Ann Arbor is is considered a Detroit Suburb. Brightoon is evne considered a Detroit suburb by many. I think that Ann Arbor has to be include in Detroit Metro even if it does not want to be.
Thousands fof people commute from Ann Arbor to work in Detroit. As mentioned Ann Arbor denizens listen to/look at Detroit Radio and Television stations. Ann Arbor residents look to Detroit for professional theater, professional sporting events, major conferences, they use Detroit Metro Airport, they have same same area code as downriver Detroit suburbs. Of the 40,000 or so students and teachers that make up a substantail part of Ann Arbor's population, a majority, or at least the largest plurality, are from Metropolitan Detroit. When 100,000 people attend a Michgian game, at least as many fans are from Metro Detroit as are from Ann Arbor. I think that Ann Arbor is too tied to Detroit to be considered a stand alone city even though it does have its own economy. I doubt that Ann Arbor would survive as a city if the Detroit Metropolitan area ceased to exist.
Now Ann Arbor is in the Detroit media market and I'm sure there's plenty of travel between those two cities. Ann Arbor, unlike the other cities in southeastern Michigan, treats it's own water and takes care of it's own waste and sewage. The electric power, I'm sure, does come from Detroit (Detroit Edison).
I disagree with one poster about Ypsilanti being more connected with Detroit than Ann Arbor. Simply not true. Beside the fact that Ypsilanti is still in Washtenaw County along with Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor and Ypsilant have always been treated as "sister" cities. I should also comment that, while the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti borders are very close to each other, they don't quite come to together (there's primarily Pittsfield Township between those two cities).
Several Detroit Metropolitan area Cities have their own waste water treatment plants, some have their own potable water treatment. Some even have their own power plant (Wyandotte for one).
Frankly I think that you can go all the way out Chelsea and Grass Lake and still call it Detroit Metro.
If you live in Ann Arbor, you probably will never consider it part of Detroit. However if you live in Detroit Metro, you probably want to claim Ann Arbor as part of the Detroit Metro area.
It is a tough call. Is Plymouth part of Detroit Metro? Most people say it is. However Plymouth is as much a part of the Ann Arbor Metro as it is Detroit.
What about Ypsilanti? Again I think most people include as part of Mertopolitan Detroit. South Lyon which I think may be further away from Detroit than Ann Arbor is is considered a Detroit Suburb. Brightoon is evne considered a Detroit suburb by many. I think that Ann Arbor has to be include in Detroit Metro even if it does not want to be.
Thousands fof people commute from Ann Arbor to work in Detroit. As mentioned Ann Arbor denizens listen to/look at Detroit Radio and Television stations. Ann Arbor residents look to Detroit for professional theater, professional sporting events, major conferences, they use Detroit Metro Airport, they have same same area code as downriver Detroit suburbs. Of the 40,000 or so students and teachers that make up a substantail part of Ann Arbor's population, a majority, or at least the largest plurality, are from Metropolitan Detroit. When 100,000 people attend a Michgian game, at least as many fans are from Metro Detroit as are from Ann Arbor. I think that Ann Arbor is too tied to Detroit to be considered a stand alone city even though it does have its own economy. I doubt that Ann Arbor would survive as a city if the Detroit Metropolitan area ceased to exist.
Jeez, why not include Lansing and Flint in metro D. while you're at it?
Ann Arbor has its own print media, radio, and a TV station. The major network affiliates are based in Detroit, but cable makes that irrelevant anyway. Ann Arborites who want to do their own cable access show do not have to leave town.
Ann Arbor does *not* need Detroit for fine arts or sports! It has museums, theaters, and galleries of its own. As for sports -- who needs the pros when you've got the Wolverines? And if people from Detroit are coming to Ann Arbor for sports, arts, or education, that supports the claim that the Ann Arbor scene is independent of Detroit offerings.
Major conferences are national or regional (multi-state) affairs, not local -- Chicago gets more of those than Detroit, but that doesn't make Ann Arbor a suburb of Chicago.
I'd wager that far more people commute *to* Ann Arbor than *from* Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is definitely not a bedroom community.
It's hard to evaluate the hypothetical case of what would happen if Detroit ceased to exist*. If Detroit ceased to exist through some sudden catastrophe (meteor? terrorist nuke? not fun to contemplate), then Ann Arbor would suffer, but would weather it. If Detroit ceased to exist through continued slow decline of its economic base and social fabric, then Ann Arbor might actually grow from people leaving Detroit behind. If Detroit ceased to exist due to nationwide or region-wide factors, then those would by definition affect Ann Arbor too.
Culturally, economically, and administratively, Ann Arbor is distinct from metro Detroit.
* We can't evaluate how Ann Arbor would be affected if the entire metro area ceased to exist when we haven't decided whether Ann Arbor is part of that area or not, so I'll just talk about Detroit ceasing to exist.
I do not live in Detroit metro but have always known that Ann Arbor is apart of Detroit metro and it would be ridiculous to agrue against. The only difference between the two is Interstate 275.
I was listening to a sports talk radio on a Detroit station the other day. A bunch of callers were from Ann Arbor.
Why are the people of Ann Arbor listening to a Detroit station? Surely they have their own radio stations, right?
Ann Arbor is part of Metro Detroit/Southeast Michigan. Years and years of students and money flowing into the University of Michigan from Metro Detroit has built Ann Arbor into what it is. Don't bite that hand that feeds you, Ann Arbor.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with Detroit. Nor, would I have a problem with Ann Arbor being included in the Detroit MSA. Ann Arbor is only 30 minutes (and less than 40 miles) from downtown Detroit down I-94, why not? I was just saying that it didn't seem like Ann Arbor was part of the Detroit metro area when I was growing up there. It seemed like Ann Arbor was seperate from the rest of the metro.
I just checked the most current US Census definition of the Detroit MSA and CSA Metro Detroit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and it looks like Ann Arbor only makes the CSA list, well, I should say all of Washtenaw County, which means Ypsilanti wouldn't be anymore a suburb of Detroit than Ann Arbor. I'm guessing the MSA must've expanded because I thought it only included the three counties around Detroit: Wayne (where Detroit is located), Oakland, and Macomb. But they also included Livingston County, which surprises me, and the two counties directly north of Oakland and Macomb (looks like St. Clair County where Port Huron is, and Lapeer). Or maybe the metropolitan area is defined as the CSA, instead of the MSA (which could just be the inner ring suburbs), I don't know. Maybe you guys can help me out here.
I think Ann Arbor is a great city to have in the Detroit area (metro or not), and I think the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area combined really do provide an alternative for those living in Southeastern Michigan. Detroit is a great city for live performances and theatricals with the Fox Theater and the Masonic Temple, but Ann Arbor certainly takes the cake in film with the Ann Arbor film festival. Detroit has professional sports while Ann Arbor has (or use to have) excellent collegiate sports with the Michigan Wolverines. East Lansing is only an hour and a half north of Ann Arbor if you're alittle...Green . Detroit does have some nice festivals (that I never went to) such as the Jazz/Blues festival, culinary festival (forget the name of it), Electronic festival, etc., which are all cool, and Ann Arbor has the largest street art festival in North America (literally) known as the Ann Arbor Art Fair. In alot of ways, Ann Arbor is like a smaller San Francisco, and I think that's one very special think Ann Arbor brings to the Detroit area. Ann Arbor, as many of you know, is very liberal, progressive, certainly very educated and prosperous (even though I was poor when I was growing up there), artsy, vibrant, gay-friendly, doesn't have the racial tensions that are apparent in parts of the Detroit metro, good city for interracial dating, etc.
Ann Arbor is also home to the annual "Hash Bash" (first Saturday of every April), and has some of the most relaxed and lenient marijuana laws in the nation (last I checked, you'll only get a $20 ticket for possession of marijuana). Ann Arbor use to be home of a "Folsom-typed" event known as the "Naked Mile" that took place on South University and started out as an annual UofM tradition among some of the graduating seniors, but got waaaaay too out of hand with the large crowd that it attracted (ten thousand people, believe it or not) along with misconduct from some of the spectators, and they had to, sort of, shut it down. As mentioned, there's Ypsilanti nearby that offers an edgier alternative to the Ann Arbor vibe (if you've hung out at both cities, you'll know the difference).
My point, Ann Arbor is a great city that offers alot of very interesting things in Southeastern Michigan. I think Ann Arbor does benefit from Detroit, but I also think Detroit (and it's inner ring suburbs) also benefit from having Ann Arbor nearby. I should mention that Ann Arbor is also a very "Green" city. Hell, in my household, we never thought twice about recycling all of our papers and cardboard and glass and everything else we could recyle, and leaving it in the designated recycling bins on the curb to be picked up, and we were of the less-prosperous kind. So that tells you how progressive Ann Arbor is, and how progressive and forward-minded us Ann Arborites are.
I was listening to a sports talk radio on a Detroit station the other day. A bunch of callers were from Ann Arbor.
Why are the people of Ann Arbor listening to a Detroit station? Surely they have their own radio stations, right?
Ann Arbor is part of Metro Detroit/Southeast Michigan. Years and years of students and money flowing into the University of Michigan from Metro Detroit has built Ann Arbor into what it is. Don't bite that hand that feeds you, Ann Arbor.
Even if we set aside the question of AA's membership in metro D., I'd have to to take you to task for the non sequiturs in this post.
People from Detroit listen to Ann Arbor stations, too (especially WUOM, or whatever the NPR affiliate is). So? And speaking of NPR, I hear people from Ann Arbor, Detroit, and other Michigan cities call in to nationally syndicated NPR shows like Diane Rehm or Talk of the Nation all the time; that doesn't make these cities suburbs of Washington DC.
The student bodies of every university in the state has large numbers of Detroit-area students. That doesn't make East Lansing or Mt. Pleasant suburbs of Detroit.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say that when people from Ann Arbor go to Detroit for something, that that is evidence of Ann Arbor's suburbhood, and then turn around and say that when people from Detroit go to Ann Arbor for something, that that is also evidence of Ann Arbor's suburbhood. Nobody's biting any hands here, your logic just doesn't work.
If this argument is conducted on the basis of competing notions of civic pride, then it is unresolvable. We need some reasonable definition of what constitutes a metro area in order to answer this question. I don't know offhand how demographers or the Census Bureau define it. But since this is primarily a site related to residency and real estate, we should probably define it in terms of the characteristics of interest to home buyers and others looking at moving here. In those terms, Ann Arbor is clearly distinct from metro Detroit.
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30 minutes from Ann Arbor to downtown Detroit? Traffic patterns and speed enforcement must have changed considerably since the last time I made that drive. It has always taken me closer to an hour.
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Ann Arbor is unquestionably part of southeastern Michigan. Maybe we should just leave it at that. But SE MI =/= Metro Detroit.
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. Detroit does have some nice festivals (that I never went to) such as the Jazz/Blues festival, culinary festival (forget the name of it), Electronic festival, etc., which are all cool, and Ann Arbor has the largest street art festival in North America (literally) known as the Ann Arbor Art Fair. In alot of ways, Ann Arbor is like a smaller San Francisco, and I think that's one very special think Ann Arbor brings to the Detroit area. Ann Arbor, as many of you know, is very liberal, progressive, certainly very educated and prosperous (even though I was poor when I was growing up there), artsy, vibrant, gay-friendly, doesn't have the racial tensions that are apparent in parts of the Detroit metro, good city for interracial dating, etc. 
