I am so tired of this sterotype on the city (Detroit: real estate, high crime)

[Dexterguy]

America's most miserable cities - Buy a House: MLS Listings & Home Buying Tips - MSN Real Estate

Another article saying how Detroit and Flint are so miserable to live in! Detroit rated #1. As hard as Detroit and south-east Michigan as a community work to make the city and state look good, some writer comes out with a article like this, and the entire country reads it! It just makes me mad!!

[detshen]

I don't feel like anyone is trying to make it look good. Read the threads! All I hear is how horrible it is. I moved back here after 12 years in California to be with my aging father and was very happy to come back, I was excited to have seasons again and enjoy my favorite places. The negativity is exhausting! I'm constantly being asked "why would I want to come back to this hellhole?" (and they mean MI, not just Detroit) I would point out the nice things and people counter with even more negativity. Nothing will improve if people don't show some pride and hope. Why would a new business want to come to Michigan and listen to people whine about how awful it is. I'm so sick of it I feel like leaving again just to get away from all the people who seem to be choosing to be miserable.

I still love Michigan and Detroit, I lived many other places, but I'd like to stay here. I see the problems but I choose to focus on the positives and try to help in any way I can to make it better.

[and the]

Detroit IS pretty miserable to live in. I didn't realize how miserable it was until I left and had something to compare it to. After I left, I realized the "Detroit things" I experienced were not normal. It's not normal to be sitting in your house on a hot Sunday night and have some lady run screaming into your living room because a pitbull just chased her up onto your porch. It's not normal to try to identify the gunshots lulling you to sleep as rifles or shotguns. It's not normal to have the police tell you to just go to the station to make your burglary report because they're too busy with more important stuff to send someone. It's not normal to feel the need to grab your gun before you take your garbage out because of the homicide down the street last week...or the robbery...or the crack house....It's not normal to go to the neighborhood park and see the grass (hiding the broken glass) higher than the fourth step on the rusty slide.

Hey, downtown Detroit is just wonderful. A cop on every corner on game nights, Greektown, Red Wings, blah blah blah, but the "stereotype" about the OTHER 90 percent of Detroit is pretty accurate.

I was at my favorite bakery on Proctor for Paczki day a few weeks ago. I was standing in line with mostly people from the neighborhood on the busiest day of the year for the bakery. I was in a pretty good mood. The bakery owner was in a great mood (she lives well outside the city and was selling lots of Paczki) Except for a few people in line who I knew didn't live in the city, all the others had this look of utter despair, like the look in the soldier's eyes in the opening of the documentary "The 10,000 Day War" about Vietnam. "The Thousand Yard Stare". They all had it. It wasn't because their Paczki weren't ready yet.......The area looked a lot like the PA town depicted in "The Deer Hunter" except the people in "The Deer Hunter" looked a lot happier.

[GA BOUND]

And The
I Totally Agree

[dkf747]

Originally Posted by and the

Detroit IS pretty miserable to live in. I didn't realize how miserable it was until I left and had something to compare it to. After I left, I realized the "Detroit things" I experienced were not normal. It's not normal to be sitting in your house on a hot Sunday night and have some lady run screaming into your living room because a pitbull just chased her up onto your porch. It's not normal to try to identify the gunshots lulling you to sleep as rifles or shotguns. It's not normal to have the police tell you to just go to the station to make your burglary report because they're too busy with more important stuff to send someone. It's not normal to feel the need to grab your gun before you take your garbage out because of the homicide down the street last week...or the robbery...or the crack house....It's not normal to go to the neighborhood park and see the grass (hiding the broken glass) higher than the fourth step on the rusty slide.

Sounds like parts of every other large city in the US. You can say the same things a bout New York, L.A., DC, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, etc... The US has a problem. It's not just Detroit.

[jonjj]

The big difference between Detroit and most other cities is that the other cities have neighborhoods that folks can live in with a better sense of safety. Detroit does have that issue to deal with and it effects the entire city with the exception of the downtown area. Yes, there are "pockets" of neighborhoods where people can feel comfortable but those pockets are surrounded by areas that need vast improvement. I don't just blame the people of Detroit for that. The entire metro area along with the state have to make it a priority to make that city livable. Hard to do with the money shortage so it has become a Catch 22.

[and the]

Sounds like parts of every other large city in the US. You can say the same things a bout New York, L.A., DC, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, etc... The US has a problem. It's not just Detroit.

Nobody says Detroit is unique, but there are too many people with rose colored glasses on who think that Detroit can be saved from "downtown outwards" to make any kind of difference. They've been trying to "save" Detroit that way since New Detroit and the Ren Cen.

You're getting a new generation of people "discovering" downtown. Downtown was NEVER bad. They think that because they can feel safe at an event, things are improving. There have ALWAYS been cops on every corner in Greektown. The neighborhoods, on the other hand, have gone nowhere but down. This is where Detroiters live. Your typical "urban pioneer" is not your typical Detroiter. The first thing to do to improve Detroit is to dismantle the public school system. Until that happens they're just going to go through the same old cycle of people who want to have kids moving out and "urban pioneers", young people and professionals moving in for a while, then leaving when they find the wizard behind the curtain and the smoke machines and the mirrors.

[fine_where_I_am]

Originally Posted by jonjj

The big difference between Detroit and most other cities is that the other cities have neighborhoods that folks can live in with a better sense of safety.

Exactly... even in a high crime city like Chicago, over half of it really is very safe. Don't think you can say the same about Detroit
People always make that argument that "crime happens in every big city" in trying to defend a rotting city, which is so unbelievably simplistic and irrelevant.

[Sunvixen]

Originally Posted by dkf747

Sounds like parts of every other large city in the US. You can say the same things a bout New York, L.A., DC, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, etc... The US has a problem. It's not just Detroit.

Other than St Louis, you cannot compare these cities TO DETROIT. None of these places are 85-90% ghetto. If you to the New York or Chicago and ask where the BAD areas are, people will tell you, but if you come to Detroit and ask, people will laugh and tell you to "GO DOWNTOWN!"

I agree downtown is and has always been the best part of Detroit.

I was in Chicago two weeks ago and what a great place!! Spending time in other major cities is why I know how bad Detroit is and will be until the voters clean house and get some real leadership at the helm.

Detroit is 139 sq Miles. 38 SQUARE MILES is abandoned property. Take a moment and let that sink in.

[Slappy san]

Originally Posted by Dexterguy

America's most miserable cities - Buy a House: MLS Listings & Home Buying Tips - MSN Real Estate

Another article saying how Detroit and Flint are so miserable to live in! Detroit rated #1. As hard as Detroit and south-east Michigan as a community work to make the city and state look good, some writer comes out with a article like this, and the entire country reads it! It just makes me mad!!

Get used to it. The city is not great by any means. It just get slagged to hell by people who spend little or no time there. I should be dead a million times over if it was a bad as so many scared surbanites will tell others.