Hipsters Revitalizing Downtown Detroit? (Lansing: house, unemployed, square footage)

[Slappy san]

Originally Posted by 313Weather

You should follow in your buddy detroitlove's footsteps and leave the forum as well, with all due respect.

With all due respect....I will stay. Feel free to block me.

[SadieMirsade]

New initiatives, entrepreneurs reviving Motor City (http://www.windsorstar.com/business/initiatives+entrepreneurs+reviving+Motor+City/5110539/story.html - broken link)

[ForStarters]

Companies head back downtown - Fortune Management

[ForStarters]

CBS News: Young energy bringing back Detroit - CBS News Video

[SadieMirsade]

Richard Florida Explains "The Geography of How We Get to Work" | Planetizen

[jaytheory]

Originally Posted by RingWalk

The problem with articles like that though is they really are taken out of context. As I've posted before, for most people who have never been to Detroit, a simple drive down Jefferson or Woodward would be shocking. Huge swaths of the city do not even look like it is in America, and not in a good way. They are only now getting the first grocery stores in the entire city. That is mind boggling to think about.

There seems to be a lot of exciting projects going on though, and I know Dan Gilbert is buying up real estate like crazy, so it definitely seems to be moving in a positive direction.

But this is all in the context of that on a scale of 1-10, it's at a 2, maybe.

You also have to understand that people who have lived in the area have been hearing this exact same song and dance for more than 30 years, since the 80s at least.

However Bing and Snyder seem to be on the right page, they are making the city much more business friendly apparently, and I have little doubt that downtown Detroit will look much better in 20 years than it does now.

First grocery store in the city...Moderator cut: please calm down. First Whole foods in the city yes, first national chain yes. 9regional chains exist everywhere). First grocery store not even close.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by SadieMirsade

@For Starters

Your post is truly moving and inspirational.

Just a couple of days ago I was talking to a friend whose family hails from Detroit and who's planning to invest in Detroit as soon as his actual business in Canada takes off.
He also mentioned, that he'd like to make money, that he sees long-term opportunities in Detroit, but along the way, he'd like to MAKE A DIFFERENCE as well.
I just wonder what kind of a difference all those fine young people (flocking to Detroit)....could make in Washington (where it REALLY COUNTS).
Or have they just given up on affecting the system from the top?

To get to the top of the system, you'd need a good ivy league degree, and years and years of experience. Additionally starting out in DC you'd need to pay alot of rent and immediately looking for good work, just so you could struggle to pay your rent.

There's something wonderful to be said where a young person without all the perfect degrees, without alot of prior wealth, can move to a city and go for dreams they'd never be able to afford to try elsewhere.

[Tyveker]

You know, it's weird, when I was in Detroit one of my neighborhoods asked why me and my roommate didn't want to go into politics, seeing as we're both very privileged and actively care about social issues. The thought isn't even on the table, we were shocked, though we are both near (in may) to having ivy league degrees (from Columbia, alma mater to President Obama). But it's like the deal with the Occupy movement: top-down approaches make you relish that you're at the top and then you slowly forget the bottom, you slowly become incapable of even knowing it. Partisanship is so all-devouring that each candidate is just about a proxy for each other, but with sharper teeth, and the inertia of the political system here prevents any singular candidate from achievement. So it doesn't seem so appealing to a young person, particularly as so many of my generation have done the very fundamentally American thing that we were told to (work hard, get a degree), and are still graduating with very limited employment opportunities (a quick aside - anyone interested in giving me a job????)

And that's exactly why the people ForStarter wrote about come to Detroit: bottom up change, which unlike the opposite, can actually produce change, even if it might just be local.

[johnr83]

Detroit's been trying a bottom-up approach for decades - it doesn't work. When you get a bunch of poor people together you get... a bunch of poor people. You're either working all the time to make ends meet - in which case your lack of time, money and high level of stress all impede you from being able to be active in your community, or you are unemployed, which adversely effects the community. There's nothing positive that can be done about that situation from within. Detroit refuses any outside help or guidance and then blames everyone else for its own problems.

[MS313]

Originally Posted by jaytheory

First grocery store in the city...Moderator cut: please calm down. First Whole foods in the city yes, first national chain yes. 9regional chains exist everywhere). First grocery store not even close.

THANK YOU
Someone has CLEARLY not spent too much time in the city and read too many news articles.