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Just read the article and wow talk about some people who are ignorant about Pittsburgh. My favorite one was "we have no national presence". They're right we don't have national presence; that's why we have UMPC, Pitt, CMU, Duquesne, and are home to the headquarters of Consol, Heinz, US Steel, PPG, Mylan Labs, PNC Bank, American Eagle, Bayer USA, etc.
D-town' has a as a larger population of Blacks & Latinos in poverty while the gang problems haven't gotten much better than the '90's.
In D-towns sections 6-mile, 7-mile, 8-mile, 9-mile is like leterally putting Homewood, Terance Village, Bedford Dwellings, East Hills, Northview Hieghts, Manchester, Larimer, Willkinsburgh, Knoxville, & Beltshoover right next to each other! Also, D-town has dangerous white biker gangs which Pittsburgh luckily doesn't have.
In the Burgh black on black is type of crime we really have. While over in D-town there's: black vs. black, latino vs. latino, and black vs. latino, and white vs. white (biker gangs).
Exactly...Pittsburgh and SWPA just doesn't have the type of racial tension and overall conflict that Detroit does, we're talking two different worlds. Detroit's issues have been a decades-long problem in the making and will need a ton of work to even scratch the surface. Detroit has a mystique about it and could rebound at some point down the line just because it's one of America's storied cities, but it's going to be a really damned uphill climb for quite a while.
Detroit has problems stemming from economical/social/structural backings. Even with all of the ghettos and physical blight....the largest problem is with the people. That city has been completely ravaged due to white flight and political issues. You can fix the economy, you can toss some paint on the old buildings and dress it all up, but attracting people back into the city is going to be next to impossible due to the last 5-7 decades of white flight and general perceptions that downtown is unsafe and completely not worth bothering with. Detroit's suburbs are all actually very nice, it's just the inner city that's a total warzone.
Whenever I visit Michigan, I always love driving around in Detroit. It's an eerie city, the type that tumbleweeds blowing down a major city street is not out of the ordinary. Where when you see a person on a street, you immediately wonder what they're doing walking around - despite the fact there are sidewalks everywhere. Nothing is maintained and everything is dilipitated and falling apart.
Yet, as soon as you drive past 8-Mile and see that sign that says 'Welcome to _____' directly across the street from Detroit, you'll suddenly see vibrant businesses everywhere, and people walking on the sidewalks, and parking in parking lots, and getting out of cars, etc. A completely different feel.
Part of the major issues, well beyond the crime, violence, crack epidemic, social problems, racial problems of Detroit; is that still, even if a person was completely indifferent or completely unaware of all of that, the fact remains that living on the suburban side of 8-Mile feels like you have 'urban options', whereas living on the Detroit side of 8-Mile, you have very few shopping or retail or supermarkets, plus the other issues, and it makes it significantly less desireable as even an option to live on the Detroit side.
(Granted, there are exceptions for Detroit, like immediately right downtown, and a few scattered good spots, but by and large, the suburbs offer all that a city should have, and the city of Detroit generally lacks the positives of a city, and contains all of the negatives in very high concentration).
This isn't only a problem in Detroit, but other midwestern cities (especially cities in Michigan -- Flint comes to mind). There is a mentality that the cities are undesirable, crime-ridden, and extremely poor, thus they are "not worth bothering with," as you said. I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit/ Flint, and was always warned of the dangers of the city. Many people refuse to set foot in the cities, let alone live there.
Personally, I don't feel the dangers of city living in Detroit or Flint are quite as serious as they are perceived, by suburbanites who view urban areas with unjustified terror. There are a few nice cities in Michigan -- Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor (although Ann Arbor is nowhere near as urban as Detroit or Pittsburgh). The rest -- Jackson, Battle Creek, Bay City, Saginaw, Flint, Detroit, and Lansing -- are neglected terribly. People would rather live in vinyl village suburbia, and that is probably the main reason Detroit looks the way it does.
I'm hoping Pittsburgh can avoid this fate. We are lucky that we live in a city where urban living is still appreciated. However, we have many neighborhoods that are neglected, and could become Detroit-like if we do not make efforts to reclaim them. In most of Pittsburgh's neglected neighborhoods, crime is not really a factor, but school districts. I still think that Pittsburgh suffers from negative perceptions of some of the poorer districts, and a follow the herd mentality, which keeps many neighborhoods stuck in a depressed rut.
My parents still assume that Pittsburgh has the same ills as Detroit or Flint, and are petrified of driving in or visiting the "inner city." They think all cities are scary places.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
Whenever I visit Michigan, I always love driving around in Detroit. It's an eerie city, the type that tumbleweeds blowing down a major city street is not out of the ordinary. Where when you see a person on a street, you immediately wonder what they're doing walking around - despite the fact there are sidewalks everywhere. Nothing is maintained and everything is dilipitated and falling apart.
Yet, as soon as you drive past 8-Mile and see that sign that says 'Welcome to _____' directly across the street from Detroit, you'll suddenly see vibrant businesses everywhere, and people walking on the sidewalks, and parking in parking lots, and getting out of cars, etc. A completely different feel.
Part of the major issues, well beyond the crime, violence, crack epidemic, social problems, racial problems of Detroit; is that still, even if a person was completely indifferent or completely unaware of all of that, the fact remains that living on the suburban side of 8-Mile feels like you have 'urban options', whereas living on the Detroit side of 8-Mile, you have very few shopping or retail or supermarkets, plus the other issues, and it makes it significantly less desireable as even an option to live on the Detroit side.
(Granted, there are exceptions for Detroit, like immediately right downtown, and a few scattered good spots, but by and large, the suburbs offer all that a city should have, and the city of Detroit generally lacks the positives of a city, and contains all of the negatives in very high concentration).
This isn't only a problem in Detroit, but other midwestern cities (especially cities in Michigan -- Flint comes to mind). There is a mentality that the cities are undesirable, crime-ridden, and extremely poor, thus they are "not worth bothering with," as you said. I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit/ Flint, and was always warned of the dangers of the city. Many people refuse to set foot in the cities, let alone live there.
Personally, I don't feel the dangers of city living in Detroit or Flint are quite as serious as they are perceived, by suburbanites who view urban areas with unjustified terror. There are a few nice cities in Michigan -- Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor (although Ann Arbor is nowhere near as urban as Detroit or Pittsburgh). The rest -- Jackson, Battle Creek, Bay City, Saginaw, Flint, Detroit, and Lansing -- are neglected terribly. People would rather live in vinyl village suburbia, and that is probably the main reason Detroit looks the way it does.
I'm hoping Pittsburgh can avoid this fate. We are lucky that we live in a city where urban living is still appreciated. However, we have many neighborhoods that are neglected, and could become Detroit-like if we do not make efforts to reclaim them. In most of Pittsburgh's neglected neighborhoods, crime is not really a factor, but school districts. I still think that Pittsburgh suffers from negative perceptions of some of the poorer districts, and a follow the herd mentality, which keeps many neighborhoods stuck in a depressed rut.
Yep, and actually that's a reason I generally try to avoid even looking at Detroit or Michigan forums on city-data. Most threads will quickly degenerate with that 'cities are bad' thinking. Even my parents and everyone I know in Michigan, all my family members, they associate cities with pure dread and worst of humanity.
Then you put the racial spin on it. No one in Michigan would ever call themselves 'racist', but you view the threads on Detroit, and you'll quickly see a 'they' don't take care of Detroit, 'they' chased us out of Detroit, 'they' 'they'...with an underlying assumption that ONLY black people live in Detroit, and they got their city, so and-on-and-on.
You put that racial spin on it, and it becomes even more impossible, and more of a vicious cycle.
As Pittsburgh doesn't appear to have devolved anywhere near that whatsoever, I think it'll continue to 'escape' that. I think crack cocaine also absolutely destroyed Detroit to the core after it was already knocked down many serious notches even before the 1980s began, as crack did to many other cities with a strong inner city core.
My perceptions of Pittsburgh is that it still remains a city with a decent black population, but still a predominately white population, and if there is any animosity there, it certainly doesn't show itself as Detroit/Detroit suburbs seems to all the time. For whatever reason, I get the impression that Pittsburgh escaped the worst racial riots of the 1960s, as well as a lot of 'white flight' of 1950s, and a lot of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, and even the foreclosure crisis of the 00s.
Detroit, on the other hand, was Ground Zero for the worst and best casebook study on 'white flight', the worst racial riots, and the worst crack epidemics....and finally got to skip one on the foreclosure crisis.
Pittsburgh had its share of riots, white flight, drug and gang problems, and so on. But I think the micro-neighborhood structure helps explain why so many parts of the City seem less affected by those events than you would otherwise expect.
That said, plenty of people in Southwest PA still view the City as a strange and dangerous place.
D-town' has a as a larger population of Blacks & Latinos in poverty while the gang problems haven't gotten much better than the '90's.
In D-towns sections 6-mile, 7-mile, 8-mile, 9-mile is like leterally putting Homewood, Terance Village, Bedford Dwellings, East Hills, Northview Hieghts, Manchester, Larimer, Willkinsburgh, Knoxville, & Beltshoover right next to each other! Also, D-town has dangerous white biker gangs which Pittsburgh luckily doesn't have.
In the Burgh black on black is type of crime we really have. While over in D-town there's: black vs. black, latino vs. latino, and black vs. latino, and white vs. white (biker gangs).
Just wanted to note that Pittsburgh does have biker gangs.
That's just a couple of several articles one can find on the subject by Goggling. BTW, we have both white & black motorcycle gangs (or clubs as some of hide under the guise of - and very few clubs are really 'clubs').
And they've been around for a long time. I can vouch at least 20 years as my father was a member of one. They tend to be involved in drugs (cocaine, heroin, crack) so unless you're involved in that trade you likely won't have issues with them, but if you get in their way they are as dangerous as any other criminal. Just wait until they can get meth running mainstream in the East. For now it seems to be a bigger issue in the West.
Back on topic, I think it's awesome Detroit wants to take some things done in Pittsburgh and apply them to their city. Any city wanting to improve upon itself is a good thing I would think.
Last edited by feanix; 01-12-2011 at 11:48 PM..
Reason: typo
That said, plenty of people in Southwest PA still view the City as a strange and dangerous place.
Perhaps, but I think you would have to live in the suburbs of Detroit to realize the extent that the city has been left to die, and how cities are viewed there, which is much, much different than in Pennsylvania, or Ohio, for that matter. Look at the differences between Toledo and Detroit. Toledo is still very much a liveable city -- not so much for most of Detroit.
I don't have any personal experience with Detroit (except for going there as a child when I was in an orchestra...we played there). It may be bad, but when I think of Detroit I think of that movie Robocop. Funny, because parts of that movie were filmed around here (like the final fight scene in the mill....that was in the Mon Valley somewhere).
Perhaps, but I think you would have to live in the suburbs of Detroit to realize the extent that the city has been left to die, and how cities are viewed there, which is much, much different than in Pennsylvania, or Ohio, for that matter. Look at the differences between Toledo and Detroit. Toledo is still very much a liveable city -- not so much for most of Detroit.
Trust me, I grew up in the Detroit suburbs, and my dad still lives there, so I know how people view the city. I also know that the reality of Detroit is, with a few exceptions, much worse than Pittsburgh--not that you will get shot as soon as you cross 8 Mile, but the disinvestment and depopulation of such large sections of the city is really depressing.
What I find amusing is that I occasionally encounter people in SWPA with a similar attitude toward Pittsburgh. Not everyone, by any means, and undoubtedly it helps that lots of people work in the City. But there are people in the region who have never stepped foot in the City, and view the prospect with dread, which again is amusing to me because compared to places like Detroit, Pittsburgh might as well be Disneyworld.
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