"For the first time since before Civil War, Detroit fell out of the top 20 largest cities in America, falling to 21" https://t.co/4RfZiSE49n
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) May 19, 2016
The high school I attended in Detroit was analogous to the south’s “Governor’s Schools,” and located in downtown. Every day for 3-years, I rode a city bus from a leafy suburb on the western edge of the city, through declining neighborhoods, and then through some of the worst neighborhoods in America. I saw storefront businesses fail, replaced by other businesses which failed, replaced again — and then one day the windows would be broken and they would stay that way for months. I saw the same people sitting and jiving and drinking on abandoned, mouldering furniture in weedy, trash-strewn empty lots day after day … for years. Street fights that stopped traffic were a commonplace as you got deeper into the city, and on a couple of occasions I watched near-riots break out.
By the time I got out of high school I knew that the city was going rotten, and doomed, and when I left home to go to college the decision that I would never live in Detroit again was final. I could not have foreseen the specifics of an epochal bankruptcy, but I knew that the culture was sick and that the city’s great days were over.
There is talk of revival, and I gather that there are now some gentrifying, habitable, island-like areas near downtown. Good luck with that.