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I'd like to speak as the man on the ground and in dire confusion while reading this article. The author has fallen into the trap that most of us living here have fallen into. We all claim to be "from Detroit" but in reality, most of us live 15 miles or greater from Detroit and rarely visit. When we do, it's: The greek town/Cobo/Downtown area, and the theatre/new football and baseball stadiums. Not coincidentally, a short distance from the new home of Quicken Loans and Compuware. When people talk about how bad Detroit is, they are not talking about these areas. There's plenty of police coverage, it's well lit, it looks acceptable (sections of Downtown are a wreck, but it's mostly OK). I've read of a previous Detroit start-up on Hacker News that turned out to be an Ann Arbor start-up (home of the local school of University of Michigan which isn't local). Culture and demographics of Ann Arbor couldn't be more different than that of Detroit. Ann Arbor is home to rich folks or college students and just about nothing in-between. It's a fantastic city to visit. I know of an online vitimin retailer that opened up in "Detroit", but they're located 20 miles from the city limits in an upper class area (http://www.evitamins.com/ecommerce-careers), granted they were a start-up in 1999. As for the couple of non-automotive companies in Detroit. I've met the CEO of Compuware and was able to ask him why they up and moved. It was small talk prior to a meeting so take his response in that context, he summed it up as he got the property "for a buck" (exact words) and the location is profitable due to tenants renting portions of it. As SwellJoe mentioned, Detroit has a reputation for being a scary place because it is a scary place. He is correct. Short of a few small sections, it's scary. I've witnessed a barred up shop being broken into around noon on a sunny week day by a gang of four thugs. If you want a thrill ride, take Van Dyke from the core of the city north at dusk. You'll feel it's safe to stop running red lights about 7 miles out. You take I-75, the Lodge or some other highway to get in and out, not the surface streets. When I used to work as contractual support for a variety of businesses, I invested in a firearm and a concealed weapons permit (a permit that if you lived in the city at that time, you'd be denied ... state law has since changed that situation). A few simple facts about the city of Detroit: There is not one major grocery chain store in the city limits (Whole Foods is said to be investing in a store near where Compuware and Quicken Loans is located). There are no real, feature film movie theatres in the city limits. There is an income tax in the city (I don't believe there's another city in Michigan that imposes an income tax). City services are terrible. Every winter the stories on the news are about how the roads in Detroit aren't cleared for snow. It's a running, very sad, joke. From the first snowfall most of the neighborhood and the roads that feed the neighborhoods will be covered in snow. And you'll get to hear about it every day if you watch any of the local news stations. The good news for people who were originally "stuck" in Detroit, but working lower-middle class is that the suburbs, as of 2008, became significantly less expensive to live in. My neighbors across the street live in a tri-level. One of the children there beamed at me about how big his house is and how much nicer it is than the one they used to live in ... in Detroit. All the suburbs, especially in parts of Warren, are seeing migration of the poor out of the city and into homes in safer neighborhoods. They want out just like my parents wanted out when I was a child. This will further isolate and wreck the city. |
Plenty of Michigan cities have city income taxes
http://www.michigan.gov/taxes/0,4676,7-238-43715-153955--F,0...
One addition and this comes from a fifth generation Detroiter living outstate who visits often. There are lots of young urban homesteaders moving downtown especially in neighborhoods like Corktown and they've given the city a huge boost. However what happens when they marry and have children?
There better be another group of young people willing to buy their houses because no sane couple will put their children in the Detroit schools. If they fail to fix the schools the boomlet will crash.
But personally I am bullishly optimistic on the city. Detroit has big problems but it also has grand canyon sized opportunities that exist nowhere else.