[mgkimsal]

in one sense, not much - "detroit" as a catch-all for 'detroit metro area' (and in some cases "southeastern michigan") - that's generally fine. Economy is hurting, but suburbs are suburbs.

"Detroit" - the area within the technical city boundaries - it's decimated. It's not quite 100% gone - there are new pockets of activity springing up, but it's extremely depressing to see what's happened. Used to be home to close to 2 million people (IIRC), and now it's 700k, and most of those don't want to be there.

The "downtown" area - about 15 square blocks - is nice - then it becomes a wasteland for several miles until you hit the suburbs.

[BallinBige]

This City of Detroit is too big, geographically

[planetguy]

How much would it cost to buy up the whole blighted area and declare it a giant national park?

[LargeWu]

A giant national park that is likely filled with asbestos, lead, and god knows what other toxic substances they used to use in buildings back in the day. Tearing all these buildings down carries serious environmental risk.

[mgkimsal]

$50 million? Dunno...

There's been a lot of investment in 'downtown' over the last decade - new ballparks, office buildings, etc., so those alone would probably need more than the $50 million I mentioned, but if you exclude those...

[saturdaysaint]

Unfortunately, a lot of prime, undeveloped real estate is owned by aggressive squatters with enough money to make any such venture a living hell.

[planetguy]

> undeveloped real estate is owned by aggressive squatters

Is this some unusual use of the word "squatter" of which I'm not aware, or are you using it wrong? Squatters tend not to be owners.

[untog]

I feel like that would be counterproductive- circling the (not bad) downtown with miles of undevelop-able land.