I also wanna express that I had no idea exactly how huge this city is. When you fit the cities of San Franciso, Boston, and Manhattan altogether, that actually threw me off! Now there's one thing I've noticed these past five or so years. A lot of us have been using the vacant lots for gardening, and distributing it to the community. And in this economy, we need every break that we can get.

And with out-of-towners buying homes for cheap and renovating them despite the dilapidated condition that the homes were in, these people thought outside the box and used alternative energy to substitute the original energy sources. Nice way to help bring in a economy as well as industry into Detroit. Like I said, there's a lot of potential here in the 313.

Now where I stay at (according to your diagram), I'm on the upper east side of Manhattan (lower east side of Detroit). And there are some areas being rebuilt while others still remain in bad shape while other parts are still maintaining their current stature in the community.

Detroit appears to be coming back after decades of corruption, neglect, and greed. Let's just hope that continue on that track again, and this time, stay on!

Try living in Detroit before you hype the positive attributes of living in chaos.

First, it is a very interesting post and the many thoughtful Comments reflect that you are on to some solutions worth trying.

Second, Detroit's collapse is an extreme example of urban America's decline that we can all learn from.

Third, I returned from Detroit less than ten days ago. This was my first visit and am chagrined that the horror stories I heard are true.
And writing about Detroit is a necessary therapy to restore faith in the power of urban life.

I briefly make two comments.

First, The Urbanophile's advocacy of an entrepreneurial zeal, I think, is probably the most likely strategy to rebuild Detroit's neighborhoods.

After all, immigrant entrepreneurs recently are given much of the credit for having revitalized many neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens and other cities.

So the question is: how can this micro-entrepreneurship be fostered in public policy?

And The Urbanophile's answer seems to be to have less over-regulation. Your post and Comments and lots of history indicate the many upsides to this entrepreneurial strategy and few downsides.

The failed federal Enterprise Zones from the 1990s indicate that government policy can do little to foster entrepreneurship and that solutions may need to be spontaneous, very grassroots.

But will municipal bureaucrats get out of the way of the solution … or at least turn the other way ?

My second comment is one made by at least one of your other postings and a few Comments: that the central issue in Detroit is that it suffers under terrible race relations in which both sides have done wrong.

Detroit needs a Campaign of Race Reconciliation before good government and capital are restored to the City.

Detroit probably will reelect Dave Bing as Mayor and he may be the man to lead this Campaign.

And Citizens may pass the Amendment on the ballot to have district elections that, hopefully, undermines the autocracy whose rule for three decades has run Detroit into the ground.

And downtown Detroit's office hulks may be continue to be renovated as apartments for young couples and empty-nesters… and develop a downtown life like other rust-belt cities such as Chicago.

But, will all this miraculously revitalize Detroit's neighborhoods?

No…. this is not enough to rebuild a city.

For vital neighborhoods, the yuppie and immigrant entrepreneurial strategies also will be needed.

Detroit's race relations are extreme. But it has other lessons for other midwest city dwellers. Unless we deal more openly with race, the recovery of cities will never be complete.

Too often many people [particually on the political left] idolise Europe and pretend that they have no problems.

And too many on the political right
have a bizzar kneejerk hatred of Europe that i find very strange.

I consider myself an Europhile.Not because i idolise Europe and the Europeans or an idealised version of them.But because i like them faults and all.

Instead of pretending that they live in utopia [as the political left does] .Or instead of pretending that they live in a socialist Hell [as the political right does] we should watch and see how they deal with some of their urban problems.

We can learn from their sucsesses and from their mistakes as well.

I agree with you MR Levy that Manchester and Sheffield would be somewhat easy to compare to some of our "rustbelt" cities including my own city of Baltimore.

MR Renn seems reluctant to do the comparisons.I understand his reasons.But it is a shame because i think he could defintly do the job well.

Most of this blog seems fairly non partisan.And it tends to avoid the silly over simplifications of the left and the right[ Europe is hell, no it's utopia ect,ect,ect].

This would make it the perfect place to compare cities in an honest way.

But of course i do respect MR Renn's decision not to do so.Hopefully he might change his mind in the future.

Best regards to MR LEVY and MR Renn.

A lot of the things I throw out in the blog are very testable, but I don't have the time or resources to really do the research it would take. That's unfortunate since it would be both fun and illuminating I think.

Demographic_profile_of_Detroit

The link gets cut.

The decline of Detroit is about race, it is not about de-industrialization or the auto industry. Poverty among whites in the Detroit suburbs is modestly above the national average. Whites squeezed out of a shrinking auto industry find something else to do.

In 1950, 1.5M white people lived in Detroit proper. Today? 100K, maybe.

If you consider that most of the significant buildings, infrastructure and housing stock were built before 1950, the 1.5M whites essentially handed over a city worth billions of dollars to an African American population, and left.

This pattern is repeated to varying degrees in every major city in the Midwest. In some areas the process continues to this day.

If we can't figure out how to employ the millions of low skilled African Americans who live in central cities (and thereby make it possible to live with them as neighbors), then we need to enact policies for a "demographic inversion." Trade several soul-less suburbs for our irreplaceable urban neighborhoods (as Chicago is). If we can't make one of these two things happen, young educated people will continue to move away.