Why does Detroit have no row houses or brownstones?!

[BrushStart]

I never gave it much thought until today, but it occurred to me that Detroit has basically no row houses or brownstones. Almost every other city has them. Most Midwestern cities have an abundance of them winding tightly through very narrow streets. Consider Pittsburgh for example, the entire city is full of them. In fact, it seems that row houses are the dominate housing type in Pitt. Ohio is the same story, and Chicago has miles of brownstones... Detroit is just as old as those cities, and all of these neighborhoods [[Detroit's included) were built when streetcars were the primary mode of transit. So, what's the deal? Why did spaced-apart, single family homes located on very wide streets dominate housing in Detroit? I heard somewhere that it had to do with taxes on street frontage, but I don't entirely buy that.... It still wouldn't explain why Detroit's streets are so much wider and the houses so far apart compared to other cities?

It's really interesting to use Google streets to travel through Pittsburgh and look at how their housing is all nestled together on streets as wide as alleys with a mix of little bars and and cafes tucked away into little nooks. The format even holds true when you get far away from Pitt's downtown. I think Detroit has a built-in disadvantage in terms of urban renewal because of our spread out housing style. We aren't built for density or mass transit as well as other cities. I think single family houses also get blighted faster because all it takes is one homeowner to go belly up and he takes an entire house down, whereas several adjoining neighbors all have to tank at the same time to cause a series of row houses to become abandoned and blighted.

Here are a few pics of some of Pitt's nicer row houses: http://www.city-data.com/forum/pitts...-pictures.html