English, thanks for your well thought out post. I can feel with you on the "nerdy" thing, I'm a computer geek myself for a living.
I would have preferred Crockrel myself, and I don't understand how Bing could get elected considering the fact he had to move to Detroit in order to run. However, I absolutely don't Bing's character or motivations; I feel they are pure. I might not always agree with how he goes about things though, but his heart is in it, and his motivation is to improve Detroit. He doesn't need the money or the power.
We have our voting oddities in the 'Burbs too. For example, Jim Fouts is the mayor of Warren, and judging by his 75% vote grab in the primary he'll be our mayor for another four years. Fouts has bloated out city hall with his cronies, depleted the cities fund balance, all while declaring that all is good in Warren. Folks just don't see through his act and I don't know how they can't. He panders to union works with his "Buy American" empty gestures, he panders to the religious with his prayer station in city hall, he pander to old people via his fight against the non-existent "ageism". And on top of it all it looks like he was re-animated a decade ago and is in need of it again.
As for the inner-ring diversifying, it most certainly is true. I bought my home in 2006. I live south of 10 Mile, and between Ryan and Mound. The neighborhood was all white when I moved in.
In 5 short years my neighborhood now has a lot of middle-eastern folks and a lot of blacks. My neighborhood now has a lot of taxis going about it [[because the middle-eastern women don't drive). My neighbors speak broken English. Some of my middle-eastern neighbors [[mostly the really old ones) don't even smile or wave back when you say hello to them! The women won't look men in the eyes, but I understand they mean no disrespect to me. My neighborhood now has a grocery store for middle-eastern folks as well as a Mosque on Ryan Road.
I'm not saying these are bad things [[minus the rude folks), but the change is most apparent. It also has the very positive side effect that foreclosed houses don't linger, they quickly get bought up by middle eastern families moving out of what I'm told is Hamtramck because they want a better, safer life.
Right now, our main financial goal is to get out of our home. We bought it for 155k back in 2006. I estimate it is optimistically worth 60k-70k right now. We still owe about 105k on it. Right now we have literally more than TRIPLED our mortgage payments, we are throwing an additional 2K a month in principle into our house. This will make it so we will break even in 2013.
As for the motivation to move, it's educational. We live in the Center Line Public School district and their test scores are much lower compared to districts where I grew up like Clawson, Royal Oak, and Troy. Our daughter is almost 2 years old and we want the best for her.
A secondary motivation for us moving is safety. Warren is worlds safer than Detroit and has a great police and fire response. However, we just don't feel safe in our neighborhood. I don't know why that is. Is it because somewhere in my subconsciousness my mind is equating diversity with danger? I hope not.
A third motivation is to live in a subdivision with less main-road intersection. In the south side of Warren most of the roads run dead north-south or dead east-west, and they almost all intersect with main roads. In the newer suburbs, subdivisions have entrances and only a few streets that go out to the main road.
Back to broader topic, I feel that this region won't be whole again until the imaginary racial and socioeconomic boundaries are gone. Eight Mile Road is the divide between the haves, and the have-nots. Those that have, wouldn't choose to live there, because it's a bad place to live, and if you had the money, wouldn't you not choose to be somewhere safe, with police, fire, and medical response?
It's already starting to happen, the lines are blurring. The haves have less, and the haves not have more. I wish it would happen faster, but lingering attitudes and slow economic growth will slow down our progress.
Detroit needs to tackle issues in this order:
1) Fix the police response issue
2) Fix the schools
3) Bulldoze houses that need it
4) Continue to grow downtown and mid-town
If they can fix those things they might be able to stop the black-flight that happens when black families break the poverty cycle and flee to the 'burbs.