Originally Posted by
DetroitPole
Haven't left yet, not in a hurry, but I plan to. There is just no future here.
Detroit is fucked beyond belief. To make matters more hopeless, there is absolutely zero leadership or vision left in this region. It is 2011 and we can't build a stupid rail line, and the Oakland County exec is vowing to block it from coming into his awful little fiefdom. Meanwhile the last hope for Detroit, Dave Bing, is a clueless, out-of-touch old man with no management skills or clear, coherent plan.
The good neighborhoods have been falling off for at least a decade or so. They have the opposite problem other posters have described. It doesn't really matter how much the neighbors care - we need government to deal with things like abandoned houses and illegal dumping and police protection. Instead we're left on our own to fend for ourselves. I live in a great city neighborhood, but I don't know how long we could hold out without some serious help.
The city has tens of thousands of great people, but their goodness is outweighed by the sheer badness of so many city residents. There are too many people who are crude, wicked, ignorant slime in the city capable of doing little else except causing conflict or crime. I used to be idealistic and able to see the goodness in all people. Now I'm cynical and jaded. I don't care how poor you are or about some 'civil justice' issue, there is no excuse to have piles of garbage in your front yard or to be shouting and shooting for no reason. As far as I'm concerned, people like that shouldn't be allowed to breed.
The city is a hulking ruin of a place and the suburbs are bland, awful, and soulless. So many people in the suburbs have been disconnected from urban life - for generations now - that they don't even seem to understand the benefits or importance of major cities and their amenities.
There are a lot of nice people here, but too many of them have left. The best and the brightest, coolest and nicest go seeking real cities and opportunities, not Brightmoor, Brighton, or Birmingham.