Huh? I mean, I'm plenty happy here, not going anywhere anytime soon, etc., but I'd say this viewpoint puts you in a minority of one.
Oh, you don't even live here? Well, that explains it, I guess. The grass really is always greener.
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Huh? I mean, I'm plenty happy here, not going anywhere anytime soon, etc., but I'd say this viewpoint puts you in a minority of one.
Oh, you don't even live here? Well, that explains it, I guess. The grass really is always greener.
We're talking about trends and tastes and the economic environment, aren't we? Aren't all of those things in flux right now? Seems that instead of arguing categorically about things, a little nuance would go a long way to defusing this kind of dust-up. Just two cents ... from an unlikely source, I know...
The author of the article is a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black, for sure. However he hits the nail right on the head. Not for all of the right reasons though. Sure, it is not easy to recruit top talent in a relatively undesireable location. It is even harder to recruit young talent in an area without a very strong urban core.
Businesses thrive on quantity. The more people a business serves, the better it can do. A business in a dense urban area, will undoubtedly do better than the same business in a suburban area. By doing more business, a company can pay higher wages and higher rent, thus driving property values, as all tenants and property owners can afford more. By continuing to sprawl, property values stay low, as does density, and businesses, especially local ones, don't grow as much. So they can't pay higher wages, and thus property values stagnate.
Being so spread out unquestionably hurts an economy, especially Detroit. Being an autocentric region, with gas prices on the rise, means that everybody spends a significant chunk of their income on gas. The lack of density means that virtually everyplace a person has to go, they have to drive to, often times across town and back. While places like New York and Chicago are able to recruit top talent and young talent, Detroit continues to wonder why this happens. A lot of the problem is about quantity, if the region as a whole were more densely populated, property values and wages would rise proportionately. This is where the mass transit debate comes in, but is another debate entirely.
The rising gas prices will just continue to hurt this region, as more and more young people simply can't afford to pay for gas and rent. The same goes for recruiting experienced workers, as they can make more money elsewhere, and even though the cost of living is less in Detroit, when you factor in the cost of gas, it can add up in a hurry.
Hey Augustine,
I admit, when I was in Detroit back in 1998 or so, Detroit WAS NOT the place to be. I was probably one of only 2500 people at the Tiger Games. And after the games, the entire team would walk over to Hockey Town and get hammered. Most people didn't even know who they were. By the way, I bet a lot of you remember those good old days... when Detroit was not commercial and still had that really special Detroit feeling.
But I will admit, it was a VERY depressing place to be, especially for a young person. It lacked a lot of the 24 hour energy that I wanted, and as a young go-getter I needed to be in a heavily-populated and dense urban area to make money for what I was trying to do. To this day, when I leave Downtown proper, I still see Detroit as a very depressing place to live. Very depressing! I wanted to be in a city that had so much to offer, to the point that I'd never run out of things to do. I wanted to have access to public transportation and live in a walkable city.
However, I still love Detroit and mostly everything about it. I also love where I'm living now. I've been lucky enough to make enough money, where I can afford to have homes in both cities and still work for myself.