Looking for advice from Detroit natives. I'm self-employed and am considering moving to Detroit. I'd like to move into one of the mostly vacant neighborhoods and purchase a whole bunch of vacant lots so I can have extensive gardens, orchards, etc, while still being in an urban area. I'm also very intrigued and excited by the various urban agriculture and greening of Detroit projects, and would love to be involved in the city's rebirth. I've been looking, on-line, at the area SW of where I-94 and I-96 meet. Looks like quite a lot of vacant land, just what I'm looking for.
So, would this be safe? I've been looking at crime statistics, and from what I can tell area isn't any worse than where I live now in Lansing, but I don't really know what it looks like from the ground. Is this somewhere a scrawy white guy with no street smarts can live by himself? Are there other areas with lots of vacant land that would be a better choice? And what about city services? I've seen a lot of contradictory things about this elsewhere on-line. Is there still trash pick-up etc in these mostly abandoned neighborhoods?