The worst aspect of contemporary Detroit?

[night-timer]

A recent D-Yes thread about panhandlers at gas stations in Detroit got me thinking. When normal day-to-day activities like re-fueling at a petrol station in Detroit turns into a potentially hazardous experience, what is the worst low-point for you in Detroit today? Corruption in politics, blight, drugs and gangs, police/crime/safety issues, joblessness? There's no single answer or 'right' answer, just fishing for opinions on what irritates you the most.

[313WX]

The widespread blight, crumbling infrastructure and abandonment really is the straw that breaks the camel's back for me. And Detroit's to the point where there's really no way to avoid it.

There's just too many memories painfully brought up of the past when seeing it [[that can never be replicated). Despite the marginal gains now being made downtown, throughout most of the city there's still the feeling that you're living in a shell of what was once a great major city that continues to die and is never coming back.

[sumas]

Parenting, our area children are so charming, had several over for activities today. They are just so needy for approval/attention from adults. It can break your heart to see these great kids sucked into their parents cycle of bad habits.

Right now it is way after dark and kids are running up and down the street. They are having kid fun but zero supervision. Seriously sad. Parents don't give a shit.

[softailrider]

Parenting, our area children are so charming, had several over for activities today. They are just so needy for approval/attention from adults. It can break your heart to see these great kids sucked into their parents cycle of bad habits.

Right now it is way after dark and kids are running up and down the street. They are having kid fun but zero supervision. Seriously sad. Parents don't give a shit.

Grandparents don't give a shit either.

[sumas]

Grandparents don't give a shit either.

hey that is unfair, the best of our best are raised by grandmothers. Kids get infatuated by other kids. They like the life style and baby mama's pay no attention. I doubt Grandmothers want to do a repeat. They are way more very careful and caring on that second round.

[Lombaowski]

The most irritating thing for me is the sprawl. I get it's the Motor City and all, but I don't like to spend more than 30 minutes in a car going from point A to point B every day. Then the bus systems around here are so lousy that there's really no other options for getting around. I don't see how millions of people just endure it for years at a time.

Try living in DC, Chicago, or LA. Places with real traffic problems.

hey that is unfair, the best of our best are raised by grandmothers. Kids get infatuated by other kids. They like the life style and baby mama's pay no attention. I doubt Grandmothers want to do a repeat. They are way more very careful and caring on that second round.

I'd like to see statistics in Detroit in particular, of how many grandmother's who were single mothers, that are now raising their grandkids. Generations upon generations of single parent homes is no way to maintain a stable community.

[sumas]

Try living in DC, Chicago, or LA. Places with real traffic problems.


I'd like to see statistics in Detroit in particular, of how many grandmother's who were single mothers, that are now raising their grandkids. Generations upon generations of single parent homes is no way to maintain a stable community.

Hate to burst that bubble, but every Grandmother here were married. Home owners and it is unfortunate that some of their kids got caught in street culture. I really love my area children and other area residents do too. We do our best our very best to insure their success

[Bigb23]

Parenting, our area children are so charming, had several over for activities today. They are just so needy for approval/attention from adults. It can break your heart to see these great kids sucked into their parents cycle of bad habits.

Right now it is way after dark and kids are running up and down the street. They are having kid fun but zero supervision. Seriously sad. Parents don't give a shit.

My old next door neighbor let his 3 year old run his big wheel in the street with traffic. When I told him that's what sidewalks are for, he told me that ANYBODY that hit his kid would be dragged out of the car and have his neck broken by the dad.
That kid started his own gang, and was breaking into homes at nine years old.
Good parenting !

[Honky Tonk]

My old next door neighbor let his 3 year old run his big wheel in the street with traffic. When I told him that's what sidewalks are for, he told me that ANYBODY that hit his kid would be dragged out of the car and have his neck broken by the dad.
That kid started his own gang, and was breaking into homes at nine years old.
Good parenting !

How is your old neighborhood? Is it "repopulating"? Probably due to those evil 'burbanites.....

[animatedmartian]

The most irritating thing for me is the sprawl. I get it's the Motor City and all, but I don't like to spend more than 30 minutes in a car going from point A to point B every day. Then the bus systems around here are so lousy that there's really no other options for getting around. I don't see how millions of people just endure it for years at a time.

[Tetherunit]

The worst part of contemporary Detroit is the cathartic negativity that seems to percolate through the popular media narrative about the City. Secondly, is our reluctance to engage our unique regional heritage of racial dysfunction which probably contributes greatly to my first choice.

[Hermod]

The most irritating thing for me is the sprawl. I get it's the Motor City and all, but I don't like to spend more than 30 minutes in a car going from point A to point B every day. Then the bus systems around here are so lousy that there's really no other options for getting around. I don't see how millions of people just endure it for years at a time.

The sprawl [[and the driving) is not unique to Detroit. In Detroit, the sprawl is due to people wanting to put as much distance between the Detroit disfunction and their family as they can [[accepting an unpleasant commute as a part of the package).

[animatedmartian]

The sprawl [[and the driving) is not unique to Detroit. In Detroit, the sprawl is due to people wanting to put as much distance between the Detroit disfunction and their family as they can [[accepting an unpleasant commute as a part of the package).

Does it have to be unique to Detroit for me to have a problem with it? There's many cities with sprawl, but there's also many cities with good transit so that even for people living many miles outside of downtown, they can still hop on a train ride to get to where they need to go. And whaddaya know, those cities too often have crime and decay which aren't things unique to Detroit.

[Hermod]

Does it have to be unique to Detroit for me to have a problem with it? There's many cities with sprawl, but there's also many cities with good transit so that even for people living many miles outside of downtown, they can still hop on a train ride to get to where they need to go. And whaddaya know, those cities too often have crime and decay which aren't things unique to Detroit.

Washington DC has a metro system and commuter rail. It has some of the worst sprawl and the most frustrating commuter traffic. If you can't afford a house in the closer suburbs, you have to live out in Dale City or Manassas and have a truly miserable nightmare of a drive everyday.

Southeast Florida [[Miami-Ft Lauderdale-West Palm Beach) has some commuter rail, but a nightmare commute.

[Chicago48]

The most irritating thing for me is the sprawl. I get it's the Motor City and all, but I don't like to spend more than 30 minutes in a car going from point A to point B every day. Then the bus systems around here are so lousy that there's really no other options for getting around. I don't see how millions of people just endure it for years at a time.

When I visit D, which is about once-twice a year, I'm amazed at the crumbling infrastructure. It's going to take billions of dollars to fix the roads, sidewalks and alleys.
Next I'm amazed at the design of the streets. There are so many dead ends and cutoffs, and the design of the city doesn't have a pattern. You can go around in circles for hours if you don't have a gps.
I don't see how my family is still living in Detroit, it's loyalty I guess or lack of money to move. Those friends that could picked up and moved to the burbs. They get better service, better police protection.

[Hermod]

When I visit D, which is about once-twice a year, I'm amazed at the crumbling infrastructure. It's going to take billions of dollars to fix the roads, sidewalks and alleys.
Next I'm amazed at the design of the streets. There are so many dead ends and cutoffs, and the design of the city doesn't have a pattern. You can go around in circles for hours if you don't have a gps.
I don't see how my family is still living in Detroit, it's loyalty I guess or lack of money to move. Those friends that could picked up and moved to the burbs. They get better service, better police protection.

Detroit does have a "pattern" which you need to look at a streetmap to recognize. There are three square grid systems in Detroit which unfortunately mix with each other. One is the ribbon farm grid oriented on the Detroit River, the second is the ribbon farm grid oriented on Lake St Clair, and the third is the township and section grid from the Northwest Survey.

You can see this on the east side where Whittier aligns with the Detroit River grid from Jefferson to Harper. North of Harper, Houston-Whittier conforms to the Lake St Clair grid to Kelly where it goes west on the township/section grid to Gratiot. Houston-Whittier continues as Westphalia on the Lake St Clair grid to McNicholls where it turns north on the township section grid to 8 Mile.

A bit confusing? Yes. It is a definite pattern though.

[Honky Tonk]

Detroit does have a "pattern" which you need to look at a streetmap to recognize. There are three square grid systems in Detroit which unfortunately mix with each other. One is the ribbon farm grid oriented on the Detroit River, the second is the ribbon farm grid oriented on Lake St Clair, and the third is the township and section grid from the Northwest Survey.

You can see this on the east side where Whittier aligns with the Detroit River grid from Jefferson to Harper. North of Harper, Houston-Whittier conforms to the Lake St Clair grid to Kelly where it goes west on the township/section grid to Gratiot. Houston-Whittier continues as Westphalia on the Lake St Clair grid to McNicholls where it turns north on the township section grid to 8 Mile.

A bit confusing? Yes. It is a definite pattern though.

You forgot the "wagon wheel" part.

[animatedmartian]

When I visit D, which is about once-twice a year, I'm amazed at the crumbling infrastructure. It's going to take billions of dollars to fix the roads, sidewalks and alleys.
Next I'm amazed at the design of the streets. There are so many dead ends and cutoffs, and the design of the city doesn't have a pattern. You can go around in circles for hours if you don't have a gps.
I don't see how my family is still living in Detroit, it's loyalty I guess or lack of money to move. Those friends that could picked up and moved to the burbs. They get better service, better police protection.

I agree with the crumbling part, but I've never gotten lost in the city. I don't know about you, but it's pretty easy to navigate. If you have a poor sense of direction, then yea I can see how it might be easy to get confused but for the most part, everything is either a grid or perpendicular to the waterfront.

[maverick1]

It would be the constant reminders of what the city or metro area could be [[world class) and what it is currently [[poverty, provincialism, blight). The reminders suck because I've seen cities with less than half the resources Detroit has make drastic changes fast. We have signs that we need to change as a region but we will go to war for ass backwards ways of doing things. You know there is a problem in the the thinking here when LBP actually put OC in the same conversation with Chicago and NYC.

[nain rouge]

I agree with the crumbling part, but I've never gotten lost in the city. I don't know about you, but it's pretty easy to navigate. If you have a poor sense of direction, then yea I can see how it might be easy to get confused but for the most part, everything is either a grid or perpendicular to the waterfront.

Inside the Boulevard, the grid is an absolute wreck. Sorry, but it is. Between the freeways, Wayne State, the stadiums, and the casinos, finding a continuous street can be shockingly difficult if you haven't mapped out a route beforehand. Roads mysteriously end for blocks at a time, cut off by a "super developments", or merge into freeway service drives.

Try driving from Midtown to Mexicantown one day on surface streets. Unless you know beforehand to take Mack or Warren to Trumbull or Rosa Parks, or to merge into Grand Boulevard from Mack [[though they start calling it MLK by that, which hopefully doesn't confuse you), you'll end up crying in frustration. Even then, it's not so simple. Bagley is blocked off TWICE, and Vernor just randomly pops out of the train station after not existing for the entire Midtown stretch. Hell, most visitors to the traditional Mexicantown on Bagley never notice the vibrant commercial stretch on Vernor because Bagley is cut off at I-75, and that you have to go north and take a road that didn't exist a couple blocks ago to get there. It's awful.

I feel like Detroit is so starved for development that whenever a developer comes along the city hands the person a map of the street grid and says, "Here, do whatever you want with this junk."

[Dan Wesson]

Growing up, working there and now visiting family the very real sense of never ever feeling safe.

Always on the lookout, swimming with the sharks.

Bike jacked twice had to fight 'em off. Robbed at knife point at middle school. Being a safety boy on the corner of baldwin and palmer had my watch stolen that was elementary school. Car tires slashed, radios stolen crap like that. Personal safety. Living around gangs, drugs and thugs. Fighting, hopefully giving as good as you got.

Went for a drive in the D two years ago, had my wife, daughter and baby grandson. We went through a neighborhood my wife and I lived in years back. I went down some streets between 7 mi and state fair, barlow, westphalia. Them streets looked like a bomb went off and they were war zones with cars, appliances and debris askew in the streets.

Then it dawned on me, I had the most precious people to me in that little Scion. What if we had a flat? What if that car broke down? I got a little worried and said to my myself, what the hell am I doing here with my family?

No more manure tour Bub. Get your ass out of dodge. On the way out, down 7 mile towards the Chrysler, I saw cops in their squad cars and they looked so out of place.

Like I said...

Growing up, working there and now visiting family the very real sense of never ever feeling safe.

Forget downtown, midtown it's the east side this ghetto rat came from.
Say all you want about resurrection, till it's made it way to 8 mile then over to 94, I'm not a believer.

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

Growing up, working there and now visiting family the very real sense of never ever feeling safe.

Always on the lookout, swimming with the sharks.

Bike jacked twice had to fight 'em off. Robbed at knife point at middle school. Being a safety boy on the corner of baldwin and palmer had my watch stolen that was elementary school. Car tires slashed, radios stolen crap like that. Personal safety. Living around gangs, drugs and thugs. Fighting, hopefully giving as good as you got.

Went for a drive in the D two years ago, had my wife, daughter and baby grandson. We went through a neighborhood my wife and I lived in years back. I went down some streets between 7 mi and state fair, barlow, westphalia. Them streets looked like a bomb went off and they were war zones with cars, appliances and debris askew in the streets.

Then it dawned on me, I had the most precious people to me in that little Scion. What if we had a flat? What if that car broke down? I got a little worried and said to my myself, what the hell am I doing here with my family?

No more manure tour Bub. Get your ass out of dodge. On the way out, down 7 mile towards the Chrysler, I saw cops in their squad cars and they looked so out of place.

Like I said...

Growing up, working there and now visiting family the very real sense of never ever feeling safe.

Forget downtown, midtown it's the east side this ghetto rat came from.
Say all you want about resurrection, till it's made it way to 8 mile then over to 94, I'm not a believer.

Dan
I had similar experiences growing up down on the east side back when the BK's and Errol Flynns were big throughout Detroit, walking home or riding a bike in the hood became a game of survival, with my head on a constant swivel.

I also made the same mistake while visiting family a few years back, we had a rental car and I was driving through the urban prairie parts of my old eastside neighborhood and thought to myself what the hell am I doing here with my wife and little kids driving through burned out crack houses with all kinds of nefarious characters hanging out up to who knows what, we probably looked like meat on a hook on 4 wheels!

[Tetherunit]

An oversimplified and utopian answer to many of the challenges you list would be to eliminate poverty.

[Honky Tonk]

An oversimplified and utopian answer to many of the challenges you list would be to eliminate poverty.

Are you running for Ms. America?

[Tetherunit]

Isn't this what we like in America? Short answers to complex problems