"Dan Gilbert is an irritation as far as our economic development" -L Brooks Patterson

[313WX]

Interesting article on fivethirtyeight.com on the topic of segregation.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...st-segregated/

The most segregated city in America? Chicago.

Within the city limits? Sure.

The thing is Detroit's segregation problems go beyond the city limits, with mostly white suburbs and a mosty black urban core. If we measured by metro areas instead, Detroit would easily top the list.

[professorscott]

Within the city limits? Sure.

The thing is Detroit's segregation problems go beyond the city limits, with mostly white suburbs and a mosty black urban core. If we measured by metro areas instead, Detroit would easily top the list.

Where we rank on this or that list does not change the fact that [[1) it's pretty damned bad, and [[2) something that needs to be worked on. It's unhealthy, morally wrong, and unproductive, just to name three things wrong with it, off the top of my head.

[maverick1]

Just so. The region needs to work together to attract talent from elsewhere, and then jobs will follow the talent. It isn't like it was fifty years ago, when you built a factory and people flocked to your town to work there. So the question is, how do we attract talent? Couple facts to feed such a discussion:

1. It's easier to try to attract young talent than older talent, just because younger adults are more portable. A forty year old is likely to have family or other commitments and be much more anchored to a community than someone who is twenty-five.

2. It's easy to gather data about communities that are successful in attracting young talent. The difficult part lies in determining which data are relevant. I have always felt that our cultural amenities were a strong positive [[arts, sports, the river, Canada, coney dogs) but our transportation and segregation were strong negatives. But I could be entirely wrong about this. Anyhow, once you figure out what your positives and negatives are, trumpet the positives to the skies, and work on the negatives.

By the way this doesn't work if we try to improve and market Detroit as one thing [[or two, or many) and Oakland County as another thing and Macomb as yet another thing and A-squared as another. We need to improve and market the whole area to be successful. Nobody [[in leadership) seems to be on the same page with me about this, though.

I don't see this changing anytime soon. Michigan has one of the highest concentration of baby boomers relative to population. They dictate what happens in Michigan and Metro-Detroit. I don't see us attracting younger people because it isn't baby boomer focused or benefits them in a way they understand. Their idea of progress is very 1960-1990 and anything that doesn't align with that is shut down. Suburban middle class baby boomers run things and until they die off not much will change.

[masterblaster]

That's a pretty poor recovery considering that there is virtually no in-migration to Michigan from non-natives.

I'm in my early 30s and of my friends who left the state I think less than 10% of us have gone back. Of those who haven't already gone back I don't think many of us have a real desire to ever go back. I'm an older millennial but it will be interesting to see how this plays out among the younger millennials who left college after the economic collapse.

Where did you friends end up settling to? Why don't these friends have a "real" desire to come back? The Midtown and Downtown are experiencing impressive and exciting investment. It's only a matter of time before core neighborhoods like the East Riverfront and New Center begin seeing considerable growth. Then neighborhoods like the North End and Milwaukee Junction will be swept up in the momentum

Already stronger neighborhoods like West Village, Mexicantown, Lafayette Park, and the city of Hamtramck are getting stronger.

Concerning public spaces, parks - Belle Isle is getting better since the state takeover, the Riverwalk just celebrated another extension on the West Riverfront, the Dequindre Cut extension is underway, Riverfront Park at the foot of West Grand Boulevard is going to see a transformation.

Concerning public transportation, its still pathetic, but the streetcar could be a decent addition.

Why not come back and be a contributing part of the revitalization instead of just living in the next hottest city? If you can find a good job back here, why not?

[Bham1982]

Why not come back and be a contributing part of the revitalization instead of just living in the next hottest city? If you can find a good job back here, why not?

Some people want an urban environment. Others want cosmopolitan feel. Plenty of people want warm weather. Then there are outdoorsy types. There are plenty of reasons for people to move somewhere else.

Detroit, whatever path it takes, will not be urban, cosmopolitan, warm or outdoorsy in any of our lifetimes, so if these are overriding factors, those people are gone. Detroit can hope to keep the folks that have other priorities.

[dtowncitylover]

Detroit, whatever path it takes, will not be urban, cosmopolitan, warm or outdoorsy in any of our lifetimes, so if these are overriding factors, those people are gone. Detroit can hope to keep the folks that have other priorities.

I would love to to know an urban, cosmopolitan place that is also "outdoorsy". I think Detroit and Michigan in general is an outdoorsy person's dream. It isn't boring and too flat like Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana and our Lake Michigan and Lake Superior shorelines are the best in the Midwest. Up North is a hiker's, camper's, and cottage lover's dream.

Despite not being Manhattan, I think Metro Detroit is cosmopolitan. We are great lovers of art, music, history, and the world. We have great institutions that promote them that are on par with any museum or institution in America. Urban, though no, we don't have the Upper West Side or Beacon Hill, but that's so minor.

I think people don't know the whole Michigan or Metro Detroit. They hear "Detroit" or "Michigan" and automatically think crime and dullness. When it's exactly the opposite. People don't even think Detroit has suburbs and when they realize we do and they're basically the same set up as other city's [[old, semi-urban inner suburbs to the exurban sprawlvilles), they stand corrected.

[313WX]

To add to what Bham said, some people don't desire to be pioneers. They want to live in a place where they can enjoy the things THEY desire NOW [[not several years/decades out, or for their grandchildren to have).

[iheartthed]

Where did you friends end up settling to? Why don't these friends have a "real" desire to come back?

I think people generally went everywhere. But there was a strong bias for the bigger cosmopolitan cities [[Chicago, NYC, SF, LA, DC). I also know a few people who went to less cosmopolitan places like Texas and Atlanta. I call Atlanta less cosmopolitan because I'm viewing it from a living in NYC perspective, but my friends who have lived in both Detroit and Atlanta view Atl to be more cosmopolitan than Detroit.

Why not come back and be a contributing part of the revitalization instead of just living in the next hottest city? If you can find a good job back here, why not?

I'm not really what Detroit needs in order to revitalize. Detroit needs to be a destination for people who are not from there if it really wants to turn itself around. That's what all cities need for survival.

[mwilbert]

I'm not really what Detroit needs in order to revitalize. Detroit needs to be a destination for people who are not from there if it really wants to turn itself around. That's what all cities need for survival.

Of course you can live where you want, and you may not be a useful citizen, but this is nonsense. Cities need people to move in, but they also need people to stay, or to leave and come back. In-migration isn't going to make up for high rates of departure.

[iheartthed]

Of course you can live where you want, and you may not be a useful citizen, but this is nonsense. Cities need people to move in, but they also need people to stay, or to leave and come back. In-migration isn't going to make up for high rates of departure.

Whether I'm a productive citizen is debatable, lol. But I think Detroit's most pressing issue is that it does not attract new blood, and not that it does not retain long time residents. Long term residents is a priority of politicians because these are the people who tend to be most civically engaged. But the people who actually keep the cities stable are the populations that continually cycle into city.

This is why big cities with stable populations tend to have foreign-born populations above 20%. Each of the cities at the centers of the 5 largest metropolitan areas in the country has at least a 20% foreign-born population. Chicago, the city with the lowest percentage of the top 5, was the only one of those cities to decline in population between 2000-2010. On the other end, there is a very strong corelation between low foreign-born populations and decline. Sort the grid in the link below and its' a who's who of stagnation, decline and decay until you get to about 10%:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...orn_population

[iheartthed]

Back to the o/t, L Brooks Patterson is a kook who does not deserve to be taken seriously anymore [[and OC voters who continue to elect him risk making the county irrelevant). Metro Detroit -- this includes Oakland County -- is the only metropolitan area of the top 50 that has not increase its college educated population since 2000. And it didn't just not increase, it decreased by a whopping 10%. Metro Detroit is truly in a league of its own by this measure. So if Oakland County is Metro Detroit's economic engine as he likes to view it then he should accept that his leadership has done a stunningly poor job at what it claims to be.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/up...g-to-live.html

[mwilbert]

Whether I'm a productive citizen is debatable, lol. But I think Detroit's most pressing issue is that it does not attract new blood, and not that it does not retain long time residents. Long term residents is a priority of politicians because these are the people who tend to be most civically engaged. But the people who actually keep the cities stable are the populations that continually cycle into city.

This is why big cities with stable populations tend to have foreign-born populations above 20%. Each of the cities at the centers of the 5 largest metropolitan areas in the country has at least a 20% foreign-born population. Chicago, the city with the lowest percentage of the top 5, was the only one of those cities to decline in population between 2000-2010. On the other end, there is a very strong corelation between low foreign-born populations and decline. Sort the grid in the link below and its' a who's who of stagnation, decline and decay until you get to about 10%:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...orn_population

I don't think so. I think that the correct inference is that immigrants don't come to cities without good employment prospects, and declining cities tend not to have those [[which is why they are declining).

[iheartthed]

I don't think so. I think that the correct inference is that immigrants don't come to cities without good employment prospects, and declining cities tend not to have those [[which is why they are declining).

I'm not so sure. I think it may be the other way around. Cities with transient populations tend not to go into long term decline.

[mwilbert]

I'm not so sure. I think it may be the other way around. Cities with transient populations tend not to go into long term decline.

Same problem. By definition, cities with transient populations lose their transient populations when they start to decline. Detroit used to attract huge number of people from outside the area. It stopped doing that when there stopped being lots of jobs.

[iheartthed]

Same problem. By definition, cities with transient populations lose their transient populations when they start to decline. Detroit used to attract huge number of people from outside the area. It stopped doing that when there stopped being lots of jobs.

I don't think that's the same thing. By transient, I mean people moving both in and out. Think of transient cities as being like water in the ocean, while stagnant and/or declining cities are like polar ice caps affected by global warming. The ice caps are losing old water molecules but are also not adding new molecules, either. But the liquid ocean is replenished regularly.

Transient cities maintain their populations not by keeping long term residents but by continually attracting new blood. Take New York City, which has a foreign-born population around 40%. If the secret formula to New York was keeping long term residents then New York's population would be much higher than it is right now. Why? Because New York's population 50 years ago was just about 1 million fewer than it is today, but over 3 million of the residents who live in the city today weren't even born in this country. So nearly half of New Yorkers today are not even descended from American parents, let alone mid-20th century residents of New York City. When you add in American born non-native New York City residents, like me, I'm sure that pushes it to be well over half of the residents of NYC today are not native to the city.