Hi Detroiters:
I have just recently discovered Detroit through Lowell's awesome Detroit Tour site. I have also spent hours on Google street view "walking" neighborhoods turned urban prairies.

You hear of plant closures on the news over decades and you think to yourself, yeah that's a lot of jobs, that's going to hurt but outside the local area, there is no follow-up reporting on the the impact these closures have on people or cities.

From what I've read so far I would attribute the current situtaion to a number of factors: decline of the auto industry due to imports , underprivileged black population, poor schools, cocaine epidemic in the 80s [[that really can destroy a neighbourhood fast), city designed for cars, lack of public transit, poor leadership at the municipal level. I'd really be interested in hearing the opinion of Detroiters as to what went wrong and also, where the people went? what was it like to leave a home behind? who owns these urban prairies, how do people who live in these almost empty neighborhoods feel about living there?