I was just toying with an online mapping program, and, just for kicks, plotted out a circle with a 21-mile radius centered on Eight Mile and Wyoming. Counterclockwise, it comes ashore roughly north of Selfridge, arcs up over where the farms meet the subdivisions, bisects Stony Creek, swoops down over Wateford, encompassing Oakland County Airport, covers Commerce, runs almost north-south along Chubb Road, arcs back while still covering Canton, covers all of DTW, and cuts across Trenton and Grosse Ile before crossing into Canada.

What if we were to say, for the sake of argument, that the city of Detroit were to be the City of Greater Detroit?

What would the area be? Would it be smaller than Jacksonville, Fla.? Larger than New York City's five boroughs?

What would the population of this semicircle be? Would it put Detroit back in the Top Ten of American cities?

What would the per capita wealth be?

Has any city police force or fire department covered an area this large?

What if, instead of 100-odd communities all raising taxes to pay for their various police departments, fire departments, zoning boards, school boards, etc., we were to have one large supercity. How much money could we save?

I know this sort of topic invites discussion of the hard realities that make something like this politically impossible now. But just a bit of blue-sky thinking goes a long way.