Quote Originally Posted by 313WX View Post
Exactly.

On top of that, French777 and company can also take the same advice many are giving me. It's not like this petition will solve the problem, it'll just shift it on to someone else. The problem is structural, and until that's repaired the problem will still be there.

Also, this area may be the fastest growing area in the city, but I bet that area doesn't even make up 2% of the city's population, and downtown/midtown as a whole doesn't even make up 6% of the city's population. So I guess we will choose to ignore 95%+ of the city's population for that 2-5%, right? In fact, I doubt much in the way of tax revenue comes from that area, since it's mostly cultural institutions and yuppies in that area.
As someone who grew up in and lived in one of those "other," unnamed areas, I remember what we did long before Detroit's renaissance. Our streetlights started going out in the late 1980s, early 1990s. We had an active block club. We not only petitioned, but we had post lights in our yards. My folks and some of the neighbors installed motion lights.

It's not an either-or situation. It is both-and. You can do individual things within neighborhoods AND work for larger change across the city.