I don't personally blame anybody for leaving the city if it feels too hot for them. But when the majority of people would rather move away from their problems than face them, the despair zone just keeps growing.
We're going to see despair, frankly, all across metro Detroit, and the only exceptions will be places where people really dig their heels in and love the place enough to defend it.
We've lived for almost 100 years on the illusion that we can just leave the city, with all its problems, behind us. And Detroit was ideally sited for that escape plan, surrounded with millions of acres of flat land, even with an international border in the way.
But the "bad" part of the metro just kept growing. Eight Mile Road wasn't enough. Soon the dividing line was I-696. Then it became Hall Road. As people kept fleeing, removing their investments and resources from ever-larger areas, they didn't blame themselves for that, naturally. They blamed "them" -- the poor who follow in their wake.
Three generations on, and the grandchildren of the people who initially left the city discover they actually like cities. And since we are unable to provide a functioning city, they leave. Those who stay are essentially not even suburban people anymore, but rural, without any understanding of what a city is.
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