Reasons you still believe in Detroit after all the sh**

[O3H]

Detroit needs to grow out of a generation regarding "old - thinking".
Unfortunately that takes a tremendous amount of time.
Until the city stops revolving around the automotive sector, its sunk.

[cla1945]

Detroit needs to grow out of a generation regarding "old - thinking".
Unfortunately that takes a tremendous amount of time.
Until the city stops revolving around the automotive sector, its sunk.

GM and Fiat Chrysler are two of the biggest contributors to Detroits tax base. Detroit is and will always be recognized as the "Motor City".
You may think it's "old-thinking", but the minute we do stop recognizing that fact, Detroit WILL be doomed...IMHO.

[Atticus]

I have hope, because I believe two of the biggest issues [[schools and transit) are on a path to eventually work themselves out.

In Detroit, people often say “we need transit” and “we need to fix the schools”. I think what most fail to realize is that good schools are good transit are the RESULT of a healthy community, and not the CAUSE of a healthy community.

The cold truth is that for the last generation or so, the majority of Detroit Public Schools students have come from broken, impoverished families whose parents have not taken an active interest in their kid’s eduction. This is obviously not true for every family, but when you look at DPS over the last 20 years, this has been the case for the majority of students.

This is what happens when you have a student base comprised almost entirely from low income neighborhoods. And I am sorry, but no reasonable amount of public investment, teacher training, or academic program is going to be able to overcome that. Compared to wealthier neighborhoods, schools in poor neighborhoods are not going to better prepare students for life. They are at a fundamental disadvantage.

However, as the city begins to turnaround, and more upper and middle class families return to the city, eventually the tide will turn. The families will change the schools at the grassroots level, which is really the only way the problem can be fixed. This will not happen overnight, and probably not in the next 10 years either. It will be a very slow process. But it will happen eventually.


As for transit, there are two reasons people use transit. They either use transit because 1) they can’t afford or aren’t able to drive, or 2) they use transit because it is preferable to other modes, like driving. From a social justice standpoint, we should increase transit for reason #1. But cynical as it is, the only way a region will actually get good transit is for reason #2.

And the truth is, there hasn’t been a reason for many years that people would actually want to take transit. Part of that is because most of the region is built suburban style, so transit doesn’t work. And part of it is because traffic congestion has not been bad enough that enough people would choose it over driving. Both of these are starting to change.

Traffic is getting worse, as the economy is getting healthier. And just as important, greater downtown is coming back with enough residential/employers/commercial etc. in a walkable setting that transit makes sense again. We still probably aren’t fully there yet, but we are getting close to the point where a car driver may find that transit actually could be more convenient for a given trip. Once that happens, voters will want more transit. It is important that our leaders then build transit that people want to use.

In both cases, it is a slow ride. But we are getting closer.

[casscorridor]

global warming making the rest of the country flooded, too hot and or drought-ridden