Sunday, March 01, 2009

Detroit is Dying

The Chicago Tribune wrote Detroit's outlook falls along with home prices. "The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service." There are 800,000 people there and houses go for $7,500!

"Detroit, which has lost half its population in the past 50 years, is deceptively large, covering 139 square miles. Manhattan, San Francisco and Boston could, as a group, fit inside the city's boundaries. There is no major grocery chain in the city, and only two movie theaters."

Well that settles it, I won't be moving there. :)

"To be sure, progress has been made downtown: two new sports stadiums, a reinvigorated neighborhood around Wayne State and new lofts and casinos. But unlike Pittsburgh, which successfully reinvented itself after the decline of Big Steel, Detroit displays only islands of prosperity amid a dismal landscape. Neighborhoods have suffered, and foreclosures have aggravated the long-festering ill of abandoned homes."

"On a positive note, Detroit's homicide rate dropped 14 percent last year. That prompted mayoral candidate Stanley Christmas to tell the Detroit News recently, 'I don't mean to be sarcastic, but there just isn't anyone left to kill.'"

1 comment:

The Dad said...

We go to Detroit once a year to visit family. It's really depressing. Not so much because it's blighted (we don't go to that part of Detroit that was the scene from "Judgement Night" but because here's an area with huge companies, phenomenal road infrastructure and excellent services, that's just wasting away. Each year the road to our relatives house gets more decrepit, there's more closed storefronts, and the place just looks more drab. Our family lives in an area with a wonderful library that seems to be the only salvation in the immediate area.