Wilderness

Er… wow. What the hell happened to number 4?

I kind of want to live in those houses. All of them.

What an intriguing website you’ve found there, David.
Another facinating post on a similar theme is the abandoned Belle Isle Zoo:
http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/07/return-to-abandoned-zoo.html

TimT,
Well, they’re going really cheap, have you seen current real estate prices in Detroit?

Hey gary T: I live in one of those suburbs, and have for most of my 39 years… The racism crap, that sounds like those talking points the Detroit City Council reads off to cover up their latest scandal. People moved away to find a safer neighborhood – black, white, yellow, or green – it didn’t matter. Thats why my parents moved us out of the city in 1976. If Detroit wasn’t such a corrupt, nearly-lawless wasteland then more people might be willing to live there again. I actually tried about 10 years ago, to live downtown. Lived right near the new stadiums, supposed to be the safest/nicest area of the city. Mostly it was fine, but I got tired of my car getting trashed by the streets that were never fixed, and 3 busted-in windows, and 2 slashed tires, and a half dozen random bums urinating on it – all in an 18 month span. So, I left.
Nowadays? A lady I work with talks about the young 20-somethings who hang out on her street night and day… BBQ-ing in the street until 3am… shooting small animals for fun… dealing drugs… less than a half mile from a Police Station. She would be gone tomorrow if she could get out from under her house, and find some place affordable. She already sent her kids to live with grandma in the suburbs, to get a better education, and to hopefully avoid getting shot. This wasn’t a bad neighborhood 15 years ago when she moved in… but nobody is taking care of anything in that city anymore.
Thats the reality of Detroit. White people don’t make the black people who rule the city shoot each other, or neglect their city – thats on us alone. And nothing sinister keeps black people out of the suburban neighborhoods – except maybe their own prejudices. My experience is, if you’re a regular law-abiding non-a-hole person, your neighbors don’t care what you look like. I realize that doesn’t play well with the victimhood mantle you want to put on black people, but hey – tough crap. I’m sick of people blaming Detroit’s downfall on “race”… how about we talk about a total lack of responsibility, and corruption at every level of government first.

‘people different from you’ = people who piss on other people’s property and/or cars
Glad we cleared that one up. And thank god they ARE different!

Spare me the guilt trip Gary T. The black middle class moved out of Detroit a generation ago. The lack of a tax base has little to do with a school system that only turns out 25% of it’s students who are literate. try googleing Robert Bobb+DPS. You’ll see the problem isn’t funding, it’s theft and mismanagement.
Detroit’s geography contributed to it’s downfall. It was a developed city surrounded by green fields. New suburbs could be built within easy commuting distance of the central city. I don’t think that situation exists in many places.
Gary, do you have any idea how dangerous the idea of going in to the city of Detroit is? Next time you visit why don’t you take a stroll through some of the neighborhoods.

it’s sad that some of the people most ignorant about the situation in Detroit are those closest to that city.

“We are talking about a city where a parent can’t put his kids in the car and drive them to his old neighborhood to show them where he grew up because it’s physically not safe!”
this is the ignorance I’m talking about. what does “not physically safe” even mean? I have spent months walking around all kinds of neighborhoods in Detroit making a documentary film about the relationship between Detroit and its suburbs. Most neighborhoods are more empty than anything else. Most people in Detroit are shockingly friendly. Poor, yes. Black, yes. But I was never threatened or harmed in any Detroit neighborhood, no matter how poor it seemed. I doubt you deserve to call yourself “a Detroiter.” You’re a suburbanite who drives into “the old neighborhood” and feels unsafe because there are black people around.
I’m sure it’s perfectly safe for you to bring your kids into Detroit. when they ask why things look so bad, be sure to include in your explanation the main reason: your people up and left.

yeah, dead white guys who dare to drive into detroit to show their children granny’s old duplex are really piling up at the morgue.
detroiters kill detroiters over drugs and personal beefs. the idea that detroit is dangerous for some accountant from farmington hills just rolling through the old neighborhood in his SUV is the load of twaddle.

garyt,
I know a number of people from Detroit. They’re all down here in FL. Same stupid lefty mind-set. Of course down here, I’ve never had my car pissed on.
“IN EVERY GODDAMN CITY. ever been to NYC? Chicago? The whole city of San Francisco has been pissed on by bums.”
Well isn’t that your problem right there? Think of what mind set predominates in those cities. As for my lefty ex-Detroiters, they have all of the “guilt of their forebears’ own culpability”, but did they stay there to fix the problems? No. Up and left because their common sense overrode their guilt. Took their tax base with them. Now they’re down here to infest the rest of us with their cancer mentality. You people in ‘Troit can do both of our cities a favor by fixing what YOU broke so these losers can go home and improve the quality of life in both of our cities.

“racism combines with the guilt of their forebears’ own culpability and the blame for what happened to the city of Detroit is placed on those who stayed in Detroit rather than those who abandoned it.”
– – – –
Oh, what drivel.
First, people don’t “abandon” a huge city. They simply move away. For you to characterize them as having abandoned Detroit, for you to claim that they moved to escape blacks, is simply your pathetic attempt to evade the truth: that many many people who had jobs and education and training and ambition finally tired of having to listen politely to thieves such as you who demanded – demanded! – that they give more and more and more of their money and their time and their safety to you, immediately and on your terms, so that you could make the world better for . . .. well, not them . . . but for jobless-forever people, druggies, drunks, criminals – all of whom you insisted the working people acknowledge daily as their moral superiors, because they had nothing, aspired to nothing, accomplished nothing, and contributed nothing.