I can't believe how many once-beautiful buildings are left to rot. There is some preservation work being done, though. The group Restore America (I think??) which is largely sponsored by HGTV has bought a few homes and is fixing them up to sell. You can get a huge house for not a whole lot of dough. But...you'd be living in the D, which is not so desirable, especially is you have kids.
Here's a house being restored by Restore America. I took these last fall. For some reason this photo won't show up...darn. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3641/3354379074_44b3a94a24_m.jpg
Same house, side view. Big!
This house is a law office now.
I don't know the story on this one, but it's been restored.
"Right now, Detroit is as close as any city in America to becoming a food desert, not just another metropolis like Chicago, Philadelphia, or Cleveland with a bunch of small- and medium-sized food deserts scattered about, but nearly a full-scale, citywide food desert. (A food desert is defined by those who study them as a locality from which healthy food is more than twice as far away as unhealthy food, or where the distance to a bag of potato chips is half the distance to a head of lettuce.)
About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy their food at the one thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas stations in the city. There is such a dire shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner."
Mili, there is some truth to this article. Major chain stores have abandoned Detroit; not only grocery stores, but clothing stores, department stores, etc. The older generation always talk about how they would go to downtown Detroit when they wanted to go Christmas shopping or buy a special outfit. Now those stores and malls are all in the suburbs. I worked within the city of Detroit for about a year and wondered, where do people shop? All the stores are abandoned! I had a difficult time even finding a gas station downtown. When I did find it, it was in such a scary area I was almost afraid to get out of my car to pump the gas! Detroiters have to travel to the suburbs to buy food and clothing.
I'm sure Detroit would be a great place to grow food. There is enough vacant land to produce vegetables for the whole state, probably. I just don't know who'd be willing to do the work or even know how to raise crops. If there were willing workers, getting it distributed would be difficult due to lack of stores.
Nikki and I have all the lettuce we need, available close to our homes. :) We live in the suburbs.
Kayte, is this development happening in other US cities, too, or is it only Detroit? My brother-in-law lives in Atlanta, in the suburbs, and his wife told me when I asked what the centre is like, that they never go there. Rather got the impression it's a no-go zone for the white middle class.
I live in the capital of Finland, Helsinki, which is the largest city here (about half a million, the whole of capital area housing around 1 million people of the population of 5,2 million of the whole country). Here the centre is a desirable place to live, the most expensive flats in the whole country are there, and one can still buy lettuce there. I wouldn't go to few places in Helsinki centre after dark, but otherwise it's pretty safe.
In my suburban area we have three smallish supermarkets just a couple of minutes' walk away and a small shopping centre about 10 minutes' stroll away. A big mall is not far either, and those are gradually killing smaller shops.
There is a campaign to keep the services alive in town centres and new houses are built in the areas that are freed from industry. The next big new area is going to replace the fairly central harbour that moved to the eastern side of the city.
The Detroit problem is so huge, it's hard to even know where to begin. Most of it is due to racism and discrimination, unfortunately. Long ago, many blacks moved up to Detroit from the south to find work in factories. There was segregation. "Whites only" drinking fountains, separate schools, separate waiting rooms, even separate hotels! Things we can't even imagine today. We had the race riots in the 1960's. Whites all moved out to the suburbs. Detroit quickly became poor and black. Add in government corruption, which only made things worse. There is an extremely high drop-out rate in the Detroit public school system. Poor education, no jobs, leads to high crime. Detroit was once the murder capitol of the USA. High teenage pregnancy rate, therefore high rate of single mothers. There are actually families in which several generations have lived off welfare and not worked.
Now with the economy being so bad, even large businesses are closing or moving out to the suburbs, which means even more job losses. Public transportation is dismal, just a few buses, so if people are too poor to have a car, they still can't work. The city is in debt, most branches of the government are corrupted. The school system is just...beyond words. The city council can't do anything without screaming at each other. The last mayor left in disgrace because of a sex scandal. It's such a mess!
It's really sad to drive through Detroit and see all the abandoned homes. (Especially when homelessness is a major problem.) Many of them are set on fire to discourage drug dealers and homeless people from living there. It's dangerous because you may have one home where people are living surrounded by 4 or 5 burned out buildings. Don said he drove a co-worker home one day and his neighborhood looked like a war zone. Neglected houses, burned out houses with open roofs, holes in the brick walls! And then there's be a little kid riding a tricycle down the sidewalk.
There are still some gems downtown (theaters, museums, etc.) but a lot of people are afraid to go. There are also a couple of nice, expensive neighborhoods in historical districts in Detroit, but...living in Detroit is just not desirable, especially if you have kids. Detroit has such a reputation for being dangerous that you would never choose to walk any distance there. You drive to where you're going, park as close as possible to the building and then make a bee-line for the door, avoiding eye contact with strangers. Homeless people hang out near museums and theaters because they know people with money go there. (Nikki and I were approached by a woman asking for money when we were making our Flat Travis video--and we were IN a car!)
Segregation and prejudices still hang heavy over our heads here. We like to think that's over with, but it's not at all. And the prejudices run on both sides. You can still see evidence of the riots downtown. Lots of blame on both sides.
I don't know much about Atlanta, except that they also have a high black population. They may be facing some of the same problems.
So...all this has come down to a lack of lettuce! Perhaps why Detroit is one of the USA's fattest cities!
