No, Detroit Is Not Like Other Cities

Whenever I discuss the city with friends and family back home, I inevitably run into one ridiculous statement: "Every city has the same problems as Detroit." This comment annoys me in particularly because it illustrates Detroit's biggest problem: people have their heads in their asses. Detroit's problems are not like other American cities in either scope or quantity. It's not like Chicago, New York, or L.A.  Sure, those cities have crime problems, but they don't have a homocide every day, a undiversified and fundamentally broken economy, a largely uneducated and illiterate constituency, ridiculous urban sprawl and vacancy, bankrupt school public school system, and a supremely incompetent municipal government to top it all off. To put it bluntly, none of those cities are nearly as fucked as Detroit. Detroit is in a league of its own in clusterfuckery, people. Acknowledgment is the first step and half the battle. Pretending that we're still an economically relevant (or even sufficient) city is only going to make things much worse.

Cars: We don't sell that many.

This needs to be realized because acknowledging the city's unique problems is the first step to focusing the discussion just how we're going to fix the city.  For example, whenever I get into a discussion about the city, someone inevitably brings up the city's lack of a high-speed rail or worse, a subway. And every time, I have to explain that there's very few places to put that high-speed rail other than up and down Woodward, Gratiot and maybe Jefferson. It might not justify the costs particularly well and may be hard to implement. The city was built with the idea that everyone would just drive everywhere. Detroit's got a patent on urban sprawl. As for the subway: what the hell are we going to use a subway for in this sparse city? That's just stupid.

...But we could build one of these!

Speaking of spare...well...the city is really fucking sparse. There are blocks that are composed of five or six abandoned and decrepit houses and a single occupied home. There are parts of Detroit were nature has effectively taken the city back. Go to the right part of the city at the right time of day and you'll probably find some animals they don't have at the Zoo. It's that bad. What does that mean for the city? Well it means that improving public transit is going to be difficult as it's probable that providing service to the entire Detroit area is inefficient. It also means that some schools need to be shut down.

It's not like we're getting rid of this one.

Yes, I said it. Some schools need to be shut down. It's a hot issue. Whenever someone wants to close down the schools city's stupid but outraged parents throw a fit, crying that the city is trying to ensure that they're kids are denied an education. In reality, school closings are probably just efforts to concentrate the few resources that the school district has left. Are we going to waste money on ugly, old, underpopulated schools or are we going to pool our resources to give children in Detroit a legitimate shot at being educated? If you're one of those people that freak out whenever a school is closed, you're opting for the former. You probably don't really get the issue.

But that's totally understandable if you went to school in Detroit. Most are just holding pens anyway.