Overall

Detroit is amazing, it has some awesome neighborhoods and endlessly wealthy suburbs. Detroit has many bright sides and most of the reviews tell you about them. BUT, The city also has the most segregation around. The region is extremly diverse - as a region, but the burbs are white and the city is black, but there are many divides within. Even in the city, you have Hamtrammack which is still very polish surrounded by Detroit and mostly black communities. In Mexicantown you have your mexican population and it's not like Chicago where the neighborhoods blend together, it feels like streets divide the neighborhoods into ethnic enclaves. Even on Seven mile there is a distinct section that is mainly Chaldean (Iraqi). Taking Jefferson East to Grosse Point is amazing, Factories and Blight instantly turn into Mansions and White. Eight mile which is the northern most border is also called baseline road almost literally divides black from white (less now than in the past but it's mainly black people moving north). This road divides detroit from a strip of suburban towns, on the suburb sides are nicer businesses, warehouses, etc. On the Detroit side of 8 Mile is different, Nasty paint all over buildings designed to make cheap signs that make the whole city look like its closed. In Detroit, I am sometimes confused by some businesses, They seem like they could be in business but there aren't any windows or lights or lit up signs. Some businesses are so heavily fortified that you wonder how people could accept this, but there is no money or work, no mass transit to go find work to get money and not much hope based on that. The average Detroit bus rider has to take many different busses to get to work sometimes waiting hours, How can you expect people to pull themselves up when there is nothing to grab onto. If you don't have a car, good luck. But all the driving and gas prices to boot don't help either. The city does and awful job of regulating itself, its corrupt, if you want to build in detroit, you don't worry about the actual building code as much as you would need to be concerned with how much to pay off the worthless city inspectors. There are many burnt down buildings, manytimes not even boarded up. Detroit isn't the Crime Hell it is made out to be, it is bad, but most the crime is amongst the people living and working near the blight. Downtown detroit is as safe as any downtown around, the suburbs are even safer. Everything inbetween is fair game. The Best part of Detroit that isn't mentioned in the review is Palmer Park and Indian Village. Mansions in amazing neighborhoods. Surrounded by nothing. All the Auto stuff is cool, especially greenfield village and the plant tours. Belle Isle is nice but I have lived in detroit for 25 years and I just found out they have an aquarium, I found out when they announced it was closing, the first time I had ever even heard it existed. A big problem in detroit is nobody knows what it has to offer unless they go looking cause the city doesn't promote itself very well.

Atmosphere

Convenience

Safety

Value

6 June 2005 | A Yahoo! User

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