I am shocked, shocked!
Is it true that some parts of Detroit are becoming naturally reforested due to abandonment? I guess that's one of the silver(or green) linings to this mess.
That's an exaggeration, but not a complete fabrication.
One of the cost saving measures that Mayor Bing tried, and failed, to get through was to have certain sections of the city seized under eminent domain. The few remaining residents would be forced to leave, and those areas would then be left alone. He wanted to save the cost of road and sewer maintenance. Those areas would then end up being naturally reforested.
As it is, there might be a lot of vacant lots, some of which have been vacant long enough for trees to grow.
A huge problem for Detroit is that it has a city income tax. None of the suburbs (except for similarly blighted Pontiac) has such a tax. That causes a lot of people to not want to live there. However, they can't exactly just stop collecting the tax, because they don't have enough revenue.
Meanwhile, there is the problem of the schools. The public schools are full of poor people. If you have a four year old kid, whatever idealism you might have disappears as you ponder what sort of kids your child will share a classroom with. I know several middle class families who lived in Detroit, right up until their child's fourth birthday.
It's a big mess. No one wants to live there. What do you do with fourty square miles of blight? (I don't know the exact size of Detroit. That's a guess.)
Meanwhile, I live two miles from the border, and I almost never go there. None of my friends live in Detroit. I go to the art museum once in a blue moon. I have been to the Fox and Fischer theaters a few times, and to see the Tigers, but there really isn't anything there to go to. The restaurants and shopping areas are in the suburbs, where the money is.
