Yes. That is accurate. I lived in Ann Arbor during 2008 but partied in Detroit from time to time. We'd say that "Detroit is very dangerous...if you run into som

Yes. That is accurate. I lived in Ann Arbor during 2008 but partied in Detroit from time to time. We'd say that "Detroit is very dangerous...if you run into someone. But you won't, so in reality it's actually safer than anywhere else." It's truly impossible to overstate how empty Detroit was at the time. You could walk around aimlessly for 30-45 minutes in many areas and not see a single soul. That said, you really didn't want to run across strangers -- the reputation for violent crime was well-deserved. A friend of mine rented a room for $250/month in an enormous mansion with 25-foot wide marble staircases and a panic room/vault in the basement. I have no idea how many rooms the mansion had, it was far too big to fully explore in the time I had. Since no one else was renting a room there, my friend used the mansion to throw raves with 50-100 people and we mostly stuck to 2-3 rooms, with the majority of the house still being empty. Some of my friends from slightly wealthier families bought up entire neighborhoods in Detroit at $10,000/home and renovated them, they revitalized the neighborhoods by installing a fun neighborhood dive bar with cheap menus and some convenient commercial stores. Many of those neighborhoods are still "hot spots" today, retaining quirky/fun culture. Makerspaces bloomed as well[0] due to a truly insane amount of heavy industrial equipment which was being sold for fractions of a penny on the dollar. The aforementioned rave scene also laid a lot of the musical foundations for today's EDM music, though it was not as impactful as the Baby Boomer generation's "Motown Records" (The Supremes, Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, and the Miracles). Before the Detroit Race Riots, people were regularly moving from Chicago to Detroit because Detroit was far and away the "cooler" city to live in of the two. 0: https://www.i3detroit.org https://www.i3detroit.org