8 ms·

30 miles West in Ann Arbor, there are tech gigs but not tons of them. If you are apart of the University of Michigan, there are tons of opportunities via the c

30 miles West in Ann Arbor, there are tech gigs but not tons of them. If you are apart of the University of Michigan, there are tons of opportunities via the college and the groups there, but if not there aren't tons of openings. Detroit itself is an amazing city, but it isn't a tech hub, nor is it for everyone. It is the shell of the automotive companies that started to move their operations of out the country in the 50s-70s. Check out the book "Origins of the Urban Crisis" to get an understanding of the decay in Detroit and other large cities who the Big 3 have abandoned for a profit. All of my friends that I have brought to the D are always weirded out by how big the city is, yet how few people you actually see outside of the entertainment district. The streets and sidewalks can be fully empty, with a 6 lane road that has so many holes that it is more pothole than road now. This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert.

ghaff 2y ago
I was in Detroit for a big tech event a couple years back. The more or less universal consensus was that, yes, the Riverwalk during the day (and the Convention Center there) were quite nice. But people felt uncomfortable away from large groups of event-goers at night and there were a few incidents. It definitely felt different from other events I've been to. Some of this is admittedly probably a matter of familiarity; I generally know to just avoid the Tenderloin for example.
francisofascii 2y ago
I'm curious if Lansing, the capital of Michigan, offers opportunities for government contractor work due to its proximity. With Lansing, Detroit, and Ann Arbor relatively close to each other, semi-remote roles might be feasible.
- bityard 2y ago
  I lived in Lansing 10 years ago. Honestly, it was pretty depressing. We lived in an old neighborhood between the downtown area and south Lansing which while not conventionally dangerous, was an area I always avoided driving or walking around at night if I could avoid it. The west side is fine but bland, a mix of suburban and apartment living. East Lansing is more interesting due to being a college town. The outlying towns are bedroom communities with fairly high property values. Work-wise, there were mostly small businesses or branches of large national brands. I tried to get into government work several times but never made it. There were LOADS of non-profits (some government affiliated) who would take just about anyone with a pulse but the pay was quite low as well. After about a decade there, we moved 45 minutes east and never looked back.
  - bityard 2y ago
    > We lived in an old neighborhood between the downtown area and south Lansing Too late for me to edit but in case someone comes back and reads this later, I want to be clear that south Lansing was the place I'd avoid at night, not the neighborhood I lived in.
- fzzzy 2y ago
  Lansing has been the epitome of what the rust belt means for decades already.
- RALaBarge 2y ago
  I really love my state, but lansing is just as bad as anywhere else. Outside of a more rural situtation or Ann Arbor, everywhere here is decayed.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> fully empty Like that.
gcanyon 2y ago
St. Louis is similar: you can walk from downtown to empty grass-filled blocks in about fifteen minutes. My favorite story is the origin of the City Museum (which, shoutout to the City Museum, it's awesome). The City Museum building is in a former factory, it's about 11 stories tall and fills a city block. It's on the edge of downtown about a dozen blocks from the Arch. The artist behind the museum bought the building in the '90s for something like $700,000. That's a whole-ass industrial building, walkable from anywhere in downtown St. Louis, for under a million dollars.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  I think most US cities are like that in the “downtown to disheveled in 15 minutes” sense.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - cobertos 2y ago
    I'm not quite so sure. The amount of demolished blight in Detroit has left this eerie urban meadow feeling to a decent amount of areas in the vicinity of downtown. Walking the empty streets with empty lots and a few normal or a few burnt out houses is peaceful and fun in a way you wouldn't expect. I haven't seen it in a lot of cities.
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    I've lived in Los Angeles, Seattle, D.C., New York, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Boston. I've spent time in Phoenix, San Francisco, Kansas City, Chicago, Miami, Portland, Atlanta, and Orlando. None of them come close to what you see in St. Louis. As a disclaimer, I always tell people, every bad thing you hear about St. Louis is true, and worse than you've heard -- but also that the many, many good things about St. Louis are never mentioned, and that's a shame. It's a long list and the City Museum is high on it. But that said, check out this completely empty block on Delmar and 21st [1], and remember that with the Arch, that's less than 20 blocks from the river. And five blocks north of there is the former site of Pruitt Igoe, which is basically six or so blocks of wilderness behind a chain link fence. I don't doubt there are cities in worse shape (Detroit probably being one of them), but none that I've explored. https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZWrwkK6CytcQRNmU6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZWrwkK6CytcQRNmU6
nojs 2y ago
> This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert. For an outlet that “thanks to our reader-funded model, what we cover isn’t dictated by the algorithms of the tech titans” they did manage to cram a surprising number of ads in there
tokioyoyo 2y ago
I was there about a year ago with a couple of friends, stopped for a night while driving through Michigan to go up north. It was just so eerie throughout the entire day. Incredibly wide streets, but sometimes you would walk for 5 mins before you saw a single soul. Maybe because it was a bit of a chilly day as well, but it felt like the city was built for way more people, and there just isn’t enough now.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Other people makes a big difference. Even back when NYC was a lot more iffy than it is today in general, I never really felt uncomfortable walking down somewhere like Fifth Avenue late at night because there were enough people at night. Various midwest cities can be pretty eerie--especially after business hours. The downtowns are often not that busy during the day and they're deserted--except maybe some local pockets--after dark.
  - Yeul 2y ago
    This is an interesting point. In the 1980s Amsterdam was dirt poor but it was never empty. In fact it attracted all kinds of people who wanted to live an "alternative" lifestyle in cheap real estate. Communists, artists, gay people. New York no matter what happens will always be located in the most densely populated part of America.
- qudat 2y ago
  It’s a commuter town: people drive in at 8am and leave at 5pm. The greater Detroit area is massive.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I've found that in some Midwest cities that weren't even necessarily blighted. I remember Kansas City at an event years ago where there was basically no one in the downtown at night. The same is somewhat true of even someplace like the Financial District of Boston after hours but there are enough people pretty close by it doesn't feel the same.
wing-_-nuts 2y ago
I've actually looked at Ann Arbor before as I adore college towns and was looking at trying to find one in the great lakes region as a forever / retirement destination. Given you're from the area would you have any others to recommend? Things I'm mainly looking for: * A climate change refuge * No 'lake effect' snow * Continuing education opportunities (i.e. auditing classes as a retiree) * A good public / uni library system * Walkable density * Reasonable cost of living (yea, this is gonna be higher in college towns) I realize that moving to the great lakes region and wanting to avoid snow are naturally in conflict. I have a disability so I'm just bearing in mind my balance and ability to shovel snow in my old age.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  You might want to look at Kalamazoo.
- filoleg 2y ago
  I have an alternative proposal to Ann Arbor for this that hits every single one of your criteria, but with a plus-minus (with a caveat, but i will elaborate on that later) regarding reasonable cost of living. That would be Seattle area. I will go point by point. The good: * According to their own Climate Vulnerability Assessment[0], the region is fairly resilient to the impacts of the climate change. * There is no lake effect snow (despite being adjacent to multiple fantastic lakes). I’ve lived there for 7 years, and the amount of snow was much less than even in places like Atlanta. The amount of rainfall is ridiculously small too (despite the stereotype), and it is usually just drizzle that doesn’t necessitate even an umbrella 99% of the time. It got nothing on typical east coast rains that just pour like hell. I was able to commute to work on motorcycle for about 90-95% days of the year. For any east coast city I’ve been to (ATL/NYC/DC), I don’t foresee that number being even above 50% (most of the time it would be either too cold or too hot or too rainy/snowy/dangerous). * UW is a very popular and common option for continuing education opportunities. Had friends who would take classes there for fun outside of work, just to fill gaps in whichever topics they were curious about (typically math). Seems like there is a large population that does this, and UW is a great school. * Public library system is the best I’ve experienced hands down. Free, many accessible locations, and libraries even have stuff like 3d printers and hackerspaces available for anyone’s use. * Had plenty of friends who lived there with no car for years, and they have zero plans to ever buy one. Especially with the public transit lightrail having some really significant expansions completed recently (with many more nearing the completion; the lightrail to eastside is something i am personally excited for) The mixed: * Reasonable cost of leaving is the one plus-minus I mentioned. The minus is that it isn’t cheap. It is much cheaper than Bay Area/NYC/etc., but it is still a major city area. The plus is that there is no state income tax. So, in retirement, your 401k withdrawals would not get any taxes skimmed off on the state level. This point is by far the biggest potential concern I have as far as Seattle being a good suggestion for you. The bad: * While the weather is amazing temperature/precipitation-wise year-round, clear skies and sun outside of summer are not that common. Grey skies for more than half of the month during winter eventually got to me. Bonus points: * If you are into outdoorsy stuff (skiing/snowboarding/hiking/kayaking/lake stuff), I cannot think of a better area. So many options within just a couple of hours. Hell, Discovery Park (calling it a park feels like a misnomer, because it is a massive cliffside forest, fields, and a beach) is just a 15 min drive from downtown. * Flying to asian countries is much faster and cheaper than from east coast (13 hour non-stop flight to Japan from NJ vs. a 7-8hr flight from Seattle). 0. https://seattle.gov/documents/departments/opcd/seattleplan/seattleclimatevulnerabilityassessmentjuly2023.pdf https://seattle.gov/documents/departments/opcd/seattleplan/s...
rmason 2y ago
I grew up in Detroit during the fifties and sixties. Afterwards I watched the city decline for a good forty years. Around the time of Detroit's bankruptcy it started to be reborn. Dan Gilbert gets a lot of the credit because he bought Detroit real estate when no one wanted it. Skyscrapers that had been empty for thirty years or more. People wouldn't consider coming downtown or moving their offices there because of the crime. In response Gilbert formed his own police force and put cameras everywhere. They coordinated with the Detroit force and crime plummeted downtown. Then the complaints were that sure it was nice downtown but no where else. Then projects started all over the city. Detroit is a very large city which makes fire and policing difficult. There are huge swaths of empty area thanks to federal funding that allowed abandoned and burned down houses to be torn down. The critics will point out there is still no shortage of crime although the overall numbers are declining. But it is relatively safe downtown, midtown where the sports teams are located. Detroit was at one time the richest city in America, yes ahead of even New York City. Detroit also had the best public city school system in the U.S. at one time though they are near the bottom now. There are a lot of world class museums and architecture. The city is being discovered and rated a top destination by dozens of publications. I'd urge you to make a trip there and discover for yourself. As for tech, Detroit is only second to Ann Arbor in the state for the number of startups and venture capitalists. Unlike the rest of Michigan Detroit and Ann Arbor are the only cities in Michigan where entrepreneurs run the local community events. Everywhere else in the state its run by economic development organizations that do not understand startups and hinder their forward progress.
qudat 2y ago
I live in A2 as well and I don’t even bother looking for gigs here. Duo used to be the tech company to work for here but they were bought by Cisco which is not really my vibe. Barracuda is another big name but other than that I cannot name many others.
- bluedino 2y ago
  Isn't Techsmith (Camtasia) down there somewhere?
  - alexissantos 2y ago
    East Lansing, where MSU is!
- randcraw 2y ago
  In Ann Arbor the name of the game is small startups, often derived from U Michigan professors. There are enough of those you can make a career there, though it's wise to expand your network to include other towns within 30 minutes (like Plymouth or Novi). You won't want to rely on only UofM for work, though I know a few who have worked there in computing for decades.
guywithahat 2y ago
> who the Big 3 have abandoned for a profit. I don’t think anyone left Detroit willingly; they were forced out due to race riots, threats to their life, and the UAW. The big 3 lost billions trying to revive the city in spite of the local politicians If your book implies or says it was somehow due to greed, you should respectfully find a new book.
- RALaBarge 2y ago
  That's cool. Feel free to leave a reference or something. From the Wiki description: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit is the first book by historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue in which he examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit. Sugrue argues that the decline of Detroit began long before the 1967 race riot. Sugrue argues that institutionalized and often legalized racism resulted in sharply limited opportunities for African Americans in Detroit for most of the 20th century. He also argues that the process of deindustrialization, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor-saving technologies. The book has won multiple awards including a Bancroft Prize in 1998
- garciansmith 2y ago
  Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" has a much more nuanced thesis, and part of it is that people were leaving well before the 1967 Uprising, part of it was broader economic changes, part of it was governmental policies (especially with regards to housing and transportation). The causes of the decline of Detroit's population are complex, not something that can be distilled in an HN comment honestly. But the idea that no one left Detroit willingly is not correct. I know people who did, even interviewed someone who said their family left due to simple racism: a Black family moved to their neighborhood so they left. Of course, in many cases choices could be weighted by other things like, say, you wanted to purchase a house but couldn't get a mortgage in the city due to extensive redlining but could easily get one in the suburbs.
  - Yeul 2y ago
scythe 2y ago
There is also the secular trend. Detroit's dominance in the auto industry wasn't an accident. Iron was mined in the Iron Range in Minnesota and shipped across the Great Lakes to Detroit. It was natural for manufacturing to occur there. Other GL cities had similar advantages, but e.g. Alabama wasn't a realistic competitor. Coal was also shipped, mostly from the Allegheny region, west across Lake Erie. Today, less iron is refined domestically, and cars are made of more aluminum and less steel. Most coking-quality coal is now mined in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. On top of that, the US shipbuilding industry has become less competitive globally, which together with the Jones Act has resulted in a significant drop in shipping on the Lakes. See Figure 2 on page 2: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47550.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47550.pdf
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
I watched a YouTube video recently about Detroit's rebirth with a focus on old architecture being renovated. What I mostly noticed, from the Arial drone shots, was how spaced out the buildings were, it looked to be about 70% car parking.
- toyg 2y ago
  I always say that Detroit feels like an European city in the late 1940s, i.e. a dense city that suffered a bombing campaign. It's really weird. And it's a shame, because what's still there can be jaw-dropping.

ghaff 2y ago

I was in Detroit for a big tech event a couple years back. The more or less universal consensus was that, yes, the Riverwalk during the day (and the Convention Center there) were quite nice. But people felt uncomfortable away from large groups of event-goers at night and there were a few incidents. It definitely felt different from other events I've been to. Some of this is admittedly probably a matter of familiarity; I generally know to just avoid the Tenderloin for example.

francisofascii 2y ago

I'm curious if Lansing, the capital of Michigan, offers opportunities for government contractor work due to its proximity. With Lansing, Detroit, and Ann Arbor relatively close to each other, semi-remote roles might be feasible.

bityard 2y ago
I lived in Lansing 10 years ago. Honestly, it was pretty depressing. We lived in an old neighborhood between the downtown area and south Lansing which while not conventionally dangerous, was an area I always avoided driving or walking around at night if I could avoid it. The west side is fine but bland, a mix of suburban and apartment living. East Lansing is more interesting due to being a college town. The outlying towns are bedroom communities with fairly high property values. Work-wise, there were mostly small businesses or branches of large national brands. I tried to get into government work several times but never made it. There were LOADS of non-profits (some government affiliated) who would take just about anyone with a pulse but the pay was quite low as well. After about a decade there, we moved 45 minutes east and never looked back.
- bityard 2y ago
  > We lived in an old neighborhood between the downtown area and south Lansing Too late for me to edit but in case someone comes back and reads this later, I want to be clear that south Lansing was the place I'd avoid at night, not the neighborhood I lived in.
fzzzy 2y ago
Lansing has been the epitome of what the rust belt means for decades already.
RALaBarge 2y ago
I really love my state, but lansing is just as bad as anywhere else. Outside of a more rural situtation or Ann Arbor, everywhere here is decayed.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

> fully empty Like that.

gcanyon 2y ago

St. Louis is similar: you can walk from downtown to empty grass-filled blocks in about fifteen minutes. My favorite story is the origin of the City Museum (which, shoutout to the City Museum, it's awesome). The City Museum building is in a former factory, it's about 11 stories tall and fills a city block. It's on the edge of downtown about a dozen blocks from the Arch. The artist behind the museum bought the building in the '90s for something like $700,000. That's a whole-ass industrial building, walkable from anywhere in downtown St. Louis, for under a million dollars.

dgfitz 2y ago
I think most US cities are like that in the “downtown to disheveled in 15 minutes” sense.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cobertos 2y ago
  I'm not quite so sure. The amount of demolished blight in Detroit has left this eerie urban meadow feeling to a decent amount of areas in the vicinity of downtown. Walking the empty streets with empty lots and a few normal or a few burnt out houses is peaceful and fun in a way you wouldn't expect. I haven't seen it in a lot of cities.
- gcanyon 2y ago
  I've lived in Los Angeles, Seattle, D.C., New York, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Boston. I've spent time in Phoenix, San Francisco, Kansas City, Chicago, Miami, Portland, Atlanta, and Orlando. None of them come close to what you see in St. Louis. As a disclaimer, I always tell people, every bad thing you hear about St. Louis is true, and worse than you've heard -- but also that the many, many good things about St. Louis are never mentioned, and that's a shame. It's a long list and the City Museum is high on it. But that said, check out this completely empty block on Delmar and 21st [1], and remember that with the Arch, that's less than 20 blocks from the river. And five blocks north of there is the former site of Pruitt Igoe, which is basically six or so blocks of wilderness behind a chain link fence. I don't doubt there are cities in worse shape (Detroit probably being one of them), but none that I've explored. https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZWrwkK6CytcQRNmU6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZWrwkK6CytcQRNmU6

nojs 2y ago

> This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert. For an outlet that “thanks to our reader-funded model, what we cover isn’t dictated by the algorithms of the tech titans” they did manage to cram a surprising number of ads in there

tokioyoyo 2y ago

I was there about a year ago with a couple of friends, stopped for a night while driving through Michigan to go up north. It was just so eerie throughout the entire day. Incredibly wide streets, but sometimes you would walk for 5 mins before you saw a single soul. Maybe because it was a bit of a chilly day as well, but it felt like the city was built for way more people, and there just isn’t enough now.

ghaff 2y ago
Other people makes a big difference. Even back when NYC was a lot more iffy than it is today in general, I never really felt uncomfortable walking down somewhere like Fifth Avenue late at night because there were enough people at night. Various midwest cities can be pretty eerie--especially after business hours. The downtowns are often not that busy during the day and they're deserted--except maybe some local pockets--after dark.
- Yeul 2y ago
  This is an interesting point. In the 1980s Amsterdam was dirt poor but it was never empty. In fact it attracted all kinds of people who wanted to live an "alternative" lifestyle in cheap real estate. Communists, artists, gay people. New York no matter what happens will always be located in the most densely populated part of America.
qudat 2y ago
It’s a commuter town: people drive in at 8am and leave at 5pm. The greater Detroit area is massive.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I've found that in some Midwest cities that weren't even necessarily blighted. I remember Kansas City at an event years ago where there was basically no one in the downtown at night. The same is somewhat true of even someplace like the Financial District of Boston after hours but there are enough people pretty close by it doesn't feel the same.

wing-_-nuts 2y ago

I've actually looked at Ann Arbor before as I adore college towns and was looking at trying to find one in the great lakes region as a forever / retirement destination. Given you're from the area would you have any others to recommend? Things I'm mainly looking for: * A climate change refuge * No 'lake effect' snow * Continuing education opportunities (i.e. auditing classes as a retiree) * A good public / uni library system * Walkable density * Reasonable cost of living (yea, this is gonna be higher in college towns) I realize that moving to the great lakes region and wanting to avoid snow are naturally in conflict. I have a disability so I'm just bearing in mind my balance and ability to shovel snow in my old age.

ElevenLathe 2y ago
You might want to look at Kalamazoo.
filoleg 2y ago
I have an alternative proposal to Ann Arbor for this that hits every single one of your criteria, but with a plus-minus (with a caveat, but i will elaborate on that later) regarding reasonable cost of living. That would be Seattle area. I will go point by point. The good: * According to their own Climate Vulnerability Assessment[0], the region is fairly resilient to the impacts of the climate change. * There is no lake effect snow (despite being adjacent to multiple fantastic lakes). I’ve lived there for 7 years, and the amount of snow was much less than even in places like Atlanta. The amount of rainfall is ridiculously small too (despite the stereotype), and it is usually just drizzle that doesn’t necessitate even an umbrella 99% of the time. It got nothing on typical east coast rains that just pour like hell. I was able to commute to work on motorcycle for about 90-95% days of the year. For any east coast city I’ve been to (ATL/NYC/DC), I don’t foresee that number being even above 50% (most of the time it would be either too cold or too hot or too rainy/snowy/dangerous). * UW is a very popular and common option for continuing education opportunities. Had friends who would take classes there for fun outside of work, just to fill gaps in whichever topics they were curious about (typically math). Seems like there is a large population that does this, and UW is a great school. * Public library system is the best I’ve experienced hands down. Free, many accessible locations, and libraries even have stuff like 3d printers and hackerspaces available for anyone’s use. * Had plenty of friends who lived there with no car for years, and they have zero plans to ever buy one. Especially with the public transit lightrail having some really significant expansions completed recently (with many more nearing the completion; the lightrail to eastside is something i am personally excited for) The mixed: * Reasonable cost of leaving is the one plus-minus I mentioned. The minus is that it isn’t cheap. It is much cheaper than Bay Area/NYC/etc., but it is still a major city area. The plus is that there is no state income tax. So, in retirement, your 401k withdrawals would not get any taxes skimmed off on the state level. This point is by far the biggest potential concern I have as far as Seattle being a good suggestion for you. The bad: * While the weather is amazing temperature/precipitation-wise year-round, clear skies and sun outside of summer are not that common. Grey skies for more than half of the month during winter eventually got to me. Bonus points: * If you are into outdoorsy stuff (skiing/snowboarding/hiking/kayaking/lake stuff), I cannot think of a better area. So many options within just a couple of hours. Hell, Discovery Park (calling it a park feels like a misnomer, because it is a massive cliffside forest, fields, and a beach) is just a 15 min drive from downtown. * Flying to asian countries is much faster and cheaper than from east coast (13 hour non-stop flight to Japan from NJ vs. a 7-8hr flight from Seattle). 0. https://seattle.gov/documents/departments/opcd/seattleplan/seattleclimatevulnerabilityassessmentjuly2023.pdf https://seattle.gov/documents/departments/opcd/seattleplan/s...

rmason 2y ago

I grew up in Detroit during the fifties and sixties. Afterwards I watched the city decline for a good forty years. Around the time of Detroit's bankruptcy it started to be reborn. Dan Gilbert gets a lot of the credit because he bought Detroit real estate when no one wanted it. Skyscrapers that had been empty for thirty years or more. People wouldn't consider coming downtown or moving their offices there because of the crime. In response Gilbert formed his own police force and put cameras everywhere. They coordinated with the Detroit force and crime plummeted downtown. Then the complaints were that sure it was nice downtown but no where else. Then projects started all over the city. Detroit is a very large city which makes fire and policing difficult. There are huge swaths of empty area thanks to federal funding that allowed abandoned and burned down houses to be torn down. The critics will point out there is still no shortage of crime although the overall numbers are declining. But it is relatively safe downtown, midtown where the sports teams are located. Detroit was at one time the richest city in America, yes ahead of even New York City. Detroit also had the best public city school system in the U.S. at one time though they are near the bottom now. There are a lot of world class museums and architecture. The city is being discovered and rated a top destination by dozens of publications. I'd urge you to make a trip there and discover for yourself. As for tech, Detroit is only second to Ann Arbor in the state for the number of startups and venture capitalists. Unlike the rest of Michigan Detroit and Ann Arbor are the only cities in Michigan where entrepreneurs run the local community events. Everywhere else in the state its run by economic development organizations that do not understand startups and hinder their forward progress.

qudat 2y ago

I live in A2 as well and I don’t even bother looking for gigs here. Duo used to be the tech company to work for here but they were bought by Cisco which is not really my vibe. Barracuda is another big name but other than that I cannot name many others.

bluedino 2y ago
Isn't Techsmith (Camtasia) down there somewhere?
- alexissantos 2y ago
  East Lansing, where MSU is!
randcraw 2y ago
In Ann Arbor the name of the game is small startups, often derived from U Michigan professors. There are enough of those you can make a career there, though it's wise to expand your network to include other towns within 30 minutes (like Plymouth or Novi). You won't want to rely on only UofM for work, though I know a few who have worked there in computing for decades.

guywithahat 2y ago

> who the Big 3 have abandoned for a profit. I don’t think anyone left Detroit willingly; they were forced out due to race riots, threats to their life, and the UAW. The big 3 lost billions trying to revive the city in spite of the local politicians If your book implies or says it was somehow due to greed, you should respectfully find a new book.

RALaBarge 2y ago
That's cool. Feel free to leave a reference or something. From the Wiki description: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit is the first book by historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue in which he examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit. Sugrue argues that the decline of Detroit began long before the 1967 race riot. Sugrue argues that institutionalized and often legalized racism resulted in sharply limited opportunities for African Americans in Detroit for most of the 20th century. He also argues that the process of deindustrialization, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor-saving technologies. The book has won multiple awards including a Bancroft Prize in 1998
garciansmith 2y ago
Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" has a much more nuanced thesis, and part of it is that people were leaving well before the 1967 Uprising, part of it was broader economic changes, part of it was governmental policies (especially with regards to housing and transportation). The causes of the decline of Detroit's population are complex, not something that can be distilled in an HN comment honestly. But the idea that no one left Detroit willingly is not correct. I know people who did, even interviewed someone who said their family left due to simple racism: a Black family moved to their neighborhood so they left. Of course, in many cases choices could be weighted by other things like, say, you wanted to purchase a house but couldn't get a mortgage in the city due to extensive redlining but could easily get one in the suburbs.
- Yeul 2y ago

scythe 2y ago

There is also the secular trend. Detroit's dominance in the auto industry wasn't an accident. Iron was mined in the Iron Range in Minnesota and shipped across the Great Lakes to Detroit. It was natural for manufacturing to occur there. Other GL cities had similar advantages, but e.g. Alabama wasn't a realistic competitor. Coal was also shipped, mostly from the Allegheny region, west across Lake Erie. Today, less iron is refined domestically, and cars are made of more aluminum and less steel. Most coking-quality coal is now mined in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. On top of that, the US shipbuilding industry has become less competitive globally, which together with the Jones Act has resulted in a significant drop in shipping on the Lakes. See Figure 2 on page 2: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47550.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47550.pdf

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

I watched a YouTube video recently about Detroit's rebirth with a focus on old architecture being renovated. What I mostly noticed, from the Arial drone shots, was how spaced out the buildings were, it looked to be about 70% car parking.

toyg 2y ago
I always say that Detroit feels like an European city in the late 1940s, i.e. a dense city that suffered a bombing campaign. It's really weird. And it's a shame, because what's still there can be jaw-dropping.