HN user's description of Detroit

September 2013 Hacker News thread that points to Sep 15, 2013 Detroit Free Press story titled How Detroit went broke: The answers may surprise you - and don't blame Coleman Young?

For the true Detroit experience, stay the weekend at the Motorcity Hotel and Casino.

It's just a few blocks outside of what is considered 'downtown' Detroit. It's not an overly fancy or even large hotel but it has the weirdest vibe to it, it's as if you're in this dystopian movie about the future where there's a 1:1000 difference between the haves, and the have nots.

Inside the hotel there's food, booze, gambling, and bright lights. As you leave the hotel you see security forces (hotel security as well as a fairly large presence by the Detroit PD). But once you're outside, that's it.

Barren wastelands. Empty city blocks, fields of grass and weathered concrete, and the ruins of entire neighborhoods. Exactly what you see when you Google 'Detroit slums'.

In the daytime you'll see people walking around like zombies, carrying grocery bags, walking between stores (despite what you read on the internet, there are grocery stores in Detroit). You'll see them talking to each other on the corner, sitting under trees, or hunched over on a curb.

They have nothing. They do nothing. There is nothing for any of these people to do. There's nowhere for them to work. There's nothing even for them to have. Everything is gone or destroyed.

At night time you won't see anything. Almost all of the streetlights in the city have been turned off, because Detroit can't pay the bill! The city is pitch black at night. You can drive around with the highbeams on. You can't see the roads, you have to make sure you don't run over anyone who's in the street, it's incredibly unsafe but it's just so dark it's unbelievable.

And then in the midst of the darkness you see the multi-colored lights of the hotel, and you know you're back to your version of Detroit. The police let you back in, you park your vehicle in the guarded garage, and you walk back to your room to eat $4 bags of M&M's and $5 bottles of water.

And once you think about how fucked up that is, you almost lose your appetite.

Another comment:

Thats a great analysis of a visit to Motorcity Hotel and casino. I live 40 minutes from there, but refuse to go because the people that gamble there are there to try and pay their bills. Its not like Vegas where someone loses a hundred bucks and smiles about it. Its much more intense, but in a not fun/sorta dangerous type way.

There was a story not too long ago where an older guy won 5,000 and on their way home someone followed him, ran him off the road, killed him and took the 5,000. Doesn't beat the pizza delivery guy murders here in Flint, but it paints the correct picture.

Comment:

Just had a look on Google Maps satellite and street view in an area near the Motorcity Casino and - wow. There's a lot of nothing there.

Where did the grassy vacant lots come from? Did someone (the city?) bulldoze abandoned buildings? All of the grass is neatly trimmed. Is that the city too? Or does the casino keep their immediate neighbourhood looking neat?

Comment:

I think it is no coincidence dystopia sci-fi authors love for Detroit... Just from.the top of my head I remember Robocop and Deus Ex 3 for example...

Comment:

Maybe the Freep should have done this in-depth investigation like a decade ago?

Comment:

Detroit isn't circling the drain because of Kilpatrick, as corrupt as he was; the problem is fundamentally the cumulative effect of decades of reasonable if ultimately irresponsible decision making. I liked the freep article a lot; I was surprised by how little approbation Young came in for, all taken with all.

There's a fairly serious principle-agent problem in elected government; I'm not sure how you get around things like e.g. Detroit's pension fund throwing the 13th check around, or US Representatives trying to force the US Treasury into default, given that the incentives for more long-term thinking just aren't there.

Comment:

Detroit has been losing 200k residents per decade since 1950. It's probably more useful to see Kwame Kilpatrick's administration as a symptom of Detroit's deterioration rather than its cause.

#detroit