DRIVING DETROIT - URBAN BLIGHT - CRY FOR ME DETROIT

For the longest time Detroit had the moniker - MOTOR CITY - because for many years Detroit was the centre of the automobile industry. This wealth created by the automobile industry allowed Detroit to become one of the great cities of the United States and caused its population to grow to nearly two million people. In the 1950's due to various reasons automobile manufacturing plants and its suppliers moved their plants into the suburbs and also into other locations around the United States where labour was cheaper. Add to that the foreign competition of the European and especially Asian car manufacturers and Detroit because a collapsing house of cards. With the shrinking job market came a general depopulation of the city of Detroit to its present 700,000. The riots of 1967 of course were the nail in the proverbial coffin when it came to Detroit.
Depopulation has drastic consequences and that is empty neighbourhoods and of the 201 neighbourhoods in Detroit none were completely spared from this depopulation. Many were devastated in the most unimaginable way to the extent that the word obliterated might be more appropriate.
Yes Detroit now has the moniker America's Great Comeback City and I have chronicled this comeback in many of my vlogs that comeback has now reached many of the neighbourhood and in some cases will never reach some of these neighbourhood. It begs the question how do you get the population of Detroit back to two million. The short answer is - you don't - that horse has left the barn.
Detroit has been described by some as a ghost town. Parts of the city are so abandoned they have been described as looking like farmland, urban prairie, and even complete wilderness.
A significant percentage of housing parcels in the city are vacant, with abandoned lots making up more than half of total residential lots in large portions of the city. With at least 70,000 abandoned buildings, 31,000 empty houses, and 90,000 vacant lots, Detroit has become notorious for its urban blight.
In 2010, Mayor Bing put forth a plan to bulldoze one fourth of the city. The plan was to concentrate Detroit's remaining population into certain areas to improve the delivery of essential city services, which the city has had significant difficulty providing (policing, fire protection, trash removal, snow removal, lighting, etc.).[ In February 2013 the Detroit Free Press reported the Mayor's plan to accelerate the program.The project has hopes "for federal funding to replicate it [the bulldozing plan] across the city to tackle Detroit’s problems with tens of thousands of abandoned and blighted homes and buildings." Bing said the project aims "to right-size the city’s resources to reflect its smaller population."
The average price of homes sold in Detroit in 2012 was $7,500. As of January 2013, 47 houses in Detroit were listed for $500 or less, with five properties listed for $1.Despite the extremely low price of Detroit properties, most of the properties have been on the market for more than a year as the boarded up, abandoned houses of the city are seldom attractive to buyers.] The Detroit News reported that more than half of Detroit property owners did not pay taxes in 2012, at a loss to the city of $131 million (equal to 12% of the city's general fund budget).
The first comprehensive analysis of the city's tens of thousands of abandoned and dilapidated buildings took place in the spring of 2014.] It found that around 50,000 of the city's 261,000 structures were abandoned, with over 9,000 structures bearing fire damage. It further recommended the demolition of 5,000 of these structures.
Detroit has some of the highest crime rates in the United States, with a rate of 62.18 per 1,000 residents for property crimes, and 16.73 per 1,000 for violent crimes (compared to national figures of 32 per 1,000 for property crimes and 5 per 1,000 for violent crime in 2008).[61] Detroit's murder rate was 53 per 100,000 in 2012, ten times that of New York City.[62] A 2012 Forbes report named Detroit as the most dangerous city in the United States for the fourth year in a row. It cited FBI survey data that found that the city's metropolitan area had a significant rate of violent crimes: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.[63][64]

According to Detroit officials in 2007, about 65 to 70 percent of homicides in the city were drug related.[65] The rate of unsolved murders in the city is at roughly 70%.