I like Detroit. I lived in not-too-far-Ann Arbor for most of the 1980s and worked in Detroit for two summers in the mid-90s while in law school. Of course a lot of Detroit looks like a war zone. Burned out abandoned houses, whole blocks where prostitution and drugs are the only industries. But it has a good cultural life, excellent jazz scene and reasonable popular music and an OK symphony. They opened an Opera House after I left. The DIA is not a great museum but it is a good one, and has some unique Diego Rivera murals. Theater is so-so, some goodd small compnaies, nothing major. It's not an Out Of Town venue for NYC. If you can send you kids to private school you can afford a mansion in Indian Village, for example, formerly owned by an auto exec. Detroit is pretty multicultural, lots of Mexican, Greek, Russian, and of African-American culture. AT the same time the schools are a duisaster and the city as corrupt as Chicago.
--- robert mast <mastrob at comcast.net> wrote:
> Jon Johanning said:
> "Around here, in the City of Brotherly Love, we're
> used to being dissed.
> Goes with the territory."
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Since this whole thread has chamber of commerce or
> academic social psychology markings, I'll go along
> for a minute and ask, "What do folks think of
> Detroit?" What's its image to New Yorkers,
> Philadelphians, etc? Detroit is my city at this
> time. This thread is really kind of strange: Whose
> city is better? Where does a better quality of life
> lay? Who is more 'arrogant' or 'insular'? What's
> the point?
>
> Reminds me of the late 80s when I left Augusta, GA (
> thought by the locals as a desirable up and coming
> place in the New South, with the nicest of people)
> and moved to Pittsburgh, PA (certified by Rand
> McNally as 1985's most desirable city in the country
> according to dozens of their 'quality of life'
> indicators). But I soured on Pittsburgh and moved
> to the land of enchantment's biggest, most modern
> city - Albuquerque, NM - which was thought by some
> to be the nicest city in the country and a real up
> and comer in the New Southwest. Guess I soured on
> Albuquerque too, and moved to the Boston area for a
> short while before moving to Detroit. I won't bore
> you with tales of earlier living and activism in
> London (England), Atlanta, and Honolulu, places that
> are raved about for their diversity, excitment, etc.
>
>
> It's possible that I can't adjust anywhere. But
> also, maybe my wanderlust resulted from finding
> similar fundamentals wherever I lived: poverty and
> affluence, hope and despair, wisdom and ignorance.
> These basics are pretty much the same everywhere.
> I'd be surprised to find more than a small fraction
> of a city's residents expressing loudmouth arrogance
> or being super insulars. For the cases that exist,
> there are good sociological reasons. Two things
> kept me in an area for a long time. First, of
> course, was my job. More importantly, the more I
> was linked into left activism, the more 'adjusted' I
> became and the less I was concerned with the social
> psychology of urban-regional 'citizenship.'
>
> Bob
>
> > ___________________________________
>
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