Detroit By Night
Urban Decay White Flight and the Infamous Race Riots
Permanent Recession
Despite some of the lowest land values and the poorest city services in the nation, Detroit is
an expensive place to live. Property taxes are high—the fifth highest among major U.S. cities.
With Detroit’s personal income tax over 3 percent, it’s no wonder why few high income people
choose to live in the city. The financially strapped Detroit public school system is universally
viewed as inadequate, and about half of all students drop out before finishing high school.
The strategy for revitalizing the city implemented by the Coleman Young administrations
was to concentrate limited resources on making the downtown and riverfront alluring for new
development, while also promising huge subsidies for new businesses there. Young’s strategy
achieved some short-term success in the 1980s, with new condos and private marina residential
communities along the river attracting suburbanites (mostly young singles, divorcees, and couples
with no children). In recent years there has been a slight change of focus on improving law and
order and infrastructure in the areas north of downtown, with mixed success.
Detroit has a long way to go to halt the slide it has been in now for half a century, let alone
regaining its onetime status as a great place to raise a family. The mayoral administrations have
had a disappointing track record in neighborhood improvements compared to other large
industrial cities. While the riverfront blossoms with casinos and small stable neighborhoods
are dotted throughout the city (often behind perimeter walls), most of the neighborhoods have
continued to decline and are victims of the drug-related problems that first swept through the
U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s.
Some of the people who still love this city maintain that it can’t get any worse, that things have
bottomed out and that soon the low cost of land and Detroit’s geographical advantages will
result in a turnaround. Others see no grounds for optimism yet.
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