I love Detroit. I moved there in 1998 to go to art school, and moved to Chicago in 2008. I've been going back frequently for the past 9years. I lived in Grosse Pointe Park for much of my time there but most of my friends and most of my time were and are in the city. I was there this weekend for the first time in some months. EEV is a solid middle class and racially mixed neighborhood that was hit really hard by the housing crash, like many, many neighborhoods in the city. There were many neighborhoods that were healthy in 2007 and were destroyed by 2011. EEV survived better than many. Indian Village, about halfway to GP from downtown, is one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city and is home to enormous mansions in beautiful condition with great neighbors. The west Village, just west of it, has been undergoing something of a revival.
The central core has changed a massive amount just in the last five years, and is unrecognizable compared to what I moved to in 1998. The city I'd deflove nicely, definitely past it's bottom but there is a long road ahead for the city as a whole, especially with the terrible school system. The population has stabilized, however, and is growing, though most of that growth is in the CBD and surrounding neighborhoods. Downtown has become the new "it" place where people from all over the metro area go out, businesses at relocating from the suburbs to downtown, dan Gilbert has bought seemingly everything in sight, and they're running out of old buildings o rehab. The change in scene is weird to me, as everywhere I go it's full of white suburbanites, which is great, but still strange to me. I was at the Old Miami bar for the first time in like a decade and could hardly believe the change inclientele, even as the bar itself hasn't changed.
I was there this weekend to visit friends and per my usual practice left my car parked at my friends' house and got around on my bike. Friends live in Sherwood Forest on the north side and the ride to and from midtown/downtown (down on Third, up on Second) takes you through some pretty severe contrasts and gutted neighborhoods. Everything is normal through New Center then it begins to drop off in quality and becomes quite run down then from one block to the next it is transformed into a neighborhood of huge houses in beautiful shape (you will pass Henry Ford's first house, before he built Fairlane in Dearborn) then four blocks later poof it is gone and the whole ride through Highland Park looks terrible until you get to McNichols. But even in the terrible neighborhoods you can see the homes of the people who really care and keep their houses in great shape.
Safety in neighborhoods can be all over (I have a friend who lives in EEV and it is OK) - I would never hang out at, say, Gratiot and Seven Mile at night - but the center city is quite safe, especially where Wayne State police supplement the DPD. Though I did pass two drug deals on my ride home at 1:00 AM Saturday night
