Having lived in Michigan for almost all my life, I find Mr. Byrne's conclusion and observations about Detroit to be pretty accurate. I want to point out that not all parts of Detroit are ruinous; mid-town with Wayne State University, the DIA (Detroit Institute of Art), and other universities in the area make for an interesting and healthy part of town. As far as the tech scene, I'd say it's mainly concentrated in the Ann Arbor area.
I feel the same way. My wife and I work downtown and walked down to the Transformers filming at lunch. It's so odd to have outsiders look at Detroit. It's both embarrassing and cathartic.
I'm in AA too. Lived in MI most my life, but moved to AA last year. Any HN meetups? We are looking for another tech-cofounder, applying to YC this month.
There are not any HN meetups that I am aware of; based on the periodic "where are you" posts here I'm not sure HN density is high enoungh. But there is an active startup hub here, see http://www.techbrewery.org/ . In the community section, I think a2geeks.org is probably the most active site. There's definitely enough startup activity to get you going. Either show up for the "beer thirty" mentioned on the techbrewery's sidebar, or just stroll in and start chatting. Make sure you meet Dug Song.
I live here in A2 as well (have for a few years now). My office is just across the hall (in the same building) as the Techbrewery, and we very much participate in Beer:30 every Friday.
I've actually met up with a few people here on HN, and I know many many more who are HN readers, but not really commenters. If anyone is interested in having a cozy HN meetup in A2, contact me via email and I'd be happy to set it up.
Yes, we have a lot of casual HN readers who live in A2. We have a lot of good events here, mainly aimed at startups, but many focus on hacking as well.
We have the monthly A2NewTech, which jerf mentioned below. This one is really good. We also have events such as Coffeehouse Coders every wednesday downtown, Mobile Mondays once a month, LA2M (Lunch Ann Arbor Marketing) weekly, and lots of events held by SPARK and NEF (see http://www.annarborusa.org/ for info about most of the events).
I live and work in Grosse Pointe. There are at least 2 of us here on the East Side that consider ourselves hackers. We have informal meetings at the local coffee shops. We're both working on various projects. Most of the tech scene is concentrated more in the AA area, but if there are any more metro-Detroiters, let's meetup and start something.
Thanks for submitting this. These are the kinds of non-startup stories I like to find on HN (I'm a fan of David Byrne's blog but I somehow missed this one).
Great article about the history, but unfortunately, being outside of Detroit, the author has only barely scraped the surface of all of the amazing people that are still in and around Detroit doing real things to make a real difference.
Just take a look at the TEDx Detroit event [1] that I was fortunate enough to attend last week for evidence.
If you haven't seen the amazing difference that everyday people like Chazz Miller [2], or Claire Nelson [3], or Terry Bean [4], or many others are making, then you don't know what's possible for Detroit.
Also, if anyone is interested, I'm excited about a great movie being made about Detroit and what's possible, called Lemonade Detroit [5].
I watched that yesterday (after reading the David Byrne article last week).
Good documentary (apart from all the "show and tell" cut and paste video and one or two of the soundtrack choices - Schools out for a burned out school! ugh)
Loved the optimism at the end and how a bunch of people living there see it as a really exciting place to live full of possibility.
(it also occurred to me that if anyone was going to film Samuel R. Delanys Dhalgren - Detroit would be the place to film it)
Detroit's story of a working-class town that failed to evolve is depressingly familiar throughout the US in many small towns whose main industries have moved on - for example, the old railway towns. I feel these towns die because they lack the critical mass of people with a culture that embraces technology and change.
Unfortunately, the pain that comes with this evolutionary process is probably unavoidable. To change it would require a wholesale change in culture - something that takes a generation, if not more.
I'm a fifth generation Detroiter and have lived in MI my entire life. The people are like nowhere else. In my many travels, despite the state's troubles, I haven't met anyone who has left who doesn't want to come back if they could.
I think there is hope for converting large swaths of Detroit to farmland and reinventing the city. As I am fond of saying any idea that has among its supporters both Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh just has to happen ;<).
I’ve always wondering if farming could be a solution for Detroit? It seems to have plenty of land and with growing shortages of basic commodities such as Wheat on the global market surely there’s an opportunity to return large parts of the land back to farming use.
Many people have thought this (John Hantz), but there's a reason it hasn't begun. The cost of cleaning up the land is too great to start cost-competitive large scale farms.
What's wrong with having a few cities like this? If you had clean, organized cities through the country, life would be boring and the visuals would be monotonous.
Broken down buildings are history. A country should not be made up of suburban sameness, just like a mole on a models face enhances her beauty, enclaves of disorganisation can make the country as a whole more interesting and prettier.
Because real actual people are suffering in the city. Think of the poor who can't get out. Detroit schools are in serious trouble right now. Recently in the news they were taking donations for toilet paper. Apparently their EMS has trouble meeting demand because it's underfunded, and just about everything else about detroit is either underfunded or undermanned. Let's not forget about the crime and murders.
This. Detroit isn't a painting, it is an ongoing tragedy with many kids playing roles. When I was in my late teens, we used to go to parties and art shows in these abandoned buildings, even in that Packard plant.
Once Gil Hill (commissioner of Beverly Hills cop fame) and the police broke in our party with guns drawn. Before ticketing us (95% white kids from the suburbs) he berated us, and told us not to dance in his city. It was a very colorful tirade. He was in the wrong, but I now know where his anger was coming from. To us, Detroit was a cool industrial wasteland scene to party in. To him, it was a dysfunctional place where people struggle to live.
