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Comment by FunCaptcha_Jim | Hacker News Reader

As I live in Australia, to see a city like this in such a state is saddening. Of course, everyone has heard stories of Detroit's issues but to see them so starkly pictured is pretty confronting. What's the current economic state of Detroit? Is it still in decline or is there reason to be optimistic?

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The city government is just beginning to emerge from bankruptcy, so there is some hope there. But they still have a chicken and egg problem: the city has to provide a reasonable level of services to attract businesses and their workers, but they need the tax base to provide those services. What the solution to that will end up being is anyone's guess.

That was my assumption. It appears Detroit could potentially be reliant on a wealthy entrepreneur to take a "leap of faith" or have a third party offer some sort of financial incentive to encourage businesses back. I'm not too well versed on US law but is the federal government able to help in this vein?

Dan Gilbert is likely that wealthy entrepreneur [1]

Also, it is worth noting that the suburbs surrounding detroit include some of the wealthiest in the country. There is certainly an investor base

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Gilbert_%28businessman%29#D...

Detroit will recover due to its history as a hub. It is a cheap place to live that has direct flights to Europe, Asia, South America, and almost any city in the US.

Also, Detroit has plenty of wealth. It just all sits in the suburbs. The article even shows a mansion in Grosse Pointe and another with 23,000 square feet in West Bloomfield. These people are definitely executives at businesses in the Detroit area.

Yep, and that's what puts Detroit in a better position than Toledo or Youngstown.

And the double-problem is that given the pictures, they clearly have 5-10 times more streets, sewers, electric poles, to maintain than they would have with a compact city.

A good map to sum this up:

http://detroitography.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/detroit_po...

They've lost an additional 250k people since the year 2000 as well, so just add to the misery.

Yes, looking at the pictures, I couldn't help feeling sorry for all this immense infrastructure going to waste.

That is definitely a huge problem. If the city had money, I wonder if it would be efficient in some areas to try to buy out the remaining residents so that they could essentially "shut off" entire neigborhoods.

> so that they could essentially "shut off" entire neigborhoods.

Just to add to the complications: they'd almost have to–due to either social pressure or environmental pressure–demolish the streets/poles/etc as well, else they still pose a maintenance requirement and an eyesore.

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