Detroit

Detroit was the nearest big city to where I grew up, although I was on the other side of the border. Because of Detroit TV and radio stations, I sound a little Michigan-ish when I say words like "coffee" (and even "sorry," which is usually one of the words that'll signal a Canadian accent). In fact, I hardly ever set foot in Detroit or Michigan--despite the fact that I literally could have walked to Michigan (if you count standing on a ferry as a kind of walking). My mother was a more frequent visitor to the City as a child, because her American uncles still lived there at the time, but they'd all migrated to Florida and the Southwest by the time I was around. (One of Mom's crinolines may still be somewhere in Detroit, lost out the window while changing out of fancy clothes in a car's backseat sometimes in the 1960s.)

I've been reading Sweet Juniper for years, looking most forward to jdg's entries concerning day-to-day living in Detroit. Eventually, I realized that I'm getting suckered into a kind of nostalgia for the place. It is one of the places of my childhood; it was the City, even if it wasn't in hot shape. The population decline had started in the city proper even before the 1967 riots, but was definitely in full swing by the 1980s. Coleman Young was in the second decade of his mayorship and the Devil's Night arson at their peak, and I remember (but have no idea how to track down a citation) the murder rate working out to one homicide every 23 hours.  These things only inflated Detroit in my imagination, in a way; Detroit was a place I know, but could scarcely be more foreign to a rural Canadian kid.

I've been branching out recently, looking up news and documentation of the place Detroit is, now. Some excellent sites include:

63 Alfred Street: Where Capitalism Failed

detroitblog

deTROITfUNK

Forgotten Detroit

Mythic Detroit

The Night Train

The Incorrigible City

Edit:  When I glanced at this entry again, it struck me as more negative than I'd intended. Despite all the "urban decay" stories I see in the mainstream press, most of what I read elsewhere makes Detroit sound potentially super-exciting as it re-envisions itself. That's what I meant to focus on, but the entry itself seems to have gotten stuck in the 1980s. The other sites will fill in all the blanks that I've left here.