Many people have a vision of Detroit that is essentially a deserted — and dangerous — urban wasteland.
But in reality it is a city of incredibly stark contrasts.
In order to show the world what the city is really like, here's a video we saw on Deadline Detroit from a hobbyist who goes by Tretch5000 on YouTube. The videographer attached a camera to a small RC quad-roter drone in order to show the outer beauty of the city and the utter despair that overtakes parts of the metropolis.
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While some of it is depressing and other parts uplifting, all of it is hauntingly beautiful.
(H/T to Justin!)
DISCUSSION
It's a good illustration of Detroit's largest problem. Geographically, Detroit is bigger than many of the large, healthy metropolises in the country. But it has to struggle to maintain all that infrastructure with a tax base that is a small fraction of other major American cities.
Obviously, there are massive corruption issues as well. But I believe that regardless of corruption — meaning, even if it were all rooted out and fixed — the city will not be able to rebound until someone or some group comes up with a plan to shrink the city to a size that is manageable given its tax base, if not even smaller, so tax rates can actually be lowered.