News

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There's a lot more to Detroit than meets the eye. Good or bad, there are perspectives of the city you might not see unless you live here.

That's what we wanted to show in a story that shined a light on the complex city and its thousands of residents who can sometimes get overlooked in national news stories.

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When Detroit filed for bankruptcy last month, it wasn’t much of a surprise. With its boarded-up houses, abandoned schools, declining public services and shrinking population, it had become the country’s most depressing city. At least, that’s how it looked to outsiders.

The good news about Detroit’s bankruptcy filing, though, is that it was like hitting rock bottom. Where could the city go from there, but up?

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Detroit is struggling with the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history, which was brought on in part by the flight of both residents and businesses in recent decades. But Detroit's downtown area is enjoying rapid growth. The busy, 7.2-square-mile area stands in sharp contrast to the stretches of abandoned homes, closed factories and urban decay that dominate most of the city.

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Detroit's historic bankruptcy has not fazed everyone in what was once the nation's fourth-largest city. A burgeoning community of entrepreneurs is seeing opportunity and the chance to rebuild the Motor City.

"Some people feel like 'Oh my God,' there should be panic in Detroit! But I felt a sigh of relief," said Amy Kaherl, who runs a unique program selling meals to fund entrepreneurial ideas. "Time to just move on."

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On Thursday, the city of Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Cue the panic. 

The media, internet, and social media exploded with predictable stories of the city's imminent demise. There's the shrinking population, which dwindled from a peak of nearly 2 million to700,000 in 2012. Over and over again, we heard the the long list of other woes – mass joblessness, the sky-high murder rate, street lights that don't work, unthinkably long waits for police and emergency services, huge numbers of vacant buildings, and neighborhoods that are all but abandoned. 

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Detroit has an open-door policy, and it goes something like this: What you see is what you get.

There is no slick skin, no artifice. Thankfully, some people get us. They understand what it means to operate simply and honestly. It’s how we make the sausage, so to speak. It’s messy and it’s complicated and it’s necessary. And that’s what makes this city work.

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When summer sweat becomes too much to handle, the demand for a chilly escape route rises. That's when Bert Sperling, the owner of bestplaces.net, and his list of the top 50 "chill" and "sizzling" cities steps in, happy to offer guidance.

Using the Sperling Heat Index — a formula the author created that combines daily high temperatures, dew point and nighttime low temperatures — the site's specialists analyzed 30 years of June and July weather reports starting in 1980 through 2010 to determine the coolest and hottest metropolitan cities in the USA.

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The debt-laden city of Detroit has been an incubator for new strategies in urban revitalization, including a downtown People Mover, casinos, urban farms, artist colonies and large scale down-sizing.

In the wake of the city's bankruptcy, many in the community are thinking small.

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Most mornings Tali Kritzer takes her Pomeranian mix Ace on runs around Comerica Park or into Midtown along Woodward Avenue.

It’s either that or do what dozens of other dog owners who live downtown resort to doing: Walk to a boulevard of grass that runs through the center of Washington Boulevard or to Grand Circus Park, formerly home to a tent village of Occupy Detroiters, homeless people and dried-up historic fountains.

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After Detroit's landmark bankruptcy filing last week, more eyes than ever have zeroed in on this struggling city.

For Detroiters, it's both a blessing and a curse. While it's a relief that some have started to pay attention to the countless problems that often make daily life an uphill battle, how Detroit is portrayed by outsiders can be disheartening: pictures of abandoned buildings stand in for the people who pass by them each day; headlines blare that the Motor City is out of gas, dead or even hell on earth.

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Tell people that you live in New York City, and they ask which neighborhood. Tell them that you lived in Rome, and they ask how you could ever leave.

Tell them that you lived in Detroit, and they ask, “Why?”

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Amid the city’s deepening financial woes, natives recommit to revitalizing their community.

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A new music festival is coming to Detroit this Saturday at Historic Fort Wayne and it’s being billed as the region’s first fully philanthropic festival.

More than 25 musicians will perform across all genres of music during the concert, including Grammy Award winners “Bone Thugs and Harmony” as part of their comeback tour, electronic star “Girl Talk,” and numerous local favorites, such as Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas, Ro Spit, and more. A complete line-up can be found online.

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The effort to establish Detroit’s Inner Circle Greenway has just reached an important milestone. Two Metro Detroit bicycling infrastructure project grants, including one for the proposed greenway, have been approved for a total of $1.4 million in funding from the federal Transportation Alternatives Program.

The Inner Circle Greenway grant will partially pay for the purchase of an 8.3 mile stretch of the abandoned Conrail railroad track in Detroit. The other will be used to create bike lanes in Warren on Van Dyke between Conner/E. Outer Drive and a half mile past 9 Mile.

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