I have a theory that America is actually a dystopia, just no-one acknowledges it because they think it's just a problem with the state they are in.
First I thought it was just Detroit that was thought of as a cesspool. Then it was Georgia. Then New Jersey. Now everywhere in the southern united states is terrible.
Hey now,
Detroit isn't a cesspool. There are plenty of places within the city limits that are safe, comfortable, and well-maintained, where people still have access to things like police protection and medical clinics. The area around the Casinos, for one, because they're one of the remaining draws for the city, and they can afford their own maintenance and security forces. Of course, there are plenty of other places too, often centered around sports arenas and theaters that were built before the riots and fires. But most of the city never recovered from the riots and fires.
01|
02|
03|
04|
05|
06|
07|
08|
09|
10Blocks and blocks, with the empty shells of Victorian Townhomes, boarded-up windows pried away years ago by squatters. The husks of strip malls, gas stations, and shops, which desperate people gutted to harvest scrap metal, furniture, tools, and useful materials. Places where you don't want to travel on foot, unless you're moving in a pack or have someone local to help you know what to look out for. Or a gun.
The former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, just went to prison. He's not unique among Detroit mayors for being a felon. He is, however, unique in being foolish and unrelenting enough in his crimes to get caught. He fought the City Council to try and cut funding for city projects with one hand, while embezzling city funds with the other. He flaunted bribery, cheating on his wife with his chief of staff, and selling city contracts for personal profit. We've known what he was doing for many years, but he was wealthy enough, and the city poor and fractured enough, that it took a sex-scandal to get a decent investigation on him rolling... which finally lead to his conviction only days ago.
So yeah, Detroit is not a cesspool, so much as a series of safe and functional slices of city, sitting in the middle of a vast, unsafe, and sparsely populated urban wasteland. If you wanted to film a live-action Fallout movie, you could go there and you wouldn't even need a set. But you might need to hire your own security forces.
And yeah... as someone born and raised in and around Detroit, thinking about this did make me sad today.