Detroit in our time. Detroit is like an American nightmare that comes to life (USA). “I’m learning to love Detroit the way a parent learns to love an adopted child.”

There were times when Detroit's population exceeded 1.8 million. Today, three times less live here - 681,090 people. The year 1805 was a tragic milestone for the city - Detroit almost completely burned out.

Detroit is in the top ten most criminal cities in the world and consistently leads in similar US ratings.

However, not everything is so gloomy! A famous rapper was born and raised here Eminem. Francis Ford Coppola, director of the “Godfather” film trilogy, is also from Detroit. From here the musical style spread throughout the world " techno" All the most important automotive events for the United States take place in Detroit! It was here that the first affordable family car was created ( Ford model T), A Henry Ford founded Ford Motor Company and opened his first factory. Thanks to Detroit for the cream soda too.

Renting in Detroit

Housing and rental prices here are indecently low! However, rumors that you can buy a two-story country house for $100–200 should not be believed. Just a couple of years ago, at special auctions it was possible to find a house for $500 - but to equip such housing, it would have taken another ten thousand. Now the most budget option will cost about $1.5 thousand (but still without repairs).

Jobs in Detroit

Here is the answer to the surprised looks caused by real estate prices. More than half of Detroit's buildings are abandoned. The unemployment rate reaches 20%. Crime and poverty rule the streets.

Many houses lack running water and electricity. Salaries at factories are meager. Young people are increasingly choosing crime.

What happened to Detroit

The beginning of the 20th century was Detroit's finest hour. Then there was an economic boom in mechanical engineering. Not only Henry Ford, but also corporations decided to settle in the Motor City General Motors And Chrysler, collectively referred to as the "Big Three".

Almost every family had a car. Public transport was considered inconvenient and unprestigious. The infrastructure developed rapidly, every millimeter of the city flourished - everyone, except for the public transport sector. Which later played a cruel joke on Detroit.

The car equaled freedom of movement. Why not move out of town in this case? Most Detroiters did just that.

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With budget cuts, the city began to fade. At the beginning of the 60s, the changes were still imperceptible, but then - more. Only those who had no money to move remained within the city limits, and the middle class and elite left Detroit.

The city was completely deserted after the oil crisis in 1973. There is less gasoline - there is nothing to refuel the car with, and as we remember, the situation with public transport is no good. The authorities were shocked by such a rapid extinction, because this was the first such case in American history.

Fewer people - the city's economic turnover is falling - jobs are being cut - hello, unemployment. Salaries are meager, crime is high.

Today, Detroit looks like a setting for the filming of a post-apocalyptic action movie. The world's population is growing rapidly, but not here.

The business center of the city is in the best condition (as far as possible in the current situation). Skyscrapers, where thousands of clerks rush to work every day, shops and shopping centers are functioning.

The corporate headquarters of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler are still in place, which helps the city stay on its feet.

Important

At night in Detroit you need to be at home, behind all the locks. The streets are empty early, and civilization goes to sleep. With twilight, crime wakes up in Detroit.

The city can still be saved. But this requires wise decisions by the authorities, the responsibility of every resident and many years and patience.

Updated: March 30, 2019 by: Lera Koptseva

Do you want to buy a house in the States for just a couple of dollars and see with your own eyes real sets from Hollywood horror films? - Come to Detroit! But it’s better not to: the once richest industrial city is slowly turning into ruins, where drug trafficking and crime flourish. Today there are more than 33 thousand abandoned buildings in Detroit - empty skyscrapers, shopping centers, factories, schools and hospitals - in general, a quarter of the city should be bulldozed right now. How did it happen that the unlucky “Western Paris” came to this?

Birth

Detroit (Detroit, from the French "detroit" - "strait") is located in the northern United States, in the state of Michigan. It was founded on July 24, 1701 by the Frenchman Antoine Lome as a Canadian trading post for fur trading with the Indians. However, in 1796 the region was ceded to the United States. Like a Phoenix, Detroit rose from the ashes of the 1805 fire that destroyed much of the city. However, empires are not held together by logs and bricks: its advantageous location on the waterway of the Great Lakes system made Detroit a major transport hub. The restored city remained the capital of Michigan until the mid-19th century. The city's economy at this time relied entirely on the successful shipbuilding industry.

Heyday

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Detroit experienced a “golden age”: luxurious buildings and mansions with architectural delights were built, and Washington Boulevard was brightly illuminated by Edison light bulbs. For this, the city was nicknamed the “Paris of the West” - and it was here that Henry Ford created his own car model and founded the Ford Motor Company in 1904. Durant (General Motors), the Dodge brothers, Packard (Hewlett-Packard) and Chrysler were inspired by his example - their factories turned Detroit into a real automobile capital of the world.

Rapid economic growth in the first half of the 20th century required a large number of workers, so black people from the southern states, as well as Europe, came to Detroit to work. The city has a large number of private cars, as well as a network of highways and transport interchanges.

At the same time, an advertising campaign was promoted, the purpose of which was to portray public transport as unprestigious, as “transportation for the poor.” When you have your own car, there is no longer any point in living close to work: earn money in the city, live in a green suburb! At that time, no one suspected that the relocation of engineers and skilled workers outside the city limits would mark the beginning of today’s desolation...

And when there are too many cars, an old “broken” horse can be used for household needs. So, in the 50s, river bank erosion became a real environmental problem in Detroit - and it was creatively replaced with another environmental problem, strengthening the shoreline with old “wheelbarrows”. This “cart” is still there - rusty and green-covered piles of cars still poison the water with paint and oil. But who in the middle of the last century could have known that a few decades later many areas of the city would also look like garbage dumps?

Beginning of the End

What was the government's goal in ridiculing public transport? Of course, it all came down to economic benefit: people should buy more. But they did not foresee that the movement of the wealthiest part of the population from the center of Detroit would deprive the entire service sector of work: bank workers, hospital workers, store owners.

Having collected the bare necessities, they rushed after a source of income, leaving in the city only low-paid African-American workers living on benefits for the unemployed and homeless.

Poverty and lack of prospects pushed people “abandoned” in the center into criminal gangs, and Detroit quickly gained notoriety as one of the darkest and most dangerous cities in the United States.

But the troubles of “Western Paris” did not end there: in 1973, the oil crisis struck, bankrupting American automakers: their cars were not only expensive, but also consumed a lot of gasoline.

At the same time, economical Japanese brands entered the market confidently, and it became impossible to compete with them. Employees of closing factories lost their jobs and went wherever they could.

Today

The population of Detroit and its suburbs has decreased by 2.5 times: if in the early 1950s 1.8 million people lived here, today there are barely 700 thousand. The city itself in some places looks like pictures of the ruins of a human civilization enslaved by aliens from the science fiction film “Battlefield Earth”.

Buildings with broken glass and trees sprouting from their walls are strangely intertwined with streets brightly lit by the windows of expensive stores and ghetto neighborhoods covered in graffiti.

The sparsely populated center of Detroit, no matter what, remains a collection of cultural and sports centers, as well as architectural monuments of the past century, and continues to attract tourists.

In addition, Detroit continues to be home to the headquarters of major automakers and will house a limited number of workers. Numerous Arab immigrants also found refuge here.

All recent authorities have not given up attempts to revive the city and have approved the construction of several casinos: they did not strengthen Detroit’s economy, but at least slightly revived local leisure.

But the local ruins are of interest to Hollywood directors - they are willing to pay for such realistic and unforgettable settings for anti-utopian films, horror films, scenes of disasters and crimes.

In addition, abandoned houses serve as a real art space for Detroit's most restless artists. One of them - a certain Heidelberg - turned an entire block into eerie installations, decorating walls, fences, lawns and pillars with a variety of rubbish: plush toys, discarded mixers, shoes... Tourists, by the way, found Heidelberg's works to be a good and, most importantly, free attraction.

Prospects

In the second half of the 20th century, all of America considered what was happening in Detroit funny - and repeatedly ridiculed the city that had fallen to its knees. But today the joke has lost its edge: the same story is happening in dozens of other post-industrial cities and towns throughout the States. But what does this mean? The policy of consumerism and an unecological approach to production have already reached an absolute dead end - and only thanks to this, a gradual transition to “green thinking” is being observed throughout the world. Fate gives lemon only so that we can make lemonade out of it.

Today, the city of Detroit in the USA is often called abandoned. For many reasons, this once prosperous metropolis, the center of the American automobile industry, has gone bankrupt and deserted in recent years. So let's find out why Detroit, a civilized city in the middle of America, has become a ghost!

Detroit - the story of an abandoned city

As you know, at the very beginning of the 20th century, Detroit was experiencing its heyday. Its extremely advantageous geographic location at the intersection of the Great Lakes water routes made it a major transportation and shipbuilding hub. After Henry Ford created his first car model and subsequently an entire plant - the Ford Motor Company - the production of luxury executive cars of that time began here. During the economic boom of World War II, more and more people from the Southern states began to flock to this richest city in the country, especially African Americans, who were attracted by jobs at Ford plants. Detroit was experiencing a population boom.

But years later, when the Japanese became the kings of the automobile industry in the global world economy, the products of the trio of giants Ford, General Motors and Chrysler could no longer compete with them. Presentable and expensive American models turned out to be completely uneconomical. In addition, the global gasoline crisis broke out in 1973, which pushed Detroit even further to the brink.

Due to deindustrialization, massive layoffs began in the labor force, and people began to leave the city. Many moved to more prosperous cities where they could find work, while others—mostly low-wage workers or unemployed people living on benefits—stayed in the impoverished city. And since the number of taxpayers was decreasing, this could not but affect the economic situation for the municipality.

Mass unrest and riots began, mainly related to interracial relations. This was facilitated by the abolition of racial segregation in the United States. Outbreaks of violence, unemployment and poverty led to the fact that the center of the gradually collapsing city was populated by blacks, while the “whites” lived mainly in the suburbs. The movie “8 Mile” was made about this, where the famous rapper Eminem, a native of Detroit, plays the main role.

Today, Detroit has the highest crime rate in the country, with particularly high rates of murder and other violent crime. This is four times more than in New York. This situation did not arise overnight, but had been brewing since the Detroit riot of 1967, when unemployment pushed many African Americans to commit mass riots. It is noteworthy that the tradition of setting fire to buildings for the holiday, which arose back in the 30s of the last century, has today acquired frightening proportions. Detroit is now considered the most dangerous city in America; Drug trafficking and banditry flourish here.

The empty buildings of the ghost town of Detroit are gradually collapsing. Here is a photo of an abandoned train station in Detroit, destroyed skyscrapers, banks and theaters. Residential buildings in the city are sold very cheaply, the real estate market has simply depreciated, which is not surprising, given the current demographic situation in Detroit.

Basic moments

Tell an American you're planning a trip to Detroit and watch him raise his eyebrows questioningly. He will ask “Why?” and warns you about sky-high prices, boarded-up houses with trash swirling around their foundations, and foreclosed mortgages that sell houses for $1. You will hear: “Detroit is a hole. They will kill you there."

All of the above is true, and although the city is to some extent characterized by an alcoholic-apocalyptic mood, it is also the spark that ignites the fire of urban energy - energy that you will not feel anywhere else. Artists, entrepreneurs and young people come here, so the spirit of self-reliance and independence prevails here, one might say that “people decide their destiny here.” They are turning vacant spaces into urban farms and abandoned buildings into hostels and museums.

Detroit had its heyday in the 1960s, with the booming American auto industry and the legendary Motown band, which still has fans today. But since the end of the 20th century, Detroit has been steadily in crisis - the city has become dilapidated, and the crime rate is off the charts.

But this does not mean that it is impossible to relax and see various sights in Detroit. The main thing here is to know where and what is.

Story

French explorer Antoine de La Mothe-Cadillac founded Detroit in 1701. Fortune smiled on the city when, in the 20s of the 20th century, Henry Ford began churning out cars. He did not invent the automobile, as many people mistakenly believe, but he created an excellent production line and developed mass production technologies. The result was the Model T, the first US-made car that the middle class could afford.

Detroit quickly became the automobile capital of the country. General Motors (GM), Chrysler and Ford were all headquartered in or near Detroit (and still have). The 1950s were the best in the city's history, with the population topping two million and Motown music blasting from radios. But racial tensions that emerged in 1967 and Japanese auto competitors in the 1970s rocked the city and its industry. Detroit entered an era of deep decline, losing about two-thirds of its population.

The city was able to recover slightly in the mid-2000s, only to see a new global economic crisis in 2008-2009 destroy the auto industry. GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and thousands of blue and white collar workers lost their jobs. The city continues to “restructure.”

Detroit Attractions

The life of downtown Detroit is concentrated in the coastal area, near the Renaissance Center (Renaissance Center) and near Hart Plaza (Hart Plaza). Woodward Avenue - the city's main boulevard - runs north to Midtown (home to the Cultural Center and its museum, as well as Wayne State University) and further to the New Center (New Center) with rich architecture. Corktown, full of bars, is just west of downtown. Mile Roads are Detroit's main east-west arteries; Eighth Mile (8 Mile) forms the border between the city and the suburbs. Across the Detroit River is Windsor (Canada).

All attractions are usually closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Detroit is traditionally proud of its own Henry Ford Museum, where you can see both vintage and modern cars of this famous automobile company. The Ford Museum still has the assembly line. (it still works) and there is even a piece of the street where Henry Ford himself stepped on the paving stones.

But it's also worth visiting the Detroit Museum of Art, the Science Center and the African American Museum, along with the History Museum.

For lovers of real exoticism, it will be useful to visit the famous Eastern Market, where you can make inexpensive purchases of souvenirs and then listen in cozy clubs to signature jazz and blues from yet unknown groups that are just making their way up the American horizon.

The Eastern Market is also valued among tourists because you can find authentic peasant products - from cheese and butter to wine - with which you can easily organize a stylish and delicious breakfast in your hotel room.

For bowling lovers, we can recommend Cafe Cadieux, which is considered the only place in America where you can play the Belgian version of Bowling. In the cafe you can also watch games of local hockey and football teams. (what is the famous Red Wings team worth!).

Bars and restaurants

Thanks to its expatriate policy, Detroit has been and remains a true cultural melting pot. That is why you can find a wide variety of cuisine here. Specialty food can be found at Greektown Restaurant, while Polish food can be found at Polish Village. Mexican food is traditionally served in the stylish and affordable Mexican Village.

For lovers of nightlife, there are quite a lot of options here - there are an abundance of various cafes and bars that are open until two in the morning, while most nightclubs are open until dawn.

For those intellectuals who rightfully want to see and experience this city, there is a good choice in the form of a dive bar or live entertainment, which can be found at either the Bronx or the Woodbridge Pub. An excellent snack and good local beer will be a guaranteed affair.

Video: Detroit from above

Problems of the city

In the 50s of the 20th century, Detroit became the automobile capital of the United States, which at that time was promoting a program of cheap and accessible cars at the state level. The country's largest automobile factories were concentrated in Detroit. (Ford, General Motors, Chrysler), and the city experienced a boom in its development - it literally flourished, becoming one of the richest cities in North America. Black people from all over the country began to flock to the city in large numbers in search of work, as automobile factories needed workers and racial discrimination eased. Demographically, the city's white population had already begun to decline, and this trend increased every year, essentially making Detroit a “black city” within a couple of decades. The reason for the relocation of the white population to the suburbs was the undeveloped public transport system and the oversaturation of the city with personal transport. Since the mid-40s, with the development of the automobile industry, a large number of personal cars appeared in the city. Constant traffic jams and lack of parking spaces became an increasingly acute problem. At the same time, the need to purchase a personal car is promoted; public transport is presented as unprestigious - it is “transport for the poor.” On the other hand, the public transport system is not developing; tram and trolleybus lines are being eliminated. This forces residents to switch to cheaper cars. As a result, the number of cars in the city is growing rapidly, and the old urban structure does not meet the requirements of the city's motorists. And from about the mid-50s, there has been a tendency for the wealthy, mostly white, population to move to suburbs with more convenient infrastructure. The percentage of Detroit's poor, mostly black population is growing, and the crime situation is worsening, which further accelerates the outflow of city residents. The authorities are trying to solve the problem by demolishing historical buildings in the city center to build parking lots. At the same time, tensions between the black and white populations are growing in the city, which leads to protests by blacks. During the riot of July 23, 1967, more than 2,000 buildings were looted and burned. The matter ended with the entry of army units on July 25, and after another 48 hours the riot was suppressed. 43 people were killed (of which 33 are black), 467 were injured. This further spurred the departure of the white population, and the process of decline of the once prosperous city became irreversible.

In the 80s, the decline of the automobile industry began and the city gradually began to decline, entire skyscrapers and business districts were abandoned, after several “black riots”, when dozens of houses were burned and hundreds of robberies and other crimes were committed, the white population began to move to other cities.

By the beginning of the 21st century, Detroit's white population was about 10 percent, concentrated in the southern part of the city, with most of it in the suburbs. There, in the south of Detroit, business districts are still preserved, but most of the city looks extremely deplorable. Crime is at a very high level. Even in the center, if you simply turn onto the wrong street, you risk being robbed. Most of the skyscrapers are empty, the once richest theaters have been destroyed, and luxury housing has been abandoned. A few years ago, the city began to slowly recover, but the pace is still very low.

Cultural contribution

Detroit, with its unique demographics and oppressive atmosphere of decay, has become a unique place for creative people. In particular, this was facilitated by the fact that Detroit has the largest number of wealthy black Americans in the United States. Detroit became the first city in the United States to develop a large movement of middle-class black youth, giving rise to a unique cultural phenomenon - Techno. Detroit is generally recognized as the capital of this type of club music.

The term "Detroit Techno" denotes not so much a style as a mood inherent in the music created in this city. In the early 80s, black party people got together and they wanted to create something new, they were young, rich and they wanted to be different. Juan Atkins, the musician who created the first techno track, belongs to this movement. Laurent Garnier, a French DJ, wrote the book “Electroshock” in 2005 about the history of techno, from its birth to its present state. The most important part of this book describes the search for the “Spirit of Detroit” through the eyes of a European, who subsequently finds it in an atmosphere of oppression and devastation, as well as in racial discrimination by the authorities, especially pronounced in Detroit.

Festivals and events

North American International Auto Show

In mid-January, for two weeks, you can see a huge congestion of cars in the Cobo Center (www.naias.com; tickets $12; mid-January).

Movement Electronic Music Festival

The world's largest electronic music festival takes place on Memorial Day at Hart Plaza (www.movement.us; day pass $40; end of May).

Information

Safety

The area between the sports arenas, north and around Willis Road, is deserted and best avoided at night.

Information for tourists

Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau (Detroit Convention & Visitors Bureau) (Tel: 800-338-7648; www.visitdetroit.com)

Medical service

Detroit Emergency Hospital (Detroit Receiving Hospital) (Tel: 313-745-3000; 4201 St Antoine St)

Transport

Detroit Metro Airport (Detroit Metro Airport) (DTW; www.metroairport.com), a hub for Delta Airlines, is approximately 20 miles southwest of Detroit. There are few transportation options to get from the airport to the city: you can take a taxi for about $45 or take the 125 SMART bus ($2) , but on it you will travel to the center from one to one and a half hours.

Greyhound (Greyhound) (Tel: 313-961-8005; 1001 Howard St) travels to various cities within and outside of Michigan. Megabass (Megabus) (www.megabus.com/us) travels to/from Chicago (5.5 hours) every day; departs from the center (corner of Cass and Michigan) and from Wayne State University (Wayne State University, corner of Cass and Warren Avenue).

Amtrak trains (Amtrak) (Tel: 313-873-3442; 11W Baltimore Ave) travel three times a day to Chicago (5.5 hours). You can also go east to New York (16.5 hours) or other destinations along the way - but first you will have to take a bus to Toledo (Toledo).

Transit Windsor (Transit Windsor) (Tel: 519-944-4111; www.city windsor.ca/001209.asp) drives the tunnel bus that goes to Windsor (Canada). Ticket costs $3.75 (American or Canadian), the bus leaves from Mariner's Church (corner of Randolph St and Jefferson Ave) near the entrance to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel (Detroit-Windsor Tunnel), as well as from other places in the city center. Don't forget to take your passport.

For information about the operation of the People Mover Monorail.

American real estate agencies sometimes publish advertisements that make you want to rub your eyes. Didn't it seem like it? A one thousand dollar mansion? With two bedrooms and a lawn, in the city center? Yes, this happens. In Detroit.

Detroit is the city with the cheapest real estate not only in America, but, perhaps, in the entire Western Hemisphere. But before you buy a house for a dollar, think about whether you need such an acquisition.

In the middle of the last century, Detroit experienced rapid growth. The center of the automotive industry, a city-industrial giant, it was fashionable and promising. Residents of Detroit considered it shameful to travel on buses and trams: in the city of Ford and Chrysler, everyone considered it their duty to have a car.

Now they sell not cars, but crack and heroin, and dark-skinned drug lords in gold and fur coats roam the streets, like in a bad American movie. Here you can buy a house for a dollar or a plot of land for 100. Detroit has become like a post-apocalyptic ghost town.

Canadian Detroit

In 1701, the French colonist and military leader Antoine Lome de La Mothe-Cadillac, who arrived in the New World, in what is now Canada, to develop the lands conquered from the Indians, founded a settlement on the shores of the strait connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. Initially, it bore the name Fort Pontchartrain-du-Detroit, and later turned into the familiar “Detroit”. By the way, “Detroit” means “strait” in French.

The strait, with access to two Great Lakes, was an unusually advantageous location, and the new settlement very soon turned out to be an important transport hub for the developing region.

For a long time, Detroit remained a Canadian city, changing only the “owners”: in 1760, Detroit went to the British. And even after the War of Independence, which separated the United States from Britain and its colonies, Detroit did not become part of the new state. The city became American only in 1796.

At the beginning of the 19th century, most of the city burned down in a fire, and it was actually rebuilt.

For more than 40 years, Detroit was the center of the Michigan Territory, which then became part of the United States and became one of the states. Later, the state capital was moved to Lancin, but Detroit remains the largest city in Michigan. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, it became one of the transit points of the “Underground Railroad” along which black slaves fled from the South to the North.

Until the mid-19th century, the basis of the city's economy was shipbuilding. And in 1899, an event occurred that determined the fate of the city - Henry Ford built an automobile plant not far from Detroit.

After the founding of the famous Ford Motors company, other automobile giants opened their concerns in Detroit: Chrysler, General Motors and American Motors. The city turned into the automobile capital of the country and began to grow rapidly. The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries is called the “golden era” of Detroit.

Detroit in its heyday

Over the next fifty years, Detroit flourished: it literally became a symbol of the American auto industry. However, this success predetermined his subsequent fall. The public transport system has practically not developed here. Who needs trams and trolleybuses in the city of Ford and Chrysler? Public transport is for the poor, the automobile giants preached. Residents of wealthy Detroit should only drive private cars.

Citizens with cars were leaving for quiet suburbs, and the city center was emptying. This phenomenon was called “white flight.” White Americans with high incomes did not want to live surrounded by black workers, who were hired in large numbers by automobile concerns. As wealthy citizens outflowed from the city, the treasury became empty, and, accordingly, funding for local schools, kindergartens and hospitals decreased. Which, in turn, caused further population outflow.

Old Detroit

Detroit suffered its greatest blow in 1973, when the oil crisis broke out. Many American automobile companies went bankrupt, unable to compete with European and Japanese competitors: they produced more fuel-efficient cars. Concerns were closing, people were losing their jobs, and the city's population was rapidly declining.

In the 1950s, Detroit had a population of approximately 2 million. Over the next 30 years, the city's population decreased by 600 thousand, then by another 200, and so on. Now the population of once bustling and wealthy Detroit is less than 700 thousand people.

Entire areas were abandoned. And if in other cities the poor outskirts are considered dangerous, in Detroit the opposite is true - the center of the former automobile capital suffered the greatest destruction. Brightly lit shops stand side by side with empty buildings whose storefronts and windows are broken. Everything that remains inside the houses abandoned by the ruined townspeople is taken away by looters. Trees grow through broken roofs. The empty building of the Packard plant was inhabited by homeless people.

It is not surprising that the city is breaking records for cheap real estate: for $500 you can buy a mansion here, for example, in the Steele Street area, once considered prestigious. Steele Street, which translates to "quiet street", no longer lives up to its name. There are hardly any quiet corners left in Detroit. There is an active drug trade in the city. Armed gangs drive around the city and rob people.

Ghost town

A plot of land on the ashes, which remained after the fire that took place here, can be purchased for $100. Detroit is home to legendary home deals for a dollar.

Here's an example of this. The two-bedroom house on Ervington Street was built in the late 1920s. Over the past six years, they have tried to sell it 12 times - about a couple of times a year. In the end, the price was reduced from 70 thousand to one dollar.

But no one wants to buy a house here for this money either: who needs a mansion in a city filled with drug dealers, looters and homeless people? Crime is increasing year by year, and the police force is only decreasing due to lack of funding.

In addition, the matter, naturally, will not cost a symbolic dollar. In fact, the owner will have to pay the state 30-40 thousand dollars a year - Detroit is famous for having perhaps the highest property taxes in America. And repairing the looted building will cost several tens of thousands more.

However, sometimes buyers are found. Usually these are foreigners: British, Australians, Spaniards, Swedes. Often they call agencies, lured by an incredibly low price and without understanding what's what. And then they either abandon their idea, or, having already purchased, they understand what they have gotten themselves into - and strive to quickly get rid of the source of constant expenses. The house is put up for sale again, and this is repeated many times.

However - an interesting observation - the situation is gradually changing. According to experts, over the past two years the real estate market in Detroit has picked up somewhat. Prices for houses and apartments increased by 23%. Of course, not all real estate here is sold for next to nothing: in the city there are houses for 15-20 thousand dollars. And, judging by the recent rise in prices, there is a demand for this property.

Will someone really populate the ghost town and Detroit will have a chance for a second heyday?