I Grew Up in the Detroit Area...

...and this article is very sad...and very accurate:

Driving northwest out of the city on Grand River Blvd, another empty eight lane arterial, gave me the feeling that I was Will Smith in I Am Legend. Block after block, mile after mile the scenery was the same: empty, abandoned, dilapidated, boarded up, burned out, decaying storefronts and vacant lots. Most of the functioning businesses were streetfront churches or missions. Here and there were sad down-and-outers loitering on the corner, old men wandering in the vacant lots, poor souls in tattered clothes out in the middle of the street, trying to make the crossing from noplace to nowhere. It gave me such a deeply disturbing feeling that I am at a loss to describe. Here stands one of America's once great cities, a gilded age paradise, home of the automobile manufacturing giants and the dictum that what is good for GM is good for America and of course good for Detroit. Today, the prosperity that once built the sturdy, now vacant high quality brick homes and buildings has evaporated away with America's manufacturing economy.