I have family living and working in the City of Detroit(albeit not in the worst parts). My parents lived for several years in Detroit(city itself) before tiring of the city, and left for the country(even bypassing the suburbs).
Americans are willing for those places to be like that, because to make them markedly better - to make them like tough blue collar working class neighborhoods - would cost far more money than Americans are willing to spend on that segment of society
Disagree. Michigan, as well as the feds, have spent billions and billions (if not trillions) of dollars trying to fix Detroit over the last 30+ years. You can give away the combined incomes of George Soros, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, and nothing will happen to fix Detroit....unless the people of Detroit choose to fix their city themselves - which I hope happens, as Detroit is the face of Michigan to the entire world.
There are several reasons why most of the city Detroit is in the shape it is in today. Some of them are:
1. Corruption. Coleman Young ran the city for 20 years destroying it. He was a racist who aliented all the whites. He was also so corrupt, that he made Chirac look like George Washington. There's rampant corrpution with the city council and also Wayne County governments.
2. Taxes and services. Detroit has higher tax rates than the rich surburbs of Grosse Pointe, Birmingham, and Bloomfield Hills. The city services are also poor despite the high taxes. There is also an income tax for those who live or work in the city that doesn't exist in those areas. Anyone who wants to raise a family in Detroit better pay major $$$ for private schools, since Detroit schools are among the worst in the state.
3. Dependence on one industry - The auto industry is to Detroit, like wine is to Bordeaux. The business cycle has always affected Michigan and Detroit more than the rest of the country. Currently, Michigan leads the nation in unemployment.
4. Crime.
5. Lack of will of Detroiters to change. Detroiters keep electing the same people to the city council and mayors office time and time again. They elected the corrupt school boards time and time again. Until this changes, Detroit will still keep giving downtown a facelift while ignoring the problems in many of their neighborhoods.
But why does Detroit have higher taxes?
Is it not that there is a smaller base of taxes, but a large population with great needs?
Is it not that the value of land is very low there, and the value of income of the people living in Detroit is very low. But the cost to educate a student or to provide health care for people on welfare is the same as elsewhere. And so is it not true that in order to get enough money to run those services from poorer people, that Detroit must tax more?
Isn't it true that schools in America, instead of being part of a uniform national system and funded based upon needs from the national state so that there is parity, are instead funded and directed by each and every separate community? Doesn't that mean that poorer areas, like Detroit, have bad schools because the only money is from Detroit, while wealthy areas, like Beverly Hills, have very good schools because the property values in such areas are very high, so even with lower tax rates more money is taken in?
You say that Detroiters do not WANT to change, but isn't this a matter of a lack of education? In France, the national education system would be imparting the national values there. But in America, each locality is on its own. So, places that have intelligent residents do well, but places that are already blighted are relying on people who already don't know what they are doing to direct the school systems that are supposed to teach children to not be like their parents, where their parents are not functioning well.