I go to Detroit a lot--a lot more often than someone in Iowa does.
Like ANY OTHER major city, there are good parts and bad parts.
Even the allegedly wonderful cities of San Francisco, Chicago, LA, New York, Boston have good parts and bad parts.
But when actual riots (sports or otherwise) break out in those other cities it's considered some sort of coincidental aberration.
Even though there have been 6 championships in the last 20 years and NO riots in Detroit, Detroit still gets stuck with the rep.
It's horsecrap, a cheap and easy cliche for someone to resort to. I'm sure you're proud of yourself.
I'm willing to guess Detroit has the most population decline of any major metropolitan area. I won't bother to look it up, but it loses a chunk of population every year.
That's no reason to lose hope. Cleveland is making a somewhat-reasonable comeback after years of being a punchline, what with the river fire and the reign of King Dennis the coocoo. There's a long way to go before Detroit becomes the exclusive province of the archeologists.