Downtown Detroit is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The layout of the town is classic, the architecture is beautiful, it has an automated train running a loop around the town for a pittance, 50 cents. There are festive little parks and squares pretty much everywhere. There is a riverfront.
The most incredibly impressive thing about downtown Detroit, however, is the complete and total lack of inhabitants. I don't have my cards with me, but one figure I've seen bandied about is that a full square mile of early to mid 1900's skyscrapers sits completely abandoned. All windows are shuttered up, boarded up, or broken. Aside from a strip of modern steel-and-glass structures along Woodward Avenue, the town is completely empty at 8 o'clock in the morning. No cars, no suited office workers rushing through intersections flapping newspapers, no visible sign that a city of close to a million is just waking up.
It is also worth noting that the only other passenger I encountered on the Detroit People Mover was a very old man who smelled of whiskey, had a snap-down flannel shirt and a foamfront baseball cap and faded jeans. He was recounting to me, in his own mumbly way, tales of a long-forgotten past. In his past, the streets were a-bustling, the people a-hustling, the town was alive and significant.
Looking out the window of the train, I could almost see it.