Most people, myself included, lump Highland Park into Detroit despite technically being a separate city. Hamtrack is similar. You really don't feel like you're out of Detroit until you hit the Southfield, Ferndale, and Royal Oak areas.

While I agree many people do this with Highland Park, Hamtramck is very distinct, both physically (types of houses, density) and demographically (huge immigrant populations, Polish and now Middle Eastern and South Asian). Actually, certain parts around Hamtramck (e.g. Banglatown) are often lumped with Hamtramck despite being in Detroit.

I can understand that. I guess I mentally lump it with Detroit because of the arson, infrastructure issues that I associate with the city, but it is pretty unique. Thanks.

It is a separate city, that is surrounded by Detroit except for one small portion touching Hamtramck which is also surrounded by Detroit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Park,_Michigan

It's not terribly uncommon for a city like Detroit to annex surrounding towns and cities, but some of them hold out, which looks like is what happened here.

It's just historically incorporated separately, so it is a different tax base, to share services would have to negotiate with Detroit, etc.

Yeah, so I can understand that technically speaking, for income & property tax purposes Highland Park is it's own thing. But the big picture economics of the area are that proximity of the neighborhood means, for example, many people living in that neighborhood also work and purchase goods in Detroit but outside of the neighborhood. And Detroit as a whole has this problem, it's been written about all over the place. All of Detroit has been grappling with how to provide continuing services to the multiple neighborhoods that have lost a lot of people. So I'm just curious if there's something more I need to know than just the Highland Park boundary that warrants separating it? Or maybe even if writing about it this way is a good thing for the Highland Park residents for some reason I don't understand?

Detroit attempted to annex Highland Park multiple times in the early twentieth-century (at least in 1910, 1922, and 1924, maybe more). But Highland Park was wealthier and its residents wanted to remain independent.

Now things are different, but even if Highland Park's residents agreed to be annexed by Detroit, would Detroiters have them? Why annex a small city that's in terrible economic shape?

I think you could definitely make an argument that Detroit and Highland Park could come together and improve both their lots, but that would take a huge effort and a whole lot of political will that I'm not sure is there.

There's just no fixed process for dealing with the situation. Detroit doesn't necessarily want to assume responsibility, the residents don't necessarily want to become part of Detroit, etc. etc.

I think it is kind of a modern problem to think of government structure as a static thing. Like another example from Michigan, now that we have paved roads everywhere we should all but dissolve townships. Organizing most of what they do would work fine at the county level. There's some real neighbor stuff that they do, but they don't need to have zoning boards or road projects.

> There's just no fixed process for dealing with the situation. Detroit doesn't necessarily want to assume responsibility

True. And I'd assume that it's very complex and Detroit in many cases cannot legally or financially assume responsibility, even if it wanted to. I have no idea how I'd solve the problems there, they are tough.

The problem being written about is that the city itself has so little income and revenue that it can't provide certain basic services, and even can't necessarily partner with non-profits which are trying to address problems in different ways.

With a different government, tax base, and so on, Detroit as a whole may have similar problems, but the scale is different, and the larger scale likely means that there are some things Detroit can do that Highland Park cannot.

I'm not sure why you think that an article about one city, Highland Park, should have been about a different city, Detroit, that while it is close by, operates at a very different scale?

> I'm not sure why you think that an article about one city, Highland Park, should have been about a different city, Detroit, that while it is close by, operates at a very different scale?

Well, I did ask the question and not state it as my opinion, didn't I? And I read the article, and already explained my take on the arguments you're making. Are you asking why, or just making a point?

The Detroit native in this thread agreed that Detroit natives think of Highland Park as part of Detroit.

Highland Park is entirely contained inside the Metro Detroit boundary. Use of the word "city" here is overloaded. To an outsider, Detroit is a city and Highland Park is a neighborhood within Detroit. To the Highland Park government, "city" has a technical boundary meaning that is not necessarily relevant to people outside Highland Park, and especially to people outside Michigan.

I'd speculate that most people who don't live in Michigan reading an article about a city in Michigan would assume or imagine something geographically distinct from other cities, with fields in between them, as opposed to a continuous metropolitan area.

My question is whether there might be some political context to the way this article is written. Do you know of any?

Enclaves and exclaves aren't totally unheard of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave

They are sort of a topic of interest/amusement, because they aren't the usual thing.

Hamtramck is another city surrounded by Detroit, except for the portion that borders Highland Park.

But it is a distinct city. With a separate mayor, a separate budget, and so separate issues that it has to deal with due to its budget shortfalls. Including issues with the City of Detroit being one of its creditors, due to unpaid water bills.

It is not uncommon for there to be cities or towns in the metro area of other cities that are independent. For instance, Cambridge is different than Boston; or for an even closer example, Brookline which is surrounded on three sides by Boston is independent from Boston. Or Oakland is not San Francisco, nor is Almeda Oakland.

Or for other examples of being completely surrounded, the Vatican is not Rome. Monaco is not France.

The "technical boundary" is not irrelevant here. We're talking about different jurisdictions, with different governments, and an article about how one government is failing to provide some basic services is distinct from another government that is close by but has very different issues due to the differences of scale and available tax base.

> with fields in between them, as opposed to a continuous metropolitan area.

But that's not how cities work. It is very common for two cities to be part of one continuous metropolitan area, and the only way you notice the boundary is by paying very close attention to signs as you pass them.

> My question is whether there might be some political context to the way this article is written. Do you know of any?

I think that the context for this article is just that it's an interesting phenomenon; this small city, which grew very fast during the auto boom and has been fading slowly ever since, and now the government is so cash-strapped that it doesn't even have the personnel to work with independent non-profits to do things as basic as keeping the streetlights on, but also due to the small scale it's possible for individuals and neighborhood organizations to provide some of their own services that the city can't.

The issue of "the government barely exists", as expressed in the title, is not true of Detroit as a whole. While the Detroit government does have issues of being short on funds, it is large enough that there is a recognizable government that is able to do things. But for this small city, which grew very quickly and then has slowly been fading away, the size and scale make it very hard to have a functioning government that can reasonably govern.

And while the state and the federal government obviously do exist, for many of the things that ail Highland Park, the state and federal government generally work by providing grants to cities and towns, but being as cash strapped and small as this city is, it's hard for it to take advantage of programs that could bring in more revenue.

From reading the Wikipedia page, it seems that Highland Park had some great economic prospects in the 1910's - 1920's (Chrysler was founded there) and wanted to self-govern.