the impact the suburbs have on Detroit's development. According to George C. Galster, an urban affairs professor at Wayne State University and author of Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in Motown, the vacant land, the lack of development, all spring from what he calls "a giant sucking sound" from the suburbs.

"To understand vacant land in Detroit is to understand why it's there," he says, "why the forces at play are still creating the issue. The force is the vast majority of buildings still being created on the suburban fringes. We've created a perpetual excess of housing in the region."

For the last 60 years, he says, Detroit has created an average of 10,000 excess dwellings a year, mostly in north suburban areas such as wealthy Oakland County. Whenpeople vacate land, they move up to the next best housing option in a chain of moves that often leaves the least valuable (i.e. inner-city) homes empty. While some areas of the city, such as Midtown, the southwest (an area with a burgeoning Mexican population), and stable older neighborhoods are doing well, the vast remainder of Detroit has seen population and value hemorrhage for the last five decades. While there are many bright spots, plans and projects that have started to make a dent in the staggering amount of open space in the city will need to be expanded to make a serious dent in the issue.

"Suburban property developers don't care what happens in Detroit," Galster says. "All these efforts to knock down blighted buildings to make areas