Old North Side
The wasteland of former residential neighborhoods spreads out in a wide swath along what was once Detroit's northern boundary. Houses are either burned wrecks, or in the process of advanced decay: rooflines falling in, windows boarded up or broken, doors hanging askew. A few streets spawn stretches of retail buildings, their glass long-since smashed, their concrete hulls remaining like empty shells. Stretching from McNichols Road in the south to Eight Mile, and from the preserved neighborhoods around Palmer Park all the way to the posh lakeside suburbs, the old north side holds only shattered remains of civilization: broken pavement and destroyed, decaying structures. There are no streetlights; there are no city services; there is neither water nor electricity. Nevertheless, squatters and addicts survive in pockets here and there, scraping an existence from the carcass of the city.
On the eastern edge of this apocalyptic landscape lies Osborn: one of the most dangerous hoods in Detroit before Measure 2, and now without a doubt the most dangerous of the excised neighborhoods. North, across Eight Mile, there's a sharp and shocking divide between wasteland and suburbia: neatly paved streets and relatively recent construction predominate, along with older strip malls and residential neighborhoods.
