I'm guessing you were at Kubecon as well. It was my first time in Detroit and overall thought the city was much nicer than expected. But to be fair, I mostly was just downtown during the day and we ended up staying in a suburb (Royal Oak) because all of the hotels within walking distance were booked by the time I registered for the conference. The drive between Royal Oak (adjacent to the city limits) and downtown Detroit had some areas that looked dilapidated or worse.