I go to Detroit fairly regularly for one of my many time-devouring hobbies, and the city doesn't feel nearly as desperate and dangerous as the common narrative likes to portray it. I still prefer Chicago, but I don't dread my visits or anything. 

That said, it's not a bad idea. To an extent the city can be interchangeable - unless you're going to tightly couple the story to the location, what you really wind up "needing" is just the urban backdrop. Every city has abandoned and overgrown areas, every city has the "nice" and "bad" parts of town. We could even do Tucson or St. Louis or Salt Lake City. Well, maybe less that one; I've never been anywhere so clean.