When you travel far away from Rochester and someone asks you where you are from, what is your answer?

Do you say Rochester or Rochester Hills? Or are you from Michigan? Are you from Detroit?

In his first blog for the new HuffPost Detroit, which launched today, writer Toby Barlow says most of us in the suburbs identify our place in the world as being from Detroit — without having any idea of what Detroit is really like. It's time we all stop running away from Detroit, Barlow writes in "'Detroit,' Meet Detroit."

"If you're from Detroit, you've got to know it and be a part of it, embracing all of its opportunities, its troubles and its beauty," Barlow writes. "It is not just some idealistic dream, it's an economic necessity: The reason this is so fundamentally important is because – get this – it's the straightest path to getting your property values back. It's that simple. You may be from Berkley or Dearborn Heights or Beverly Hills or even Ypsilanti – it doesn't really matter how far out you go – but if you're in Southeast Michigan, you're from Detroit. It's your brand. So deal with it."

HuffPost Detroit has a mission of providing "an alternative to the knee-jerk narrative the national media love to tell about Detroit," founder Arianna Huffington writes in an introductory piece.

Patch and the Huffington Post are partners; we worked with HuffPost Detroit Editor Simone Landon last week while covering the GOP Debate at Oakland University.

That GOP debate fits nicely into this discussion of place: It was here in Rochester, yet most of the national media considered it happening in Detroit — even featuring photographs of the Detroit skyline in preview stories.

So, where do we live? In one of the Rochesters? In southeast Michigan? In Detroit?