Originally Posted by
Bham1982
How do you figure this?
During the 1970's-80's, downtown got a 7 tower complex, including a luxury shopping mall, the tallest hotel in the world, and six office towers. Detroit completely rebuilt the two main shopping corridors, and added a new mall and department store in New Center. Oh, and an elevated rail system alongside a street-running trolley.
During the 1980's-90's, downtown got multiple trophy office buildings [[including one by Hines, the gold standard in higher end commercial space) a shopping mall in Greektown, three highrise residentials, multiple new hotels, and two huge riverfront developments along Jefferson.
During the 1990's-00's downtown got two new HQ buildings, three massive casinos, two new stadia, renovated its largest abandoned tower to a luxury hotel, major expansion at Wayne State.
You can have stuff get built and still struggle. A city as big as Detroit will have development, even if the overall narrative is decline. "But stuff is being built" isn't really a reasonable response to whether or not the city is still declining. Stuff is always being built, whether cities are growing or shrinking.