Are suburbanites aware of how unattractive living in Metro-Detroit is to outsiders?

[Detroitnerd]

And I still don't get Point B. If the parents had higher taxes to support culture, then their kids wouldn't move to urban areas, and would join them in the exurbs?

Having the option or urban living, in a historical urban core, with a sense of place and identity, doesn't only benefit the urban core. It benefits the people who work there but may not live there. It benefits the parents who don't have to only see their kids over the holidays. It benefits the region by conferring upon it a better reputation. Surprisingly, it will make the nearby suburban housing worth more.

Bham, I'm sure you agree with this idea: "Once the economic downturn ends, Americans will resume their 20th-century thrust outward and seek ever newer greenfield homes on plots of land further and further from the city, transporting themselves back and forth on longer and longer commutes by means of the automobile."

The evidence of generational shifts in taste, the staggering oversupply of that kind of housing, the rising cost of fuel and materials, the increasingly fragile household economy of the average American family, all point to that not being true.

That economic activity has to happen somewhere. Nobody is going to get a job building Pulte homes in Shelby Township anytime soon. Isn't it a fair alternative to rehab houses in Detroit neighborhoods for deal-seeking and hardy urbanites? Or would you sacrifice that economic activity because it doesn't dovetail with what you would like to see or think will happen?