Quote Originally Posted by corktownyuppie View Post
Detroit will never boom again....if your definition of "boom" is 1 million people and growing, as sort of the beacon of the middle class. It will definitely be a respectable city of 500,000+, but the demographic will definitely change throughout that process.

We're essentially going to see Detroit divide up into 10-12 different neighborhoods that are all sustainable with a LOT of urban prairie in between. And Greater Downtown, Indian Village, and Palmer Woods will be the 3 wealthiest "cities within the city".

And there will be people left behind/displaced or shuffled around in the process.
I'm not sure about a boom, but I wouldn't be particularly surprised to see Detroit reach a million people again, if I expected I would live to 150. But before anything like that happens, what CTY describes is what I think is most likely, with the stronger areas staying populated/filling out/expanding slowly into neighboring areas and the weaker ones continuing to empty out.

At this point, the net effect is still population loss, but that should stabilize in the next decade or two. At what level I would not venture to guess, as I certainly underestimated the size of the population drop in the 2000-2010 decade.