That's an odd statement. I live in New York and there are not a lot of middle class families living in the city. There are pockets here and there but it's not a broad category of the population. What New York does have is a very transient population and also a very high concentration of foreign born residents. People move here to New York from all parts of the globe, and the state of the public schools is probably something that does not register much in their decision for coming. Nor does things like car insurance [[since most of the population depends on public transit), or property taxes [[since most of the population rents).
None of the inner ring suburbs have anything close to the density of Detroit at its peak. Detroit's population density today is pretty uniform with the inner ring suburbs. In the 1950s, Detroit had areas with population densities similar to areas of Manhattan.
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