How many "yuppies" have actually moved to Detroit the past couple of years?

[nain rouge]

Those are some very good points. There's little debate about Downtown and Midtown being on the road to recovery, with numerous renovations of long abandoned buildings and some degree of new construction. But whenever I look up some address on Google and see an aerial map, I'm struck by the astounding amount of vacant land in "booming" Midtown. It really brings home how deep the hole is into which the city has sunk.

Thank you. I'm big on walking, and when I finally managed to convince my friends to walk from Midtown to Corktown, let me just say that they weren't impressed. I don't mind it, but objectively speaking it's a rough and dreary stretch, to be sure.

And you know, it gets tiring to have people selling BBQ or crepes talked about like their doing mission work. It's not that big of a deal. A lot of starving artists types try to use the Detroit image to boost their egos. For better or worse, it's a place where absolute failure can be rechristened as a glorious opportunity for reinvention.

I think, if trends continue, Midtown can be the basis of a competitive urban area befitting of a city of about 400,000 people. Most of the rest of Detroit is screwed, however. And I think that's also why some people are bitter. It's not always jealousy.