Quote Originally Posted by gameguy56
Also Grosse Pointe, Plymouth, Northville, Birmingham, Ferndale, and Rochester.

Downtown Berkley isn't bad either.


OK, fair enough. I didn't really qualify what I meant by "major". Royal Oak and Ferndale, with populations of about 20,000 in 1930, are even somewhat stretching the concept for me. I don't believe any of those other cities you listed had even half that in population until Metro Detroit sprawl reached their borders and most still don't. Really small downtowns usually weather the storms better, because filling or maintaining a couple retail spaces is a lot easier than dealing with big city problems.

Most of those downtowns you listed, if isolated from Metro Detroit, would have a hard time competing with downtown Dundee, Michigan, let alone Pontiac, Flint, Detroit, or Ann Arbor [[the lone outlier in the discussion).