Originally Posted by
jpbollma
I think NYC and LA saw growth over the past ten years, but those are the American Dream. They define big city. Miami grew a bit, but in reality Miami doesn't have that many people, somewhere between 400-500,000, yet everyone considers it a major city. New Orleans grew slightly, but they had a natural disaster unlike anything we have seen in modern history. Their population is between 300-400,000.
None of Ohio's major cities even have 400k and I believe have all shrunk.
Atlanta and Nashville, 500k.
Memphis and Indianapolis only grew because of annexing their suburbs, something I would never see happening in Metro Detroit. Detroit still has 713,000 people. In my personal opinion, the more people you can get to move towards the core of the city, and the better city services/transit/walkability become, the more quickly Detroit will rebound.
Imagine if 75% of the cities' population was within a few miles of Downtown. The police presence and response time would be so much better and provide a better quality of life. If these things can happen, business and people will flock to Detroit. The Downtown area has fantastic sky scrapers and architecture and will only get better with all of the ongoing renovations.
Chicago and Minneapolis are the only cities in the Midwest with more skyscrapers than Detroit. Midtown, with all of it's cultural institutions could basically become a mini Ann Arbor within a large city. You will have high rise living downtown, condos on the river, multi-family units, and nice spaced out neighborhoods. A bit of every type of housing people enjoy.
If Detroit can get it's people to the city center and improve it's services, IMO everything else would fall right into place.