Green Shoots (Downtown Detroit)

I've been looking for zip code based demographic information for Detroit for a while. The Free Press just published an article showing some.

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/c...ome/100167656/

48226 -- Downtown Detroit -- $141,141
[[Fifth highest in the metro area)

Anyone who thinks that Detroit's comeback is not real ought to take a hard look at that number. We're not finished, by any means, but the rebirth is unquestionably underway.

The funny thing is that you can have hundreds of thousands of people still living in poverty or making working-class wages, but this wouldn't be reflected in the "average" income because of 5 or so people making 6 or 7-figures will heavily tilt it towards a higher number.

I hope 313WX is correct.

High Income and the wealthy are a nessesary part of the fertilization for those Green Shoots.

People with capital start businesses in the private sector, often close to where they live. New opportunities and diversification of the economy is exactly what Detroit needs and this is a vital link in the chain on how to get there in this country.

This is is the #1 reason I would advocate new vertical luxury living in the downtown. Get more of the wealthy living in the city because a certain percentage will start businesses and create jobs. It's just a statistical probability so increase it.

Money is always the very best tool in the box.

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Originally Posted by 313WX

The funny thing is that you can have hundreds of thousands of people still living in poverty or making working-class wages, but this wouldn't be reflected in the "average" income because of 5 or so people making 6 or 7-figures will heavily tilt it towards a higher number.

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The actual example given is wrong--a few people making 6 or 7 figure salaries would not materially affect the average income of "hundreds of thousands of people"-- but the underlying idea is correct, and it would be better if they had released the median income data, but this isn't likely to be a big problem with the calculations for 48226. A bigger problem with this data is that zip codes aren't homogeneous. For instance 48203 includes Palmer Woods, Palmer Park, and Highland Park. Averaging them doesn't tell you much.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

The actual example given is wrong--a few people making 6 or 7 figure salaries would not materially affect the average income of "hundreds of thousands of people"-- but the underlying idea is correct, and it would be better if they had released the median income data, but this isn't likely to be a big problem with the calculations for 48226. A bigger problem with this data is that zip codes aren't homogeneous. For instance 48203 includes Palmer Woods, Palmer Park, and Highland Park. Averaging them doesn't tell you much.

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Goodpoints.

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Originally Posted by BankruptcyGuy

48226 -- Downtown Detroit -- $141,141
[[Fifth highest in the metro area)

Anyone who thinks that Detroit's comeback is not real ought to take a hard look at that number. We're not finished, by any means, but the rebirth is unquestionably underway.

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You're talking about 2,000 tax returns; an essentially meaningless number.

Why would a "rebirth" be judged on the tax returns of not even 1% of the city?

Also, how can you judge something like "rebirth" without looking at comparative data. Were there no high income zip codes in Detroit in past decades? I find that hard to believe.

Also, this is average income data, so useless. Median income data has value.