The recent "Decline of Detroit" thread has an excellent discussion of some of the factors that led to the decline of Detroit from what it once was - a city with much wealth, thriving neighborhoods, good public education, etc.

What I would like to get is people's thoughts on the flip side to that discussion: What decisions, if any, could the city or state have realistically taken to save Detroit from the decline it faced? This could mean not having taken a decision that was taken, or doing something that wasn't done.

For example, instead of just saying something like "preventing white flight," it would be interesting to know what could have prevented it [[e.g., not building the freeways that made it easy to move out of the city).

Obviously, Detroit faced a lot of forces that were beyond its control, such as the loss of competitiveness of American manufacturing, but there were surely decisions that could have been taken to mitigate the damage. It would be
interesting to know what these decisions were.