Quote Originally Posted by motz View Post
Also Bham, do you think Detroit would still be the way it is today if it had annexed Warren, Southfield, Oak Park, etc where much of the city's tax base moved? Because you're telling us to totally disregard something that has an extremely profound affect on a city's ability to stem the outflow of tax dollars to surrounding communities.
Again, you're missing the point. Annexation is irrelevent to metropolitan population patterns. Metropolitan areas are based on Census-determined commuting patterns and have nothing to do with municipal boundaries.

Though to answer your question, if we had your scenario, where Detroit had annexed inner suburbs, no, I don't think Metro Detroit would have greater population growth.