I just wanted to add to my post that although the average household income of Detroit is somewhere in the range of $18,000 a year, there are still many who make much more, many of whom go outside the city to shop. I also wanted to say that people who make 18k a year still need to spend money on things, and some of them still go to the burbs for food. So there is a massive amount of money leaving the city every single day. Millions of dollars every day I would guess, out of the hands of Detroiters and into the hands of suburbanites. I strongly feel that light-rail will help reverse this trend by concentrating development, making it easier for retailers to go in, so that Detroit once again has some sort of "Downtown" shopping district, and so that we don't have to drive to the mall anymore.