Is Detroit on the rebound?

I know my post will get deleted by moderators but here goes. Detroit is set to lose population in the 2020 census for the 7th consecutive decade. There was a survey done, albeit a few years ago now, where the majority of Detroiters would leave the city if they had the means too. Detroit is really two cities. There is Downtown-Midtown, and then there is the rest. Downtown and Midtown have no doubt rebounded and are on the rise. However, just go east of 75 on Warren Ave and you end up in a desolate third world city. Detroit used to have many middle class neighborhoods in the Northeast and Northwest sections as recently as the late 90's. Now the 48205 zip code that is Northeast Detroit is now the most violent. I used to live in Northeast Detroit up until 1999. It was a very safe and quiet neighborhood. Now my house has been stripped by scrappers and can't even sell for $1,000. While Midtown and Downtown have improved substantially, the outer neighborhoods have declined severely so really all that is happened is we have condensed the good neighborhood to the Woodward corridor. The city was once again named the most violent city in the country. Murders are down but so is the population so the rate really isn't going down all that much. The crime is even starting to spill into the good areas as there have been shootings, stabbings, and people run over intentionally recently in the Downtown-Midtown area. When I look at the city as a whole, I just don't see the improvement. If we just look at Downtown and Midtown, most definitely it's on the rebound. Maybe that will spill to the neighborhoods but I doubt it.

I've lived about an hour outside of Detroit for about 10 years, and I think the city as a whole is improving. As other posters have mentioned, it's focused on downtown, but I don't see it being limited to the "green zone".

I've driven across the city several times in the last week, up and down major arteries, and there is a palpable improvement in the infrastructure and commercial areas in several parts of the city. The infrastructure improvements are most noticeable; working traffic and streetlights all over the city, as well as some important street repaving, signage improvements, etc. The commercial development has been more limited to downtown and midtown, but Michigan Avenue is quickly gentrifying past the train station (and then picks up another stretch of very good quality commercial in Dearborn), and Woodward, and increasingly Cass, are high quality, urban environments. I havent spent as much time on the East Side, but Gratiot near downtown is experiencing the same. Demand for Woodward is pushing attention to the other radials, and increasingly, into some of the best-maintained city neighborhoods.

Woodward's historically strong stretch from New Center to Downtown is now continuously active - it's a quite impressive. It's a high quality urban environment like in Chicago or Toronto - it's just very thin in places; sometimes abandonment is just a street or two over. Livernois just south of 8 mile is also seeing improvements, and Mexicantown continues to expand. But even other parts of the city not seeing sustained attention, there is more activity and investment than I've seen in the past ten years, prompted I think by the bankruptcy.

I havent been down too many residential streets, but I agree with other posters that there isn't much change in the neighborhoods yet. In the Green Zone, the investment is substantial, mostly renovations, but I have yet to see much single-family housing construction outside of perhaps Corktown. The key to this revitalization - which feels substantive - is to make sure that housing and individual investment in small plots continues to feed the commercial, institutional, and rental revival in central Detroit. All of the strongest downtowns have similarly strong nearby neighborhoods (and a large metro) to sustain them, and Detroit seems to be rebuilding these again, slowly but surely?

Looks like the city is reinventing itself.

In the tragedy of its decline, Detroit has the unique opportunity for a western world city to rebuilt itself.

It makes sense to rebuild from the core because that's what a city really is, not the suburbs.
Far away neighboorhoods are like branches in flame. If you want to save the tree you have to cut them, there isn't enough water to save them and they require much more of it than the trunk.

They will come back eventually but I don't thing they ever will because Detroit is going to be different, modern and it's not going to be made of sprawling suburbs anymore.

Two main aspects that must be taken in high regards for a successful rebuild:

1) Housing prices cannot be too high.
If you let housing pricess to go up too fast you will be killing the city. Detroit has to be attractive because it's cheap and it has to be cheap because right now it doesn't offer what other cities offer. Maybe in 10-15 years of big developments prices can become close to other successfull cities.

2) Forget the cars. Public transportation is the future
Even in the US young generations like to live in the city and to use public transport. Right now Detroit has tons of empty land in its core that can be rebuilt with medium-high density housing or to be used for trains, tram lines, busways and so on.
This is also important because the space in the core must not be wasted with parkings and people have to be able to move across the whole city from the core without having to take a care or have an adventure into the surrounding wastelands.