What Detroit Would Be Like Today if it Never Declined (2024)

^ Gotchya. Indeed it was a tramatic experience for many and probably the last straw for people who were already close to the point of leaving.

Probably didn't seem all that cute back then, but then again it was a prediction and a very poor one at that. Cities are dynamic places and long term predictions were never right. Even having a diversified economy, I'm not sure Detroit would ever reach its projected population simply because NO cities in the midwest ever met their top projected population, and few followed successful curves in terms of population and economy. It's always been a struggle for rustbelt cities, Detroit would not be an exception, no matter how hard you try to imagine it.

Even if Detroit were to boom like it did in the first half of the century, it's only fair that other cities would as well if you are to play the city statistics game.