[DCReid]

NYC did go through a severe decline in manufacturing closing and corporations fleeing, as well as people fleeing. As the largest metro in the country, with significant clusters of critical industries like finance and international business despite losses, its rebound was also probably due to the rebound in the USA in stature in the world stage as well as the city figures so stated. After all, in the late 70s and 80s, Japan was the talk of the world and at one point in the late 1980s, the land in Tokyo was worth more than the entire USA and their stock market reached nearly 40,000 compared to the NYSE of around 3,000. Detroit's decline seems to have been the poster child of the decline of manufacturing in the USA on USA cities. Detroit of course had other issues, like a weak downtown core and high dependence on the domestic auto industry. Detroit was actually a relatively wealthy metro; I recall reading in the late 70s that it had the 3rd highest per capita income of all US metros.