Would you invest in Detroit?

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Good point. Detroit regularly grew by 50-60k per year for several decades in the early 20th century. I think Los Angeles is the only city to sustain anywhere near that type of growth for at least a decade post-1950s. And even then it was only able to sustain it for a decade. OTOH, one thing that helped NYC recover from its massive decline in the 1970s is that much of the regional population growth is pushed into the city because of strict land development controls. If Michigan gets rid of those pro-sprawl policies then Detroit could easily start growing again.

Getting Detroit to grow is actually the easy part as the city comes pretty close to positive annual population growth during peak economic cycles (eg; from 1995 to 1996, the city only lost 2,000 residents), but to fill up a good amount of the underused space with urban development is an entirely different task.

I feel like anti-sprawl policies would only serve to boost real estate prices but not actually promote growth in the core. It might force the more desirable suburbs to upzone with density drawing away the need to develop the inner-city.