Detroit is on the rise in national media. A few years ago, headline after headline was all about how horrible Detroit is or was going to continue to be. Now, people are starting to catch on to the transformation narrative, with Business Insider being the latest.
Detroit has been slowly decaying over the past several years, but things are finally looking up for the Motor City.
The city has been trying to turn its economy around by attracting well educated and talented workers.
But a group of young, motivated Detroiters have also been influential in turning the city around: They’ve been revitalizing the real-estate market, boosting tourism, and investing in local companies. Local residents are already noticing that home prices are on the rise.
Before we kick their tires too hard – we write lists all the time. We get it. Lists are fun. They, at their best, are a popular art form can be used to communicate tidbits that someone wouldn’t normally know about. At their worst, you’ll see yet another bad picture of Macaulay Culkin.
And in order for anyone to pay attention, lists have to be short, punchy, and straightforward. One to five sentences, on to the next thing … and making people click to see each image in the slideshow is lame.
That said, we’d add that the decay has been at work a lot more than “several years” (think more like decades – it took us awhile to get in this mess and it’ll take awhile to get out) and that Detroit is attracting well educated and talented workers, but many of those workers aren’t the city residents themselves.
There is progress in Detroit, no doubt. And it’s great to get the kudos. We should be proud of the efforts so far, and “hot” is definitely true when it comes to momentum and energy talking about the city.
But let’s not forget that we still have a lot more work to do to turn the current momentum into something sustainable.