Recent census figures show that Detroit’s overall population shrank by 25 percent in the last 10 years. But another figure tells a different and more intriguing story: During the same time period, downtown Detroit experienced a 59 percent increase in the number of college-educated residents under the age of 35, nearly 30 percent more than two-thirds of the nation’s 51 largest cities.The migration of young people into old cities is happening across the country from Portland, Maine to Los Angeles, and it may portend a major change in our future. My brother-in-law the real estate magnate thinks the migration to the suburbs is reversing, and that future slums will be in far outer suburbs abandoned by middle class people moving back toward the city.
As for Detroit, I wonder what will become of it. It seems to me that the way to go now is to completely level big swathes of the city so that what remains will still be compact and well-populated; if that happens, the heart of the city might well become a lively and attractive place. An interesting sign of the problems faced by areas with declining population is that while Detroit as a whole has tens of thousands of vacant houses, there is a housing shortage in the neighborhoods these young migrants want to live in and prices are going up.
Another interesting sign about America's future is the people reporter Jessica Conlin found at gatherings of Detroit hipsters: artists, techies, and many people who have founded businesses in fields from event planning to art galleries to urban farming to software. There is in America an enormous entrepreneurial energy that I think will make fools of people predicting economic decline.
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