A story that should receive more coverage is how Detroit made a comeback after imploding a decade ago. City Journal's Judith Miller explored how Detroit pulled back from the abyss in a July 2025 story:
On a temperate April night, Detroit was buzzing. The historic Detroit Athletic Club—long a favorite for family celebrations—was fully booked. At the Detroit Opera House, director Yuval Sharon’s reinvention of Mozart’s Così fan Tutte played to a sold-out, enthusiastic crowd. Downtown at Cliff Bell’s, a jazz quartet performed for a racially mixed audience. At Little Caesars Arena, 20,000 fans watched the Detroit Pistons battle the New York Knicks in the NBA playoffs. And along the newly restored RiverWalk, residents strolled the scenic, carefully landscaped waterfront. Just a dozen years ago, none of this would have seemed possible. Detroit was, as Donald J. Trump recently put it, “a mess”—the nation’s most notorious symbol of urban decline. After the devastating 1967 riots, which left 43 people dead, and the city’s 2013 bankruptcy—the largest municipal failure in U.S. history—downtown Detroit had become a ghost town. Crime rates were soaring. Roughly 200,000 residents and businesses had fled the city over the previous decade, with some estimates putting the exodus at 1,000 people per month. Half the city’s streetlights were out. Arson was rampant, with as many as 12,000 fires set each year. Tens of thousands of homes—about 47,000, by some counts—stood burned-out or abandoned.Sounds like Jackson, doesn't it? However, all was not lost.
In 2013, Mike Duggan—a former county official and hospital executive—was elected mayor, improbably, as a write-in candidate. He was the first white mayor in nearly 40 years to lead the city, whose population had become predominantly black and whose political culture for decades had been dominated by a Democratic Party race-and-patronage machine that thwarted reform at every turn. Duggan somehow prevailed over this machine and went on to win two more terms. Twelve years later, he has helped drive—again, improbably—one of the more promising urban turnarounds in the country. While Duggan credits others for the city’s revival, he clearly played a central role. Governing magazine recently named him “America’s Most Effective Mayor,” and his leadership offers lessons for other cities struggling with debt, crime, and government dysfunction.What? You mean he had actual business executive experience and wasn't a loud-mouthed community activist who knows nothing but is an expert on everything?
At least for now, the Motor City is back. For the first time since 1957, Detroit’s population is growing. A city $18 billion in debt when Duggan took office now holds $550 million in reserve funds. Once rated as junk, Detroit’s municipal bonds have been upgraded ten times in as many years. Unemployment has fallen from a high of 20 percent in 2020 to below 5 percent. The city’s budgets have been balanced for 11 consecutive years. Crime rates have plummeted—a key factor in attracting new investment and residents. The city’s homicide total now stands at its lowest since 1965, falling from 252 in 2023 to 203 last year, a 19 percent decline. According to this year’s first-quarter numbers, carjackings and nonfatal shootings are down 30 percent and 45 percent, respectively, compared with the first quarter last year. As City Journal reported in March, initiatives like Project Green Light—a public-private partnership that helps businesses in high-crime areas install security cameras—have played a key role in improving public safety.
But in his final State of the City address and in a follow-up interview, Duggan emphasized that hiring more police at higher pay was critical to reducing crime. When he took office, officers were making as little as $15 an hour, often working 12-hour shifts. Detroit had fewer cops on the streets than it did in the 1920s. Yet unlike many other cities, Detroit did not defund its police department after the 2020 killing of George Floyd. “We gave officers a $10,000 pay raise and put 350 more officers on the streets,” Duggan said. As a result, he says, “[we] got people who should have been locked up locked up.” Duggan also invested $10 million in the city’s community violence-intervention program, which enlists trusted neighborhood activists to work directly with gang members and other high-risk individuals to prevent violence. Duggan rebuilt the city’s fire department, too, and cross-trained firefighters to serve as medical first responders. A department once notorious for having the nation’s worst response times beat the national average last year by seven minutes and 30 seconds.Great. That's public safety. What about blight? Glad you asked.
Another major challenge was Detroit’s stock of 47,000 abandoned or uninhabitable houses and more than 50,000 vacant lots, which the city’s Land Bank had inherited. In his State of the City address, Duggan credited Erica Ward Gerson, a retired Skadden Arps attorney, with helping reduce the inventory of vacant houses to 2,900, projected to be down to 1,000 by year’s end. The city demolished 29,000 unsalvageable homes, and the Land Bank launched programs to sell fixable properties—not to developers but to individuals willing to restore them. In just over a decade, one auction program sold 15,000 houses, some for as little as $1,000, to city employees, veterans, and residents, who committed to rehabilitate them within a certain time frame. The Land Bank also sold 25,000 side lots to neighboring homeowners, who turned them into gardens, built garages, or installed basketball hoops and playgrounds. These grassroots improvements boosted property values and helped prevent illegal dumping and other blight-related crimes. Thanks to the Land Bank’s efforts, “whole streets have been saved,” said Duggan. He added that Gerson had run the Land Bank for a decade, as a volunteer. Duggan “bought me a Diet Coke once or twice a year,” Gerson joked. Duggan has also worked with the city council, state and federal agencies, private companies, mortgage lenders, and philanthropists to expand affordable housing across Detroit. Over the past six years, 92 new housing developments—worth a combined $1.3 billion—have been built. According to Duggan, Detroit now leads southeastern Michigan in the number of new housing units.
The demand is now there. Over the past decade, real-estate values in Detroit have risen faster than in any other major U.S. city. According to the mayor’s office, Detroit homeowners have gained $4.6 billion in property value over the last ten years, including $700 million in 2023 alone. Over 70 percent of those gains went to black homeowners—the longtime residents who stayed. At the same time, tax revenues have climbed steadily, rising 7 percent annually for 11 consecutive years, even as the city has cut property-tax rates.Don't let it be said Mayor Duggan neglected economic development.
Duggan took an unorthodox approach to attracting business investment. Instead of offering up-front cash incentives, Detroit has provided generous tax breaks—but only after projects are built. One of the biggest deals came when Ford Motor Company proposed investing over $950 million to restore the city’s long-abandoned Michigan Central Station, one of the city’s most beautiful Beaux-Arts structures, and to surround it with a 30-acre innovation district. The city approved tax breaks worth about $100 million over 35 years for the project. The restored station and innovation center reopened in summer 2024 to critical acclaim and commercial success. Support from Detroit’s most prominent businesses and philanthropists—long a feature of the city’s civic life—has also been key to its revival. Consider Dan Gilbert, Detroit’s largest private employer, with more than 17,000 employees at his mortgage lending firm, Rocket. Through his businesses and foundations, Gilbert has invested over $500 million in his hometown. In 2010, he helped jumpstart downtown’s recovery by moving Rocket’s headquarters and 1,700 employees to the city center. When the Detroit Land Bank launched its Rehab and Ready program to restore vacant homes, Gilbert provided a $10 million revolving construction loan to get it started. He also committed another $15 million to wipe out property-tax debt for some 20,000 low-income homeowners—an effort that helped preserve an estimated $400 million in household wealth and home equity.Detroit's municipal museum is home to one of the country's finest collections of art. It almost lost the collection during the bankruptcy but thankfully it was saved and not sold off to private collectors.
The Detroit Institute of Arts is world-renowned for its collection of 66,000 works, including Diego Rivera’s iconic mural celebrating industrial labor. But when Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, the museum faced the unthinkable prospect of selling parts of its collection to help pay off the city’s creditors, including bondholders and pensioners. In response, the state of Michigan, local philanthropies, and museum donors united in a landmark “grand bargain.” They raised over $800 million to shield the collection from liquidation and to ease the city’s exit from bankruptcy. The deal also restructured the DIA as an independent nonprofit, legally separate from the city, to protect its holdings from future financial crises. “Art and culture, when they’re quality, bind people to place and to each other, and so are essential in building community,” says Alberto Ibargüen, former president of the Knight Foundation, who helped forge the “grand bargain.” While many others deserve credit—including the Ford Foundation, which pledged $125 million of the $366 million raised by local and national philanthropies—much of the success is attributed to Judge Gerald Rosen, the chief mediator in the bankruptcy case, who played a central role in brokering the agreement that preserved both Detroit’s finances and its cultural legacy....Little green shoots are sprouting all over the city.
Alongside billions in new investment, Detroit has also attracted a new wave of cultural creators like Sharon. For years, residents worried that the city’s revival was confined to downtown. But neighborhoods like Little Village are now showing signs of renewal. There, a deconsecrated 110-year-old Romanesque church—closed since 2016—has been transformed into The Shepherd, a vibrant art gallery and cultural campus featuring work by black and other local artists. Time magazine recently named it one of the “World’s Greatest Places.” The 3.5-acre campus, created by Detroit native Anthony Curis and his wife, JJ, features a bar called Father Forgive Us, an upcoming restaurant from James Beard Award winner Warda Bouguettaya, a bed-and-breakfast, a skate park, and sculptures by the late Detroit artist Charles McGee. Nearby, two nonprofits have moved into a long-abandoned bakery, and a local print shop now sells posters and teaches young Detroiters the craft. A new marina is rising along the nearby riverfront. “We’re committed to Detroit and its future,” says JJ Curis.Don't think there still aren't challenges.
Detroit still faces daunting challenges. Geographically vast—134 square miles, into which Manhattan and Boston would both fit—Detroit remains among the nation’s poorest cities. A third of its residents still live in poverty, as do nearly half its children. (Detroit is ringed by wealthy, overwhelmingly white suburbs like Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills, whose taxes finance their own schools and institutions, not Detroit’s.) At least 25 percent of the city’s economy is tied to an auto industry that has been shrinking and now faces an uncertain future due to automation and, more recently, Trump’s tariffs on Canadian auto parts, upon which the city’s three large auto-assembly plants depend. “Business needs predictability,” said Duggan, who added that he supports tariffs, but only if judiciously imposed. But the most imposing challenge of all is finding a successor to Duggan who will build on his reforms. Will the long-entrenched political culture of racial politics reassert itself and roll back the progress that the city has made? It’s already happened once before. In 1994, reformer Dennis Archer succeeded Coleman Young, whose calamitous 20-year tenure saw the city become a national symbol of urban decline and failure. But after two terms, Archer was succeeded by Kwame Kilpatrick, the rapper mayor considered more “authentic,” who wound up getting removed from office amid criminal charges. This same pattern has been seen in other cities, where a relative moderate pursues reforms for a time, only to be followed in office by a new champion of the old racial politics.Rest of article.
Ha. That sounds familiar. Detroit showed a city can come back from the brink. Hopefully, the same can happen for Jackson.
48 comments:
Have to get the BK out of the way first.
Jackson-no mindset to change.
Detroit has billionaire Dan Gibson owner of rocket mortgage to pump billions into the city. He tore down cass park and built high end condos and a lot of gentrification happening in Detroit. People in Jackson know nothing of other places. I lived I. Chicago until 14 yrs ago. Ppl still n Mississippi compare Jackson to Chicago and that’s nuts. Chicago is less than 30% black and now people want to compare Detroit to Jackson. Detroit has major cooperate headquarters for national companies too. Jackson doesn’t
The mass exodus from Jackson cut the economic heart out of the city, which wasn't that fantastic in the first place. Detroit also had a mass exodus to the suburbs but the auto industry, the heartbeat of the once most prosperous city in the country although weakened, was still there. The business community is not comfortable in either city but there is more commitment
in Detroit. If the auto industry holds up, Detroit has a descent chance. Jackson is another story.
Detroit has much different demographics than Jackson. While white flight was significant in the 90s, it slowed to a stop in the 2000s and over 40% of the city is still white, 10% other races, and 50% black. Combined with a large scale demolition of abandoned and blighted properties leaving the abandoned lots as more attractive green spaces. Not to mention that GM maintains a workforce of 10s of thousands in Metro Detroit. Jackson really doesn’t have any industries left besides government and criminal enterprises.
First we have to acknowledge history. I’ve tried to post about “The Great Migrations” of African Americans. For some reason you always censor those posts. It’s real. And it really happened.
The first Great Migrations happened when Henry Ford announced that he was paying black workers the same as white workers.
The second great migration was to LA when WW2 war materials manufactures were also paying blacks the same as whites.
During those migrations, the black folks who were most capable simply left Mississippi. This is part of the reason why you have celebrities like Oprah, Brandi, and Snoop Dog being “from” Mississippi but not living here. Their families escaped long ago. The local connections are just to relatives who never left.
So no, you won’t get the same results here as Detroit. It’s a different “quality” of people in Mississippi.
Jackson will require help from outside Hinds County, real financial help especially from the rest of Mississippi which it will not get. The people left in Jackson are mostly poor, black, and undereducated. Mississippi is also racially polarized and always will be. Jackson has the wrong racial makeup to get help. Detroit does too but the state of Michigan is different. Although much of the white money residents have left Detroit they still want Motown to succeed. The white money in Mississippi has no such concern for Jackson.
People in Jackson can’t even accept higher water bills in exchange for a good stable water service. They’ll never pay for any other improvements. The future isn’t bright.
Does anyone remember the early comical, over-the-top violence portrayed in Detroit in the movie Robocop ?
Jackson is actually much worse than that today.
Detroit isn’t 40% white according to Wikipedia it’s 77% black please get your facts straight
Detroit has NOT recovered and Jackson is a little Detroit
I m not joking you can buy a house in Detroit for $10,000 why because the area is a third world country
Close to the top is the one thing that Detriot did that Jackson will never do. Elect a white mayor. Won't happen in Jackson.
Coleman Young was the downfall of Detroit. He was the motor city version of Chokwe LuDUMBa
Black people hate white people too much in Jackson, to elect a skilled white man for the job. Jackson will have to get over it's bad case of reverse racism first, to ever succeed, but I don't see that happening in the next 100 years.
Agreed about Rocket. It helped that guy had a cooperative government. There are similar people such as Speed, Barksdale, and others who wanted to help Jackson but frankly the political leadership saw them as a threat instead of an asset.
As for a white mayor, the color had nothing to do with it. He was a businessman, he knew how to run things, something these clowns who run for Mayor here never have.
Detroit was and is a core surrounded by prosperous functioning area that has a population of nearly 6 million.
Jackson is surrounded by not so much, and a total population of about 600,000.
The total population of Mississippi is about half that of the Detroit CSA.
Detroit was the hole surrounded by the dount that helped save it.
Is Jackson going to be saved by it's proximity to Yazoo City, Meridian and Natchez?
Yes Chicago is 30% black but only 31% white you are misleading people
2:46 are you wrapped up in the municipal boundaries of Detroit and Jackson rather than who the people are and where they live and work in a large metropolitan area?
In the early 90s, the MS Nat Guard had a project were they abolishing and hauling off abandoned houses in Jxn. Didn't last long unfortunately.
Gm laid off 1,100 workers at its ev plant plus the growing trend is to build car factories in right to work states to avoid unions
Jackson absolutely will correct. It is the state’s capital, home to 5 colleges, 5 hospitals, state office buildings, museums, etc. that are not going anywhere because they literally can’t. So the whole “RUN RUN GET OUT” nonsense from “conservatives” just isn’t going to stick. A decent Jackson is crucial to MS’s health and the sooner the suburban haters of Jackson realize it, the better Mississippi gets as a whole. It’s just plain stupid and also cruel to wish ill on Jackson.
Anyway, with John Horhn, Capitol PD, and JXN water in command, things are going to get better. They have to. Chuckway legit put this city down to its last breath, but there is new life coming. I’m more thankful and excited than ever to be a Jacksonian.
Tired of reading posts from you people who have it all backwards.
Neither groups nor individuals migrating cause crime and poor government structure. Put it the other way around and you'll have it right.
A city with industry won't preclude crime. A city with crime causes industry to leave. Jobs don't (and never will) come to high crime cities. They leave. Get it right.
Giant influxes of money don't cause crime to decrease and properties to be less ghetto. Increased crime and cities turning to ghetto cause money to dry up and people and productivity to leave. Get it right!
"White money" leaving town doesn't cause crime, filth, ghettos, potholes, poor and understaffed policing...the converse is true. Get it right!
Never having another white mayor is not the problem. Having mayor after black mayor who has a stated unwillingness to work with or around white people is the problem. Get it right.
The myth that bringing back white people and their money will solve problems is a convoluted notion. Most people covet a town and neighborhood of safety, security, peace and upkeep. Nobody is going to return to a place that's the opposite. Nor will their money.
White people did not cause the problems of our once great capital city. Get it right.
@2:31pm It’s not. I mean really. All crime is way down. Stop being dramatic. Why do you feel the need to comment on something you know nothing about?
Before WW2 Mississippi's political and economic power base did support industrial development in Mississippi. They did not want to compete for labor with industry and raise the cost of the cheap agricultural labor that the backwards Mississippi agrarian economy had relied upon since the early 1800s.
This finally started to change after WW2 as Mississippi farms replaced hand labor and sharecropping with machines at which time Mississippi finally started to make some attempts to join the 20th century and pursue industrial development and jobs.
A significant amount of the industrial development that happened in Mississippi in the years following WWII was national and international companies moving to non union low skilled areas to cut labor costs.
Many of these jobs then went away as these companies move operations to even cheaper and less regulated places like Mexico and Asia.
If you end up being late to the game and your plan is to get the business by doing the job cheaper than everyone else, then there are always plenty of other bottom feeders waiting and ready to eat your lunch.
Before WW2 Mississippi's political and economic power base did NOT support industrial development in Mississippi.
fmr typo!
Jackson has to understand it’s broke. Get out of the zoo biz and focus on attracting real investment. It has to hit rock bottom and you’ll know when that happens when jackson elects a white mayor. Race is still primary focus and the graft is unreal.
I guess you've never heard about Kwame Kilpatrick.
Houses--Jackson has lots of houses--many more affordable than nearby areas--so it has that going for it.
Crime is the only thing that truly runs people away. Can't abuse us and be mad when we leave and focus our efforts elsewhere.
Grocery Stores--stop abusing them and they might stay. Steal from them and wave goodby.
Trash--why is one guy on a clean up Jackson Campaign? What kind of people throw trash out of their car window--mostly food wrappers?
Water--Why is the Water Service the politicians and most favored service providers favorite piggy bank?
Affirmative Action AKA DEI--Add a layer of inefficiency to every project and it is morally wrong.
Racial Makeup of City of Jackson Employees? Percent of each?
Jackson-do right and watch the City improve. Rid your heart of hate for white and black people and watch you change immediately. This is true.
Changes in us immediately shift our reality, what we focus on we will get more of. Give the grace you want to receive. Be the example you want to see.
All of us can play a game called what would God do if in limited human form? The truth is anything he wanted-just like you.
This post is so accurate it is scary. "White people did not cause the problems of our once great capital city." No shit. Drive down the formerly beautiful stretch of Ridgewood Road, from Briarwood to County Line and observe trash....EVERYWHERE. It wasn't always like this, but was caused by this area of town now seen as "sketchy".....and dangerous. (Losing storefront after storefront weekly.)
They DISAGREE: https://detroitisstillcrap.blogspot.com/
3:36 There is no evidence anywhere that shows black people vote solely on race anymore than whites vote on race. Blacks are constantly voting for white Democrats. If a white Democrat ran a real campaign for mayor he has a damn good chance in Jackson, Mississippi. Not a white Republican. No way.
You are clueless. A white person will NEVER get elected in this city. Blame Othor, Brad, Danyelle, Rokia, Chokwe and the cadre of racist loudmouths they lead.
3:36 In Jackson Mississippi black people find it hard to trust white people. I wonder why?
Born yesterday
Dan Gilbert is a Republican.
As long as the voting base of Jackson things FUBU is a way to govern instead of a clothing brand things will only get worse.
we all in the suburbs want jackson to succeed because it is in the best interest of Jacksonians, those of us that live in the suburbs surrounding jackson, and the state as a whole. if the democrats running jackson weren't running it into the ground, then more people will stay.
the issues of systemic racism, white flight, whitey, etc, etc is blamed for jackson's problems, instead of where the blame lies; shitty infrastructure, shitty school system, shitty judicial system, high murder rate, high violent crime, high taxes, and inept leadership. blaming others instead of their own policies seems to be an olympic sport for democrats. if none of these were issues, like they aren't where i currently live, then my family would have stayed in "The Fondren." we liked our neighbors, we liked the neighborhood. we liked being close to everything. we also liked being one of only 2 or 3 houses on the entire street that had not been broken into. thank you, big dog Muddy. but there comes a point where enough is enough. not saying there is no crime where i live, but we damn sure don't have a record high murder rate in a city losing residents as fast as they can get out.
the solutions to these problems are well known but they require work on the part of "the community." start with having some damn self respect, respect for others, and respect for your surroundings.
those three things will fix everything. respect for yourself; don't have kids out of wedlock, stay in school, get an education, trade school, work on improving yourself because you are worth investing in.
respect for others; treat others like you want to be treated, don't race down city streets, don't rob anybody, don't shoot anybody (sounds simple enough, but i guess not), don't knock up chicks left and right, and disappear to knock up the next one. if you do have babies then stick around and raise them. children need a mother and father.
respect for your surroundings; take care of your house, your yard, cleanup your street, don't litter going down the road. other things apply, but respecting yourself, others, and your surroundings are crucial. without these, nothing will work. nothing.
but you don't want to hear from whitey on solutions to fix the black community's problems. after all, according to you and much of the elected black leadership, and white liberals, it's all whitey's fault in the first place. so yeah, there's a lot of apathy, lack of concern, or willingness to help jackson, because jackson doesn't seem too interested in helping herself.
5:40 Whites currently serve on the elected Jackson city council and there has never been a Jackson city council without white
people. Think first.
Jackson is a joke. When I moved to the area in the early 90’s I really thought Jackson had a chance. But what I was so naive about it WHO Jackson was run by and the total lack of any intelligent people in leadership positions. Add to it the rampant amount of kids being fathered by absent dads, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
As people have fled crime over the last 30 years, stores and services have shuttered. The hey will not be coming back.
Jackson will have the same fate as Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez.
Notice a pattern? What do they all have in common?
KF, just curious, do you know of other blogs for our sister cities like Baton Rouge, Memphis, Mobile, Bham, Montgomery where they all talk about their issues? Would be curious to see if they, like commenters on here, act like their cities are the only places with problems.
4:09 for today's win.
If a white Democrat ran a real campaign for mayor he has a damn good chance in Jackson, Mississippi.
ONLY if that white Democrat was the only Democrat on the primary ballot. That isn't going to happen.
Other cities have problems, so that makes Jackson's dysfunction acceptable. Is that what you are saying?
Depends on whether Jackson has hit to rock bottom, like Detroit did. Judging by the last municipal elections, I don't think it has.
Detroit improved significantly when the Lumumba clan departed. Right?
I left Jackson almost 30 years ago and never looked back. Don’t miss it You are aware there are hospitals outside of jackson
I wonder how the connection between the daddy Lumumba and Detroit played into Detroit collapsing. Was it just coincidence? Maybe or maybe not. We sure know that little Chockwe was a part of Jackson spiraling down the drain.
KF said: “What? You mean he had actual business executive experience and wasn't a loud-mouthed community activist who knows nothing but is an expert on everything?”
As for who can be elected Jackson’s mayor in future elections, personally knowing 4 African American families having located their families in a Jackson suburb in order to make sure their children don’t grow up in a Democrat controlled crime infested city like Jackson, I can attest to having seen the “black man comin' round.”
One AA friend told me recently about Jackson, “we don’t go ever there.” And while lapdog RINO’s like Bill Crawford and Yellow Dogs like Sid Salter keep pushing Leftist Democrat Propaganda, I keep adding conservative African American YouTuber’s with 100’s of thousands of subscribers as my news sources.
Never forget what Malcom X said.
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