[LMich]

Actually, blacks make up a substantial portion of those moving into the core. Of course, your working-class family is picking the suburbs, and, actually, many are moving out of the region and state, altogether. But, a lot of internal movement is back towards the core by all kinds of people.

BTW, I can attest to the very real flight by middle-class and even many working-class blacks out of the city. Of the four of my aunts who lived in Detroit in the 1990's, not one of them remains there, and only one still resides in Southeast Michigan. One of them even tried loft living before it became "cool".

Detroit is now being forced to learn and plan for shrinkage, just as many cities have been forced to learn and plan for growth. I really wish it would be less reactionary, and we'd start seeing city government proactively planning to shrink instead of reacting to the inevitable, though.

Personally, I wish the wealthy of Metro Detroit would fund a Kalamazoo Promise-type program that would promise all public school kids payment for college, if even only two years. That would go a LONG way in offsetting a lot of the other things Detroiters have to put up with, at the same time cutting down on crime by keeping kids in school.

There is just SO much that could, and needs to be, done. It seems like both city government and the residents are trying to put out ragging fires with buckets of water instead of concentrating their efforts. Everyone seems to be running around willy-nilly with little coordination.