[The North One]

Originally Posted by balletomane

I'd agree with you in that all cities that you mentioned except Detroit are more so stagnating than declining. Another factor to take into account is declining fertility rates and smaller household sizes.

Detroit on the other hand I would say is declining if the mass exodus and abandoned neighborhoods are evidence of that. On top of that, its metro isn't really growing, its been more or less stagnant for many years. Those other cities have all lost 50-60% of their population, whereas Detroit will probably be 1/3 of its 1950 size by the time of the 2020 census.
Despite the substantial population losses in those other cities, they seem to lack any completely abandoned neighborhoods, is there any reason for that?

You seem to know nothing, Detroit is one of the only metro regions actually gaining population in the rustbelt. Urban blight doesn't expose anything unknown, all those cities have that as well, how is this unique evidence? Cleveland, Buffalo, and Chicago have substantial blight, what are you even saying? Blight is mostly evidence of suburban sprawl not metro population loss. The Detroit region has a higher population than it did in 1960 and mostly remained stable since the 70's. City proper numbers get chopped in weird ways, Hemmtrmack and Highland Park are technically their own cities so they don't get counted, there's also Windsor to consider (but that's a totally different can of warms) so the population is much larger than raw census numbers suggest. You keep going back and forth between city proper and metro numbers, your post doesn't even make a slick of sense.