It wasn’t billed as a debate, but the discussion Tuesday at Detroit’s Economic Club meeting stumbled into one about whether the city’s comeback benefits all.

The event entitled, “The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America,” after the book of the same name, treated the lunch crowd to a view of what the city’s comeback looks like from an outsider’s view and from the officials charged with turning a blighted town into a boom town.

On the one side, the book’s author, Alan Mallach a senior fellow with the Center for Community Progress in Washington D.C. who studied Detroit extensively. On the other: Maurice Cox, the City of Detroit’s director of planning and development and an unabashed booster.