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Detroit’s slow revival has become a thoroughly top-down venture. The new downtown nightlife, hip restaurants and elegant lofts are a sure sign of new investment in the once bustling Midwestern city. But like all corporate-sponsored and profit-driven initiatives to develop a city, the downtown renewal counts for a fraction of the overall city. And many Detroit residents feel they are being neglected in favor of a wave of gentrification.

Cash-driven transactions make up 80% of all housing purchases in Detroit currently.

This means already wealthy buyers are sweeping up real estate in the up and coming neighborhoods, while longtime residents continue struggling to pay mortgages and stave off foreclosure.

At the 5th annual Detroit Policy Conference on Wednesday 2 March, president of the Detroit Regional Chamber Sandy Baruah called this current model unsustainable.

"We are one economic ecosystem," Baruah said. "Unless all people are participating in the economy, our economy is not going to thrive."

Detroit went into bankruptcy proceedings in 2013, the largest such filing in U.S. history. Since then, Detroit residents with the means have been leaving the city at staggering rates. As of one year ago, the number of abandoned buildings in the city was more than 80,000. Municipality services have been severely cut back, including fire, police and even street lights and water services.

The point being, Detroit’s revival could not have come soon enough.

But the slew of recent investment in the city is focused almost exclusively on Detroit’s downtown and business district. In other words, billions of dollars have flowed to the city’s main capitalism district.

However, the revitalization of outlying neighborhoods, many of which are majority people of color, has been slow if nonexistent.

“There is little real inclusion or real opportunities for Detroit businesses or residents,” Former Detroit mayor David Bing told the same Detroit Policy Conference.

“Many African-American Detroiters do not feel that they are a part of the redevelopment or resurgence of the city,” added Bing. “As much as we say or think we are inclusive, the reality is, we are not.”

“Today we have a void in African-American leadership,” he said.



While his comments are true, Bing himself is a self-made millionaire. He began his career as a professional basketball player, then moved to politics when in 2009 he became mayor of Detroit. He has varied investments and is an ardent capitalist. His criticisms are valid but he failed to provide a plan of action for a bottom-up revival of a city that was built by union labor and the working class.



Other participants at the Detroit Policy Conference did have better suggestions.

While recognizing that investment in downtown is a positive first step, Tom Goddeeris, executive director of the Grandmont Rosedale Development Corp cautioned that "most Detroiters still live in the neighborhoods.”

"For the city to have a real recovery, we definitely need to see how those neighborhood can be stable, grow, put people back to work, improve safety,” added Goddeeris.

Henry McClendon, a representative of the Skillman Foundation, a decades-old Detroit based child welfare group posed a question: “What expertise do you have? Find a way to get involved and know the community.”

Offering a vision of real inclusion for Detroit residents in the revival of the entire city, McClendon added this advice: "Go to that neighborhood, spend time in that neighborhood, do things in that neighborhood — do things not to or for the neighborhood, but with it."