Rebuilding Detroit will not be easy, but the city needs to focus on its strengths, which include the medical industry, educational institutions and public sector employment.

What is not the route for urban renaissance is a reliance on hipsters, and the revitalized coffee shops, bars and shops they have brought to downtown and Midtown.



Creative class professionals "are not going to be the saviors of the city," says Thomas Sugrue. (University of Pennsylvania photo)

Chris Gautz writes in Crain's Detroit Business that message was one of the many blunt points made Thursday by Thomas Sugrue, the University of Pennsylvania historian who gavethe keynote address at the Detroit Regional Chamber's 2014 Detroit Policy Conference.

Sugrue, who grew up in Detroit and Farmington Hills and graduated from Brother Rice High School, is a nationally known expert on city issues. His 1996 book, "Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-war Detroit," won multiple awards and is widely considered the best explanation of the reasons for Detroit's long decline.

Speaking Thursday in the MotorCity Casino Hotel's Sound Board concert venue, Sugrue cautioned attendees to beware of the false hope of "hipsterification" to save the city, which is overwhelmingly working class and poor.

"There's a lot to celebrate, but such enclaves have not played a significant role in urban revitalization because they don't scale up,"said Sugrue, who called such gentrification "trickle-down urbanism."

People who wear cool, architectural glasses like he does and enjoy good coffee and wine do bring energy and enthusiasm to cities, he said. "But we are not going to be the saviors of the city," he said.

Instead, Midwestern cities like Detroit need to focus on their strengths: "meds," "eds" and public jobs.

Without those sectors, "Detroit would not have much of a middle class today at all," Sugrue said.

In The Detroit News, columnist Daniel Howes writes Sugrue's speech served as "a proverbial wet blanket on building enthusiasm for where the city is headed, bankruptcy or not."

Howes notes that Sugrue warned that the city’s latest effort at revival “will not be easy.” Nor will overcoming divides cleaved by history; nor burying the record of racial polarization; nor building a different Detroit on the rubble of de-industrialization and dysfunctional public education.

“If Detroit is left to fend for itself, it will face troubles,” Sugrue, the David Boies professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Detroit Policy Conference Thursday. “Region matters now more than ever. Detroit does not have the resources — it has the will — to go it alone.” . . . A downer? Sort of, notwithstanding a distinctly audible ring of truth. For all the promise rising from new leadership, a financial restructuring in Chapter 9 bankruptcy and billions in corporate investment in downtown and Midtown, the harsh reality is that Detroit’s comeback is likely to be a fraught series of steps forward and back."

Previously on Deadline Detroit:

Thomas Sugrue: Detroit Faces 'Such A Big Obstacle' To Reach Stability And Growth

Below: Sugrue discusses Detroit with the cast of "MiWeek," the public affairs show on WTVS.