The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a "rebound" as an increase or improvement after a recent decrease or decline
So is Detroit in the midst of a true rebound?
That continues to be a subject of debate. There's plenty chatter in the national media about a comeback and there's occasional stories about a tale of two cities: The new restaurants and the young, educated workers living in Midtown, downtown and Corktown, and those residents stuck in poverty and in neighborhoods where crime and vacant homes are pervasive.
Kriston Capps writes in The Atlantic's City Lab:
It’s not entirely fair to describe the changes in Detroit as a “rebound.” That suggests that, with enough time, given present conditions, things will actually turn around. For some Detroiters, that’s right. For the poorest and most vulnerable residents, however, it’s not clear that their situation is improving.
Capps writes that the Pew Charitable Trusts just released a report that says things are looking up one year after the city exited its unprecedented bankruptcy. She concedes "that's not wrong."
He writes:
As the report notes, utility crews are ahead of schedule in installing some 65,000 LED streetlights throughout the city. And under Mayor Mike Duggan, the city has brought complaints against 2,000 blighted property owners. “By the end of the year, the city will have torn down about 8,000 vacant homes,” the Pew report reads.
Some of the indicators are more mixed, or beneficial to only some parts of the city, like the new Red Wings arena and the attendant $650 million entertainment district, or the streetcar going up along Woodward Avenue. The breakout success of Shinola seems like an unalloyed good. . . .
There are some aspects of Detroit that could fairly be described as worsening. The scale and severity of the vacancy crisis in Detroit make forward progress extremely difficult under any circumstances. It just might be intractable.
