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Despite big problems, the city that sums up American success and failure is looking pretty positive
The seal of Detroit, created after it burned to the ground in 1805, anticipated the way despair and determination would vie ever after for the city's future. One woman weeps beside burning buildings while another next to her, smiling, is flanked by a grand, flame-free Detroit. "We hope for better things," sighs one motto, in Latin. "It will arise from the ashes," insists the other.
The arising-from-the-ashes moment has been heralded at intervals for a long time. "There is little doubt that Detroit has turned the corner on some of its most obvious problems," reported the Washington Post back in 1980. "Middle-class whites are moving back into the city, and a visitor senses a new vitality downtown." Yet in the decades ahead lay the exodus of hundreds of thousands more residents, more declarations of renaissance and, in 2013, America's biggest municipal bankruptcy.
That history is chastening. Let it be said that Detroit has not turned the corner on all its obvious problems, including a high crime rate and beleaguered schools. But determination has clearly gained the upper hand. Ford, General Motors and Stellantis (whose biggest shareholder, Exor, also part-owns The Economist's parent company) are making big bets on Detroit, as are Amazon, Google and the developer Stephen Ross. Under Mayor Mike Duggan, in his tenth year, the government has courted investment by offering itself not just as provider of tax incentives and expediter of permits but as real-estate agent...