The Detroit/Warren/Dearborn MSA has a higher GDP than San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara MSA and is home to ~4 million people. Don't be confused by articles highlighting specific neighborhoods or old factories, there is a ton of economic activity. There are obviously some huge problems trying to provide government services for the same land area with a shrinking population, especially following a large recession, but "Won't have a viable economy" is silly given the number of companies in the area.

I think you make a good point. You shouldn't write off the whole Detroit area because of a few articles about specific neighborhoods. But Detroit/Warren/Dearborn essentially have the same GDP as San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara yet twice as many people live in the Detroit area

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NGMP19820

https://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/pdf.cfm?fips=19820&ar...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NGMP41940

http://www.bestplaces.net/metro/california/san_jose-sunnyval...

That only strengthens my point though -- The original commenter said we should just pay everyone to leave since there's no hope of sustaining an economy there.

If you can pay 4 million people to leave, you can pay to fix whatever services they are lacking -- and then you'd have 4 million people in a area with hundreds of large companies and good government services!

This is why I constantly hammer the point about comparing cities using MSA figures. Focusing on “Detroit” or “St. Louis” or “Cleveland” or whatever without understanding their place in their respective regions and how much activity surrounds them only misleads.

A failure to understand this leads to all kinds of confused and nonsensical beliefs about rust belt cities and ultimately to casual, confident assertions that can only be described as absurd (like the one you’re responding to).

Except abandoned cities won't magically go back to some idyllic paradise. They're full of value (shelter, metals, art, etc) that someone is going to want to extract. And they're also full of lots of potentially dangerous stuff too.

Dealing with broken cities will not be cheap, swift or easy. I have no ready solutions. But thinking that we can just walk away from them is only setting ourselves up for different problems down the timeline.

In 30 years when capital is harder to come by and suburban infrastructure starts to crumble, cities will come back.

Cities compromise 3.5% of the United States land area. They are not taking land away from trees or wildlife..

I don't think he's concerned so much about wildlife, I think the point is just that some cities don't really have anything in particular going for them, aren't worth rebuilding, and should be abandoned like a Western ghost town.

When you take out the great plains, the desert scrublands, and the alaskan wilderness, that 3.5% grows.

Totally agree, that's a huge part of city planning /permissions to build etc. You can't decide to build on top a mountain and then ask for city water, power, police cruiser patrols etc .

In Detroit the city bought a lot of lots, demolished the homes and closed that neighborhood. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7...

That plan by a former mayor (former NBA great Dave Bing) was hugely unpopular and never launched.

Police and fire in Detroit is hugely difficult because they have a large area to protect that includes numerous ghost neighborhoods. Often a fire is set in an abandoned house and if it's windy spreads to occupied residences.

Despite the difficulty Detroit's current mayor is committed to all the cities neighborhoods. However if you follow the money resources are concentrated in a handful of neighborhoods.