I mean, it seems hard to disagree that things were better in Rust Belt cities before deindustrialization. You might quibble about why it happened or what should be done about it but Detroit went from being a beautiful, world-class city to a byword for crime and urban decay within living memory and plenty of smaller cities are worse off.

Hm? Detroit ungentrified, housing became affordable, artist communities flourished, over-policing went away, corrupting corporate influences and (especially) real estate developers vanished. Detroit is everything every growing liberal city claims to want and writes public policy to work towards.

Wasn't there a bankruptcy in there somewhere?

> "corrupting corporate influences and (especially) real estate developers vanished"

... and were replaced with a level of government corruption (and incompetence) that would have been funny if it weren't so sad.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like an argument I actually want to engage with.

"Ungentrified"? Is that a euphemism for a place you'd want to live turning into the kind of place where you're afraid to go out of town for the weekend because all your stuff will be gone when you get back?

He's trying to be cute and say anyone who complains about rising rents is trying to turn their city into Detroit.

Anyone who complains that their city is too attractive to the (upper) middle class and thinks that public policy should seek to motivate people with good jobs to stay the hell away, yeah.

I’ll complain about rising rents too, but from a place of “we need more housing” and not “people need to stop trying to live here.”