Is the goal purely population based? You seem to be making the claim that a city is only worth its raw population numbers, which I tried to refute. Detroit used

Is the goal purely population based? You seem to be making the claim that a city is only worth its raw population numbers, which I tried to refute. Detroit used to be a dead city full of slums and ghettos with a population of 1+ million people. Today it's a city with a thriving downtown that's on the economic upswing with 700,000 people. Even if "economic upswing" means people finally have enough money to move to another city. That's still better than it was. Still better than Flint, where they can't. Think of it this way: if I refactor my app so it runs faster and hits more customer use cases, but has 1000 fewer lines of code, would you argue that it's a worse app now? I live in the Midwest and I've seen these cities first-hand over the course of several decades, and honestly your opinion is so dramatically off from the reality of these cities that all I can say is "you're so incredibly wrong" and walk away. You're so incredibly wrong.