I don't get to Detroit much but do live in another rust belt town in Michigan and things do seem to be looking up a bit. There is noticeable investment downtown

I don't get to Detroit much but do live in another rust belt town in Michigan and things do seem to be looking up a bit. There is noticeable investment downtown and property values in the city limits (as opposed to the surrounding white flight townships) are rising for basically the first time in my life (though another way to say this is that housing is becoming less affordable). There is still a long way to go though, and while I moved back from Austin once my job went remote during COVID, none of the other bourgeois high achievers from my public magnet school have done so -- as you'd expect they are all in NYC, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, etc. Brain drain is a real problem and WFH doesn't really seem to be helping. I don't think people outside the Midwest understand what a disaster the last ~50 years have been for the industrial heartland. I don't know what the answer is, but even if it's whatever is happening in Detroit, it will be decades before these cities feel anything like whole.