What about race and white flight? Certainly Detroit is a much more racially segregated city than it was in 1960, and this increase reflects the relocation of a substantial part of the white population to the affluent suburbs.
I enjoyed this piece, and in particular I like the links it provided. As for the white flight, have you ever read Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex? It tells of the Detroit riots and the following white flight in an interesting way. Great book. b_b, you ever read it?
I've not read it, but it's one of those than I've been planning to get around to for years. Anyway, I think Detroit's decline may be temporary. It's a minority opinion, but its grounded in logic. There is no place on Earth that has more fresh water than Michigan. When shitholes like Phoenix start to run dry, those refugees, ironically refugees from the cold to begin with, will need some place to go. Here, we have water and more infrastructure capacity than we know what to do with. It may take decades to rebuild, but I think that eventually people will have no choice but to move North again.