City Living Detroit

Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News. Pat Vinson, left, Ron Uhouse and Scott and Margaret Newton listen to Chad Hooks talk up Detroit at the show in Ford Field. The Newtons and Uhouse had found the suburbs a more practical place to live.

The Detroit News reports, in "Home show fuels Detroit revival: Hundreds of exhibitors offering improvement ideas include city's pitch as a place to relocate," about last weekend's City Living Detroit Expo. From the article:

Among the landscaped brick paths, burbling waterfalls and home improvement displays set up inside Ford Field for this weekend's Michigan Home & Garden Show, Kijuanna Page found a booth promoting a return to living in Detroit.

She climbed aboard a bus with about 30 others and took a two-hour tour Saturday of rehabilitated historic homes, dazzling new townhouses and trendy lofts inside former industrial buildings. "It's like nothing I've seen or even imagined about Detroit. It makes me want to move back," said the Sterling Heights resident who works at the DaimlerChrysler AG headquarters in Auburn Hills.

City Living Detroit is offering tours free through today's 6 p.m. close of the show. A $10,000 grant from LaSalle Bank also will fund more tours this summer. The group hopes to squelch notions that Detroit is a place to flee, and show it is becoming a vibrant destination for life, work and play. "If you live in Royal Oak, you are coming down to Detroit anyway if you want the real culture and night life of this region," said Austin Black, a real estate agent and president of City Living Detroit.
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However, this is somewhat crazy. People living in Detroit and then commuting 30+ miles away to their job in Auburn Hills isn't necessarily a good thing. The deconcentration of job sites throughout the metropolitan area needs to be addressed as well.

A phenomenon I have noticed in DC is suburbanites moving to the city because it's trendy, but they still work in the suburbs. Eventually, many people end up moving back to the suburbs because of the commute and/or because they are still suburbanites at heart.

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization