DETROIT HAS BOUNCED BACK LIKE AN URBAN LAZARUS

Detroit and its outgoing mayor model big-city comeback

Zohran Mamdani could learn a lot from Mike Duggan.

 

Editorial board

 

The Washington Post

Oct 22, 2025

 

 

 

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan

 

A dozen years ago, Detroit stood out as America’s decaying symbol of urban dysfunction. Once the nation’s fourth-largest city, its population dipped below 700,000 in 2013 for the first time since World War I. With the nation’s highest homicide rate, Motor City became known as “Murder City.” It was one of the poorest big cities in America, with the highest child poverty rate and the worst unemployment. That year, Detroit gained the ignominy of being the largest city in America to ever declare bankruptcy.

 

After 12 years of sound management, Detroit has bounced back like an urban Lazarus. Its rebound offers lessons for other struggling large cities. Detroit has seen its first population uptick in decades. Unemployment, at 8.8 percent, is still above the national average but down from its peak of 23 percent. Homicides fell last year to their lowest since 1965. The once desolate streets of downtown are bustling. Even the Detroit Lions football team, which failed to win a single game in 2008, is playing like a Super Bowl contender.

 

On the fiscal side, Detroit has now had 12 consecutive balanced budgets and managed to put $500 million into a rainy day fund. The city’s bond rating has gone from junk to investor grade.

Bankruptcy helped. The city shed $7 billion in liabilities out of $12 billion in unsecured debt. About 21,000 city pensioners were forced to accept reduced payouts and a loss of generous health benefits. Bondholders had to swallow losses.

But a lot of the credit for Detroit’s turnaround goes to Mayor Mike Duggan. He was a little-known former county official when he made an unlikely run for mayor in 2013. He ran as a write-in candidate in the non-partisan primary after opponents took court action to force him from the ballot because he hadn’t lived inside the city limits long enough. He lacked the backing of major unions and Black churches, long prerequisites to winning citywide. And he was a White man running to be mayor of a city that was 80 percent Black.

What Duggan had was a track record as a turnaround artist, having rescued the financially ailing Detroit Medical Center hospital system. Detroiters were willing to try something, and someone, new.

He focused initially on quality-of-life issues, the mundane stuff of governing. He relit the city’s streetlights, 40 percent of which were broken, and partnered with businesses to install security cameras. He demolished almost all of the 47,000 abandoned and dilapidated homes that had become eyesores and drug dens.

The population exodus had left behind a large stock of fixable homes, which attracted young first-time homebuyers from more expensive markets. The flight of business from downtown meant large tracts of commercial property were available at discount prices. Duggan used generous tax breaks and other incentives to become a magnet for job creators. Working with a largely cooperative city council, he offered hundreds of millions of dollars in tax abatements. The Ford Motor Company, for example, received a $104 million break for its renovation of the historic Michigan Central Station.

Another beneficiary was billionaire Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who bought vast amounts of downtown real estate. Gilbert’s latest addition to Detroit’s skyline is a 681-foot skyscraper for offices and apartments on the site of the old Hudson’s department store.

Duggan’s revival strategy has gotten predictable criticism from the left. They don’t like tax breaks for the rich and complain that the benefits of redevelopment has been too slow to trickle down. But Detroiters have liked what they got: Duggan was reelected twice with over 70 percent.

The mayor opted not to seek a fourth term so he can run for Michigan governor in 2026 as an independent. The leading candidate in the polls to replace him in the Nov. 4 mayoral election, City Council President Mary Sheffield, promises to continue Duggan’s policies while also offering what she calls a more “progressive” and “people-centered” agenda.

What enabled Detroit’s turnaround is no secret: Make hard choices to get the fiscal house in order, instead of promising “free” stuff the city cannot afford. Partner with businesses and investors, instead of chasing them away with higher corporate taxes and so-called “millionaire’s taxes.” Focus on reducing crime, instead of demonizing and defunding the police.

If democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani wins the mayor’s race in New York, he’d be wise to take a trip to Detroit. Mayor Duggan has lessons to offer.