I know they are trying to do this in both Cincinnati and Columbus by building really expensive, fancy-pants housing in the middle of downtown areas. It's newer in Columbus (a lot these places haven't even had open houses), but in Cincinnati they made an old Lazarus building into multi-million dollar lofts which actually seemed to sell pretty quickly. It seemed that a lot of (really wealthy) empty-nesters bought them.

But these people still shop, eat, and socialize in the burbs, so they're not really bringing great gobs of money into the downtown. Businesses still fail or close ridiculously early.

Something I've noticed in looking at the cost of houses is that they are actually cheaper in the burbs. That is, I could get a much larger house for about $20,000-$50,000 less in the suburbs than I can in the city. I don't know if this is unique to Columbus or not, but it's kind of disheartening and weird.

Indeed, the recent trend in many midwestern cities for redeveloping buildings into yuppie "lofts" (sometimes the term is used pretty loosely) is a great example. And, as you said, the people who live there still have to go to work and eat and play in the burbs because the lofts are going up in places that don't have existing yuppie infrastructure. How sustainable is the loft trend, though, I wonder... and will this gentrification truly lay the ground for suburban families to move back into the city? Of course, I think that downtown Columbus still has way more jobs/offices than residences and so it's at least equalizing somewhat..

I don't think cities can all use the same strategy into moving people downtown.

Take Columbus for example. Until recently (and still for the most part), there is nothing to do downtown. Downtown is a place of business. There is very little residential space, and there is little to do for entertainment. The first step in this case would be to foster interest in bringing people downtown. I think Columbus is moving in the right direction by building up the arena district and putting in restaurants, bars and theatres all within walking distance downtown.

However, in the case of cities like Detroit and Philadelphia the same strategy is not going to work. These cities, with plenty to do downtown, once had much larger populations and lost them to the suburbs. Detroit used to have a population of 2M, it now has a population of only 500,000! These cities need to find strategies to win people back.

There's no one size fits all strategy but there's got to be a few general methods for doing this. One, I think, are regional governments with real political power, so that the suburbs don't war with the central city and with each other and so social problems aren't just pushed disproportionately from one place to another... to make regional public transportation possible..

But Columbus and Detroit/Philly are on opposing ends of that spectrum which you speak of. There's very little to do in downtown Columbus (between the Arena and Brewery districts) outside of the 9 to 5 and nowhere to live. I don't think they developed the Arena district as well as they could have because it's kind of outdoor-mall-ish (Easton).. I would have preferred some mixed use development (residential mixed in) in more of it, although there is some of that over by Buggyworks. But there are also giant surface parking lots.

And Detroit, I think, has gone too far in the entertainment direction.. too many giant spending projects to bring people in for giant events (I'm thinking the Tigers stadium). There is some other more regular nightlife too but I think instead of the prestigious big spending items they could have done more to make the regular nights better. Also, besides entertainment (for the suburbanites) it can be very difficult to get what you need to just live in downtown Detroit... grocery stores (not party stores) are few and far between. So, while there are things to do downtown and plenty of emptied out places to live (the ones that haven't fully decayed), but other factors make life difficult in that city. Perhaps the situation is more or less the same in Philly?

P.S. The population of Detroit, once 2 million, is still just under 1 million.. not quite down to half a mill. But it does get smaller every year.

I think Philadelphia is in a much better situation than Detroit, but with fears that the future of the city could go either way here. Like Detroit, the population of Philly has continuously dropped since the 50s (where it saw a peak of 2.1M), down to about 1.5M today. Interesting to note that out of the top 10 largest cities in the US, only Philadelphia and Detroit saw population decreases from 1990 to 2000.

Philadelphia has a very busy nightlife. People from the suburbs pack in here on the weekends to hit the bars and restaurants. We have every major sport, great museums, theatres etc..

But there are your big city problems that I am sure were the driving force behind population decreases. People want to come to downtown and enjoy what it has to offer without dealing with living in the city. Philly sees its fair share of crime, although the crime rates have significantly decreased over the past decade. Considering such a large population, our public/mass transit system is a bit weak. I think if we can stay on top of issues like these before they become too big of a problem, the city can turn things around for itself. There is too much here to let it go to waste.