Shikha Dalmia on Corporate Welfare and Detroit

While the
rest of the country remains focused on Detroit’s bankruptcy
travails, the big story in the city itself is the group of private
investors who are attempting an ambitious urban turnaround. Led by
Dan Gilbert, owner of Quicken Loans Inc., they are trying to
rebuild everything—retail, housing, start-ups, transit and even
street life—in the seven-square-mile downtown area. Their theory is
that a thriving core will lift the rest of the 130-square-mile city
out of its economic torpor. Shikha Dalmia warns that the challenge
for the new mayor, Mike Duggan, will be to let this grand
experiment in private social engineering proceed without getting
carried away by grand plans of those purporting to act in its
interest.

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