January 26, 2014 | Detroit Free Press
At a recent conference on blight removal at Marygrove College, longtime Detroit activist Maggie DeSantis pressed businessman Dan Gilbert for the economic model that he and others assumed would fill up the city’s vacant land once the Gilbert-led blight removal effort has finished its work.
Gilbert told DeSantis and the other 100 or so people in attendance that removing eyesore buildings and trash would, by itself, create economic opportunities in Detroit’s empty spaces.
DeSantis asked, but how? As she told me later, “If knocking down blight and clearing property was really the answer, then you’d already be seeing it,” since the city has been razing derelict structures for years. [...]