In Detroit, anyone can be a developer

New York

AN urban revival has to start somewhere, and in the case of Detroit, that place has been downtown.

Coming out of the Great Recession, a handful of real estate developers invested heavily in a bid to lure corporate employers - and, more recently, business travellers and condo buyers - back to the centre of the city. That theme has met with occasional criticism that most efforts are intended to make Detroit more appealing to outsiders, without doing much for people who suffered through the city's infamous decline. One way, perhaps, to address the problem: help the city's long-time residents learn to make their own bets on commercial real estate.