Needing and Fearing Billionaires in Cities Abandoned by Wealth

"Heck, we invented the middle class," wrote journalist Mitch Albom of Detroit in its heyday.' Today, the city is inventing something else entirely. A small group of billionaires is leading what surely must be the largest privately fi­nanced urban transformation in American history. Detroit's new model for growth is premised on radical inequality, and it may well perpetuate it too. Is it good news anyway?