The City That Forgot How to Dance

In 2013, Detroit filed for bankruptcy — the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. But the numbers only told part of the story. Drive down Brush Street, past the Packard Plant, and you saw it: a cathedral of industry, once employing 40,000 workers, now a hollow skeleton of broken glass and creeping vines. Neighborhoods that had hummed with block parties and church suppers stood empty, whole streets where only two or three houses still had lights on at night.…