I like to see the improvements. It gives you the incentives to do things yourself. When asked about their neighborhood, residents immediately invoke the name of their ward's council member, Fannie Lewis. Lewis, who has lived in Hough 46 years and has been on the city council for 16, has pushed hard for Hough's redevelopment, and residents say she is often in the neighborhood, greeting them by name. She looks after us.
People can believe, but they have to have something they can see.
But the overall feeling is that it's better. Both cities began losing huge chunks of their populations in the 1970s, as the middle class fled the inner city for the suburbs. Poverty spiraled upwards and jobs became scarce. The turnaround in Cleveland, which most say began in the early 1980s, came much the way Detroit's is expected to unfold. The downtown renewal injected glamour into the city, attracting praise even from those concerned about the slow revival of the neighborhoods.