The Motor City Comeback

Outgoing Mayor Mike Duggan tells Newsweek how Detroit rebuilt pride and prosperity after bankruptcy—and why the city's resurgence is powered by its people

- by JESUS MESA

WHEN EMINEM MADE A CAMEO IN CHRYSLER'S 2011 Super Bowl ad, cruising through Detroit's streets in a stylish new sedan to the strains of gospel and hip-hop, the message to the recession-weary audience was pointed: In America, there's always a comeback story waiting just around the corner.

"What does a town that's been to hell and back know about the finer things in life?" the narrator intones. At two minutes, it was among the longest commercials ever shown during a Super Bowl, and has since been voted as one of the greatest commercials of all time. The ad worked because it wasn't really about selling cars. It was a reclamation—of grit, of identity, of pride. A battered but unbroken city staring back at the country that had dismissed it. The tagline clinched it: "Imported From Detroit."

Fourteen years later, long after Chrysler discontinued the model it paid Eminem to pitch, the Motor City is humming with life. On a late summer afternoon, Detroit's outgoing mayor Mike Duggan sits in his office overlooking the Detroit River and the hulking General Motors headquarters, reflecting on what that hometown pride means today.

"The pride is back," he says. "People are proud of this city. When visitors come from out of town now, Detroiters take them down and show them the riverfront. They take them to the train station. We have a long way to go, but we now have a riverfront that's a unifying site for everybody in Detroit."