Its burnt out buildings were once a bigger tourist attraction than its art museum, and in 2013 Detroit went bankrupt. Yet by last year it had been transformed, with a revived downtown filled with jobs and pricey condominiums — one of several fading industrial cities across the US rust-belt that had managed to breathe new life into their economies.

Attracted by low costs, light traffic and architectural masterpieces left over from when these were boom towns, millennials priced out of markets on either coast moved to old industrial cities. They opened cafés and bakeries and pop-up restaurants and art galleries, often with start-up incentives they couldn’t obtain elsewhere, creating Midwest cultural and lifestyle hubs in some of the grittiest cities on Earth. 

Now that whole process is in jeopardy. Some of the rust-belt cities are among those places hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people in the US and which is shattering economic optimism and throwing thousands out of work in cities such as Detroit, the original Motor City.