Downtown Detroit: a national study ranks it No. 1 for weekend draw

DETROIT. A new study called City Pulse 2026, from the Gensler Research Institute, ranked downtown Detroit first in the country on what it calls a "stickiness score," a measure of how often people visit and how long they stay. The study surveyed more than 140,000 people across 75 cities on six continents.

Nearly a third of Detroit residents say they go downtown because they want to, not because work makes them, roughly double the national average of about 16 percent. Sixty percent rated downtown's lighting excellent or very good, against a national average near 40 percent, and 80 percent said downtown felt welcoming to everyone, compared with about 66 percent nationally. Downtown occupancy sits at 95 to 96 percent.

The gaps residents named were job opportunities and nighttime safety: only 33 percent said they feel safe walking alone downtown after dark, well behind Pittsburgh's 46 percent and Boston's 70 percent.