It works the opposite way: cities operate on a zero-sum basis, especially when an MSA is declining in population the way many Rust belt cities are. Detroit may be the epicenter of the MSA but the other cities have all the incentive to see Detroit - and other cities - suffer so that they can maintain the engine of "flight to quality". Perhaps race is no longer the primary driver of this, as realtors cannot legally use race as reason to sell homes in the hinterlands, but the motion is decades in the making. Unless the Federal government gets involved (again), many US cities while barely function and their nearest and oldest suburbs will suffer a worse fate for not having the same level of infrastructure and sense of permanence to buttress them from sloppy decay (sorry that's a gin and tonic line).