What do our burning fields smell like?

I was talking to someone from Detroit last week, and we were discussing the similarities of our sister Great Lakes Cities(Cleveland). Both of them were once proud, progressive towns offering many opportunities to its inhabitants. In my opinion, the decline of the Great Lake Cities is a huge disgrace. This is a crucial region...we've practically built the country through our steel factories, auto plants and manufacturing plants. We have most of the fresh water (the largest collection of fresh water lakes in the world) We don't have a lot of natural disasters and the climate is reasonable(I know people like to bitch about the winters but try living in North Dakota...)

Often, when large cities get abandoned, the property values plummet which opens up the area to artists and other entrepreneurial types, who take advantage of the space/cost ratio. This often leads to a "scene" that springs up out of the ashes, which then becomes gentrified by those who have money and are now willing to live there. When this happens, the artists can no longer afford to live there and move on to the next squalid neighborhood...kind of like carpet-bagging...so it goes. This is generally a good thing. So the question is; is this happening enough in Cleveland and its' surrounding inner-ring suburbs? We know that many of the abandoned warehouses in certain areas have been rehabbed for residential use but these are mostly unaffordable to the average person. What is needed is more downtown affordable housing. It's the only way to get ordinary people to live in the city. And that's what makes good cities great:a population with economic diversity.

If we've hit rock bottom, what's the best way to get back up? We know from our recent past that building big ticket items is only a small temporary solution. If you burn the fields is it guaranteed that the next crop is better?