Detroit ranked No. 1 in America for downtown stickiness

For years, Detroit's downtown recovery showed up mostly in real estate databases and construction filings. Now it is showing up in global research, and the finding is blunt. Detroit has the stickiest downtown in America.

That conclusion comes from Gensler's City Pulse 2026, the firm's largest study of urban experience since the pandemic. Researchers surveyed more than 35,000 residents across 75 cities in 30 countries between July and November of 2025. The study's core measure, the stickiness score, captures not just how often people visit a downtown but how long they stay once they get there. Among the 34 American cities in the study, Detroit ranked first.

The numbers behind that ranking are specific. Detroit topped the 34 U.S. cities for residents who say their downtown experience has improved over the past year, at nearly 64 percent, with Boston the next closest, eight points back. Detroit also ranked first in the country for walkability, with nearly 87 percent of residents calling downtown enjoyable to walk around in, ahead of both Boston and Chicago.

Sofia Song, the global leader of cities research at Gensler's Research Institute, framed the result as a measure of choice rather than obligation. Detroit ranked first for discretionary visits, with 31 percent of residents saying they go downtown because they enjoy it rather than because they have to, against a national average of 16 percent.

Antoine Bryant, who runs Gensler's Detroit office and previously served as the city's director of planning and development, pointed to how tightly the downtown core is packed. Detroit is the only American city with four professional sports teams playing within a half-mile of each other, including a shared arena for the Pistons and Red Wings and adjacent stadiums for the Lions and Tigers. Little Caesars Arena, he noted, is the second most booked arena in the country and runs roughly 325 days a year. That density of scheduled events gives people a steady reason to be downtown across the full calendar.

The next major draw is already taking shape. Cosm Detroit, an immersive venue rising in Bedrock's Development at Cadillac Square, wraps viewers in a planetarium-style LED dome with a 180-degree field of view built to feel like sitting inside a live stadium. It is set to open downtown this fall, timed to the Lions season and a possible Tigers playoff run.

Bryant tied the broader turnaround to infrastructure and safety. The city brightened major corridors and side streets with new lighting and leaned on community policing to change how downtown feels after dark. Homicides have fallen to a 50-year low, and the overall crime rate is approaching a 15-year low. When people feel safe, he said, they tell other people, and the narrative starts to shift.

The momentum is pointing toward something more durable than a strong year of foot traffic. Downtown groups are now pushing to grow the area's residential population by 50 percent over five years, a sign that the engagement Gensler measured is starting to translate into people who live downtown, not just visit it.

For a city that has spent years making the case for its own future, a No. 1 ranking built on how often people come back is the kind of outside validation that does not need much translation.