I’ve been re-reading and thinking about this article recently. There are some unfortunate clichés here and there, but ultimately the author does a great job making a meaningful point in the din of “who are Millennials anyway?” stuff that shrinks and grows every couple of news cycles.

My TL;DR:

• Gen Y folks value business attitudes that encourage entrepreneurship, hustling, and being one’s own boss.
• Mistrust of and nonloyalty to big companies has spurred young people to invest in and create ventures that support some kind of social good.
• The Millennials differ from their immediate predecessors because they shirk both revolution (unlike the Boomers) and ennui (unlike the Slackers).

Detroit-wise, I hope I’m not the first to tell you that entrepreneurs are running the place right now. I really hope I’m not the first to tell you that talking about the city that way isn’t the best idea. There’s universal agreement that the city is forming a new future, and fortunately there are plenty of people voicing concerns about who will have access to the next chapter. For cautious better and unfortunate worse, Detroit’s trajectory is being set by hipster capitalists.

Who moves here? People who can. People who can’t afford their dream cities. Lots of artists, lots of activists, lots of idea-havers. Lots of people like me. The “make something happen” attitude that gets people approximately my age to wheel, deal, and steal is doing incredible stuff for Detroit businesses, communities, nonprofits, creative pools, taste buds, and tax coffers. It identified a city empty enough so that—at least for a while—any change was better than no change. Now that the edge has worn off some of the more radical stuff, it’s high time to think about what the new boss wants for the city.

And while I do mean “wants for the city” in a pretty broad, idealistic sense—“I wish this was” kind of stuff—I have a feeling that all the responses will end up looking the same. Who doesn’t want a Detroit free of crime? A viable public transit system? An educational universe that teaches, nurtures, inspires, and empowers? An end to racial mistrust, police brutality, war, hatred, ignorance, death itself? I want these things, odds are you want these things…I bet even Matty Moroun wants these things. And that’s good—if there’s something that never fails to tap my optimism, it’s that the scores of Detroit-bound Millennials are overwhelmingly empathetic, opposed to ignorance, and ultimately concerned with coming here in the “right” way.

But what I really want to know is a little more nitty gritty. Is your small plates restaurant going to do some tangible good or is it just going to taste good? Do you want to buy that house so that you can keep spinning out Detroit’s racist past or do your part to halt that ongoing tragedy? And to be clear, I’m fine with any answers to any questions. I firmly believe that all cities depend on all kinds of people—good and bad, engaged and negligent, passionate and agnostic. I want the questions asked, however, because I don’t think that Detroit is or should be known as the place where you can do whatever you want, a place so experimental and Wild Western that hipster capitalism can reach real damage. I want the Detroit transplants who generally look, think, and act like me to ask where they want to fit or fight.

I’ve also been playing a lot of this game lately. When Electronic Arts shamefully destroyed the excellent SimCity series, a couple of guys took it upon themselves to make a modern city-building game that doesn’t suck. If you don’t mind my editorializing, it’s a damned fine game. You’re in charge of every big-deal decision a city planner could make, from infrastructure to industry and plots to public transit.

I love the details here. If you destroy a house in order to build a road, little red frowny faces balloon up to mark your victims’ dissatisfaction:

And if there’s a blighted burger joint dragging down property values, just point-and-click with the Bulldoze tool:

Talk about tripping off the power! I saw a few Reddit commentors joking that the game should be retitled “Eminent Domain,” and they’re not wrong. I remember playing SimCity 3000 as a preteen and plowing through entire neighborhoods to build train tracks and highways, never sparing a thought for the simulated lives I was likely destroying. Now, though, I play carefully. Even ridiculously—I’ve done entire playthroughs with the main goal of leaving every existing road, school, home, and occupied building peacefully alone.

What if I were playing a Detroit scenario? Would I carve up the North End to build a solar power plant? Would I legalize marijuana to attract new residents? Would I run free with the Bulldoze tool, spending not a dime (dream big) to convert blighted neighborhoods into the Great Plains of the Great Lakes?

And what would my peers do? What would the hipster capitalists do? What are the hipster capitalists doing, and why are they doing it? My empathy for nonexistent in-game citizens surprised me, but shouldn’t my (slowly improving) lack of empathy for real-life vulnerable Detroiters shock me even more? What are my wants for the city?