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Detroit may be broke but it will soon have a first-rate motor pool, featuring 23 new ambulances and a fleet of 100 new police cars. Some city parks also are getting tender loving care. New fruit trees and shrubs have been planted, and mowing crews are beginning to make the rounds to keep the green spaces tidy.

In the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index, London leads the world as both the most popular destination city for overseas travelers, and in the average amount each visitor spends. Whether drawn by business or as tourists, London's visitors from New York are the ones that travel the furthest and spend the most.

Stockton and San Bernardino, the two California cities that have filed for bankruptcy protection, are both considered test cases in the epic battle over whether municipal bondholders or pensioners will absorb most of the pain when a government goes broke.

The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.

"Welcome to SugarDaddie.com, U.S.A." That's what the town sign would likely read if Woodside, Calif., decides to take SugarDaddie.com up on its offer to change its town name. While the publicity stunt may seem outlandish, with $11.65 million on the table, the prospective name change is no joke.

At the Detroit Auto Show earlier this month, luxury was in the air. Pricey new Bentleys and Maseratis glittered - including a Maserati 2014 Quattroporte with a $132,000 price tag; U.S. Cabinet Secretaries and dignitaries rubbed shoulders; and many of the well-heeled attendees ponied up for a $300-a-ticket black-tie charity ball.

24/7 Wall St. has completed its second annual ranking of the 100 largest cities in the U.S., based on local economies, fiscal management and quality of life measures.

At a community meeting in a Lutheran church earlier this year, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing got an earful about his city’s distressingly high crime rate. The heckling started with members of his own police force... What could the mayor say? The best crime news out of Detroit these days is that the rate of violent crimes – murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault – fell 10% last year to 2,137 per 100,000 residents. That’s still more than five times the national average and more than enough to make Detroit America’s Most Dangerous City for the fourth year in a row.

The gulf that separates how much people make, depending on where they live, hasn’t changed much.

Jeffrey A. Michael, a finance professor in Stockton, Calif., took a hard look at his city’s bankruptcy this summer and thought he saw a smoking gun: a dubious bond deal that bankers had pushed on Stockton just as the local economy was starting to tank in the spring of 2007, he said.