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Originally Posted by SkokieSwift
Detroit wasn't built around the car? What are you smoking? Outside of a small sliver of downtown, Detroit is the most car-centric, pedestrian-unfriendly major city in the midwest.
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The people of Detroit might be car-centric, but the built environment of Detroit lends well to a car-free lifestyle, and that includes much of the inner-ring suburbs as well. For one, Detroit easily has one of the largest grid systems in the world. It basically extends nearly 30 miles from Riverview in the south to Birmingham in the north, and nearly 30 miles from the Grosse Pointes in the east to Westland in the west. That entire area consists mainly of dense (5,000+ ppsm) residential neighborhoods developed primarily in the 1910's-1950's with sidewalks surrounded by relatively walkable commercial corridors. In theory, people in that 900 sq. mi. "block" could never be more than 1/2 mile from a public transit stop, whether it be bus, streetcar, or train, and in theory one could walk 40+ miles from Trenton in the south to north of Pontiac using only sidewalks and dedicated crosswalks while being connected to most of the major areas in between. While the city is obviously no Boston or San Francisco, it's not nearly as auto-dependent and anti-pedestrian as many of the sunbelt cities. You won't find endless cul-de-sacs and mega-retail centers.
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Originally Posted by Evergrey
Agreed... just visit and it's quite obvious. Sure... there was a city before the car... but the automobile transportation monoculture transformed the built environment of Detroit into one scaled exclusively for the requirements of the automobile. It truly personified the dream of "car culture". The commercial corridors are extremely wide, multi-lane highways lined with barren sidewalks and suburban-scaled retail entities.
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The funny thing is that the spoke roads are only about 120 ft from property line to property line, which isn't that much. In fact, the 120 ft ROW that is somewhat common along metro Detroit's major roads dates back to 100 years before the auto-boom. Such wide ROWs were created to accomodate the crowded masses that were common in cities before the sprawl-era. Look at the stretch of Woodward in Downtown between Campus Martius and Grand Circus Park. That is a 120 ft ROW, yet I don't think anyone would say that that particular stretch appears to be "extremely wide".
The problem is how they are currently used. When they widened the major corridors, they did so to make it easier to accomodate the streetcars and the automobiles. (I think outside the original city core, the spoke ROWs were only about 100 ft wide.) They packed in as many lanes as they could because traffic levels warranted it. When the streetcars became obsolete and the the freeways took most of the traffic away from the major corridors, there was no use for the wide avenues, but the city was a bit more pre-occupied with other things than worrying about reducing capacity along the major corridors.
The upside to the widened roads though, is the fact that they can now easily accomodate LRT. The city is already planning an LRT line up Woodward from Downtown to 8 Mile Rd. The LRT will have its own dedicated stretch along the center of Woodward, and yet there will still be room for two lanes of traffic and streetside parking. Once the Woodward LRT system proves popular, I can easily see the city planning lines (or at least BRT) along the other major spokes.
Granted, that's only the major spoke roads. Detroit has (or rather
had) many smaller commercial corridors that aren't wide. Streets like Vernor Hwy through Southwest Detroit, and many of the major Mile Roads (7 Mile, McNichols, etc.) are relatively narrow.
While some of the most pedestrian-friendly commercial corridors have been severely abandoned or razed, there are still a few areas that could easily see a revival with renovations and the right kind of in-fill. There are still a lot of areas in Detroit like this, that given the right investment, could become bustling pedestrian-friendly corridors:
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Originally Posted by novawolverine
It's all relative IMO. I don't think I could do Detroit or Atlanta w/o a car. Whether it's possible is besides the point. It's whether or not it's comfortable. Having relatively frequent and widespread transit options is a big part of the equation. Having a well-scaled environment for walking and biking is important as well. In both of these cities, things are a bit too spread out and the transportation options aren't quite robust enough at this point.
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With the right investments, though both cities could easily become the next "walkable mecca". I can only speak for Detroit, as I don't know much about Atlanta. I think as soon as Detroit get's its streetcar/LRT/Commuter Rail system up and running in the next few years, it will easily jump into the fold. Building a streetcar line from the Belle Isle area to Downtown and then northwards to the Boston-Edison area will single-handedly connect all of the major points within the urban core. You can live in a highrise in Rivertown, bike along the Dequindre Cut to Eastern Market to do some shopping, go jogging along the Riverwalk, take the streetcar downtown for work or entertainment or to Midtown to go to class at Wayne State or to the New Center area to connect to the LRT line/Commuter line. You can take the Commuter line to the Airport, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Royal Oak, or Birmingham. You can take the LRT up to the Zoo, Ferndale, or the Fairgrounds, etc.
Maybe it's just me, but I think that while the city in its current state is nowhere near as friendly to a car-free lifestyle, it does have the bones that could easily support such a lifestyle given the right investments.
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