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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 7:04 PM
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The Detroit Project (New Republic)

The Detroit Project
A plan for solving America’s greatest urban disaster.


December 9, 2009
New Republic
Bruce Katz, Jennifer Bradley

http://www.tnr.com/article/metro-pol...oject?page=0,2

For much of the United States, Detroit has become shorthand for failure--not just because of the dilapidation of the town’s iconic industry, but because the entire metropolis seems like a dystopian disaster. It is the second-most-segregated metropolitan area in the country; the city’s population is 82 percent African American. No other American city has shed more people since 1950--Detroit is only half its former size. Its city government fails at the most basic tasks. A call to 911 will bring a response, on average, in about 20 minutes. (Such emergency calls are depressingly common in the metropolitan area: There are 1,220 violent crimes per 100,000 people.) And that’s to say nothing of corruption in the municipal ranks. This year alone, at least 48 Detroit public-school employees have been investigated for fraud--which might help explain why only one in four high school freshmen ever receives a diploma. Unemployment in Detroit stands at a staggering 28 percent. And, in key measures of economic vitality in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan regions, Detroit finishes dead last.

All this might make Detroit seem like the most hopeless case in the global history of the city. But it is hardly the worst and certainly not hopeless. Europe is filled with cities that have risen from similarly miserable conditions.

Take Belfast, which suffered not only industrial decline and disinvestment, but also paralyzing religious guerrilla warfare. Although it received the same sort of hammer blow from globalization as Detroit, it now has steady job growth after decades of losses. Its economic output leapt 35 percent per capita between 2000 and 2005. And, throughout the European continent’s industrial belt--the parts that are distinctly not Disneyland for American yuppies--there are many other examples of old redoubts of manufacturing (Bilbao, Leipzig, Sheffield, St. Étienne) that have enjoyed the very same sort of dramatic recoveries. This is not to oversell the optimism that these cities should inspire. They will never recover their full manufacturing might or swell with quite so many residents as before. Still, they represent realistic models for the rescue of Detroit.



It is strangely fitting that the recent auto bailout endowed Detroit with a new corporate patron hailing from Turin, Italy. Like Detroit, Turin was once a grand capital of the auto industry, which accounted for 80 percent of the city’s industrial activity, most of it with Fiat, Chrysler’s new owner. But the Italian auto industry didn’t fare much better than the American one in the face of new competition. Fiat’s Turin operations went from 140,000 workers in the early 1970s to a mere 40,000 in the early ’90s. And with the collapse of Fiat came the collapse of Turin. Its population plummeted almost 30 percent in 25 years. National and local leaders focused more on combating domestic terrorism from the Red Brigades than on providing basic services. The city spun through four mayors in seven years and accumulated a budget deficit in the mid-’90s of 120 billion lira.

Recovery from this kind of spiral begins with political leadership. And, in 1993, the city elected a reformist mayor, Valentino Castellani, who devised a breathtakingly ambitious plan for the city. Potential investors were never going to have faith in Turin unless the city spelled out its strategy with specificity, so the plan laid out 84 “actions” for development, which Turin vowed to implement by the year 2011. Despite its gritty condition, the city promised to develop a tourism industry and the transportation network to support it. It used its own funds, plus money from national, regional, and provincial governments and private companies, to create a range of institutions--business incubators, foundations, research laboratories, venture-capital funds, and technology parks--that would promote its information-technology and green-energy industries. Other efforts built on Turin’s historical strengths. Turin may no longer have had cheap industrial labor, but it still possessed people with a deep understanding of production and design. They simply needed new outlets and markets for their core competencies.

Turin’s plan worked. By 2006, it posted its lowest levels of unemployment ever and its highest levels of economic activity in half a century. The city reinvented itself as a center for design, not just of cars, but also for aerospace, cinematography, and textiles. Plenty of parts suppliers still depend on business from Fiat, but they have also found new customers in China and other growing markets. Physical regeneration accompanied the economic recovery. The city submerged the old central railway line that had bifurcated the town, transforming that route into a boulevard that serves as Turin’s new backbone. What Turin shows is that even a decaying industrial base can be the foundation for a new economy. That is, the industry may fade, but expertise doesn’t. Detroit’s American cousins, Akron and Toledo, have already shown how specialties developed for car manufacturing can be repurposed. As Akron’s tire-making industry declined, companies, working with local universities, shifted their focus and research efforts into the related business of polymers. The former Rubber Capital of the World now makes polymers and plastics that can be used in clean energy and biotech. Or take Toledo, which long specialized in building windows and windshields for cars. One industry leader, known locally as “the glass genius,” started tinkering with solar cells in the 1980s. The University of Toledo showed an interest in his work, and the state gave the school and two companies some money to investigate photovoltaic technology. That spurred other business and university collaborations, which drew more infusions of state economic development funds, and the region now has some 5,000 jobs in the solar industry.

Institutions developed at the height of Detroit’s postwar prosperity remain--and provide the city with advantages that similarly depressed industrial cities cannot claim. It has educational institutions in or near the city (the University of Michigan, Wayne State) and medical institutions (in part, a legacy of all those union health care plans) that are innovative powerhouses and that currently generate private-sector activity in biomedicine, information technology, and health care management. And there is already a smattering of examples of old industrial outposts that have reacquired relevance. An old GM plant in Wixom has been retrofitted to produce advanced batteries. There’s a new automotive-design lab based in Ann Arbor. And Ford, the most promising of the Big Three, has made a decisive shift toward smaller, cleaner cars.

Retooling Detroit’s old industries and advancing its new ones will take public money, and the feds are the only ones with money to give these days. But Washington already spends heavily on Detroit--$18.4 billion went to the city and the surrounding county in 2008. This money, however, isn’t invested with any broader purpose, a sense of how all this spending can add up to something grander. A better return on federal investments will take a functioning local government as well as leadership in suburban counties that is willing to collaborate closely with the city. And, with so much sclerosis, change will only emerge with a strong hand from above. State and federal governments should place the city’s most dysfunctional agencies in receivership as a quid pro quo for federal investment--a milder version of the federal takeover of Washington, D.C., in the 1990s. These higher-level governments should also insist that the city and its suburbs end their wasteful bickering and act as one on issues that naturally cross borders, like transportation and the environment. The region’s elected officials should be strongly encouraged to replicate the metropolitan mayors’ caucuses in Chicago and Denver, or a strong metropolitan transportation and land-use agency, as in Portland or Minneapolis. Business will never have faith in Detroit with local government in its current condition and with the metropolis so riven by old city-suburb divisions.

The point of Turin is that dramatic reform in local and metropolitan governance, coupled with strategic interventions from above, catalyzes market revival. Turin reoriented manufacturing with smart, subtle, and relatively minimal government interventions. And there are plenty of opportunities like this in Detroit. The metropolitan region is packed with companies that supplied parts to the Big Three. Because of the current credit desert, these companies should receive low-interest loans that allow them to reconfigure their plants to produce parts that can be sold to the international auto market--or for other types of machinery. And local government (or NGOs, even) can play the role of industrial planner. That is, they can look across the map and find instances where research institutions and manufacturers should collaborate on new ventures.



Even if Detroit were to rebuild its economy, it would still face a fundamental obstacle to recovery. It is just too big for itself, with a landscape that even locals compare to postwar Dresden. Nearly one-third of the land in the city is empty or unused, and some 80,000 city homes are vacant. European cities faced a similar challenge. After decades of population and job loss, they were saddled with an excess of housing and too much unproductive, polluted, or vacant land. This derelict land was as much an economic problem as a physical one, depressing property values and repelling new investments. So these cities reconfigured themselves into denser communities, recycling polluted industrial lands, laying down new rail and transit infrastructure, and investing in projects that created demand not only for particular parcels, but also for the wider urban area.

This physical regeneration, much more than economic reorientation, is where governments have a major role. The great object lesson is Bilbao, Spain. As in Turin, leaders--in this case, the Basque regional government, worried about the condition of its largest city--created a master plan and two public-private agencies to support it, one of which, Bilbao Ria, focused specifically on managing large-scale land-cleanup-and-revitalization projects. The master plan identified four swaths of the city for targeted reinvention, including a major parcel of riverfront land, which was cut off from the central city by unused shipping and transportation infrastructure.

Bilbao Ria spent 184 million euros on site cleanup; the provincial and regional governments kicked in 144 million euros--the full cost--for the Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim museum. But the city also created a new metro system and a tram line for the revitalized waterfront. Airports, ports, and regional train systems were also modernized. And, critically, the city spent two decades and one billion euros (mostly from higher levels of government) on a new water-sanitation system to keep untreated household and industrial waste out of the river, which would make waterfront development possible.

Detroit has to change physically because it simply cannot sustain its current form. It was built for two million people, not the 900,000 that live there today. Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston could all fit within Detroit’s 139-square-mile boundary, and there would still be 20 square miles to spare. Even more than its European counterparts, which had much less severe population losses, Detroit will have to become a different kind of city, one that challenges our idea of what a city is supposed to look like, and what happens within its boundaries. The new Detroit might be a patchwork of newly dense neighborhoods, large and small urban gardens, art installations, and old factories transformed into adventure parks. The new Detroit could have a park, much like Washington’s Rock Creek Park, centered around a creek on its western edge, and a system of canals from the eastern corner of the city to Belle Isle in the south. The city has already started on the restoration of the Detroit River waterfront, largely bankrolled by private philanthropy. The city has created a new “land bank,” which can take control of vacant and derelict properties and start the process of clearing land, remediating environmental contamination, and figuring out what to do next with the parcel, whether that’s making it into a small park, deeding it to a neighbor to create a well-tended yard, or assembling large tracts of land for redevelopment or permanent green space. There are plans for a new transit line along Woodward Corridor, which, if coupled with smart land use and zoning changes, could spark an entirely different pattern of development. Expanded commuter-rail service to Ann Arbor is in the works, and the Obama administration is weighing a high-speed-rail plan that would link Detroit to Chicago and other Midwestern cities.

Like a neglected brownstone or a ramshackle Victorian, Detroit has good bones. Already, the city is attracting social entrepreneurs who are excited by the challenge of fundamentally remaking a city. Philanthropies are pouring in money and imagination--the rail system on the Woodward Corridor is partially funded by tens of millions of dollars from two major foundations, and other philanthropies are trying to develop a comprehensive educational plan.

The federal government could support the physical regeneration of Detroit by footing the bill for the development of a new city plan focused on reconfiguring land uses and economic activity around the reality of population loss. More radically, the feds could overhaul that tired cliché of urban policy: the community-development block grant. They should require Detroit and other cities to use these grants (and other federal, state, and local resources) for reclaiming, reconfiguring, and reusing vacant and abandoned land and housing. The federal government could make Detroit a pilot city for land recycling and demolition projects. Scores of other industrial cities have too much land and outdated infrastructure. The foreclosure-smacked boomtowns of the sunbelt are also grappling with their own version of this legacy of excess.



European leaders understood that recovery requires at least a generation. This is a tough realization in places that are not just in economic decline, but are often caught in a kind of mass state of depression. Detroit’s leaders must manage expectations. It took half a century for the city to get this low. It won’t turn around in a four-year political cycle. Turin’s revival started with the mayoral election of 1993; Bilbao’s physical transformation began in 1990. And both cities are still in the process of recovery. The policies that salvaged these cities are perfectly compatible with the American grain of politics--but the patience required for their success is not.

Washington has already bailed out Detroit--at least, the companies that once turned the city into the quintessential American metropolis of the industrial age. When the government justified injecting money into the firms, it made an implicit argument about the country--that these companies are essential to our future economic greatness, that their loss would be an unbearable symbolic defeat. The same holds for the city that houses them. Even after losing one million people, Detroit is still the eleventh-largest city in the country and, before the auto crisis, it was the source of more than half of Michigan’s GDP. To allow Detroit to continue its march toward death would come at significant costs, both human and economic. For Detroit to die, especially in the face of such tested methods for saving cities, would be an American tragedy.

Bruce Katz is director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Jennifer Bradley is a senior research associate with the Metropolitan Policy Program. This essay draws on research undertaken by Brookings and the London School of Economics for a joint project on older industrial cities.
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 7:10 PM
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It was built for two million people, not the 900,000 that live there today. Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston could all fit within Detroit’s 139-square-mile boundary, and there would still be 20 square miles to spare.
That brings up an interesting question, could Detroit be broken down into smaller cities? That way one city government isnt trying to take care of all of that land. It might be an interesting way to take on the problems of Detroit, create a "metro government" that helps to do projects that effect the area as a whole, then have "local government" to take care of all the individual cities that could be created from Detroit.

Just an idea, especially when it is put in perspective of size compared to much larger cities.
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 8:47 PM
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That brings up an interesting question, could Detroit be broken down into smaller cities? That way one city government isnt trying to take care of all of that land. It might be an interesting way to take on the problems of Detroit, create a "metro government" that helps to do projects that effect the area as a whole, then have "local government" to take care of all the individual cities that could be created from Detroit.

Just an idea, especially when it is put in perspective of size compared to much larger cities.
Changing the jurisdictions wouldn't change the oversupply.
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 9:24 PM
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Changing the jurisdictions wouldn't change the oversupply.
So they should bulldoze the non needed parts of the city, replant the forest and start over?

My suggestion was not about the current oversupply, heck maybe some of those oversupplied areas should be dis-incorporated and returned back to the county to create a smaller boundary for Detroit to work with it??
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 9:50 PM
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That brings up an interesting question, could Detroit be broken down into smaller cities? That way one city government isnt trying to take care of all of that land. It might be an interesting way to take on the problems of Detroit, create a "metro government" that helps to do projects that effect the area as a whole, then have "local government" to take care of all the individual cities that could be created from Detroit.

Just an idea, especially when it is put in perspective of size compared to much larger cities.
Well... Detroit wasn't really built for 2 million people. I hate when these types of articles try to argue their position from that perspective. Detroit was above the 2 million person mark a couple years at best (but most likely only stayed there for a few months). It didn't operate that large for a generation, or even a decade. It's not the same as say New York dropping below the 7 million resident mark, since NYC has been above 7 million residents for the better part of a century.

Furthermore, Detroit at 900,000 residents isn't that sparsely populated. The city's total density is still a bit higher than most major Sun Belt cities. And when you adjust it to reflect the estimated abandoned land area, the density jumps up to levels comparable with cities like D.C., and Baltimore. Now that ain't to say there isn't a major problem in Detroit. But I am saying that I don't think things like breaking up the city (the last thing Metro Detroit needs is a more community fragmentation), or shutting down neighborhoods will not do much to fix the situation. What Detroit sorely needs now more than anything is investment into its urban infrastructure, namely the public transportation infrastructure.
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 9:56 PM
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And when you adjust it to reflect the estimated abandoned land area, the density jumps up to levels comparable with cities like D.C., and Baltimore.
I hate this type of argument... unless it's true that virtually all the abandoned land in Detroit is in one contiguous section of the city while the rest operates at Baltimore-esque levels. And what if we also compensated for the abandoned land area in Baltimore in order to inflate that city's density figure further?
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 9:59 PM
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Since family sizes have fallen dramatically (everywhere), a drop from 2,000,000 to (guessing) 1,400,000 would be status quo. It's the other 500,000 (also guessing) where the problem lies.

Places that have maintained or grown their populations since the 50s and 60s have added enormous amounts of new housing.
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 10:05 PM
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I hate this type of argument... unless it's true that virtually all the abandoned land in Detroit is in one contiguous section of the city while the rest operates at Baltimore-esque levels. And what if we also compensated for the abandoned land area in Baltimore in order to inflate that city's density figure further?
Well, if Baltimore has that type of abandoned land then do so. I don't really know Baltimore enough to judge how much abandonment there is in the city.

I do know that D.C. doesn't have equivalent amounts of abandonment to Detroit. So the effective density would still be in the same ballpark.
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2009, 11:13 PM
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So they should bulldoze the non needed parts of the city, replant the forest and start over?
that's very Koolhausian of you to suggest...well, sort of.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:43 AM
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For much of the United States, Detroit has become shorthand for failure--not just because of the dilapidation of the town’s iconic industry, but because the entire metropolis seems like a dystopian disaster.
As someone who grew up in metro Detroit, these drive-by articles are so tiresome. Bruce Katz seriously sounds like a jerk, and should probably stay cloistered at Brookings.

For the article as a while, are they referring to city limits only?

Because Oakland County, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, is the largest and most important suburban county in metro Detroit. If billionaire-laden places like Bloomfield Hills are a "dystopian disaster", I would like their thoughts on real s---holes like Manaus or Tegucigalpa.

Is there a continguous areas of 1.2 million people anywhere in Europe with Oakland County's median income?
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A call to 911 will bring a response, on average, in about 20 minutes. (Such emergency calls are depressingly common in the metropolitan area: There are 1,220 violent crimes per 100,000 people.)
Again, conflating the city and metropolitan area. Assuming the stat is true it applies to city limits only, which is less than 20% of the metro area (and maybe 2% of the professional classes).
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And, throughout the European continent’s industrial belt--the parts that are distinctly not Disneyland for American yuppies--there are many other examples of old redoubts of manufacturing (Bilbao, Leipzig, Sheffield, St. Étienne) that have enjoyed the very same sort of dramatic recoveries. This is not to oversell the optimism that these cities should inspire. They will never recover their full manufacturing might or swell with quite so many residents as before. Still, they represent realistic models for the rescue of Detroit.
This is silly. None of thse cities are desirable models. Leipzig and Bilbao are positively developing world in comparison to the average metro Detroiter. Leipzig is at something like 60% of German median income, while metro Detroit is right at the U.S. national median. And U.S. median income is considerably higher than that of Germany.
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It is strangely fitting that the recent auto bailout endowed Detroit with a new corporate patron hailing from Turin, Italy. Like Detroit, Turin was once a grand capital of the auto industry, which accounted for 80 percent of the city’s industrial activity, most of it with Fiat, Chrysler’s new owner.
Absurd. Detroit is THE global automotive capital, even today. Turin is a comparatively minor regional manufacturing center.
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These higher-level governments should also insist that the city and its suburbs end their wasteful bickering and act as one on issues that naturally cross borders, like transportation and the environment. The region’s elected officials should be strongly encouraged to replicate the metropolitan mayors’ caucuses in Chicago and Denver, or a strong metropolitan transportation and land-use agency, as in Portland or Minneapolis.
What are they talking about? Since when have Washington bureaucrats forced municipalities to act as a single entity? No American metro has this arrangement.

And what are they talking about with Chicago and Denver? Since when do they have powerful metropolitan governing bodies? How are they any less fragmented than Detroit?
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Business will never have faith in Detroit with local government in its current condition and with the metropolis so riven by old city-suburb divisions.
And the more recent American boomtowns, places like Austin, Raleigh-Durham, and Orlando, don't have municipal divisions?

How is the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill-Cary-Who Knows What Else region less fragmented than Metro Detroit? What proportion of metro Orlando actually lives in, works in, or has anything to do with, the City of Orlando?
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Even if Detroit were to rebuild its economy, it would still face a fundamental obstacle to recovery. It is just too big for itself, with a landscape that even locals compare to postwar Dresden.
And yet Detroit city limits have 50% higher population density than Portland, and nearly twice the population density of Atlanta. I guess Portland must be far too big for itself, and needs to demolish half the city?
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Bilbao Ria spent 184 million euros on site cleanup; the provincial and regional governments kicked in 144 million euros--the full cost--for the Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim museum.
Translation: Spanish (read EU, since Spain has been a big net recipient state) taxpayers paid for 100% of this tourist attraction.

This is Brookings' brilliant urban regeneration scheme? Have American taxpayers fund 100% of a major tourist trap in downtown Detroit?

I guess museum gift shop jobs and hot dog vendors can replace the 500,000 lost union jobs in Michigan?
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 6:53 AM
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I hate this type of argument... unless it's true that virtually all the abandoned land in Detroit is in one contiguous section of the city while the rest operates at Baltimore-esque levels. And what if we also compensated for the abandoned land area in Baltimore in order to inflate that city's density figure further?
Actually, a huge chunk (if not most) of the abandonment is located on the Lower East Side and the Near West Side. Detroit is unique in that most of its densest neighborhoods are actually on the perimeter of the city. You have the greater downtown area, then a ring of abandonment, and then the rest of the city, which is relatively dense.

For example, Detroit's Far East Side has a population of over 150,000 in less than 15 sq. mi. While you can find the occasional boarded up house and maybe a few pockets of blight, for the most part that area is relatively intact. There's also the Central West Side which has over 75,000 people in less than 7.5 sq. mi. There's a lot more blight in this area, but the overall density is high. The Mexicantown/Vernor-Springwells area has over 30,000 people in just over 2 sq. mi. It is undoubtedly the densest area of Detroit, despite the fact that it is surrounded by industry on all sides.

Then you have the Far West Side which is basically everything west of Livernois Ave and north of the city of Dearborn. It covers an area of about 49 sq. mi. and has a population of over 361,000. The density is over 7,400 ppsm. While there are plenty of pockets of blight, the only truly largescale area of abandonment is Brightmoor at the far western edge of the city.

If that area somehow broke off from Detroit to become the city of "West Detroit" it would be one of the 50 largest cities in the U.S. Of those 50 cities, it would rank #11 for population density and would have 2x the median density (3,694 ppsm) of the group.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 9:09 AM
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that's very Koolhausian of you to suggest...well, sort of.
Funny you say that because I actually like his work and admire much of his writings....not everything, but a good portion of it to say I like his theories.

hudkina, maybe there is something in this idea of creating a smaller Detroit with a reclaimed forest belt around the city, then having the outer ring of Detroit broken up into individual cities.

I am guessing that would help reduce the strain on the city with the large sections of the city that is currently creating much of the problems there.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:37 PM
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Funny you say that because I actually like his work and admire much of his writings....not everything, but a good portion of it to say I like his theories.

hudkina, maybe there is something in this idea of creating a smaller Detroit with a reclaimed forest belt around the city, then having the outer ring of Detroit broken up into individual cities.

I am guessing that would help reduce the strain on the city with the large sections of the city that is currently creating much of the problems there.
This would not work for two reasons:

First, the most stable and wealthiest neighborhoods of the city are closer to the periphery of the city. Breaking the city up would compound the problem because you would separate the neighborhoods that need the most help from the tax base. (When you hear stories in the media about Detroit not having any chain grocers in the city, this is why. The chains have figured out that if they build right outside of the city limits then they can save on taxes, insurance and construction costs, but still be patronized by city residents.)

Second, municipal budgets all across Metro Detroit are under strain in part because they are wasting so much money providing redundant services instead of resource sharing. Breaking up the central city into more communities would only compound this problem too.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:41 PM
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The problem is that the vast majority of Detroit's tax dollars come from the Far East Side and the Far West Side. Those are the areas that need to stay a part of the city if it is to succeed. It's the poorer, inner-ring neighborhoods, which are severely blighted that are the biggest drain on the city. The best option would be to create a Metropolitan government. Create an urban growth boundary on the perimeter and demolish the inner areas.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 3:49 PM
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For the article as a while, are they referring to city limits only?
I think it's pretty clear that the article is only about the city.

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Again, conflating the city and metropolitan area. Assuming the stat is true it applies to city limits only, which is less than 20% of the metro area (and maybe 2% of the professional classes).
That's still pretty bad for a city of Detroit's size.

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And the more recent American boomtowns, places like Austin, Raleigh-Durham, and Orlando, don't have municipal divisions?

How is the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill-Cary-Who Knows What Else region less fragmented than Metro Detroit? What proportion of metro Orlando actually lives in, works in, or has anything to do with, the City of Orlando?
I may be mistaken, but perhaps the author is also talking about class divisions as well. Certainly there are divisions in the NC Triangle area, but those stark class/racial divisions do not exist there at all. I suppose Durham would be the "Detroit" of that region as it has the highest Black population and has the most crime, but there's still no comparing it with the Detroit region in that regard.

I'm not arguing in favor of this article overall (although it seems to make some good points), but I just wanted to respond to those points in particular.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 5:56 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
And what are they talking about with Chicago............ How are they any less fragmented than Detroit?
one of the things that helps keep chicago less fragmented with its burbs than detroit boils down to the good fortune of the size imbalance of the counties in northeast illinois. cook county is a gargantuan beast, and it's 5.4 million people constitute 62% of chicagoland's 8.7 million urban area population. the rest of the counties in chicagoland are all relatively small (all under 1 million people) and thus they are all quite weak in relation to the city and cook county, which is a different set-up than you see in metro detroit where oakland county officials frequently butt heads with wayne county/detroit on a whole host of issues.

chicago was also lucky not to have an 8-mile road situation where the city limits also constitute county limits (technically, a small bit of ohare airport does cross into dupage county, but nobody lives at the airport). on all sides, chicago's city limits abut suburbs that are still a part of the same county that the city lies in.

and lastly, chicago's massive commuter rail system maintains a much bigger focus on downtown chicago as the unequaled epicenter of the entire metro area in terms of employment. a significantly larger percentage of suburban chicagoans have jobs in downtown compared to suburban detroiters. this helps foster more of a "well, we're all in this together so we might as well try to get along" mentality than you see in metro detroit.

now, all of that isn't to say that chicago and it's burbs don't have their disagreements, they certainly do, and there are even attemtps that pop up from time to time by some suburban areas of cook county to secede (but they're always DOA), but all things considered, in my opinion chicagoland (city and burbs) does operate as a more cohesive metropolitan area than metro detroit.
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Dec 10, 2009 at 6:22 PM.
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  #17  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 6:01 PM
Bootstrap Bill Bootstrap Bill is offline
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If I won the lotto, I'd buy up as much downtown Detroit property as I could afford. I think the city is on the verge of a major comeback. Ten years from now we'll be talking about the new billionaires that were made over the rebirth of Detroit.

I'll bet Donald Trump will be one of the major players.
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  #18  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 6:58 PM
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So from the sounds of it, wealthier people have moved outward in the city leaving poorer people within the city...sounds like a typical case for most cities in this country...so I guess it would be important for the city to refocus inward, rail leading into the city, new developments that are designed to make urban life attractive to wealthy people.

That is basically what Portland did when building its Pearl District. It was once a dead warehouse district that the city rebuilt into high end condos and now it is a clean version of an urban area. NYC did this with the construction of Battery Park City, which is urban living without all the dirtiness of urban living.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2009, 8:38 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by urbanlife View Post
So from the sounds of it, wealthier people have moved outward in the city leaving poorer people within the city...sounds like a typical case for most cities in this country...so I guess it would be important for the city to refocus inward, rail leading into the city, new developments that are designed to make urban life attractive to wealthy people.

That is basically what Portland did when building its Pearl District. It was once a dead warehouse district that the city rebuilt into high end condos and now it is a clean version of an urban area. NYC did this with the construction of Battery Park City, which is urban living without all the dirtiness of urban living.
On a simplistic level, this is exactly what happened. The Detroit area also grew a lot faster in area than it did in population, which is why there is so much abandonment in the older areas of the city.

The land area of Metro Detroit has grown by about 40-50% over the last 50 years, while the population of Metro Detroit has grown by less than 10%. At the same time, Detroit/Michigan also heavily neglected the public transportation networks that allowed the denser neighborhoods closer to the city core to exist. So not only did it become cheaper to move to outer neighborhoods, it also became more practical (especially after the private industry jobs left downtown for the suburbs).
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Old Posted Dec 11, 2009, 2:06 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bootstrap Bill View Post
If I won the lotto, I'd buy up as much downtown Detroit property as I could afford. I think the city is on the verge of a major comeback. Ten years from now we'll be talking about the new billionaires that were made over the rebirth of Detroit.

I'll bet Donald Trump will be one of the major players.
What? A Trump Tower in Detroit He's be better off throwing money out the window as he drives across the bridge.
I could see a small on in Windsor, right next to the Casino, maybe.
Detroit is not a walkable neighborhood at all, it's not cohesive other than Woodward and the compact Financial/Theater district, NO reliable useful transportation, (no the people mover doesn't count unless you want a tour of Abandon bldgs., private lofts. or go in a circle that takes 20 minutes.)
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