An interesting perspective from an East Detroiter, MD, astronaut

[corktownyuppie]

obviously, the devil's in the details. but, it's all true. It's time for everyone to just say goodbye to something that will never be again.

http://detnews.com/article/20110721/...20-miles-above

A view of Detroit from 220 miles above
Jerry M. Linenger/ U.S. astronaut/Mir cosmonaut
Probably the greatest gift that I received from traveling in space was a change in perspective.
During my 132 days on the Russian space station Mir, I was as isolated as I had never been in my life. My crewmates spoke no English, we only talked in Russian to mission control Moscow, and the communication system aboard the creaky spaceship was static-filled, unreliable and sporadic. I was cut off, removed from mankind, stuck with myself. I learned a lot about myself, a lot about human nature.
Juxtapose that profound isolation with a most spectacular, grand view of the world. One cannot help but look at the "big picture," to think strategically when viewing planet Earth as a whole. Whenever I do not fully understand something, perhaps a conflict between people or between nations, my space-acquired instinct makes me step back, look at the bigger picture. If I still do not understand, I step back farther and re-examine the problem. Understanding follows.
I saw Detroit from space. What a setting! The Great Lakes are indeed well-named: the greatest collection of freshwater on Earth. At the limits of my visual acuity, I could make out a hairline crack in the earth — I-75 lined with the contrasting white of snow. Squinting, I could just make out the Ambassador Bridge. Looking more broadly, the curvature of the Earth and half of our country.
And of course, the mitten of Michigan looks, well, like God took special care and planted his left hand on our special place on the planet.
The space shuttle program after 30 years of incredible highs [[deploying, repairing and upgrading the Hubble Space Telescope, capturing broken satellites, launching planetary probes and building the sprawling, permanently manned International Space Station) and a couple of heartbreaking lows [[Challenger and Columbia tragedies) is coming to an end.
It was a tough decision for NASA that boiled down to economics: You cannot build the next generation spacecraft without phasing out the present one. You cannot be bold and move technology and mankind forward without letting go of the past.
Use your limited resources — brainpower, engineering facilities and budget — wisely. Short-term sacrifice [[the inability of the U.S. to send a person to space for perhaps as long as five years) for long-term progress [[the ability to send an astronaut to Mars and beyond).


Read the rest at The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110721/...#ixzz1Sm04xWoe

[Hypestyles]

parts of it are intriguing.. though I disagree with the part about "minimizing regulation".. Though I do agree that turning big sections of land back to nature is a good idea.. no reason why Detroit can't have more contiguous, dense, thriving neighborhoods surrounded by well-kept forest lands and farmlands.. trying to automatically get back to 2,000,000 people is a Herculean crapshoot, and most people know it, but have problems openly saying it..

[canuck]

Well done Corktownyuppie! It is nice to have opinions from various perspectives. Thanks for the article.

[rjk]

No offense to this guy, but people not nearly as smart as him have been basically been suggesting the same thing for many years. Coming up with an idea is the easy part, we can all do that. It's implementing the plan and dealing with all the hurdles that is the difficult part.

It's just like the outstate urban planners who came to Detroit a few years ago and said the city needs to have the nighborhoods consolidated and the less populated areas need to be turned into green spaces. Thanks a lot, now if they could just find a way to come up with the money, a way to persuade people to move among many other problems involved with trying to shrink a city we'll be all set.

The devil is in the details is right.

[DinNC]

Well said rjk. I would love to get details on how Mayor Bing plans on exacuting his Detroit works plan. I think it's a great Idea to make parts of the city more dense and leave others for nature. Although, I don't agree on leasing the land to logging companies. Natural wooded area with parks mixed in would be great. Build all around them but don't touch them. We'll just have to wait and see the the mayor has to say.