Detroit's City Council Districts Decided

**MSUguy** · January-20-12, 02:30 PM

After a years-long battle, and a city charter revision requiring it, the Detroit City Council on Monday will publicly unveil four draft maps of seven council districts from which members will be elected next year.

[Proposed district images added by moderator] The proposed districts, if approved, would require most current council members to move to continue to serve, City Council President Charles Pugh said in an exclusive interview this week. At least four live in one proposed district.None of the proposed maps includes a downtown district, elevating concerns that the fate of Detroit’s corporate heart will compete in one district against neighborhoods. And each of the four maps includes a southwest district, which could lead to the election of the city’s first Hispanic city council member.“The overriding goal was to follow state law,” Pugh said. “There is no way to draw the lines due to race, religion, income, influence of your neighborhood. Obviously, nobody wants to create pockets of poverty or pockets of wealth. But we also want to comport with state law. You err on the side of state law.http://www.freep.com/article/2012012...text|FRONTPAGE''I don't see major any issues with them, but I'm inclined to pick 1 or 2 as they keep downtown and midtown together.1.http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4184121120.PDF2.http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4184122120.PDF

3.http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4184123120.PDF

4.http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4184124120.PDF

**Brian1979** · January-20-12, 02:43 PM

This is a good move indeed. This should have been done years ago, now we just need a real city council.

**Danny** · January-20-12, 03:21 PM

It won't be no coucil by districts if Governor Snyder, the Nerd appoints a Emergency Manager.

**Richard** · January-20-12, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by Brian1979

This is a good move indeed. This should have been done years ago, now we just need a real city council.

Exactly , just think if the neighborhoods had representation years ago how nice they probably would be now,city council members must live in and fight for their district if they do not then they get voted out by the residents that are in the district . It gives the voice back to the residents provided they speak up.

**Gistok** · January-20-12, 04:11 PM

Some of these are pretty unusual... such as #4 that has St. John Hospital [[far east as you can go) and includes, east riverfront, Belle Isle, RenCen, Greektown and Eastern Market...

**DetroitPlanner** · January-20-12, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by MSUguy

I don't see major any issues with them, but I'm inclined to pick 1 or 2 as they keep downtown and midtown together.

If they were split between two districts and they share common needs then why on earth would you only want one representative on council???

Just as well. Better for the neighborhoods.

**Hypestyles** · January-20-12, 04:25 PM

interesting.. so are the designs going to a formal public vote or is it just based on general "feedback" at these public meetings and whoever makes a phone call or sends a letter?

**Detroitnerd** · January-20-12, 04:33 PM

Actually, I'm pretty satisfied with the districts.

**maxx** · January-20-12, 04:40 PM

Doesn't it say something about the pool of potential council candidates that four are from one part of the city? Are these districts really going to improve the council?

**DetroiterOnTheWestCoast** · January-20-12, 05:36 PM

You can vote in a freep poll if you follow that link

**Detroitnerd** · January-20-12, 05:55 PM

I expect there will be some shady dealings where carpetbags will "move from" Palmer Park to some in-name-only house where they spend a couple hours a week. How will we enforce district representation? That's another question we haven't answered.

**Richard** · January-20-12, 06:05 PM

Originally Posted by Detroitnerd

I expect there will be some shady dealings where carpetbags will "move from" Palmer Park to some in-name-only house where they spend a couple hours a week. How will we enforce district representation? That's another question we haven't answered.

That's when a thing called civic duty steps in ,if you know about it make it heard or recall them and vote somebody else in that will care about their district and who lives there.

**laphoque** · January-20-12, 11:16 PM

Originally Posted by Richard

That's when a thing called civic duty steps in ,if you know about it make it heard or recall them and vote somebody else in that will care about their district and who lives there.

Exactly. It's incumbent on the citizens to watch this. And I think they will. People are aware of a councilmember in their neighborhood. Cockrel would show up to blockparties.

I'm pleasantly surprised. Now if we can get rid of the council's drivers and somehow force them to make use of the bus. Then we might have a viable transit system.

**Brian1979** · January-21-12, 01:07 AM

Originally Posted by Richard

Exactly , just think if the neighborhoods had representation years ago how nice they probably would be now,city council members must live in and fight for their district if they do not then they get voted out by the residents that are in the district . It gives the voice back to the residents provided they speak up.

It's almost like making seven different cities, but it'd all be one big city. I think this is going to do a lot to rebuild Detroit if this is done correctly. Now we need to get going on mass transit.

**antongast** · January-21-12, 01:23 AM

Just eyeballing these, the third one seems the most logical to me in terms of which areas are put together. It has the fewest votes in the poll, though.

**East Detroit** · January-21-12, 07:35 AM

I like option #3.

Gives the far northeast side its own representative who would concentrate solely on that area [[not Belle Isle or other monuments, just the neighborhoods).

**313WX** · January-21-12, 09:20 AM

Originally Posted by East Detroit

I like option #3.

Gives the far northeast side its own representative who would concentrate solely on that area [[not Belle Isle or other monuments, just the neighborhoods).

Agreed.

Plus, the NE neighborhoods bordering 8 Mile wouldn't be lumped together with all the poorer neighborhoods [[I.E. City Airport area). At least the district with East English Village/Morningside in this choice and the other ones would share some of these areas.

I also agree #4 would be pretty awful.

**Richard** · January-21-12, 09:22 AM

Thanks for posting the images here.

I would agree on #3 also because by splitting up the CBD it eliminates what would be the most powerful politically at this time and does give the rest of the neighborhoods a better chance,based on the areas that you guys talk about here it looks like there are in each district a stable area mixed with unstable areas which would give at least a solid base to work with .

You need to have strong supporting neighborhoods in order to have a strong core,in the past many cities dumped millions into rebuilding the core only to find out that they then had a rebuilt core surrounded by neglect .

**401don** · January-21-12, 11:04 AM

I realize they are designed to do this but these district maps really demonstrate how evenly spread out the population is and how impossible any shrinking of the city on a large scale would be. I somehow thought the north east quadrant of the city had less population than the rest.

**EastsideAl** · January-21-12, 12:41 PM

I like #2, which seems to me to do the best job of having contiguous, reasonably compact, and sensible districts, while also mostly keeping areas with common interests together, including downtown. It links us here on the lower part of east side with downtown and midtown, which we are more tied to than we are with the areas to our north.

**Jason** · January-21-12, 01:02 PM

I don't think any of them are perfect. I think a combination of #2 [[for keeping greater downtown together), and #3 [[represents the other neighborhoods better) are best.

In the article a point was made about how by law you can't segregate based on various demographics. But at the same time those different demographics have different interests that need to be represented. If you mix downtown with anything, downtown's interests will overpower the rest, and the same goes for poor neighborhoods and not-poor neighborhoods.

Part of the problem is that the populations need to be balanced. This isn't how it's going to happen, but if it were up to me, the districts would be completely based on the similarity of interests, without any regard to population. And then all of the council member's votes would be weighted based on the population of their district. This would improve the districting, and it would encourage the council members to work to increase the populations of their districts, in order to increase their political influence.

**antongast** · January-21-12, 01:37 PM

Originally Posted by EastsideAl

I like #2, which seems to me to do the best job of having contiguous, reasonably compact, and sensible districts, while also mostly keeping areas with common interests together, including downtown. It links us here on the lower part of east side with downtown and midtown, which we are more tied to than we are with the areas to our north.

2 is good on the east side and downtown, but I don't like how it splits up the NW side. The Joy/Wyoming area has more in common with Warrendale and the rest of the Joy/Tireman corridor than it does with SW Detroit, and Grandmont, Rosedale Park, and Old Redford should all be in the same district, IMO. That one snake-shaped district connecting Warrendale to the Grandmont/GR-Greenfield area to the Dexter/Joy area just looks bizarre and gerrymandered.

**Scottathew** · January-21-12, 02:40 PM

I hate dividing cities into districts like this. This happened in Warren last year and they Gerrymandered the hell out of the districts.

These proposals don't see too bad though.

**Bham1982** · January-21-12, 02:49 PM

I don't think the SW District will necessarily result in Latino representation. There are few Latinos north of Michigan Ave., and that's half the district.

And NW is kinda screwed. There should be a way that the middle class parts of NW form a district. Right now they're grouped in with poverty strcken zones under all four options. But maybe there isn't quite enough folks [[the needed 100,000) to form a fully contiguous middle class district.

**BrushStart** · January-21-12, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by Jason

I don't think any of them are perfect. I think a combination of #2 [[for keeping greater downtown together), and #3 [[represents the other neighborhoods better) are best.

In the article a point was made about how by law you can't segregate based on various demographics. But at the same time those different demographics have different interests that need to be represented. If you mix downtown with anything, downtown's interests will overpower the rest, and the same goes for poor neighborhoods and not-poor neighborhoods.

Part of the problem is that the populations need to be balanced. This isn't how it's going to happen, but if it were up to me, the districts would be completely based on the similarity of interests, without any regard to population. And then all of the council member's votes would be weighted based on the population of their district. This would improve the districting, and it would encourage the council members to work to increase the populations of their districts, in order to increase their political influence.

This is my thought as well.