Are suburbanites aware of how unattractive living in Metro-Detroit is to outsiders?

[swingline]

^That's garbage. . .

This guy is not a "telemarketer." His starting salary is $80k. Are you saying you do not want this kind of person spending money and paying taxes in this state? Your problem is, you would rather live in denial and offer up hyperbole to try and rationalize your ridiculous defense of this failed region. Metro Detroit is a failed region- everyone knows it. I've had clients from all over the world come here on business and tell me how messed up this city is.

Offering up BS about telemarketers getting drunk on buses with whores is a boneheaded thing to say and you know it. You pretend as if most people of all ages and socioeconomic status do not enjoy good restaurants and places to have a drink. Eating and drinking are not exclusively a "frat boy" activity. Wanting to live in a place that isn't visually decaying is a normal desire. Living in a place where other people seem happy is a normal desire. Living in a place where one can enjoy a typical urban-American lifestyle is a normal desire. Living in a region where one can take his family into the city on weekends and have an enjoyable experience is a normal desire. Expecting basic types of infrastructure available in all developed places is a normal desire. Your attitude and lack of recognition of obvious reality however is not normal.

This a good post. The hypersensitive types who feel the need to defend the lifestyle choices of residents in conventionally designed suburbs by attacking folks who urge more investment in denser urban areas are certainly part of the problem. [[Cocky, judgmental urban dwellers can be a problem too.)

To suggest that advocacy for investment in a more urban walkable Detroit is only the brainchild of the fantasy minds of horny Sim City playing 20 somethings exhibits cluelessness about what attracts wealth and capital - and intellectual capital. It's a huge problem for this region when folks with this kind of attitude can influence development policy.

Anecdotally, out of a sample size of perhaps 35 young Michigan college graduates I've met in the past 15 years who relocated out of state to NYC, DC, Chicago, Boston, SF or Minneapolis, no more than 4-5 moved to the suburbs of those regions. Unfortunately, a lot of their parents are the clueless ones who see no irony in the paradox of their offspring's flight from the region while they write letters to the editor whining about an extra $50/yr in property taxes that might support regional transit or cultural institutions.

The trend is beyond dispute. Improving Detroit isn't a zero sum game for the suburbs. But it will take an investment. It won't be easy.

[Bham1982]

Anecdotally, out of a sample size of perhaps 35 young Michigan college graduates I've met in the past 15 years who relocated out of state to NYC, DC, Chicago, Boston, SF or Minneapolis, no more than 4-5 moved to the suburbs of those regions. Unfortunately, a lot of their parents are the clueless ones who see no irony in the paradox of their offspring's flight from the region while they write letters to the editor whining about an extra $50/yr in property taxes that might support regional transit or cultural institutions.

I'm not sure how you get from Point A to Point B.

Your first point is that 21 year olds typically don't buy homes in sprawling suburbs, but rather rent in more urban communities, which should be blindingly obvious and has probably always been true.

Your second point is that their parents don't want to subsidize the DIA, which is apparently ironic, because their offspring don't have three kids and a mortgage yet.

Those same parents were mostly living in more urban communities when they were 21. The Summer of Love wasn't in Canton Township. And their kids will eventually have their own kids and buy a place. That place probaby won't be on Fenkell & Greenfield.

[iheartthed]

I'm not sure how you get from Point A to Point B.

Your first point is that 21 year olds typically don't buy homes in sprawling suburbs, but rather rent in more urban communities, which should be blindingly obvious and has probably always been true.

Your second point is that their parents don't want to subsidize the DIA, which is apparently ironic, because their offspring don't have three kids and a mortgage yet.

Those same parents were mostly living in more urban communities when they were 21. The Summer of Love wasn't in Canton Township. And their kids will eventually have their own kids and buy a place. That place probaby won't be on Fenkell & Greenfield.

Probably won't be in Canton Township either.

ETA: If we are to assume that the city is the source of residents for the suburbs [[which seems to be where your logic was headed).

[gameguy56]

Probably won't be in Canton Township either.

ETA: If we are to assume that the city is the source of residents for the suburbs [[which seems to be where your logic was headed).

I have a feeling the the Pointes, Birmingham, and Lower Woodward corridor are the future for young families. Some may even try to dip their toes in the city. But I have a feeling that the outer suburbs are going to have depressed real estate values for a very long time.

[iheartthed]

I have a feeling the the Pointes, Birmingham, and Lower Woodward corridor are the future for young families. Some may even try to dip their toes in the city. But I have a feeling that the outer suburbs are going to have depressed real estate values for a very long time.

I was thinking more along the lines of Schaumburg, IL, Evanston, IL, Silver Springs, MD, or Tarrytown, NY.

[swingline]

I'm not sure how you get from Point A to Point B.

Your first point is that 21 year olds typically don't buy homes in sprawling suburbs, but rather rent in more urban communities, which should be blindingly obvious and has probably always been true.

Your second point is that their parents don't want to subsidize the DIA, which is apparently ironic, because their offspring don't have three kids and a mortgage yet.

Those same parents were mostly living in more urban communities when they were 21. The Summer of Love wasn't in Canton Township. And their kids will eventually have their own kids and buy a place. That place probaby won't be on Fenkell & Greenfield.

Bham, Point A is far from blindingly obvious to too many SE Michigan baby boomers [[and older) for whom living in anything other than a conventionally designed suburban neighborhood is inconceivable.

You whiffed on Point B.

[TexasT]

Bham, Point A is far from blindingly obvious to too many SE Michigan baby boomers [[and older) for whom living in anything other than a conventionally designed suburban neighborhood is inconceivable.

You whiffed on Point B.

This is my experience. Upon telling older people from SE Michigan that we're moving to Detroit, the first question is, "Which city?" When I tell them actual Detroit, the next comment is "But have you looked at Farmington Hills/Plymouth/Grosse Pointe/Ferndale etc". The in-laws who all live in the burbs are confused as to why we want to live in the city. I'm 29, he's 30, we have no kids, and we live in Wicker Park currently. Should be obvious but it really is a generational thing.

[Bham1982]

Bham, Point A is far from blindingly obvious to too many SE Michigan baby boomers [[and older) for whom living in anything other than a conventionally designed suburban neighborhood is inconceivable.

Well I don't know these people. Most folks of my parents' generation [[and my generation, for that matter) rented small apartments after college. Small rental apartments are overwhelmingly located in older communities.

I never heard of folks buying homes immediately after college, which would make postcollegiate residence in the exurbs exceedingly rare. You don't rent a one bedroom in Oakland Township. You do in Royal Oak or Detroit.

And I still don't get Point B. If the parents had higher taxes to support culture, then their kids wouldn't move to urban areas, and would join them in the exurbs?

[Detroitnerd]

And I still don't get Point B. If the parents had higher taxes to support culture, then their kids wouldn't move to urban areas, and would join them in the exurbs?

Having the option or urban living, in a historical urban core, with a sense of place and identity, doesn't only benefit the urban core. It benefits the people who work there but may not live there. It benefits the parents who don't have to only see their kids over the holidays. It benefits the region by conferring upon it a better reputation. Surprisingly, it will make the nearby suburban housing worth more.

Bham, I'm sure you agree with this idea: "Once the economic downturn ends, Americans will resume their 20th-century thrust outward and seek ever newer greenfield homes on plots of land further and further from the city, transporting themselves back and forth on longer and longer commutes by means of the automobile."

The evidence of generational shifts in taste, the staggering oversupply of that kind of housing, the rising cost of fuel and materials, the increasingly fragile household economy of the average American family, all point to that not being true.

That economic activity has to happen somewhere. Nobody is going to get a job building Pulte homes in Shelby Township anytime soon. Isn't it a fair alternative to rehab houses in Detroit neighborhoods for deal-seeking and hardy urbanites? Or would you sacrifice that economic activity because it doesn't dovetail with what you would like to see or think will happen?

[townonenorth]

Having the option or urban living, in a historical urban core, with a sense of place and identity, doesn't only benefit the urban core. It benefits the people who work there but may not live there. It benefits the parents who don't have to only see their kids over the holidays. It benefits the region by conferring upon it a better reputation. Surprisingly, it will make the nearby suburban housing worth more.

Bham, I'm sure you agree with this idea: "Once the economic downturn ends, Americans will resume their 20th-century thrust outward and seek ever newer greenfield homes on plots of land further and further from the city, transporting themselves back and forth on longer and longer commutes by means of the automobile."

The evidence of generational shifts in taste, the staggering oversupply of that kind of housing, the rising cost of fuel and materials, the increasingly fragile household economy of the average American family, all point to that not being true.

That economic activity has to happen somewhere. Nobody is going to get a job building Pulte homes in Shelby Township anytime soon. Isn't it a fair alternative to rehab houses in Detroit neighborhoods for deal-seeking and hardy urbanites? Or would you sacrifice that economic activity because it doesn't dovetail with what you would like to see or think will happen?

There is nothing worse than oversimplifying a situation, but I will try anyway.

Detroit's whole problem has been crime. From the starting shot of urban flight to the present day, crime has been the leading cause of flight out of the city.
Midtown flourishes because of Wayne State. Absent that institution and it's police force, you would be looking at a hugely less successful area. Attracting college students and young professionals to any given area depends on ensuring that their lives and property are secure.

Detroit has failed in any measure of police protection since the late 70's. So, the loss of population based on a want or need to go farther and farther out to live, just for fun, is rather mawkish. It's not really a racial issue for me, although you will probably say that's the case. I'm an equal opportunity crime victim, having been broken into, robbed, and stolen from from both blacks and whites. The common denominator in all that is that the police did nothing. No arrests, and no improvement in crime.

To expect that people should move back to the city without any improvement in crime and policing is like hitting yourself in the head with a bat, expecting that it won't hurt the next time.

Now comes the fun part. The State legislature, in their infinite wisdom, is gutting the personal property tax for business as I write this. The pile of ugliness that action will unleash on cities across the state will be astounding. We are being led by idiots. Police and fire, libraries, and city governments, all will take another hit. Detroit will too.

[iheartthed]

So another thing that Metro Detroiters [[both urban and suburban) have tendency to do... They put too much emphasis on attracting residents/patrons/visitors from the suburbs as the panacea to save the city. Sure, the city could use residents and money from almost any source, but the suburbs will not save the city. Again, THE SUBURBS WILL NOT SAVE THE CITY. The suburbs will never be a large source of future residents for the city. NEVER. EVER. Until the end of fucking time! So stop saying shit like "if Detroit had a 0% crime rate everyone from Troy to Canton would just rush back into the city". They won't and it's unfair to expect them to do that.

Detroit's survival rests SOLELY on its ability to attract fresh new faces to the metropolitan area. If Detroit cannot do that then Detroit is dead. Detroit has not been able to do that for half a century, which is why Detroit is on life support.

[Detroitnerd]

There is nothing worse than oversimplifying a situation, but I will try anyway.

Detroit's whole problem has been crime. From the starting shot of urban flight to the present day, crime has been the leading cause of flight out of the city.

People have left Detroit for many reasons.

My grandfather, for instance, left Detroit in 1924 or so, getting a lot in what is now Dearborn and building a house on it. He could do that because he had a personal automobile, allowing him to live wherever he wanted. For a while, Detroit could solve the problem of residents who left by simply expanding its borders, but by 1929 it was stopped along all major thoroughfares by cities it could not annex.

The flight from the city accelerated in the postwar period, 1945-1965. This was when Detroit was considered a model city. Was "crime" the major reason for people moving out of Detroit to the suburbs during this time? Not really. There were lots of inducements for people, mostly white people, to move out: GI Bill, freeway construction, etc. This is a compelling story well told in Thomas Sugrue's book The Origins of the Urban Crisis.

Finally, the death knell was the 1967 riot, which was less a race riot than an uprising by black residents of disinvested neighborhoods protesting a police force that was practically an institution of white supremacy. Finally, many of the last white holdouts left.

What happens to a city when the people of means, the homeowners, the people with strong local institutions, churches, money, equity, good jobs, educations, leave a city? When it becomes a city of largely poor, uneducated, poorly socialized people? Then you start to see a lot of crime, my friend.

And so, as a kind of rationalization for abandoning the city, a whole generation of people blamed the criminals living in the city for driving out good people -- even though people had been leaving the city since they could buy a motorcar.

We talk a lot about this on this forum, townone. Feel free to ask some questions about the history, or to read Sugrue's book. You'll find that it is, as you well know, a lot more complicated.

[swingline]

And I still don't get Point B. If the parents had higher taxes to support culture, then their kids wouldn't move to urban areas, and would join them in the exurbs?

To belatedly respond, the irony in the parents' clueless opposition to supporting regional taxes for things like transit and cultural assets lies in the fact that those are the kind of things that attract their college educated children to other urban cities. They consign themselves to complaining about the government trying get them to pay for things they won't use, and about the cost of airfare to San Francisco.

[Bham1982]

To belatedly respond, the irony in the parents' clueless opposition to supporting regional taxes for things like transit and cultural assets lies in the fact that those are the kind of things that attract their college educated children to other urban cities.

I don't think that's true at all. Regionalism isn't a necessary reciepe for success. Nor is public support for high culture.

Successful cities are often less regonalized than those in Michigan. NYC has a metro area that spans four states, and there's no degree of cooperation whatsoever. There are no suburban dollars going to the MET or MOMA. A typical suburbanite in CT or PA would laugh if you asked to raise their local taxes to fund an expansion of the MET.

SF, DC, Boston, etc. all seem to be, if anything, less regionalized than SE Michigan. DC spans three states. the Bay Area is a giant patchwork of competing cities, and Boston is a tiny island in a sea of centuries-old established towns and villages.

Postcollegiate types don't move to Brooklyn or San Francisco because of regionalism or high culture.

They move primary because of jobs, and secondarily, because of the urban environment [[appeals of urbanism itself, massive concentration of dating partners, following their college friends, cities are trendy, etc.).

But, first, they need a job. So, for example, New Orleans is cool and has an interesting urban environment, but without a strong professional market, it doesn't attract many outsiders.

[swingline]

I don't think that's true at all. Regionalism isn't a necessary reciepe for success. Nor is public support for high culture.

Successful cities are often less regonalized than those in Michigan. NYC has a metro area that spans four states, and there's no degree of cooperation whatsoever. There are no suburban dollars going to the MET or MOMA. A typical suburbanite in CT or PA would laugh if you asked to raise their local taxes to fund an expansion of the MET.

SF, DC, Boston, etc. all seem to be, if anything, less regionalized than SE Michigan. DC spans three states. the Bay Area is a giant patchwork of competing cities, and Boston is a tiny island in a sea of centuries-old established towns and villages.

Postcollegiate types don't move to Brooklyn or San Francisco because of regionalism or high culture.

They move primary because of jobs, and secondarily, because of the urban environment [[appeals of urbanism itself, massive concentration of dating partners, following their college friends, cities are trendy, etc.).

But, first, they need a job. So, for example, New Orleans is cool and has an interesting urban environment, but without a strong professional market, it doesn't attract many outsiders.

Of course people don't move somewhere because of regionalism. I didn't suggest that at all. What I did suggest is that only a fool complains about paying for regional assets like transit and cultural attractions and then complains when the absence of such things contributes to their children moving to someplace else, in part, to enjoy such amenities.

As for the concept of regionalism in general, if SE Michigan hopes to compete in this century, regional cooperation on multiple levels will be a necessity. Gorgeous large lot subdivisions in Northville and Oakland Twp. won't attract talent and capital. And the go it alone, pull themselves up by the bootstraps argument directed towards the current Detroit underclass might produce results in say 20-30 years, but probably not. We have to figure something out together even if the solution doesn't directly benefit each one of us individually.