Livernois and McNichols

[Towne Cluber]

Says the guy who makes up stuff all the time.

I think you're playing semantics with what "gates" mean. UDM is surrounded by a FENCE because the area is high crime, no one is disputing that. And while I've been to Columbia's campus, but not Harvard or Yale campus', it seems to me their gates are used for aesthetic purposes as well as security purposes. These colleges are located in very urban areas. Students and locals are almost forced to live together and they do. UDM, though while in a city, is farther from true urbanity and unfortunately needed the fence to keep crime away. Columbia, Harvard, and Yale aren't SURROUNDED by fences and most of their buildings are easily accessible to the public. The cities of NYC, Cambridge, and New Haven would have some serious words if they were. I cannot walk up to a building on UDM's campus like I can at the three Ivy League schools I mentioned.

1. UDM has a mix of gates [[most of campus) as well as fencing [[on the McNichols parking lot and athletic fields side).

2. Most Harvard, Yale, and Columbia buildings are not easily accessible to the public in terms of actual entry. Yes, you can walk up to most of their buildings, but you cannot actually walk in due to key card access.

[dtowncitylover]

2. Most Harvard, Yale, and Columbia buildings are not easily accessible to the public in terms of actual entry. Yes, you can walk up to most of their buildings, but you cannot actually walk in due to key card access.

As I would imagine, but they're not fenced around and they're well integrated with the urban landscape of their respective neighborhoods. One is able to just walk around and easily pass to and fro from the public sphere into the campus. Not so with UDM.

[Towne Cluber]

As I would imagine, but they're not fenced around and they're well integrated with the urban landscape of their respective neighborhoods. One is able to just walk around and easily pass to and fro from the public sphere into the campus. Not so with UDM.

It's pretty hard for UDM to be "well-integrated" with its respective neighborhood of detached single-family homes on two sides and sparsely populated commercial strips on the other two sides.

Also, one can relatively easily pass to and from the UDM campus on foot. Even in a car [[without a parking pass), it really isn't very difficult. I've been simply waved through the guard gate without stopping. If I was stopped, it was simply a matter of naming my destination.

[masterblaster]

None of this is representative of the area in question. You're cherry-picking, hence the disagreement.

If you seek to cherry-pick, you can easily argue that Northville is more urban than NYC. Just pick the downtown Northville intersection and compare to a wooded lot in the south Shore of Staten Island.

In the real world, the U of D neighborhood, and the University District, are suburban in nature, and not typified by multifamily housing, pedestrian oriented retail or apartment blocks.

The center of the Palmer Park Apartments district is a little over a mile from the campus. This is a pleasant bike ride from the campus. This district has 39 apartment buildings - so it is representative of the area's diverse stock.

There are also several apartment buildings along McNichols east of the campus as well

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4173...8i6656!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/place/W+...4b6023!6m1!1e1

Storefronts intermixed as well [[so there was pedestrian-oriented retail)


Concerning Martin Park, all of Baylis Street - from Six Mile to Puritan - are multifamily residences. In addition, Fairfield street, ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE CAMPUS, has MANY two-family flats and duplexes.


The Bagley neighborhood. Adjacent streets in Bagley - Monica, Stoepel, Santa Rosa, Prairie, on and on - are almost all 2-family flats at the south end of the 'hood! Just look at Google Maps!


Just north of the campus are streets filled with 2 family flats - Oak Drive, Quincy, Warrington etc.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4196...8i6656!6m1!1e1


A suburban commercial street is characterized by stripmalls and big box stores. The West McNichols corridor between Livernois and Wyoming Avenues consists of connected storefronts, vacant lots where a few storefronts used to be, and Marygrove College. NOT SUBURBAN - maybe streetcar suburban. The University District is also adjacent to the Avenue of Fashion district - WHICH IS NOT SUBURBAN IN LAYOUT. What are you talking about?

In addition, there is Puritan Avenue - The blocks immediately south of the campus of this commercial street has been bulldozed over the years. But if you go just east of the campus at Fairfield Street, you see storefronts, churches, apartment buildings with ground floor retail - yes pedestrian-oriented.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4100...7i13312!8i6656

[bust]

People just flat out make up stuff on D-Yes. Here's a perfect example. And I love the pulling of the Harvard card, as if Harvard affiliation trumps the ability of any idiot to Google streetview the campus.

If there's no fence at Harvard, or Columbia, or Yale, then there's none at U of D either. It's all in our imagination. Google streetview must be lying. I spent a semester at Harvard and walked through these imaginary gates at least twice a day, headed to Gund Hall.

The entire old campus is gated. Nothing new is gated, because obviously you can place buildings on top of each other; they go on available space. But Harvard [[and Yale and Columbia and many others) were built as totally gated campuses, with only the newer buildings beyond the gates, and this was done long before security concerns. Harvard Square is possibly the liveliest neighborhood in Mass despite this alleged impediment [[and Morningside Heights is probably the liveliest neighborhood in Upper Manhattan despite the gates).

You are the source of so much incorrect information on this forum. Harvard was founded in 1636. The wrought iron fence around Harvard Yard was begun in 1889. By then the University extended well beyond what would later become the fence boundary. Don't believe me, will you find fault with the Harvard Gazette?

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005.../18-gates.html

From the perspective of Harvard's 369-year history, the gates in and around the campus are a relatively new phenomenon. For more than two-thirds of its existence, Harvard had nothing more to guard its perimeter than a low post-and-beam fence. When the Johnston Gate - the initial component of the present-day enclosure - went up in 1889, many decried its towering piers and elaborate ironwork as a pretentious imposition on the school's austere Puritan heritage.

It's a relatively recent addition, and was never intended as a perimeter fence in the first place. Many of Harvard's most iconic buildings stand outside of it, as they did long before the fence was built. It encloses only about 20% of campus today. It is perforated by more than two dozen gates, a few of which aren't used. It was built in pieces over the span of decades. If it had a defensive purpose they wouldn't have taken so long. It was largely intended to bring a design coherence to the historical center of campus. From the Harvard Gazette:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...on-the-screen/

Chicago businessman Samuel Johnston, Class of 1855, bequeathed funds for the first of the Yard’s modern portals. Johnston Gate was completed in 1889. Its Georgian Revival design gave the architecturally eclectic Yard its first aesthetic coherence, and set the tone for all the gates — and many Harvard buildings — to follow.

Famed 19th century architect Charles F. McKim, a Harvard dropout, designed Johnston Gate and kept the project on track despite rising costs and occasional sniping from critics. The gate cost more than $250,000 in today’s dollars, and went over budget, in part because of expensive wrought-iron decorations and fencing. Then there were the more philosophical detractors, who complained that such a gate violated the modest design ethic of Harvard’s Puritan origins. Before 1889, for centuries, the same area had been delineated by a simple, low wooden fence.

When the Johnston Gate was being built, Harvard was on the eve of a revolution in style that would anchor its image for the next century. University authorities began to waver in the face of criticism over that first formal gate.

“I feel that it is no time to be timid,” wrote McKim to nervous Harvard officials in a typed letter. In pen, he added: “Believe me.”

Perforated by so many entrances, so trivial to pass through, the fence serves little defensive purpose. From the first Harvard Gazette article above:

If anything, the gates have become such fixtures in the Harvard landscape that they verge on invisibility. To hurried, preoccupied pedestrians, their details and decorations fade and blur, their inscriptions go unread. They are reduced to mere function, a passageway from the Yard to the street, from the street to the Yard.

Harvard is irrelevant to this discussion, except perhaps to contrast how it did not employ a perimeter fence strategy like the U of D.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But those opinions should be backed up by facts. There is no excuse for falsehoods made up by some emotionally driven individual who pulls them out of their, um... nether mind.

[masterblaster]

[QUOTE=professorscott;488017]

It's sometimes like DYes exists in an alternate universe, where facts are of no consequence.QUOTE]

Yes, like the notion that college students are going to walk three miles to go to lunch or to shop. And having a bicycle is tricky; for one thing, where do you keep it? Dorm rooms, at UDM and everywhere, are small, and a bike takes up a chunk of space. There aren't bike lockers, and if you keep it outside overnight, I promise you it won't be there when you get up in the morning.

It wouldn't be difficult, in any rational urban area, to have a bus line to connect a college campus to its nearest decent-size retail and restaurant area, but in Detroit it is effing impossible.

The students shouldn't have to go those 3 miles to Ferndale. There is a relatively intact and slowly emerging commercial district centered at Livernois and Seven Mile that is only a mile away - so a much closer walk. The city and University and this non-profit should look into encouraging businesses like coffee shops and restaurants to open up in the Avenue of Fashion so that students don't have to cross 8 mile Road as much.

[professorscott]

The students shouldn't have to go those 3 miles to Ferndale. There is a relatively intact and slowly emerging commercial district centered at Livernois and Seven Mile that is only a mile away - so a much closer walk. The city and University and this non-profit should look into encouraging businesses like coffee shops and restaurants to open up in the Avenue of Fashion so that students don't have to cross 8 mile Road as much.

I agree with you on this, but until the 7/Liv area has more for students, Ferndale is where they're going, and driving is how they're getting there. In any reasonable urban area, they'd have transit as an option.

[masterblaster]

I agree with you on this, but until the 7/Liv area has more for students, Ferndale is where they're going, and driving is how they're getting there. In any reasonable urban area, they'd have transit as an option.

What transit option do you propose? The only one I could think of is extending the DDOT's Livernois bus route an additional mile so that it ends at 9 Mile instead of 8 Mile. 9 Mile & Livernois is the western edge of Downtown Ferndale. It would be interesting to see if Ferndale and DDOT could come to some agreement. Maybe the University can assist students in getting monthly bus passes at a reduced rate. From the few times I have used the Livernois bus, it has been on-time and dependable.

[professorscott]

What transit option do you propose? The only one I could think of is extending the DDOT's Livernois bus route an additional mile so that it ends at 9 Mile instead of 8 Mile. 9 Mile & Livernois is the western edge of Downtown Ferndale. It would be interesting to see if Ferndale and DDOT could come to some agreement. Maybe the University can assist students in getting monthly bus passes at a reduced rate. From the few times I have used the Livernois bus, it has been on-time and dependable.

I have a specific answer to the question you posed, and a more general comment. In regard to the Livernois bus, I would extend it through Ferndale to the Royal Oak Transit Center. That gives good connectivity between the west side of Detroit and the near north suburbs. More generally, this jurisdictional insanity that buses mostly all stop at [[or near) an artificial line on a map, whether that makes any sense from a transportation point of view or not, needs to come to an end. Transportation planning needs to focus on where people need to go, and not on whether Adam is allowed to play in Betty's sandbox or not. It reminds me of the seagulls in that Disney movie: "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

[mwilbert]

I have a specific answer to the question you posed, and a more general comment. In regard to the Livernois bus, I would extend it through Ferndale to the Royal Oak Transit Center.

It should certainly go as far as 9 and Livernois. It would make sense for it to continue on to Royal Oak, but I'm not how it should do that. It would be nice if it added service someplace currently underserved.

[Danny]

The center of the Palmer Park Apartments district is a little over a mile from the campus. This is a pleasant bike ride from the campus. This district has 39 apartment buildings - so it is representative of the area's diverse stock.

There are also several apartment buildings along McNichols east of the campus as well

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4173...8i6656!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/place/W+...4b6023!6m1!1e1

Storefronts intermixed as well [[so there was pedestrian-oriented retail)


Concerning Martin Park, all of Baylis Street - from Six Mile to Puritan - are multifamily residences. In addition, Fairfield street, ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE CAMPUS, has MANY two-family flats and duplexes.


The Bagley neighborhood. Adjacent streets in Bagley - Monica, Stoepel, Santa Rosa, Prairie, on and on - are almost all 2-family flats at the south end of the 'hood! Just look at Google Maps!


Just north of the campus are streets filled with 2 family flats - Oak Drive, Quincy, Warrington etc.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4196...8i6656!6m1!1e1


A suburban commercial street is characterized by stripmalls and big box stores. The West McNichols corridor between Livernois and Wyoming Avenues consists of connected storefronts, vacant lots where a few storefronts used to be, and Marygrove College. NOT SUBURBAN - maybe streetcar suburban. The University District is also adjacent to the Avenue of Fashion district - WHICH IS NOT SUBURBAN IN LAYOUT. What are you talking about?

In addition, there is Puritan Avenue - The blocks immediately south of the campus of this commercial street has been bulldozed over the years. But if you go just east of the campus at Fairfield Street, you see storefronts, churches, apartment buildings with ground floor retail - yes pedestrian-oriented.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4100...7i13312!8i6656

I grew up in one of them, On Lawton St. [[ 1977 to 1985) between McNichols and Puritan the whole first block north of the Puritan St. A whole line of 3 family flats on the east end and apts. across the street. I lived upstairs and lived downstairs. In the Martin Park sub-division. Fine block back then. I have black and white neighbors and few Orthodox Jews in the mix. There were more Jewish folks living at Palmer Park apts. and homes. Temple Israel was the last synagogue in the NW Detroit. After the moved to Farmington Hills, MI. in 1980 the Jews move out, too. Replace by homosexuals and crackheads from Highland Park.