History & Future of Regional Planning in SE Michigan

[Danny]

Here is a future regional planning for Michigan FIX THE D--- ROADS! That would the greatest internal improvement plan ever.

[Sandhouse]

There is a lot of history to planning efforts in southeast Michigan, with not a lot to show for it.

I know that the first use of a computerized traffic model was for metropolitan Detroit, in the early 1950s. These massive calculations were one of the first civilian uses of a computer, and I think it was an analog computer. Remember UNIVAC? Before that, elaborate street plans were made for Detroit as early as the 1930s based on counts of vehicle flows. Some old threads on this board covered these publications and the early freeway plans.

Around 1965, Detroit Edison hired Constantinos Doxiadis to prepare a prediction of development trends for the region. This yielded a 2- or 3-volume set of flashy hardbound books, but not much in the way of accurate forecasts. These may still exist in some libraries or archives.

[Jimaz]

...I know that the first use of a computerized traffic model was for metropolitan Detroit, in the early 1950s....

I can believe that. In the 70s we learned a massively complex program that ran on IBM 360s called GPSS. I still have some of the fat paper manuals that came with it. It could simulate simple things like traffic through a gas station. Vehicles were generalized into things called "transactions." I wanted to simulate a nuclear chain reaction but they wouldn't let me for fear it would break something. LOL!

...Remember UNIVAC?....

Why, yes. Yes I do! The 1100 had a weird quirk where a zero could have either a plus or a minus sign. If you didn't account for that it could cause a major problem. At the Wikipeda article they show a few images of the Sperry Star logo. We used to bend its corners into a swastika when we thought the company was getting too repressive. LOL!

Thanks for the memories!