Why hasn't Detroit ever owned up to its urban planning blunders?

[Detroitnerd]

If you had 2 identical 1950 Detroits and you built expressways in one and not the other, would the one without really be a whole lot better than the one with? I think that is what we are debating on this thread.

Maybe that's what you're debating, but it's pointless to do that. How can you say what would happen when something didn't happen? Where's the control? Shit, that's even harder than trying to compare Detroit to New York; at least those both exist for comparison. Comparing two cities that exist to two cities that don't exist is pointless to my mind.

So let's examine your list and see whether they would have been any different if expressways had not been built:

But that's not what I'm trying to do here. That list is a fairly comprehensive list of the many major reasons for Detroit's decline, with expressways being just one bullet point. Aww, shit. Well, I'll try to respond anyway.

ON NO ONE SUPERCITY:

Yes, Detroit's decline would have been slowed due to the presence of a greater, more "diverse" voter base.

No, it's not about diversity. It's about a growing region being able to harness all the growth for the greater good. Compare it to the way other cities consolidated [[Boston, New York in the late 1800s) or the way cities have swallowed their suburbs [[Anchorage) to retain the tax revenue of new growth. The main text to read on this point is Rusk's "Cities without Suburbs."

ON GROWTH BOUNDARIES:

True if you could have stopped people from living where they want, the need for expressways would be less, but that is a big IF.

Again, I'm not talking about expressways. I'm talking about civic failure. When you have a city that has growth boundaries, like San Francisco [[the tip of a peninsula), Pittsburgh [[hemmed in by mountains), Manhattan [[an island surrounded by water) or Montreal [[same), you find that people don't "use up" land and go on to the next fresh parcel. The land values are such that density is important, and the best transit system to serve densely populated areas isn't the automobile. That sets off another chain reaction in development patterns that preserve land value over spatial growth. And that's not a big IF, that's just practical reality. Nobody can live on the water or on a steep slope.
And then there are growth boundaries. That stops developers from just eating up all the new space [[lower construction costs, more profit, etc.) because it forces them to refurbish, repurpose and redevelop land and buildings that would be considered "used up" if there was endless land to consume. Seems to work pretty well in Portland.

ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ATTITUDE THAT CARS ARE BEST FOR EVERYTHING:

And if expressways were not built, the roads would be clogged.

First things first: Cars are not best for everything. I'll summarize something I've posted here before. By placing every burden on the car, you make it unsuitable for what it does best: curb-to-curb transit. If you have fully functioning heavy rail, light rail, buses, foot traffic, airports and everything integrated into a plan, you free up the street for emergency vehicles, delivery trucks and taxis. Traffic jams are the result of making automobiles do it all. Instead of helping people with a mode that's well-suited to any activity, we make them use cars for everything.
Also, expressways do not alleviate traffic. They generate it. Every time you build an expressway, it fills up with cars. And then, seeing that as the justification for expanding it, the road is expanded. Then it fills up with more cars. Then you expand it again. This has been proven and demonstrated in urban planning classes. Only in the United States do we ignore this. To some extent, you can say that the reason we have traffic jams is because we have no plan other than laying down concrete and putting more cars on the road.

ON EISENHOWER'S INTERSTATE PLAN:

Passed by the will of the people.

It is a gross oversimplification to say that the highway plan was passed by the will of the people. It was never up for a referendum. The representatives voted for it. And few people knew what it meant. Even Eisenhower didn't realize that they were intending to ram interstates THROUGH American cities. He thought they were supposed to be only from city to city. Anyway, who cares if it was passed with the will of the people, way back then, and most of them dead today? We are the ones who see what it has wrought, so we have just as much say. In a way, we're much better suited to decide if we will what it has wrought.

ON DETROIT DUMPING ITS STREETCARS:

If streetcars were kept instead of expressways, would they not have been expanded out to "34 Mile Road"?

Probably not. The development profile for streetcars is different. They travel at a maximum speed of 40 mph. The development they promote is denser, more walkable, more environmentally friendly. Nobody is going to live on Hall Road and take a streetcar downtown. They might live in an apartment building in Birmingham, though, and work downtown.[/quote]

ON THE GI BILL:

By the will of the people.

Um, not of ALL the people. You'll notice that only fighting men got the G.I. Bill. That means only white men, Retroit. You think African-Americans approved of a measure that subsidized home-buying for whites only and left them in the ghetto? See what I mean? History is important to know and understand.

ON INDUSTRIAL DISPERSAL POLICIES FOR MOVING FACTORIES OUTSIDE CENTRAL CITIES

Not "policies", but necessities. The factories were outgrown and outdated. No difference without expressways

No, these were policies. Based on the pretext of being prepared for nuclear attack, the federal government directed industry to locate its factories in a more dispersed manner. Industry, of course, didn't argue. They were happy to site new factories out by the freeways, in broad-brush zoning and with huge parcels. But it was still U.S. policy.

ON REDLINING:

Due to the same racial influences that caused people to move out of the city. No difference without expressways

You perceive the same cause, but the fact is that insurers could have been reined in. They redlined to take the most profit, and they should have had heavy fines or sanctions for that. But because U.S. urban policy was essentially "We give up, drop dead," they were free to do what they would.

ON HOME-BUILDING, ROAD-BUILDING & REAL ESTATE LOBBIES:

They were able to lobby because they were getting rich from people who moved out and necessitated the building of expressways

First of all, you have this backwards. The building of the freeways were not necessitated by people moving out. The freeways were built to move people out of the city and to develop the land outside it to make enormous profits. In the beginning, the lobbies didn't get rich because they were doing the people's bidding. They helped grease the wheels of the system for a bonanza of their own making. And it was all made possible with the people's money.

ON THE CITY CATERING TO BIG BUSINESS, NOT MOMS AND POPS:

No difference without expressways.

So? You agree?

ON LEADERS PLAYING THE RACE CARD:

No difference without expressways.

So you agree?

ON DEMOLISH-IT-AND-THEY-WILL-COME:

Unfortunately, they are demolishing the wrong things. They should be demolishing the burnt-out or dilapidated homes. No difference without expressways.

Sounds like agreement. I agree with your statement, for sure.

ON METRO DETROITERS NOT UNDERSTANDING THEIR HISTORY:

The facts are that most metropolitan Detroiters do not desire to live in a high-rise and ride the subway to work. Now, if that is all that we were used to [[like New Yorkers), we may continue to do so. But if you took away the New York subways and replaced the high-rises with single family homes, they would get used to their cars and would laugh at the suggestion that they should go back to "high-density" living.

I don't think so, Retroit. I think they'd just do what Detroiters have done over the last 60 years: They'd leave. We have a feedback loop here in the Detroit area. People who live here who do want to live in an urban environment and ditch their cars for mass transit do the only thing that works: They leave. They go to New York, they go to Chicago, they go to other cities and other countries that value the urban environment. So what we're left with here are people who not only enjoy living in a crappy, suburban patchwork of cookie-cutter houses, big box stores, pizza shacks and burger huts, megaloplexes and malls, they can't understand people who don't.
And tastes are changing. Research shows that Americans are much less likely to favor that kind of lifestyle than in the past. And trends are toward bikable, walkable, livable places with lots of transit options, entertainment choices, and real diversity. Unfortunately, we're so mired in the mid-20th century [[and so busy praising it and trying to re-create it) that we'll never attract them.
Those blinders we seem to love wearing, about our past, about what people prefer, about where we're headed, are part of the problem. It makes us look ridiculous. You tell any New Yorker that they'd be fine if they took out the subway and replaced Park Avenue with McMansions and see if they don't give you a slightly queer look, friend.

Anyway, your five-word answers make me wonder if you really want a debate at all, or just to preserve your own self-satisfaction.

[Eric]

ON EISENHOWER'S INTERSTATE PLAN:
It is a gross oversimplification to say that the highway plan was passed by the will of the people. It was never up for a referendum. The representatives voted for it. And few people knew what it meant. Even Eisenhower didn't realize that they were intending to ram interstates THROUGH American cities. He thought they were supposed to be only from city to city. Anyway, who cares if it was passed with the will of the people, way back then, and most of them dead today? We are the ones who see what it has wrought, so we have just as much say. In a way, we're much better suited to decide if we will what it has wrought.

Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk addressed this in Suburban Nation- The Rise and Decline of the American Dream: “The Federal highway planners of the fifties actually knew better than to bring highways into center cites, but they were out-lobbied by the big-city mayors, who wanted the U.S. highway money spent in their jurisdictions.” As a result, over six thousand miles of urban highway was added to the Federal Highway Act. Unfortunately American cities [[not just Detroit) have not learned their lesson because this is still happening.

[Retroit]

Maybe that's what you're debating, but it's pointless to do that. How can you say what would happen when something didn't happen? Where's the control? Shit, that's even harder than trying to compare Detroit to New York; at least those both exist for comparison. Comparing two cities that exist to two cities that don't exist is pointless to my mind.

Well then, tell that to Ihearthed, because that was the premise of this thread: that if Detroit hadn't built expressways like Moses wanted to do in NY, we would have been better off.

As for your other points, you've strayed far off topic. I tried my best to prevent that, but oh well, I'll respond anyway:

ON NO ONE SUPERCITY:
No, it's not about diversity. It's about a growing region being able to harness all the growth for the greater good. Compare it to the way other cities consolidated [[Boston, New York in the late 1800s) or the way cities have swallowed their suburbs [[Anchorage) to retain the tax revenue of new growth. The main text to read on this point is Rusk's "Cities without Suburbs."

The main benefit of a Detroit supercity is that it would force the Detroit Shitty Clown Show out of office because the superbanites wouldn't put up with their incompetence.

ON GROWTH BOUNDARIES:
Again, I'm not talking about expressways. I'm talking about civic failure. When you have a city that has growth boundaries, like San Francisco [[the tip of a peninsula), Pittsburgh [[hemmed in by mountains), Manhattan [[an island surrounded by water) or Montreal [[same), you find that people don't "use up" land and go on to the next fresh parcel. The land values are such that density is important, and the best transit system to serve densely populated areas isn't the automobile. That sets off another chain reaction in development patterns that preserve land value over spatial growth. And that's not a big IF, that's just practical reality. Nobody can live on the water or on a steep slope.

Does this apply to Detroit, and if not, why are we discussing it?

And then there are growth boundaries. That stops developers from just eating up all the new space [[lower construction costs, more profit, etc.) because it forces them to refurbish, repurpose and redevelop land and buildings that would be considered "used up" if there was endless land to consume. Seems to work pretty well in Portland.

Would this be feasible in Detroit? Isn't Portland surrounded by hills and forests? [[It's been a while since I was there, but that is how I remember it.)

ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ATTITUDE THAT CARS ARE BEST FOR EVERYTHING:
First things first: Cars are not best for everything. I'll summarize something I've posted here before. By placing every burden on the car, you make it unsuitable for what it does best: curb-to-curb transit. If you have fully functioning heavy rail, light rail, buses, foot traffic, airports and everything integrated into a plan, you free up the street for emergency vehicles, delivery trucks and taxis. Traffic jams are the result of making automobiles do it all. Instead of helping people with a mode that's well-suited to any activity, we make them use cars for everything.
Also, expressways do not alleviate traffic. They generate it. Every time you build an expressway, it fills up with cars. And then, seeing that as the justification for expanding it, the road is expanded. Then it fills up with more cars. Then you expand it again. This has been proven and demonstrated in urban planning classes. Only in the United States do we ignore this. To some extent, you can say that the reason we have traffic jams is because we have no plan other than laying down concrete and putting more cars on the road.

A car-based city can be "planned" to work just as well as a non-car based city. Actually, Detroit works quite well. The lack of a large downtown prevents a rush hour as bad as other cities.

ON EISENHOWER'S INTERSTATE PLAN:
It is a gross oversimplification to say that the highway plan was passed by the will of the people. It was never up for a referendum. The representatives voted for it. And few people knew what it meant. Even Eisenhower didn't realize that they were intending to ram interstates THROUGH American cities. He thought they were supposed to be only from city to city. Anyway, who cares if it was passed with the will of the people, way back then, and most of them dead today? We are the ones who see what it has wrought, so we have just as much say. In a way, we're much better suited to decide if we will what it has wrought.

Expressways are extensively used by people to get around within the city. Travel times would be greatly increased without them.

ON DETROIT DUMPING ITS STREETCARS:
Probably not. The development profile for streetcars is different. They travel at a maximum speed of 40 mph. The development they promote is denser, more walkable, more environmentally friendly. Nobody is going to live on Hall Road and take a streetcar downtown. They might live in an apartment building in Birmingham, though, and work downtown.

If you believe this, you might as well scrap your plans to replace expressways with rail transit. People are not going to move from Hall Road to go live near a rail line.

ON THE GI BILL:
Um, not of ALL the people. You'll notice that only fighting men got the G.I. Bill. That means only white men, Retroit. You think African-Americans approved of a measure that subsidized home-buying for whites only and left them in the ghetto? See what I mean? History is important to know and understand.

I don't deny there was racism. In fact, I listed racism as one of the main contributors to white flight.

ON INDUSTRIAL DISPERSAL POLICIES FOR MOVING FACTORIES OUTSIDE CENTRAL CITIES
No, these were policies. Based on the pretext of being prepared for nuclear attack, the federal government directed industry to locate its factories in a more dispersed manner. Industry, of course, didn't argue. They were happy to site new factories out by the freeways, in broad-brush zoning and with huge parcels. But it was still U.S. policy.

Those factories that were built in the manner you described were built in addition to the factories that existed in the city, not as a replacement of.

ON REDLINING:
You perceive the same cause, but the fact is that insurers could have been reined in. They redlined to take the most profit, and they should have had heavy fines or sanctions for that. But because U.S. urban policy was essentially "We give up, drop dead," they were free to do what they would.

Again, I wish there never was racism. And as you rightfully state, the "urban policy " contributed to this, and we should not expect that a current urban policy would also not arbitrarily pick winners and losers

ON HOME-BUILDING, ROAD-BUILDING & REAL ESTATE LOBBIES:
First of all, you have this backwards. The building of the freeways were not necessitated by people moving out. The freeways were built to move people out of the city and to develop the land outside it to make enormous profits. In the beginning, the lobbies didn't get rich because they were doing the people's bidding. They helped grease the wheels of the system for a bonanza of their own making. And it was all made possible with the people's money.

People wanted and want expressways. Whether they were built out of genuine need or as part of some conspiracy is irrelevant. People want them and they got them. You make it sound like we have a bunch of abandoned unnecessary expressways throughout the city.

ON THE CITY CATERING TO BIG BUSINESS, NOT MOMS AND POPS:
So? You agree?
ON LEADERS PLAYING THE RACE CARD:
So you agree?
ON DEMOLISH-IT-AND-THEY-WILL-COME:
Sounds like agreement. I agree with your statement, for sure.

Yes.

...post too long, continued...

[Retroit]

ON METRO DETROITERS NOT UNDERSTANDING THEIR HISTORY:
I don't think so, Retroit. I think they'd just do what Detroiters have done over the last 60 years: They'd leave. We have a feedback loop here in the Detroit area. People who live here who do want to live in an urban environment and ditch their cars for mass transit do the only thing that works: They leave. They go to New York, they go to Chicago, they go to other cities and other countries that value the urban environment. So what we're left with here are people who not only enjoy living in a crappy, suburban patchwork of cookie-cutter houses, big box stores, pizza shacks and burger huts, megaloplexes and malls.
And tastes are changing. Research shows that Americans are much less likely to favor that kind of lifestyle than in the past. And trends are toward bikable, walkable, livable places with lots of transit options, entertainment choices, and real diversity. Unfortunately, we're so mired in the mid-20th century [[and so busy praising it and trying to re-create it) that we'll never attract them.
Those blinders we seem to love wearing, about our past, about what people prefer, about where we're headed, are part of the problem. It makes us look ridiculous. You tell any New Yorker that they'd be fine if they took out the subway and replaced Park Avenue with McMansions and see if they don't give you a slightly queer look, friend.

I disagree with most of this. If a person is leaving Detroit for New York or Chicago, I'd be willing to bet it is not so they can ride the subway/El-train. Most superbanites are quite happy with their lifestyles. Sure there are changes. Bike trails are being put in and such, but these are not fundamental changes to replace cars. It is much easier for people to go from a strong mass transit culture to an auto culture than vice-versa. Once people get used to the freedom, flexibility, and convenience of a car, it is very hard to go back.

Anyway, your five-word answers make me wonder if you really want a debate at all, or just to preserve your own self-satisfaction.

Ha! Five word answers my ass!

[crawford]

Well then, tell that to Ihearthed, because that was the premise of this thread: that if Detroit hadn't built expressways like Moses wanted to do in NY, we would have been better off.

Huh? Your premise is wrong.

NYC built expressways, just like Detroit built expressways.

Yes, not every single expressway planned for NYC was actually built, but the same holds true for Detroit.

Every American city has expressways. Almost every world city has expressways. Heck Paris is completely ringed by expressways, and Tokyo has them swooping through downtown neighborhoods.

Expressways and urban planning "mistakes" have almost nothing to do with Detroit's current situation. Successful cities can overcome alleged design flaws.

The issues in Detroit are magnified economic problems, increased racial strife, and a strong preference for single family living.

[Retroit]

Huh? Your premise is wrong.

NYC built expressways, just like Detroit built expressways.

Yes, not every single expressway planned for NYC was actually built, but the same holds true for Detroit.

Every American city has expressways. Almost every world city has expressways. Heck Paris is completely ringed by expressways, and Tokyo has them swooping through downtown neighborhoods.

Expressways and urban planning "mistakes" have almost nothing to do with Detroit's current situation. Successful cities can overcome alleged design flaws.

The issues in Detroit are magnified economic problems, increased racial strife, and a strong preference for single family living.

I know that, crawford, but try convincing Ihearthed and his like-minded "urban planners" of that.

[Eric]

A car-based city can be "planned" to work just as well as a non-car based city. Actually, Detroit works quite well. The lack of a large downtown prevents a rush hour as bad as other cities.



Expressways are extensively used by people to get around within the city. Travel times would be greatly increased without them.

I strongly disagree that an auto-oriented city can work just as well as a non-auto based city. A city with highways as the main mode of transportation, like Detroit, Houston or Columbus, will have the problem of induced traffic. That is, adding highways and widening existing roads does nothing to reduce the traffic. Induced traffic is explained by an aphorism among traffic engineers: “Trying to cure traffic congestion by adding more capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt.” Basically, the mechanism here is that increased traffic capacity makes longer commutes less of a hassle thus people are willing to live farther and farther from their workplace. As more and more people make similar decisions, the longer distance commute grows as crowded as the inner city, commuters clamor for additional lanes and, the cycle repeats itself. Plus an auto-oriented city concentrates through traffic on as little streets as possible, thus compounding the problem.

Induced traffic does work both ways and this is evident in a study done by the New York Department of Transportation that showed 93% of car trips lost from the collapse of the West Side Highway did not reappear elsewhere. Additionally, a British study found that downtown road removals boost local economies, while new roads lead to higher urban unemployment.