Bing says rebuilding Detroit is 20-year task

[English]

I am an urban developer in Philadelphia, and metro-Detroit seems more screwed up than any other major metro area I have seen. I don't mean this as an insult, because the city is actually quite beautiful. Most U.S. big cities have made some pretty egregious mistakes in the past, but I would say that as far as planning policies go, Detroiters are paying the price for some pretty bad ones. And yet it seems to me that if you are talking about how to improve the city, you ought to talk about a few things other than bus service, razing priceless, irreplaceable architecture and cracking down on slumlords. Here is the main thing that comes to mind about your city: there has been absolutely no or little attention paid to walkable urban neighborhoods.

I noticed that the areas that seem to have been "redeveloped" are walled off with iron fences and highly suburbanized, in the middle of a sea of blight. That's not exactly fixing the neighborhood, let alone making a new one. Most of the downtown is divied up into isolated fortresses of either corporate offices or parking lots, of which not one iota of thought to the public welfare has been given. The major streets are far too wide and completely desolate, and if all you can muster on any given block is one or two storefronts here or there, you will never revive because that's not how a real city functions. Policy needs to be geared toward walkability [[and not just transit) and density, and every successful city knows this. No offense, but your metro area seems to be almost entirely brainless and, frankly, uncaring about its own vitality or future--otherwise how did you all let yourselves get in this kind of shape? I know you had riots, but even Newark is in twice as good shape as you guys. If you want a happy, healthy society, it's sort of like how you choose to keep your house: make sure that you pick up your clutter, organize your kitchen so you can use it and not have to eat out, throw trash in the garbage can and scrub the accumulated mud off your floors. Detroit has not exactly done its housework, and it doesn't exactly seem inclined to. Detroit: how can you get where you want to go, if you don't know where you want to go? Sorry, just an out-of-towner's perception of your beautiful but horribly mismanaged city.

Can we get you and some of your buddies to run for City Council in 2012? Better yet, we have a vacancy in the Governor's Office for 2010.

The problem is that for many people in SE Michigan, what you see here is absolutely normal. They can't envision life being any other way. Transgressors usually get their feelings hurt, their dreams shattered, and end up having to move the heck out of Dodge... excuse me, Metro Detroit... to build lives elsewhere.

BTW, I love Philadelphia. When it comes to classic soul music, it is the only city that can hold a candle to the D. Love the people, and the neighborhoods... but I am a Detroiter and a Michigan girl through and through. We'll figure it out soon.