What if all the freeways within the city limits were turned into boulevards?

[Bham1982]

You keep using the word "access", but what you're discussing in principle is maintaining a system of overbuilt, land-hungry, car-only expressways. And your motivation for doing so--allowing suburbanites to rocket through the city going to-and-from an evening of entertainment--is questionable and self-serving, at best.

The freeway system isn't perfect, but it's what we've got, and there isn't a sober-faced better option for the region. No, forcing everyone to take a bus from Brighton isn't an option.

And everything in Metro Detroit is overbuilt and land hungry. Last I checked, land costs aren't dear here, and Detroit isn't exactly starved for more space.

And my motivation has nothing to do with my individual leisure preferences.

Almost everyone has vehicles in the region, and almost all the wealth is in the suburbs. IMO it's pretty crazy to advocate barriers restricting wealth from entering the city.

Washington, DC must really be dirt poor, because they only have one freeway [[I-395) going into the city from the suburbs, and it doesn't even go downtown! How do they expect to effectively grovel for suburban crumbs when they don't have an easy way for cars to fly across the city?

Maybe it's because Washington is the political capital of the Western World, has hundreds of thousands of employees required to work downtown, and a 100 billion subway.

Make downtown Detroit the political capital of the Western World and give it a 100 billion subway, and then maybe we can talk major alterations to regional accessibility.

When was the last time Detroit's freeway system produced billions of dollars of development in the city limits? Oh, that's right--it hasn't. It has done nothing but shift development and wealth to the suburban counties while depressing land values in the City. But hey, at least you can drive through the remains of The Paris of the West at 70 mph!!!

Are you kidding me? The Rennaisance Center, Cobo, casinos, etc. would have never been built absent freeways. Greektown would have been long-gone. The Fox and Orchestra Hall would be parking lots. Wayne would be in Novi.

All of these destinations are dependent on regional accessibility. None could survive based solely on neighborhood residents.

And speaking of Paris--what suckers. That city has to beg to get its suburbanites downtown for a night of drinking. If they were really smart, they'd demolish all those old, useless buildings and start building freeways so the suburbanites can come downtown. Instead, they have that socialist subway system, where no spot in the city is more than 500m from a station. How inconvenient!

Of course this is nonsense. Paris is a Metro-oriented city. Detroit is a freeway-oriented city.

Ripping up the freeways in Detroit is the exact same thing as shutting down the Metro/RER in Paris. You're advocating eliminating the primary mode of regional mobility, becuase of some vague notion of creating a radically different city.

Ever since the dawn of the automobile, Detroit has been a car-oriented city. Detroit will never be Paris, or New York, and it shouldn't be. The only way one could create a Paris or New York would be to completely demolish Southeast Michigan and start over.

[Vox]

I love the absolute myopia of this thread. Here we have layoffs of school teachers, the possible shutdown of the majority of Detroit's library system, and one of the top threads here is about filling in freeways. You all should be ashamed of yourself.

[313WX]

I love the absolute myopia of this thread. Here we have layoffs of school teachers, the possible shutdown of the majority of Detroit's library system, and one of the top threads here is about filling in freeways. You all should be ashamed of yourself.

If the thread is so myopic to you then why did you bother even posting a response in it?

[Detroitnerd]

I love the absolute myopia of this thread. Here we have layoffs of school teachers, the possible shutdown of the majority of Detroit's library system, and one of the top threads here is about filling in freeways. You all should be ashamed of yourself.

Troll says what?

[Vox]

If the thread is so myopic to you then why did you bother even posting a response in it?

Because I felt it appropriate. Of course there has to be priorities, right?

[iheartthed]

Are you kidding me? The Rennaisance Center, Cobo, casinos, etc. would have never been built absent freeways. Greektown would have been long-gone. The Fox and Orchestra Hall would be parking lots. Wayne would be in Novi.

All of these destinations are dependent on regional accessibility. None could survive based solely on neighborhood residents.

This is silly. You do know that Cobo was built in the 1950s, right? How many freeways exists before 1960? And if nobody was coming downtown because of the absence of freeways then there would be no need to make anything into a parking lot...

Of course this is nonsense. Paris is a Metro-oriented city. Detroit is a freeway-oriented city.

Ripping up the freeways in Detroit is the exact same thing as shutting down the Metro/RER in Paris. You're advocating eliminating the primary mode of regional mobility, becuase of some vague notion of creating a radically different city.

Ever since the dawn of the automobile, Detroit has been a car-oriented city. Detroit will never be Paris, or New York, and it shouldn't be. The only way one could create a Paris or New York would be to completely demolish Southeast Michigan and start over.

Detroit is not a freeway oriented city. Detroit is a city that had freeways built over it. It did not develop around a freeway network. It developed around a streetcar network. This web site has numerous links to other sites that details Detroit's history.

[iheartthed]

This thread has convinced me that one of Detroit's biggest detriments is that the road planning commission is controlled by the state, and thus by people who are not directly accountable to the residents of Detroit. So when planning where to build and widen freeways, the priority is given to making it as easy as possible for someone to drive from the suburbs to downtown -- or even worse, pass completely through the city to occasionally visit the airport -- instead of being given to how these projects will affect the neighborhoods that would be most affected by the decision. No wonder the residents of city neighborhoods are still leaving in droves. They have more clout as suburban voters.

[ghettopalmetto]

Let me make sure I'm properly understanding your line of reasoning.

The freeway system isn't perfect, but it's what we've got, and there isn't a sober-faced better option for the region. No, forcing everyone to take a bus from Brighton isn't an option.

Are people powerless to change the built environment?

Who said anything about forcing people from Brighton to take a bus?

And everything in Metro Detroit is overbuilt and land hungry. Last I checked, land costs aren't dear here, and Detroit isn't exactly starved for more space.

No, but Detroit is one of the most spread-out regions in the United States, which is why young, educated people with professional jobs are fleeing to places like Chicago.

Almost everyone has vehicles in the region, and almost all the wealth is in the suburbs. IMO it's pretty crazy to advocate barriers restricting wealth from entering the city.

ALMOST everyone? So what happens to the people who don't have vehicles? Do they not count? Do people in the City of Detroit not have money to spend? And why should the City of Detroit cater to your whims over its own residents? What kind of financial benefit do you bring to the City that a taxpaying resident does not?

Maybe it's because Washington is the political capital of the Western World, has hundreds of thousands of employees required to work downtown, and a 100 billion subway. Make downtown Detroit the political capital of the Western World and give it a 100 billion subway, and then maybe we can talk major alterations to regional accessibility.

So the residents of DC never voted to build a subway instead of Interstate freeways? It was some magical predetermined outcome? Why, then, when DC looked very similar to Detroit in the 1970s, has it been able to rebound and Detroit has not?

Are you kidding me? The Rennaisance Center, Cobo, casinos, etc. would have never been built absent freeways. Greektown would have been long-gone. The Fox and Orchestra Hall would be parking lots. Wayne would be in Novi.

All of these destinations are dependent on regional accessibility. None could survive based solely on neighborhood residents.

So you're stating that none of these places would be able to be found without the presence of freeways? Pray tell, how did people get to the Fox before the freeways? Sure, Greektown may still exist, but what happened to Hastings Street? The Washington Boulevard retail district? Hudson's? Plum Street neighborhood? If these places are so accessible, why do they no longer exist? It seems to me that Detroit had a hell of a lot more businesses downtown BEFORE the freeways were constructed. How do you reconcile this, if your concept of "accessibility" is key to developing business?

Of course this is nonsense. Paris is a Metro-oriented city. Detroit is a freeway-oriented city.

Ripping up the freeways in Detroit is the exact same thing as shutting down the Metro/RER in Paris. You're advocating eliminating the primary mode of regional mobility, becuase of some vague notion of creating a radically different city.

Ever since the dawn of the automobile, Detroit has been a car-oriented city. Detroit will never be Paris, or New York, and it shouldn't be. The only way one could create a Paris or New York would be to completely demolish Southeast Michigan and start over.[

So Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac showed up in 1701 and built a freeway?

Detroit has 250 years of history before the first freeway was built. The Metropolitain wasn't built in Paris until the late 19th century. What do you mean by "Metro-oriented" and "freeway-oriented"???

The irony is, Detroit used to be WEALTHIER than Paris or New York, and at least at beautiful and pleasant. So it seems you're inventing history, here, or at least making piss-poor excuses.

And yes, that's what people on this thread are advocating--demolish the freeways and start over. But it seems that some people think that the function of a city is to exist primarily for the entertainment whimsy of suburbanites who couldn't give a shit less about the quality of life within that city.

[casscorridor]

The future of "Southeast Michigan" or "Detroit" as the rest of the world calls will be made within the 5 or 6 mile radius surrounding the place it began -- Downtown Detroit. If the core of the region continues to slide into abandonment and urban infrastructure is removed, rather than restored, then I don't see much future for this "Southeast Michigan," or Michigan at all.

Freeways are suburban or rural infrastructure, and are not conducive to a high-density urban environment, the type of environment we need to create in the core of the city. Urban infrastructure would be mass rail transit and enhanced bus service, bike accessibility projects, new land for parks and schools and other public institutions.

We need to create neighborhoods that people want to live in and that provide essential goods and services within the neighborhood, including housing, food, recreation and quick access to employment [[either within the neighborhood or a job center close by and easily accessible by public transit). Our infrastructure does not encourage these types of neighborhoods, and often types prohibits it.

Even in city of Detroit, which used to be among the densest cities in the country [[and still is denser than most sun-belt cities), there has been concerted effort to suburbanize the landscape: Lafayette Park, Elmwood Park, Chrysler freeway and adjacent demolition of neighborhoods and construction of suburban-style projects, Lodge freeway and similar efforts, Wayne State U and demolition of much of Woodbridge to make way for university facilities and suburban-style projects, expansion of Detroit Medical Center and demolition of much of Midtown, construction of the Ren Cen and demolition of riverfront blocks, demolition of riverfront area to make way for casinos [[that never were built), demolition of much of Corktown to make way for suburban-style light-industrial buildings, , construction of Comerica Park and Ford Field destroying a dozen blocks, construction of the MGM casino superblock destroying another dozen blocks, DTE, Fed Building, Blue Cross, various other downtown "corporate campuses" that have blocked off streets and restricted access.

In the process of these "projects," tens of thousands have been displaced and the core of city wrecked divided and fortified and left without contiguous urban fabric that cities need to thrive. While a spectacular balloon of wealth sweapt through the suburbs, the population of metro Detroit only went up 1% since 1970 but the land mass doubled in size. Developers couldn't build new houses fast enough, which each new house leaving another one abandoned. And people wonder how Detroit lost a million people.

[Bham1982]

The future of "Southeast Michigan" or "Detroit" as the rest of the world calls will be made within the 5 or 6 mile radius surrounding the place it began -- Downtown Detroit. If the core of the region continues to slide into abandonment and urban infrastructure is removed, rather than restored, then I don't see much future for this "Southeast Michigan," or Michigan at all.

This seems to be a fair summary of the crux of the disagreement on this thread.

If you feel that the future of Southeast Michigan is at Woodward & Mack, then maybe it makes sense to radically change the infrastructure.

If however, you think this is an urbanist fantasy [[count me in this camp), then the notion of tearing up the region's vital infrastructure is nonsense.

There is no statistical evidence whatsoever to support the former scenario. Only hope that tomorrow will be different than the last century, and that Western civilization will radically transform itself and abandon the car for Woodward & Mack.

The places on earth without auto-oriented suburbs are essentially limited to regions with extreme land shortages, such as Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo. These folks would generally love to live in Western-style suburbs. Everywhere else, suburbia rules, even in places like Paris.

From where I sit, downtown stands the best chance at prosperity if it can make the best of macro trends and access the resources of the region's most prosperous. There's lots to like about downtown, and suburban cash is as good as city cash.

[Detroitnerd]

The places on earth without auto-oriented suburbs are essentially limited to regions with extreme land shortages, such as Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo. These folks would generally love to live in Western-style suburbs. Everywhere else, suburbia rules, even in places like Paris.

I think, perhaps, you don't know what you're talking about. You ARE aware that, in Paris, the rich live in the city and the poor live in the suburbs?

[iheartthed]

This seems to be a fair summary of the crux of the disagreement on this thread.

If you feel that the future of Southeast Michigan is at Woodward & Mack, then maybe it makes sense to radically change the infrastructure.

If however, you think this is an urbanist fantasy [[count me in this camp), then the notion of tearing up the region's vital infrastructure is nonsense.

There is no statistical evidence whatsoever to support the former scenario. Only hope that tomorrow will be different than the last century, and that Western civilization will radically transform itself and abandon the car for Woodward & Mack.

The places on earth without auto-oriented suburbs are essentially limited to regions with extreme land shortages, such as Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo. These folks would generally love to live in Western-style suburbs. Everywhere else, suburbia rules, even in places like Paris.

From where I sit, downtown stands the best chance at prosperity if it can make the best of macro trends and access the resources of the region's most prosperous. There's lots to like about downtown, and suburban cash is as good as city cash.

That's fair. You are entitled to your opinion. But no one said anything about making the suburbs less auto-oriented. So that's a fundamentally misinterpretation on your part of what we are advocating.

[Bham1982]

I think, perhaps, you don't know what you're talking about. You ARE aware that, in Paris, the rich live in the city and the poor live in the suburbs?

This is the stereotype, but it's not true. Median household incomes are higher in suburban Paris.

If you're saying that many of the rich live in Paris proper, than this is correct. Probably the biggest concentration of wealthy in France live in the western half of the city proper. But, the city proper also has a large proportion of the poor. Ever been to Belleville?

As in NYC, the core has more of the rich, and more of the poor. The median household income of the Ile de France [[basically metropolitan Paris) is definitely higher than the median household income of Paris proper.

Now granted, this is a sloppy statistic, because it doesn't account for many things, such as the fact that city centers have more subsidized housing, more singles and small families, and a higher proportion of multifamily vs. single family. This all depresses the relative numbers.

Global cities are gentrifying to some extent, though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Paris closing the gap somewhat with its suburbs. You see the same in NYC, where incomes have risen faster than in surrounding counties.

I am not some anti-urban type, BTW. I think than urban centers have a bright future, and that Paris proper may outperform the suburbs long-term. I see the same in NYC. Even Detroit has such [[longer-term) possibility.

But I'm not seeing evidence of radical, society-altering change. I don't see Bloomfield Hills in ruins and folks willingly crowding into Dexter Davison. I still think that the average Joe [[or average Juan, Sergei or Wei) wants a house, a little land, and a car.

[Detroitnerd]

But I'm not seeing evidence of radical, society-altering change. I don't see Bloomfield Hills in ruins and folks willingly crowding into Dexter Davison. I still think that the average Joe [[or average Juan, Sergei or Wei) wants a house, a little land, and a car.

Remember how the end for Detroit began? Look at a 1947 city directory, in the back, where properties are listed by address. You will start to see "vacant" and more listings, then "vacant" then more listings. By 1950, you begin to see more vacancies, then more.

Nobody is predicting overnight ruin for the Bloomies. But I do think the prognosis for the exurbs isn't very good. You're starting to see, after years and years of subsidies and probably the greatest experiment ever in changing the way people live, it is beginning to reverse itself somewhat. And that's a good thing.

But this insistence that Detroit needs the suburbs more than the suburbs need the city is pointless to argue. I would like to see a willingness to understand that a vibrant city makes for vibrant suburbs. That investing in a strong city center increases all of our prosperity. Instead, I sense an attitude that suburban Detroiters don't realize that we are squandering a terrific opportunity to increase the region's viability.

Or should we just let our whole city and region continue to slide down the drain?

After all, we'll always have Paris, right?

[Brian1979]

Manhattan is not "downtown New York"

The lower part of it is though and midtown is another CBD aside from downtown up to 59th Street. North of 59th Street though it's not.

[Gistok]

Ah yes... Paris... where the richest people live in the large 16th Arrondissment [[neighborhood). Ironically Paris was a mostly medieval narrow street city until Baron Haussman destroyed 40 percent of medieval Paris in the 1850s and 1860s [[and those poor were relocated to the suburbs). In place of narrow medieval streets he built broad boulevards that crisscross the city.

Of course this had absolutely nothing to do with traffic or for that matter revitalization of the city [[although it was a side effect).... Napoleon III just wanted to prevent the quarrelsome Parisians from manning the barricades on such broad thoroughfares... and provide nice straight sitelines for military cannonfire when they did.

For all the complaints about the freeways of Detroit... the layout of the city is probably a bigger cause of problems than the freeways.... just look at the Mt. Elliott-Mound and Conner Industrial corridors. They literally slice the east side into 3 parts... that make east-west travel very difficult. Van Dyke sits between these corridors... ever try going very far either east or west from Van Dyke between I-94 and 7 Mile Road?? Next to impossible.

And ironically the one Detroit freeway that was never completed... the Davison... would have gone a long way to correct the eastside-westside disconnect in the upper half of Detroit.

[Detroitnerd]

Ah yes... Paris... where the richest people live in the large 16th Arrondissment [[neighborhood). Ironically Paris was a mostly medieval narrow street city until Baron Haussman destroyed 40 percent of medieval Paris in the 1850s and 1860s [[and those poor were relocated to the suburbs). In place of narrow medieval streets he built broad boulevards that crisscross the city.

Of course this had absolutely nothing to do with traffic or for that matter revitalization of the city [[although it was a side effect).... Napoleon III just wanted to prevent the quarrelsome Parisians from manning the barricades on such broad thoroughfares... and provide nice straight sitelines for military cannonfire when they did.

Playing the degrees of separation game, Haussman was an influence on L'Enfant, and L'Enfant's plan for Washington was a major influence on Woodward's plan of 1803. This was basically the last time anybody ever had a plan for the city of Detroit, and it was a very good one, actually. It's just that ... how to put this? ... Detroiters have seemingly always been people with a stubborn dedication to exigency. We could have imposed order over that awful mess of French private claims, but we didn't dare offend the landholders, who wanted their real estate. We had to raise money for a prison and government buildings downtown, so they just sold of 10,000 acres off-kilter outside the city, which is why some areas of the city have a road grid that's a mess, joining the Woodward axis with the points of the compass. We built a whole boulevard just to connect two Ford plants [[Oakman). And then we just ran rail line after rail line while factories mushroomed. Little if any thought after that was given to recreation, transit planning was largely reactive. And, by the time you get to the 1945 master plan, Detroit's city fathers were working with expressways, planning to cover the city with them, though they had little idea the damage they would do to their city, simply singing hosannas to the private auto, infused with the propaganda of the day.

For all the complaints about the freeways of Detroit... the layout of the city is probably a bigger cause of problems than the freeways.... just look at the Mt. Elliott-Mound and Conner Industrial corridors. They literally slice the east side into 3 parts... that make east-west travel very difficult. Van Dyke sits between these corridors... ever try going very far either east or west from Van Dyke between I-94 and 7 Mile Road?? Next to impossible.

These boutique street grids have left Detroit with a lack of crosstown thoroughfares. True. But what mode of transportation could carry people across town, dodging and weaving through city blocks? Could zig and zag to carry people from Southwest to Hamtramck? It was the streetcar. It seems to me that almost every single complaint about "crosstown routes" or "messy street grids" are things that would annoy a motorist but would still accommodate streetcars and light rail. One line of light rail has a theoretical capacity of several lanes of freeway, at least during peak times. So which is better? To hack massive trenches through a city so that everybody can drive in their separate car? Or to leave that land on the tax rolls and try to encourage transit-oriented development along major light rail corridors? The answer seems pretty simple to me.

[Gistok]

Detroitnerd... at least we can agree to blame it on those damn French!

[schulzte]

This would be a good plan for eliminating some miles of expressway. Some or all of the Lodge, Jeffries, Davison, and 375 spur could be eliminated.

[DTWflyer]

Whether you like B'ham's opinion or not, he does have some very valid points about the suburban residents supporting Detroit. Downtown and the city is not going to be self-sufficient anytime soon.

The ship sailed long ago about freeways in Detroit, they've been built and the damage has been done. I see a lot of utopian, [[as someone else put it - Sim City), pie in the sky options here. Sorry, be realistic. Not in the next 30 years are you going to see them rip out I-94, I-75, the Davison, or the Lodge. Nowhere in history has there been a city that has ripped out major corridor/mileage of highways. Particularly so since each one of those has been significantly rebuild and are in good condition. Plus there is zero money to rip any of them out.

The only ones that make sense would be the stub-ends like 375 and M-10 south of I-75.

The freeways are not whats keeping Detroit back right now, there are a lot of other higher priorities to fix in the city than to start ripping out perfectly good infrastructure.

[EL Jimbo]

But I'm not seeing evidence of radical, society-altering change. I don't see Bloomfield Hills in ruins and folks willingly crowding into Dexter Davison. I still think that the average Joe [[or average Juan, Sergei or Wei) wants a house, a little land, and a car.

This is what I was getting at before, YOU are the one trying to turn this into a city v suburb thing. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. Maybe, just MAYBE, not everybody thinks like you and wants to live in a suburban style community. I know I don't. I lived that as a child. It was boring. There are a lot of people who think like me.

This proposal isn't some grand sinister scheme to sabotage the suburbs. The suburbs always like to say they can survive just fine on their own without Detroit. Great! If that's the case, why get your panties in a twist when someone has an idea about Detroit proper that inconveniences you? I thought you didn't need Detroit anyway?

So let the suburbs do their thing and thrive, but also, let Detroit do the things it needs to attract people from throughout the country and around the world. Believe it or not, unlike what the suburbs did to Detroit, you CAN grow without cannibalizing population from your neighbors.

[canuck]

I think the lack of investment in newer schemes of public transit post-tramway in Detroit was more destructive than the freeway access. But it is obviously more tempting for someone in the outer rings to take their god given constitushenally protected right to use their car on an hour ride home and avoid the CBD after work. The option to take transit and therefore develop a city on a smaller-denser scale has eclipsed Detroit. It needs to reinvent a lot of structural alternatives in order to regain its central city and engage a suburb-city relationship on a higher plane. The expressways have whisked burbans away because there was no other alternative and no curbing of suburban growth patterns.
As soon as you look at competing cities on the continent you realize that lower salaried workers needed to get to work in a cheap way and it had to provided. The necessity for density went hand in hand with better transit. In Tokyo, unlike what Bham mentioned, the city is a crazy mix of low slung suburban streets mixed with high density neighborhoods. The city is a smargasbord of options, with rail subway and expressways open to business. The lack of transit was a stronger poison in the suffocation of Woodward and other major arteries in the inner city. But I agree with Ghettopalmetto and others who say that you cannot accept the status quo. There is no such thing as a car-dominated city fate. I think we should all be riding segways to work...

[SpartanTom]

I think a good start would be, as others have mentioned, eliminating the downtown spurs of M-10 and I-375. I think they serve little purpose now, and the radial network of existing boulevards [[Michigan, Grand River, Woodward, Gratiot) could easily absorb that traffic. That would help with re-uniting Corktown with the downtown, Lafayette Park and the whole riverfront. If that connector between I-75 and Gratiot were removed, then Eastern Market would be more accessible from the downtown area.

This would be a good starting point that most people could get on board with, and then we could go from there. Obviously this process would be long-term, and you would need to wait until the spurs are in need of being completely reconstructed. At that point, it would be more cost-effective to build a surface road, or simply re-connect the original street grid and allow traffic to disperse throughout, while opening land within the ROW to development/parks, etc.

[Gistok]

For both I-375 and the Lodge south of the Fisher... I would rather see them cap the freeways, with a boulevard on top of each. Getting rid of the underground Lodge would become problematic in that Cobo Hall is in the way. Adding gridlock to downtown traffic is not a positive. The goal is to get people "out of their cars" visiting downtown... rather than to have them "sit in their cars" stuck in gridlock.

[ghettopalmetto]

Sure, the idea to completely eliminate freeways is radical--at least in the post-World War II, Baby Boomer-dominated way of thinking.

But what if--what IF--such a thing were done? Let's be honest here--freeways are horribly expensive to maintain. Anyone driving Michigan roads this time of year will tell you that, every damned time they hit a pothole. Never mind the massive amounts of untaxable real estate they consume. And what is the benefit?--to carry 1200 cars per lane per hour? It seems there might be more efficient means of moving people.

So what if I-375 were removed? Would people no longer be able to find the Ren Cen or Greektown? What if the Lodge were removed south of I-75? Would people still be able to find Cobo? I think they would. And rather than have a constant traffic jam on Jefferson, with folks waiting to get on the same on-ramp to the expressway, I think you'd find the congestion would disperse itself throughout the existing street grid.

As for the remaining freeways, what's so wrong and horrible about a configuration that looks more like this:



Does Detroit really need 8 and 10 lane expanses of asphalt running willy-nilly through it?