Quote Originally Posted by Detroitnerd View Post
It's all part of some nefarious plan? Dude, you really have me confused with somebody else. Maybe you just scan what I type and impute my motives to it. That would explain how irrelevant some of your responses have been to what I'm saying.
Detroitnerd: "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."

OK, expressways make metro Detroit better, transportation-wise. Um...

How about this for another perspective. Cities are places where everything is located centrally.
"Located centrally"? We're all supposed to go downtown for all our daily needs?

Answer: No,
That means that you don't NEED to drive all over creation to put together tonight's dinner, do laundry, get a bite, buy a newspaper, etc. That's what urbanity is: Many different kinds of people, doing many different kinds of jobs, offering many different kinds of goods and services in one place. You don't need the car in the best environments, at all. And that's the kind of lifestyle that is ascendant right now.

See, in a real city, you're better off living-wise. It's all there.
Yes, it is good to have our daily needs to be met nearby, and not downtown.

Take when I was living in Brooklyn. My subway stop was a block and a half away. Within three blocks of my apartment, I had a butcher, a baker, an ethnic grocery, two green grocers, a burrito shop, a coffee shop, a supermarket, a diner, a bodega, a dry cleaner and a host of other businesses. I didn't have a transportation problem because I didn't need to travel much.

But, here, since we've decided to build everything so spread out, you NEED a car. Or else you have a transportation problem. So you say you're better off transportation-wise, but, actually, what you have is a life that is impossible without a car. Metro Detroiters are forever shuttling here and there, from big box to pizza shack, from burger hut to drive-thru dry cleaners, spending much more time, money and energy on errands than somebody in a city.

Now, that may just be peachy-keen for you. But a growing segment of the American public is sick of that shit. They demonstrate that by voting with their feet. They actually want that little apartment in an old-fashioned neighborhood with local businesses. Imagine that!
Well, I lived in Queens for a while, and I unequivocally HATED it. Way too congested. Way too claustrophobic. Too noisy. Quite run down and dirty. Had to rely on public transportation. I would bet that most superbanites of Detroit would find living there a steep decline in quality of life. True, maybe for a young person out to see the world, it may be a change of pace for awhile. But they'll get sick of it.