For all the people saying "master of the obvious", this kind of attitude is exactly what Detroit needs. It needs someone who's going to stare the problem in the face and decide to tackle it rather than run from it or try to cover it up under the rug.
An earlier poster said that it's pointless to cut bus service. What else is there to cut? Detroit barely has the money to keep the lights on at the moment; the only way to keep things rolling is to either let the city slip into receivership and hope that Chapter 9 is the way out, or to shave enough off of city services and petition for federal aid to the point where enough cash and liquidity is injected in that Detroit can start to recover financially.
One of the reasons that Detroit might be 20 years in rebuilding is that it's going to take that long for the people who had memories of the '43 and '67 riots to die off. Callous as that may sound, in 20 years, a generational shift can take place, and the change in mindset can do a lot to help clear out the cobwebs.
A lot of the new people can clearly see a lot of what once made Detroit great: some of the most beautiful architecture in the country, a world-class art museum [[DIA), science center [[DSC), and university [[in Wayne State), an outstanding symphony, two amazing theatrical venues [[the Fox and the Fillmore), top-notch baseball, hockey, and basketball teams [[we're still working on the Lions, sadly), the largest open-air farmer's market in the country and one of the most historic [[Eastern Market), and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
This. There has to be a way to get people to realize that walling their homes and neighborhoods off is not the way to revitalize Detroit. Does it take being vigilant? You better believe it does, but creating these artificial walls is exactly what got Detroit in this mess, and when people move deep into Detroit and set up their castle [[complete with outer wall and moat) this only reinforces the notion that people who live in the D are either antisocial or xenophobic. The real truth is that they're not!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.
Maybe I'm a cockeyed optimist, but there's a part of me that thinks boundless, unfettered optimism is what Detroit needs to drag itself out of the hole it's in, and to help redefine what's "okay". Because creating little islands of military-grade security in the middle of Downtown isn't okay.
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