Obama administration proposes study about shrinking cities by bulldozing emptier area

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Originally Posted by oladub

Your first point is correct although 'housing project' is your term and somewhat limiting. I would expand the concept to include major communities of thousands of residents large enough to provide high schools, shopping, medical clincs, etc. Depending on size, walkable urban environments would certainly be a good idea and possibility. This concept could also be narrowed to retirement communities, monastic communities or hundreds of other ideas. As previously suggested, each such community could do its own zoning and be more flexible in planning housing and lifestyle choices. I didn't even suggest 'vinyl-sided balkanized suburban claptrap'. However, to each his/her own . If someone doesn't like what is offered, they can buy a fixer-upper elsewhere in Detorit or move off to the suburbs as many have already done. A wall and security deliniating any such community would only be necessary if you can't get the area crime rate down enough to attract residents without it. I didn't mean to insinuate that you shouldn't continue walking around in that wonderful walking urban environment that is Detroit today.

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The point is, there are plenty of safe areas of Detroit that are ripe for accepting new residents. Public safety would be expected to increase as neighborhoods stabilize with greater populations of more educated, higher earning households.

There's no need to pretend that Detroit is the capital of Thunderdome.

How the hell did we get on gated communities? That is the absolute last thing Detroit needs now. Multiple quality of life studies done on Detroit have recommended more public spaces and building more dense environments. Even this controlled shrinkage idea is proposed under the premise that the remaining population live in a more dense environment. How does a gated community help accomplish that goal?

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Originally Posted by iheartthed

How the hell did we get on gated communities? That is the absolute last thing Detroit needs now. Multiple quality of life studies done on Detroit have recommended more public spaces and building more dense environments. Even this controlled shrinkage idea is proposed under the premise that the remaining population live in a more dense environment. How does a gated community help accomplish that goal?

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I'm responsible for bringing up that option for binging people, jobs, and spending back to Detroit. Read through my posts and find out. I hope that the quality of life studies also included something about reducing humidity and temperature extremes.

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Originally Posted by oladub

I'm responsible for bringing up that option for binging people, jobs, and spending back to Detroit. Read through my posts and find out. I hope that the quality of life studies also included something about reducing humidity and temperature extremes.

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AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Michigan doesn't even know what the hell humidity IS!

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Originally Posted by oladub

I'm responsible for bringing up that option for binging people, jobs, and spending back to Detroit. Read through my posts and find out. I hope that the quality of life studies also included something about reducing humidity and temperature extremes.

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Show me one example of where gated communities have contributed anything to the resurgence of an older major American city. Do you think gated communities would be more successful at attracting people and commerce than an improved public transit system?

Had you read through my posts , you would realize that I only suggested gated communities if Detroit, or similar communities, could not muster the resolve to master their crime problem. Ridership on light rail would also be reduced if riders were afraid to stand at or walk away from a light rail station for fear of being mugged or worse. A certain level of civility has to exist before some civic projects work. Otherwise, its walls, lights, security cameras, and concealed weapons. I'm guessing that gated communities would be seen as a threat to the control of leaders of some older major cities, I don't think they would like giving up control no matter how poorly their cities fare under their leadership. It would probably be easier to just just let the colosseums and viaducts crumble, plow them into meadows and fields, and provide a happy face explanation for doing so.

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Originally Posted by oladub

Had you read through my posts , you would realize that I only suggested gated communities if Detroit, or similar communities, could not muster the resolve to master their crime problem. Ridership on light rail would also be reduced if riders were afraid to stand at or walk away from a light rail station for fear of being mugged or worse. A certain level of civility has to exist before some civic projects work. Otherwise, its walls, lights, security cameras, and concealed weapons. I'm guessing that gated communities would be seen as a threat to the control of leaders of some older major cities, I don't think they would like giving up control no matter how poorly their cities fare under their leadership. It would probably be easier to just just let the colosseums and viaducts crumble, plow them into meadows and fields, and provide a happy face explanation for doing so.

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Oladub, I understand the motivation behind your idea, but is such a drastic plan really necessary? Other cities that have had similar levels of crime have managed to turn things around without building prisons throughout the city. Do you realize how detrimental such an idea would be to any interconnectivity between neighborhoods?

Let's stick to simple, cost-effective ideas that have worked elsewhere, rather than reinventing a wheel from 40 years ago.

ghettopalmetto, I don't think of it as drastic. Consider cities that have neighborhoods separated by bodies of water, ravines, military bases, hills, industrial areas, etc.. that disrupt the inter-connectivity of neighborhoods. It usually isn't an issue. Sometimes a bridge is built. Life goes on.

I was thinking about it from a different perspective. If there is a gated community of whatever type and size, the residents would constantly be spilling out to go to work and spend at restaurants and other places outside of their community. They would be hiring people from outside of their community to teach, repair their cars, mail their packages, etc.. Compared with listening to crickets on a humid summer night, the inclusion of any such new community, with or without walls, would ramp up commerce and connect a new neighborhood with existing ones.

Smart growth planners are often hostile to cul-de-sacs for the inter-connectivity reason you mentioned. However, studies taken of cul-de-sac residents show above average satisfaction with the intimacy of their neighborhood. I can't figure out why something that provided satisfaction would cause planners such grief. Then they try to say its because the snow plow has a more difficult time turning around. It sounds like an excuse. If they wanted efficiency we would all have to live in barracks.

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Originally Posted by oladub

ghettopalmetto, I don't think of it as drastic. Consider cities that have neighborhoods separated by bodies of water, ravines, military bases, hills, industrial areas, etc.. that disrupt the inter-connectivity of neighborhoods. It usually isn't an issue. Sometimes a bridge is built. Life goes on.

I was thinking about it from a different perspective. If there is a gated community of whatever type and size, the residents would constantly be spilling out to go to work and spend at restaurants and other places outside of their community. They would be hiring people from outside of their community to teach, repair their cars, mail their packages, etc.. Compared with listening to crickets on a humid summer night, the inclusion of any such new community, with or without walls, would ramp up commerce and connect a new neighborhood with existing ones.

Smart growth planners are often hostile to cul-de-sacs for the inter-connectivity reason you mentioned. However, studies taken of cul-de-sac residents show above average satisfaction with the intimacy of their neighborhood. I can't figure out why something that provided satisfaction would cause planners such grief. Then they try to say its because the snow plow has a more difficult time turning around. It sounds like an excuse. If they wanted efficiency we would all have to live in barracks.

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So basically, you want to build Troy with menacing walls and gates in the middle of a large city.

Based on what you write, I'm curious to know if you've actually lived anywhere other than Southeast Michigan.

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Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto

So basically, you want to build Troy with menacing walls and gates in the middle of a large city.

Based on what you write, I'm curious to know if you've actually lived anywhere other than Southeast Michigan.

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Neither Troy Michigan nor Helen's Troy but I have a taste for fair Verona's response to unruly streets.

Mack& Base Line, Santa Cruz [[CA), Rapid City [[MI), Lansing , E. Lansing, on Ferry near WSU, two places in Wisconsin, on four Great Lake freighters and a cruise ship, Traverse City, and two places on the far east side of Detroit. Oh, and I got to know my way around Eureka CA and a farm near Sturgeon Falls, ON fairly well. I travel to Minneapolis and Florida a lot. I haven't been anywhere in Minneapolis where I didn't feel safe walking around at night. The light rail is great, there is a thriving downtown condo section, lots of nightlife every night, no broken down houses, and the only gated community experiences are trying to get into condos. In Florida , I wind up visiting a senior community with hundreds of residences; independent, assisted living, and nursing home as well as detached homes all in the same complex with shops, bank, hair dresser, pool, restaurants, and more. Its huge. I've never seen anything like it in the midwest. No wall there either but lots of security guards and surrounded by lots of large ponds. Someone visiting her father there, took a midnight swim in one of the ponds and an alligator got her.

Et tu?