Architect Stephen Vogel in the Metro Times

This week's Metro Times has an excellent cover story.
Re-Detroit
Seeking the vision for a revitalized city
By Sandra Svoboda
http://metrotimes.com/news/re-detroit-1.1064791

One clip by Stephen Vogel caught my imagination for to succinctly encapsulating the current lively attraction of Detroit for artists, urban planners, international media, documentarians, dreamers and doers alike.

MT: Why is there such international interest in Detroit?

Vogel: If you look at all the textbooks on urban design or planning they're all based on growth. There is no textbook on Detroit. In a way we're sort of carving new ground. There's a general sense around the world, maybe not so much in America, that all cities are heading in the direction that Detroit is. To put a positive spin on it, however, is when architects or urban designers or planners see images of Detroit, they see it in a romantic sense. They see a very unusual environment and they see opportunity to become involved in this environment. I haven't had a group visit once that didn't fall in love with Detroit.

My experience concurs with that final sentence.

Thanks, Lowell, that's excellent. You can think of Detroit as a ruin, as some do, or you can think of Detroit as a canvas, in the manner of [[say) Tyree Guyton.

People like Steve think of Detroit as a canvas but in different, or maybe I should say larger, terms: we have an environment with urban infrastructure but lots of empty land; in what creative ways can we repurpose that empty land?

Youngstown Ohio and Pittburgh has been tackling this for a lot longer than Detroit or Flint have had to. In Pittburgh they have shown success. Youngstown, not so much.

Much of the planning work of the last 20 years has been devoted not so much to growth but to improving the quality of life and making areas attractive places to live. It is a political policy that forces the growth, because of the way that our taxes are structured without growth you cannot get tax revenue that keeps up with inflation. Planners do not make policy they carry it out.

We try our heck to educate and influence policy, but its ultimately up to those who you as citizens elect.

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Youngstown Ohio and Pittburgh has been tackling this for a lot longer than Detroit or Flint have had to. In Pittburgh they have shown success.

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True, but none of those cities faced the same challenges that Detroit has faced.

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Originally Posted by Patrick

True, but none of those cities faced the same challenges that Detroit has faced.

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What do you mean by this? Both cities have shrunk incredibly and had thier industries ripped out from under them.

"Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the steel industry in Pittsburgh began to implode. Following the 1981–1982 recession, for example, the mills laid off 153,000 workers.[57] The steel mills began to shut down. These closures caused a ripple effect, as railroads, mines, and other factories across the region lost business and closed. The local economy suffered a depression, marked by high unemployment and underemployment, as laid-off workers took lower-paying, non-union jobs. Pittsburgh suffered as elsewhere in the Rust Belt with a declining population, and like many other U.S. cities, it also saw white flight to the suburbs.[58]"

" Shortly after the closure of most of Youngstown Sheet and Tube's area operations, local religious leaders, steelworkers, and activists such as Staughton Lynd participated in a grassroots effort to purchase and refurbish one of the company's abandoned plants in neighboring Campbell, Ohio.[54] This project met with failure in April 1979.[54] In the wake of the steel plant shutdowns, the community lost an estimated 40,000 manufacturing jobs, 400 satellite businesses, $414 million in personal income, and from 33 to 75 percent of the school tax revenues.[55] The Youngstown area has yet to fully recover from the loss of jobs in the steel sector.[56]"

The point I was trying to make was a contrarian one of Mr Vogel. There are examples, some have turned out and others have not. I am not seeing what your point is as both these cities drastic declines and Pittsburgh's rebirth are well documented.