Can a city improve with less residents, less tax base but more supporters?
There is no question that the CoD has many supporters from the suburbs and state-wide that do many great things. With that said, it appears that the supporters are increasing while residents and tax base continue to decline.
So the question I pose to the board is: Can a city ever improve with a declining population, declining tax base but a large number of supporters that live outside the community?
The intent is not to belittle any of the great work done by those that live outside the city as the efforts by anyone working to improve the city make a large impact.
Yes - and 3 ideas to get us there
1. Create a regional government for "Detroit" metro, eliminate the invisible political divisions between municipalities of the same city. We have to start thinking of ourselves [[Metro Detroit) as the same city. Why have a hundred different school districts and police and fire districts? Why have a hundred city councils and city governments all battling one another for resources? Why have stark divisions between these municipalities such as Bloomfield Hills compared with Pontiac or Grosse Pointe compared to Eastpointe? Some of the worst school districts lay blocks away from the best. Why have bus services that don't connect or match up and compete with one another? I highly doubt any of this will change so long as we are so divided along race, class and geographic lines. Having a structured way to decide things on a regional scale is important, otherwise we just let politicians duke it out informally on piece-meal projects and essentially accomplish nothing.
2. Create a comprehensive and bold rapid mass transit system. We need light-rail and maybe even heavy-rail or expanded people mover within the urban core, with connections into the inner ring burbs such as Royal Oak and Dearborn. We need rail connection from the Airport to the Downtown businesses districts [[or bus at the very least!). We need regional rail that connects to the suburbs, exurbs, satellite cities and other large cities in Michigan such as Lansing and Grand Rapids. We need a huge improvement in buses, including better signs, bus shelters, schedules, increased frequency and routes, especially when connecting to a rail. Finally, work toward getting a high-speed rail west to Chicago and east to Toronto, with a revived Michigan Central Station as the main gateway into SE Michigan by rail.
3. Transform land-use/Shrink the region. We need to think regionally when "shrinking" the city. All previous discussion of shrinking treat Detroit as a vacuum, separate from the rest of the metro and state and the rest of the country. Suburbs also need to adapt and become more urban. We need to alter our land use pattern, with the aim of eliminating sprawl, by focusing development around activity centers, connected by transit. Some of these centers are very clear, such as Greater Downtown Detroit [[which is also the center of the region) but also in suburbs such as Dearborn, and other areas. Some centers have yet to emerge, but the foundation for them already exist. For example, land-use could be altered in Southfield to create three urban districts/clusters [[Northland, Civic Center, Northwestern) with connecting to Downtown Detroit, rather than a sprawling mess where it is impossible to navigate without a car. Southfield has a lot of assets, such as numerous offices and Lawrence Tech University. These assets would be built upon, so that activities can be clustered into districts, rather than spread out. Some areas might get less dense, and revert back to farming or nature, but this is a process that should happen organically, boosted by incentives, so it should not be forced. Eventually the suburb/city distinction will blur until there is little difference, and we become one city.