That representation you speak of elected the leaders that put Detroit in the condition it is in. And the voters spoke and voted in support of those leaders year after year, so they must have liked what their leaders were doing.
Yes, it might be easy to envision, “low density shops with apartments” there when you live in Tampa. Hard to believe now, but that area used to look the way you envision it back in the 1950s and 1960s. Homes and apartments filled, schools overflowing and a multitude of small shops along the major streets.
Let me put it perspective for you. Since the 1950s about 1,140,000 people decided for themselves [[no hurricane) to leave Detroit. That is nearly the size of the population of Hillsborough County, Florida – the county you live in. What would Tampa look like if the population of the county decided to leave?
By the way, my childhood home was about 1.3 miles east of the Hantz site, along Vernor Hwy. and closer to Grosse Pointe. Today the entire block I grew up on is now totally vacant and my elementary school has been closed and slated for demolition.
So when you “look down [on the map] to the green dots” notice that the typical lot size is only 30 feet wide – that is a rather tight density. So let us discuss when the next cycle of revitalization will come to this neighborhood. Fact: Detroit lost 1,140,000 in the last 60 years. Assume the revitalized neighborhood will have half the population density of the 1950s. Therefore, one could assume that the area will be revitalized when 570,000 people decide to return to Detroit.
How long will that take? Anybody’s guess. Meanwhile, growing trees or any other readily harvestable, cash crop seems like a benign use to me until 570,000 folks decide to move to town.
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