Quote Originally Posted by Richard View Post
It boils down to representation....

...snip......when I look down at the green dots I see an entire street or continuous green that could be low density shops with apartments on top and many blocks with five empty in fill lots to start with,that could be made into a really nice subdivision in the future with everything you need within walking distance.It does not need to be million dollar homes just affordable bungalow style mid range homes.To bad Sears no longer sells homes.

The infrastructure is already in place most of the neighbors are there because they are devoted so there is some stability.
It looks like there is a park there and a school?

Or I can look at the map and say wow what blight ,so disgusting nobody would want those lots there anyways plant trees or hemp.
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.