Detroit goals in 2013.

[gthomas]

My problem with your plan is it's too ambitious. Many countries have tried to make government services more efficient by concentrating the population, but very few have been so successful at it that the population stays concentrated. Typically what happens is some brilliant politician convinces everyone to try it, and six months later a hiccup appears and everyone decides to move back to grandpa's old house.

I'm not even sure how you'd do it. Condemn 30 square miles of the City, and build a couple of big apartment buildings with public money? With the Poletown decision overturned, can you do that? How do you pay for apartments to house hundreds or thousands when you're having trouble keeping the lights on?

As for my plan, you pretty much saw it.

Detroit is losing people largely because of crime. The City simply does not have the cash to keep a lid on crime. Greater Detroit would, which would make Detroit Proper a much more attractive place to live. Assuming insurance companies aren't racist, it would also result in a reduction of the ridiculous rates Detroiters pay. Both would mean moving out of Detroit would no longer be a no-brainer.

Moreover it would help the region's economy. Right no European companies have no idea whether Oakland County is a good place to do business because they don't know Oakland County exists. The thing they know about [[Detroit City) has the worst numbers imaginable in pretty much every category. The tri-county area has better numbers then pretty much any other city in the country, and if it was called Detroit it would be the local unit of government those Europeans paid attention to, which would result in Royal Oak geting more business.

It's not as elegant as your idea, but it is a lot more practical.

Condemning 30 sq. miles is impossible?....uummm Manhattan is a great example, even Brooklyn.

[gthomas]

It's not hard to condense something that's clearly nothing there in the first place, the only thing you doing is tearing down the last vacant homes in the area and clearing the site, break up the concrete streets, remove light poles and signage, clean up the area and plant thousands of trees. Then focus on the neighborhoods that are stable once it's completed. It's just not feasible to continue to sit on this mess, get rid of it and move on. We need to focus on building, time is money and money is time. Safety is one thing that can be tackle from this plan, no one will be using them for drug houses, raping school kids, dead bodies etc..Just an overall better environment.

[Dexlin]

Yeah, one of the huge problems with so-called right-sizing in Detroit is that folks have this idea that most of the empty land is concentrated into one or a few sides or neighborhoods, and Detroit's abandonment is insanely uneven, sometimes even within neighborhoods. There is no "bad side" of town, and the only major, contiguous bands of intact neighborhoods are in sections of the northwest and southwest, and even then they are encroached upon by emptying areas. This is different animal than a lot of big cities where their extreme blight/abandonment is confined to certain sections of their cities.

That's not to say that this can't be done at the neighborhood level. I mean, you can look at an area like Delray and Brightmoor which have already done this organically [[read: inefficient) manner. I think this process has been so unguided for so long that it's beyond a meaured unraveling. I think all we can hope for is to give incentives or create new zoning codes that'll cluster new residential and commercial development around existing community structures like police and fire stations and community centers and call it a day.

[Richard]

I am not a fan of the shrinking city theory.

Development planning also happens in cities and communities. Urban communities with a lot of vacant buildings may decide to engage in a development planning process to plan how to revitalize an area. This is a necessary step in order to qualify for state tax credits and federal and other funds that will allow the renovations to happen. From architects, to city planners, engineers, investors and residents, everyone who will be involved in the actual development should be part of the development planning process.

Read more: Definition of Development Planning | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5095844_de...#ixzz2GuZsimLP

Back in 2009 the EPA got involved and assembled a panel of smart growth experts and they came up with this 46 page PDF which is an interesting read.

http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/pdf/2...tial_fixes.pdf

To me if you have these little clumps of mini towns separated by woodlands are you not creating a rural environment in a urban setting?

How does mass transit fit into that ? you pick up at point A and drop off at point B with nothing in between granted you can enjoy the scenery in between but without the density you are wasting resources transit related covering unused space IE running 50 miles of track to service 1 mile of population,unless each cell has its own transportation network but then you have removed the city's identity as a whole .

Then you get into the whole neighborhood cell matches where I live here and you live uggg there where is the unity in separation?

Given the currant situation in the city to me the deck is stacked into a here and now situation and instead of promoting growth and investment its become a race to see who can shrink the city the quickest .

[nickbii]

Condemning 30 sq. miles is impossible?....uummm Manhattan is a great example, even Brooklyn.

I'm not talking physical possibility. I'm talking legally possible.

So there's only one guy on the block. To make your idea work he has to move. You've got to convince to give up his home, or you've got to seize his property with eminent domain. The latter probably won't work because the Supreme Court un-did the Poletown decision. The former will not be easy because if the dude wanted to move he wouldn't be the only one on his block.

And if you get a State Constitutional Amendement through allowing you to seize his land you've still got to pay for it, for all 30 square miles. And then you've got to spend a significant amount of cash building new.

You don't really have a lot of options in terms of hardball with this guy. He's got a right to live there through his property deed. The city has an obligation to provide services such as police and streets. I don't think you can just bulldoze his water-line and then say "too bad dumbass, you should have sold out while the selling was good."

You can dream all you want about re-fashioning the City into Brooklyn. And if you were the King, and had unlimited funds, you could do it. The trick is doing it as Mayor of Detroit with limited funds.