Any Witnesses to the Wildings, 02/09/2013?

[bailey]

Here in lies the problem with the whole shrinking city theory and the crux of this thread.

You have currently roughly 700,000 residents out of that 700,000 you have roughly 35% at this time carrying the others so to speak,which leaves a very large percentage of the population that needs to be dealt with,maybe wrong choice of words but currently you have several options.

Because until that percentage is watered down your treading water.

A: You could pack them all up and send then to the suburbs.not really advisable.

B: You can shrink the city and force them to move to the suburbs because they have no choice because by the time they are given 10 times the value of their currant home it still does not give them enough to buy a paid for home in Corktown let alone pay the increased costs of security and property taxes. So they have no option and that whole line is what is called hogwash.

Crop the whole shrinking city aspect and concentrate on job training and job creation which would also bring in residents to fill the gaps while you are preparing the rest of the ones that need the extra help to find their way in life.But that all starts at the top and people like you in place to make it happen in everybody's best interest not just the 30 something techies,nothing against them but they will get eaten for lunch and head out state the first time it happens.

Millions being raised to cover the eastside with fish farms for convicts but yet you have 65 schools sitting vacant that could be dormitorys with retired school teachers giving GED classes and actually preparing them for a future other then crime.

Shrinking city and neat little tree farms sounds all and good ,we can go dancing through the groves hand in hand singing songs but what about the 300,000 bodies that were thrown aside to get there.

There are alternatives to shrinking city that do not include stepping over those that may at some point in life be a bit more less unfortunate then others. They are still human and Americans.

So in the famous words of G and all of that monkey typing you need to dilute the waters ,how are you going to do that?

Because this whole propaganda side show of a shrinking city is based on 300,000 packing up and leaving and I really do not see that happening,nor would expect it.

So it goes back to spend millions to shrink a city or spend millions to make productive members of society,do not have the funds? Funny,the funds seem to be coming in from all over to shrink the city.People tripping over each other to raise millions to install extra security,many are willing to raise taxes for extra security but how many are willing to raise taxes to educate and employ and train so the false sense of security is not even needed?

This tread is a wake up call in a sense you are being told hey we are still here and we are not going away. You need a city of 1.7 million to thin the waters.

For what it is worth CTY I think you would be an asset to your community within the CC ,but sometimes we all need to walk in another persons shoes and see where they are coming from.

I don't understand your claim that 300,000 people need to leave the city.

The idea of "shrinking the city" is to realign the population with the land mass served. As is oft cited, we can fit the entire city of Paris in the EMPTY part of Detroit.

[Danny]

When police presence reduced in Detroit. The flash mobs begin thus sparking a riot. Those mobs of [[black) youths coming from various gang cliques mission is simple. Destroy the quality of regional life in the urban city [[especially Downtown Detroit), keep venture capitalists out and make city government fail. But Detroit will keep on building, veture capitalists will keep on coming back. They will be ready with arms if these thugs return to bring murder, madness and mayhem in City of Detroit.

Suburbanites be on the lookout for those thugs,too.

[Detroitnerd]

The safety net is in tatters because it's been overtaxed by ever increasing numbers of people depending on it to live their lives.

No, it's in tatters because it is increasingly cut year after year by both parties.

What you are arguing for is socialism. We're not a socialist country. We don't have single payer health care, nationally run schools, free or heavily subsidized post secondary education, child allowances, and lifetime welfare. We never did.

Actually, what the United States is is a "mixed economy." It has elements of capitalism and elements of socialism. The elements of socialism are there to temper the excesses of capitalism, and indeed I hope we swing more toward socializing medicine and other vital public processes, because capitalism is clearly not doing the job well.

Where'd I get this "mixed economy" jazz? It was in my social studies book in junior high school. And it's quite true.

[Detroitnerd]

Your article does not make any claim that Nordic countries "manage to produce new generations of educated, healthy young people with real future opportunities."

Have you seen statistics on crime in Nordic countries? Compared to the United States? Young Nordic folks generally do not go on rampages.

Well, except for Anders Breivert.

[Detroitnerd]

Check out the article in the current "Economist" where the Nordic countries are cutting severely back on their public spending as a percent of GDP.

I've been hearing that for years. Methinks anti-socialist commentators do overstate it a bit, a sort of wishful watching. The fact remains they have a vigorous form of socialism that protects people from the predations of capital.

Unlike our socialism, which uses the value created by the people to protect predatory capitalists.

[Hermod]

I've been hearing that for years. Methinks anti-socialist commentators do overstate it a bit, a sort of wishful watching. The fact remains they have a vigorous form of socialism that protects people from the predations of capital.

Unlike our socialism, which uses the value created by the people to protect predatory capitalists.

The "Economist" magazine is hardly conservative.

[Hermod]

Have you seen statistics on crime in Nordic countries? Compared to the United States? Young Nordic folks generally do not go on rampages.

Well, except for Anders Breivert.

And what would be the effect [[on both countries) if we exchanged a random 700,000 of the people living in Detroit for a random 700,000 of the people living in Stockholm?

[Detroitnerd]

The "Economist" magazine is hardly conservative.

Oh, I know. But that doesn't mean those opposed to public programs benefitting people don't latch onto every and any declaration that Europe is cutting back on economic democracy. I have heard so many self-satisfied death knells for "European socialism" over the years, and yet it continues to exist and help create stronger nations of people who don't resort to crime.

[Detroitnerd]

And what would be the effect [[on both countries) if we exchanged a random 700,000 of the people living in Detroit for a random 700,000 of the people living in Stockholm?

It would be a challenge, certainly. My crystal ball is about as good as anybody's, but I guess you'd have to look to a similar instance for evidence on what might happen. Perhaps the post-Soviet unification of Germany has some lessons. It hasn't been easy for Germany to integrate the citizens of the former East German state into the west, but they are making progress. It will likely take a generation or more before the influences of 40 years can be dealt with, and the old divisions disappear, from the very real scars left upon people who endured Communist tyranny to the chauvinist reactions among those who didn't.

If we were wise enough to use our public resources to see that all young people are properly fed, educated and otherwise developed -- doing so in the belief that any of them could be tomorrow's leaders -- it would take much longer here. Forty-odd years of a police state can't compare to hundreds of years of disenfranchisement and discrimination, which could take a century of work to ameliorate.

[stasu1213]

You are right. I meant to be all-inclusive, but you've exposed one of my biases...that the innovators and entrepreneurs are all highly educated, which is not true.

Point taken, and I think you [[or we) are right.

So are the ones who have credentials such as a college degree are not highly educated. Most of the credentialed people who have degrees work for those who are entreprenuers, innovators, and thinkers. I know that those who went to college for 2 to 10 years are considered highly educated. Only in th field that they had studied

[Al Publican]

I caught a segment of the Dino Costa sport show on Sirius radio today in which his guest Colin Flaherty commented on a "wilding" event at the the Winterfest, something about a hundred or so people trashing stuff and stores around the event.

Being on the west coast, I don't follow Detroit stuff on a daily basis, just look a couple of times at the Free Press and News sites each week.

Anyone here at the Winterfest that saw any nogoodniks at work? [[I was at the 2010 Winterfest and it seemed to have a good turnout.)

[Al Publican]

Got it. I missed the thread below on the "wildings."

[Al Publican]

Nihilism. Every now and then I hear someone invoke "nihilism" when nogoodniks go bugfuck and I think 'Right on. That's what what thuglife boils down to. Egocentric driven behavior based on impulse and momentary self-satisfaction.

[Richard]

I don't understand your claim that 300,000 people need to leave the city.

The idea of "shrinking the city" is to realign the population with the land mass served. As is oft cited, we can fit the entire city of Paris in the EMPTY part of Detroit.

I never claimed that 300k need to leave the city ,the question is what happens to the 300k plus that does not fit into the shrinking city aspect.

They are saying no problem you can stay where you are just expect reduced services,maybe not reduced taxes, but at any rate if you have a sewer line stretching 2 miles to serve 10 residents and that line breaks is the city going to spend the 5 million to repair it?

Is any more reduction of services really possible,I guess maybe if they run wells and revert back to the good old outhouse.I bit of a pia in the winter but sufficient anyways.

They are going to have to maintain miles of utilities at a higher cost per resident anyways.It is what you already have and making it even worse by diluting the tax base even more.

The idea of "shrinking the city" is to realign the population with the land mass served. As is oft cited, we can fit the entire city of Paris in the EMPTY part of Detroit.

Is that what they did in Poletown, realign the population?

Or maybe because you have such a large footprint you have no value and by realigning many into a small spot you create demand thus increasing value,then as the value increases people move further out because it is cheaper land or back to where they started from but by this time the existing utilities are beyond repair and have to be reestablished at a higher rate,its a short term gain and twice as expensive for the future residents.

Its kinda like a city suburb thing but within the city,you have already seen what damage it does to a city when residents realign to the suburbs but I guess under a fifty year plan to will be no need to move to the suburbs so this also impacts the suburbs for the next fifty years.

There is no push or funding to repopulate so what is the real realignment goal.

So in short, if possible, the whole reason behind realignment is because the city does not have the funds to maintain services that they will still need to maintain in return receiving less taxes to pay a higher cost per resident.

Its about decreasing land value on plot A to increase land value on plot B or internment domain of the future.

[royce]

Richard, what is the alternative if the city does not "shrink?"

[Richard]

Richard, what is the alternative if the city does not "shrink?"

I guess that is a part of getting old is weird sleep patterns.

Anyways,You have the city saying hey we are broke and what we need to do is shrink the city to concentrate resources on a specific area in order to stabilize something or end up with nothing.

Makes total sense on the surface and to prove the point the last couple of years certain areas have receive the bulk of funding in essence the other parts of the city have already been cut off they just do not realize it yet.

But here is the problem,roughly 80% of neighborhood stabilization comes from the feds so that leaves the city on the hook for 20%.

The feds do not say pick and area and shrink the city,they are more specific in the last rounds of funding.

The first round was because of the crack epidemic and the feds made available millions to each city to pick the hardest hit areas and stabilize them,
ie street improvements,demolitions,facade improvements,community centers, anything that would help stabilize and improve a given area including street lights.

The second and most recent round was in reaction to the mortgage meltdown which hit certain sections harder then others,the goal was to use those funds to educate home owners,assist home owners with mortgage modifications to keep them in their home to stabilize the neighborhoods including the boarding up and maintenance of abandoned homes.

Okay so the saying we do not have the funds to stabilize because we are broke is not exactly the bottom line.

Look at how many millions are being spent and raised to shrink the city,over 200 million in the last two years,then look at what Mr Gilbert has done downtown with 200 million,not including fed dollars.He is creating the demand for the influx of new residents and tax base,what does he know that a city gov full of consultants and paying consultants millions do not? What exactly does the Economic growth part of the city do for their paycheck?

Places like Corktown ,Midtown etc by nature and by using available yearly allotted fed dollars will succeed because they will support the average to above average wage earners who will in return will support their given neighborhood.

To me anyways the problem with the shrinking city aspect is you are trying to eliminate the below average,service workers or fixed income and even retired residents.Simply because they will be priced out of places like Corktown,Midtown etc.

They are gearing up to support and only support medium income residents,nice concept and of course the retirees are more then welcome in sunny Fl but lets face it the city is comprised of all incomes.

They have been gearing up left and right to accommodate the extremely poor but there is still a large segment that are in between poor and not medium wage yet.

So where do they live? The city is saying you do not have to relocate but they really do not have a choice.I personally have not heard that part discussed or maybe somebody can point me in the direction where that issue is already resolved.

If you take the we are broke aspect away,not to even mention they do not even know if and how broke they are yet to even make that decision yet,but it is being made.

It is a good question of what happens if the city does not shrink but also think of what the long term ramifications are being created by shrinking the city in this currant social experiment.

And I really have to ask again ,are the suburbs really prepared for the next influx of those who are not welcome in the designated sectors?

[Al Publican]

Colin Flarethy's book "White Girl Bleed A lot": I first heard of the Detroit wilding incident on Dino Costa's radio show on Sirius Radio last week where Flarethy spoke of this and other racial mob incidents. Has Flarethy's book had much discussion in metro Detroit?

[Detroitnerd]

The Detroit Works program should be enforced out where there are unfinished subdivisions in the boonies, not in the city with good bones for density.

This is what happens when you give urban problems over to foundations to solve. Pffftt...

[313WX]

The Detroit Works program should be enforced out where there are unfinished subdivisions in the boonies, not in the city with good bones for density.

This is what happens when you give urban problems over to foundations to solve.

Detroit Works is just a not-so fancy masking for the UN's Agenda 21. I don't think Michigan's non-profits are as creative as you're given them credit for being.

Detroit gets to be its first guinea pig.

[Hermod]

The Detroit Works program should be enforced out where there are unfinished subdivisions in the boonies, not in the city with good bones for density.

This is what happens when you give urban problems over to foundations to solve. Pffftt...

I know. Everywhere there are three or four houses to a block, we close the block down and raze the houses. Clear out whole areas of the city. We take the residents of those blocks and place them in very dense, high-rise public housing built as close to downtown and mid-town as we can get it. this will create the required density in the central city. Then we can buld more high-rise public housing [[worker's flats) and force anyone north of 23 mile to move back into the central city. Liberal/progressive government central planning and control is the only way to go.