Suburbs are unsustainable?

[daddeeo]

Some people don't want inner action with neighbors.
A lot of other people value their lives and wish to live in a
relatively safe environment.
As feely, touchy as some might want to picture city life, you were right on top of other people. While you might have a small yard, it's not the same as what was available outside city limits.
Migration from the cities happened way before race became the main reason for leaving. Take a good study of all major cities.
Of course, things were worse here because of a combination of job loss, poor city government and lousy race relations.

[Bearinabox]

As feely, touchy as some might want to picture city life, you were right on top of other people. While you might have a small yard, it's not the same as what was available outside city limits.

Thanks for explaining what city life is like, it's not like any of us have ever lived in one or anything.

Migration from the cities happened way before race became the main reason for leaving.

"Migration from the cities" was only an option for whites, though. Whites who exercised that option were directly benefiting from their whiteness by taking advantage of opportunities not open to people of other races. Whether or not those whites were motivated by personal prejudices is irrelevant--they were able to leave because of the color of their skin.

[sam]

Thanks for explaining what city life is like, it's not like any of us have ever lived in one or anything.
"Migration from the cities" was only an option for whites, though. Whites who exercised that option were directly benefiting from their whiteness by taking advantage of opportunities not open to people of other races. Whether or not those whites were motivated by personal prejudices is irrelevant--they were able to leave because of the color of their skin.

I think you missed the point on this one. This generalization goes back thousands of years and has been documented by numerous historians - [[Jackson, "Grabgrass Frontier, Kotkin, The City: A Global History, Breugman, "Sprawl, A Compact History, to name a few). Historically people lived in cities, behind a wall for protection. When the industrial age came about cities had another purpose for aggregating people; they needed to be near the factory, which needed to be near the river or eventually the railroad.

As far as who was able to move out of the nasty, dung ridden, and disease ridden city it basically was anybody who had money. Detroit sure had its racial problems, which went into the suburbs, but you neglect the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese [[they were sometimes hanged in California), and the Jews, who showed up illiterate with all of two dollars in their pockets on Ellis island. My family escaped the potato famine in Ireland and exploitation by the British, and became the white trash that migrated from the South after the WWII. Basically every ethnic group you can think of has been red meat for exploitation at one time or another if you want to march back in history, and the US melting pot has been anything but easy.

[Hermod]

Thanks for explaining what city life is like, it's not like any of us have ever lived in one or anything.
"Migration from the cities" was only an option for whites, though. Whites who exercised that option were directly benefiting from their whiteness by taking advantage of opportunities not open to people of other races. Whether or not those whites were motivated by personal prejudices is irrelevant--they were able to leave because of the color of their skin.

How long have there been suburban communities of blacks in places like Inkster Township? Blacks could leave the city as well.

[Bearinabox]

As far as who was able to move out of the nasty, dung ridden, and disease ridden city it basically was anybody who had money.

Tell that to Ossian Sweet.

[Bearinabox]

How long have there been suburban communities of blacks in places like Inkster Township? Blacks could leave the city as well.

As long as they didn't want to move anywhere that was desirable to whites, and didn't expect to get the sorts of mortgages available to whites, they could buy up some cheap rural land nobody else wanted and build themselves whatever kind of house they had the cash to afford. Is that what "equality" means in this country?

[daddeeo]

No one put a gun to anyone's head when many moved to the northern cities.
Different strokes for different folks.
Suburbs will survive just fine.

[Bearinabox]

No one put a gun to anyone's head when many moved to the northern cities.

So they all should've stayed put in Alabama if they didn't want to get discriminated against up here?

Different strokes for different folks.

Also different options for different folks, but we don't like to talk about that.

Suburbs will survive just fine.

Not much of anything around here will survive unless we fix what we're doing instead of just defending it all the time.

[bailey]

Did any of the unsustainable suburbs have massive blackouts to their central business districts during the recent hot weather?

[daddeeo]

Tell that to the voters in Detroit!!
They voted in Kwame twice. The second time they should have known better.
Responsibility starts at home.

[Bearinabox]

Did any of the unsustainable suburbs have massive blackouts to their central business districts during the recent hot weather?

...and now I remember why I've completely ignored this thread for 90% of its existence. People keep insisting on making it about something entirely different and much less interesting than what it's actually supposed to be about. If you're interested, I think this post by professorscott on the preceding page is a good, on-point explanation of the actual issue here.

Ah, but that's just the direct cost-of-living to an individual family. Let's instead look at a fact posted by iheartthed a little bit ago: From the 1970s to the 2000s, while Metro Detroit's population grew by just 2%, the amount of land under urban development grew by 40%.

This is an economic disaster.

Our incomes are down, yet the 102% of us who are here compared to 1970 have to pay to maintain 140% of the roads, 140% of the water lines, 140% of the sewer lines, 140% of the electrical grid, 140% of the schools. Our infrastructure costs per capita have increased by more than a third [[in constant dollars), while we make less money!

Yet nobody has any plan, or even a notion, to try to arrest this, much less reverse it. Once the recession ends, and end it will, we will once again be building new Levittowns in northern Macomb and western Wayne and Oakland counties, as the people who now live 20 miles from the central city and have a one-hour commute to work [[by car, the only means we support) decide they would rather live 30 miles from Detroit and have a 90 minute commute.

If that is not unsustainable, then the word "sustain" doesn't mean what I think it does.

If, on the other hand, you'd like to start a thread called Detroit City Government Is Dismally Incompetent, I imagine you'll get nearly universal agreement on that point.

[Bearinabox]

Tell that to the voters in Detroit!!
They voted in Kwame twice. The second time they should have known better.
Responsibility starts at home.

I'm telling it to everyone in Southeast Michigan, and responsibility starts in all of our homes. As I've said on here before, no single community, no matter how competently it manages its internal affairs, will be able to survive the effects of this region continuing to do what it's doing now indefinitely.

[Retroit]

If all the white people, who currently live in the suburbs, lived in Detroit, where would the black people live? It was because the white people moved out that housing was provided for black people. Detroit didn't experience widespread abandonment until black people moved out.



As for the 102%-140% argument: One needs to consider:

1. The number of occupants per dwelling. If this number is halved, for example, then it would make sense that the land area would double.
2. People now-a-days prefer more space then they used to. People want more privacy, more recreation space, quieter surroundings, fresher air. We have more possessions to accommodate and store, so we need bigger houses, yards, and garages.
3. The cost for building more infrastructure is born by everyone, and since 80% of metro Detroiters live outside the city, they bear 80% of the costs. They apparently are willing to bear these extra costs, otherwise they wouldn't have built, or continue to build out there.
4. If the suburbs had never been built, wouldn't this have decreased the quality of life for those living in the city? What would 4.4 million people living in Detroit be like, considering that Detroit is composed mostly of single family homes? And unlike places like NYC or Chicago, downtown Detroit does not have a substantial workforce which necessitates a desire for large numbers of people to live downtown.

It sounds to me that a lot of the arguments for the unsustainability of the suburbs are nothing more than an attempt to keep people from leaving the city or to encourage the people to move into the city. I'm afraid that this will prove inadequate. People will not move back to the city simply because of infrastructure sustainability matters; they will move back when Detroit is a safe place to raise a family. In other words, when the social structure of Detroit becomes sustainable.

[Detroitnerd]

How long have there been suburban communities of blacks in places like Inkster Township? Blacks could leave the city as well.

Inkster was set up as a dedicated black suburb for and by Henry Ford so his black workers could live near the plant in a suburban but segregated environment. Of course, it ain't all benevolent. Dearborn used to have black residents, but the old man demanded segregation and got it in the form of Inkster.

[iheartthed]

Inkster was set up as a dedicated black suburb for and by Henry Ford so his black workers could live near the plant in a suburban but segregated environment. Of course, it ain't all benevolent. Dearborn used to have black residents, but the old man demanded segregation and got it in the form of Inkster.

Can't believe him of all people didn't know that already......

[ghettopalmetto]

If all the white people, who currently live in the suburbs, lived in Detroit, where would the black people live? It was because the white people moved out that housing was provided for black people. Detroit didn't experience widespread abandonment until black people moved out.

Right. Because prior to the massive suburban flight that began in the 1940s, black folks were all just living in the streets. How kind of Whitey. And how kind of you to keep segregation alive.

As for the 102%-140% argument: One needs to consider:
The number of occupants per dwelling. If this number is halved, for example, then it would make sense that the land area would double.

Please show statistics demonstrating that the average household size in Metropolitan Detroit has shrunk by 30% since 1970. The numerous abandoned houses in Detroit tell me, however, that there is a housing supply in the region that has far outstripped demand. How do you account for this?

People now-a-days prefer more space then they used to. People want more privacy, more recreation space, quieter surroundings, fresher air. We have more possessions to accommodate and store, so we need bigger houses, yards, and garages.

When was this survey taken? Do you mean to imply that garages were only invented once suburbs started mandating minimum lot sizes of 1/2 acre? How many possessions do you store in your yard? For what it's worth, the typical 100-year-old rowhouse in Washington, DC is much larger than the average vinyl-sided piece of crap in Troy, Michigan.

The cost for building more infrastructure is born by everyone, and since 80% of metro Detroiters live outside the city, they bear 80% of the costs. They apparently are willing to bear these extra costs, otherwise they wouldn't have built, or continue to build out there.

And Detroiters would thus pay 20% of the cost--for projects like I-696, the Van Dyke Expressway, Hall Road expansion, new suburban schools, and new water and sewer lines. None of these new projects, of course, benefit the average resident of the City of Detroit. At the same time, since funds are directed at these new resources, existing resources in the City have been left to rot.

If the suburbs had never been built, wouldn't this have decreased the quality of life for those living in the city? What would 4.4 million people living in Detroit be like, considering that Detroit is composed mostly of single family homes? And unlike places like NYC or Chicago, downtown Detroit does not have a substantial workforce which necessitates a desire for large numbers of people to live downtown.

Yeah, like the quality of life in the City now is some kind of Shangri-La.

Where do you make this shit up?

[bailey]

...and now I remember why I've completely ignored this thread for 90% of its existence. People keep insisting on making it about something entirely different and much less interesting than what it's actually supposed to be about. If you're interested, I think this post by professorscott on the preceding page is a good, on-point explanation of the actual issue here.

And I too realize why I stopped reading this stupid thread 7 pages ago. Detroit is a failed city and has been basically insolvent for what?.. a decade or more? blathering on page after page about racism, segregation, and sprawl is just silly at this point. it's moving deck chairs around the titanic. We get it, galactically stupid planning and criminally racist decisions were made during the last 60 years that got us here. lovely. digging up Orville Hubbard's corpse and kicking it around for "keeping Dearborn clean[[aka white)" isn't going to solve anything. if tomorrow we had "critical" mass of integration and no one was threatening to burn down the houses of black people that move to Eastpointe, the region would still be circling the drain. cutting every aggrieved minority a reparations check isn't going to stop it either.

Oakland county is not bankrupt. Macomb County is not bankrupt. the rest of Wayne county is not bankrupt. They are struggling and may be soon, but the only reason the region is "unsustainable" is because they are all struggling with 145 square miles of the tri county area that is essentially abandoned, yet pretends it's still a city of 2 million and the jobs that built it are coming back one day. It isn't and they aren't...ever. Detroit is 145 square miles of near lawlessness, a place that is virtually ungovernable, that is spewing refugees daily, and provides almost no quality of life to what residents it has left. A place no business will locate without MASSIVE incentives, a place where the bus drivers walk off the job after being 'disrespected', and a place where the power goes off in the city center when too many people run their a/c. To paraphrase Sam Riddle, add a few goats wandering the streets and you'd think you were in the third world.

You want regionalism and regional solutions to the 102%-140% problem? fine. Appoint a financial manager to take over Detroit and run Detroit through chapt 9. Maybe then you'd get some regional buy in and fewer Levittowns built at 35 mile road. If enough people can be made to believe Detroit isn't a giant suckhole of fail run by a kleptocracy, people might take it seriously and consider it as a place to live or run a business. But of course, any move like that wouldn't survive the grape throwers upset about precious jewels being pillaged.

If, on the other hand, you'd like to start a thread called Detroit City Government Is Dismally Incompetent, I imagine you'll get nearly universal agreement on that point.

How does one continue to demand solutions, yet ignore the most significant problem? Major cities have suburbs. Suburbs in and of themselves are not 'unsustainable'. The problem with SeM is there is no city anymore. The area will never move forward until someone addresses the largest anchor holding it back, the failure of Detroit as a viable entity. and stomping your feet demanding everyone that moved out over the last 60 years move back in and calling them all mean racists is not a solution.

[Detroitnerd]

And I too realize why I stopped reading this stupid thread 7 pages ago.

You sure did.

[bailey]

You sure did.

yup. sure did. is now the time to post the crying baby picture or do I wait until later? Maybe sad face emoticons instead?

[Detroitnerd]

yup. sure did. is now the time to post the crying baby picture or do I wait until later? Maybe sad face emoticons instead?

It's OK. I'm sure everything will be fine in the region as we continue to drive our gas-guzzling vehicles from subdivision to strip mall to office on roads that must be rebuilt every five years -- until the end of time. No reason to read up on what other visions there might be, or how it happened so we can try to reverse it. Everything's fine just the way it is.

[Detroitnerd]

Here's a passage from Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons" that pretty much says it all ... and in 1918 too! But I'm sure this is all just a bunch of urban malcontents just rehashing the postwar period, even though it's written 30 years before all that.

After the arrival of coffee the Major was rallying Eugene upon some rival automobile shops lately built in a suburb, and already promising to flourish.

"I suppose they'll either drive you out of the business," said the old gentleman, "or else the two of you'll drive all the rest of us off the streets."

"If we do, we'll even things up by making the streets five or ten times as long as they are now," Eugene returned.

"How do you propose to do that?"

"It isn't the distance from the center of a town that counts," said Eugene; "it's the time it takes to get there. This town's already spreading; bicycles and trolleys have been doing their share, but the automobile is going to carry city streets clear out to the county line."

The Major was skeptical. "Dream on, fair son!" he said. "It's lucky for us that you're only dreaming; because if people go to moving that far, real estate values in the old residence part of town are going to be stretched pretty thin."

"I'm afraid so," Eugene assented. "Unless you keep things so bright and clean that the old section will stay more attractive than the new ones."

"Not very likely! How are things going to be kept 'bright and clean' with soft coal, and our kind of city government?"

"They aren't," Eugene replied quickly. "There's no hope of it, and already the boarding-house is marching up National Avenue. There are two in the next block below here, and there are a dozen in the half-mile below that. My relatives, the Sharons, have sold their house and are building in the country—at least, they call it 'the country.' It will be city in two or three years."

"Good gracious!" the Major exclaimed, affecting 'dismay. "So your little shops are going to ruin all your old friends, Eugene!"

"Unless my old friends take warning in time, or abolish smoke and get a new kind of city government. I should say the best chance is to take Warning."

"Well, well!" the Major laughed. "You have enough faith in miracles, Eugene—granting that trolleys and bicycles and automobiles are miracles. So you think they're to change the face of the land, do you?"

"They're already doing it, Major; and it can't be stopped. ..."

At this point he was interrupted. George was the interrupter. He had said nothing since entering the dining room, but now he spoke in a loud and peremptory voice, using the tone of one in authority who checks idle prattle and settles a matter forever.

"Automobiles are a useless nuisance," he said. ... "They had no business to be invented."

"I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles," [Eugene] said. "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization—that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men's souls. I am not sure. But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us suspect. They are here, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how, though, I could hardly guess. But you can't have the immense outward changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles 'had no business to be invented.'"

[iheartthed]

and a place where the power goes off in the city center when too many people run their a/c.

This only happens in Detroit? Oh... http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/06/heat.wave/index.html

[fryar]

This only happens in Detroit? Oh... http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/06/heat.wave/index.html

No, it doesn't, we have had brownouts and blackouts in Greenwich CT as well, and we're a pretty privileged bunch [[I, for one, am living with my folks - Yay recession! - but in general).

[Retroit]

Right. Because prior to the massive suburban flight that began in the 1940s, black folks were all just living in the streets. How kind of Whitey. And how kind of you to keep segregation alive.

Black people were living in segregated areas, most notably Black Bottom. Whites didn't move out out of kindness, but out of accommodation. Blacks are currently being integrated into the suburbs, which proves that segregationist attitudes are changing.

Please show statistics demonstrating that the average household size in Metropolitan Detroit has shrunk by 30% since 1970. The numerous abandoned houses in Detroit tell me, however, that there is a housing supply in the region that has far outstripped demand. How do you account for this?

I don't know the exact statistics, but just wanted to point out the trend for consideration. Housing demand varies based on desirability. There is a greater demand in the suburbs than the city.

When was this survey taken? Do you mean to imply that garages were only invented once suburbs started mandating minimum lot sizes of 1/2 acre? How many possessions do you store in your yard? For what it's worth, the typical 100-year-old rowhouse in Washington, DC is much larger than the average vinyl-sided piece of crap in Troy, Michigan.

The modern family has more possessions than in the past. You should see the backyards of some of these suburban homes - it's like Cedar Point: swing sets, pools, plastic play houses, trampolines, etc. As I pointed out, cities such as Washington, D.C. have large downtown workforces which require people to live close by.

And Detroiters would thus pay 20% of the cost--for projects like I-696, the Van Dyke Expressway, Hall Road expansion, new suburban schools, and new water and sewer lines. None of these new projects, of course, benefit the average resident of the City of Detroit. At the same time, since funds are directed at these new resources, existing resources in the City have been left to rot.

And suburbanites pay for upkeep in the city to the same extent. The suburbs benefit the Detroit city residents to the same extent that the city benefits suburbanites. The demand for expansion is fed from within. Detroiters move to the inner suburbs and inner suburbanites move further outward. But unlike many other major cities, Detroit hasn't maintained continuous full occupancy.

Yeah, like the quality of life in the City now is some kind of Shangri-La.

Where do you make this shit up?

The quality of life is what people make of it. You can find areas that have the same density as Detroit that are in much better condition. What part have I made up? Please correct me with your own counter-argument.

[bailey]

This only happens in Detroit? Oh... http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/06/heat.wave/index.html

Detroit is HALF the size its grid is built for, yet it still has it's entire downtown go dark on a hot day. yup totally normal.