Duh?: Only way to stop Detroit blight is to ease up on suburban development

[FbO Vorcha]

Apples and oranges. Those cities aren't anything like Detroit and their unique circumstances and characteristics make comparisons pointless. Different demographics, different locations, different economies, different histories, different everything.

For starters, every one of those cities has a mass transit system. Detroit doesn't.

Henry Ford was not a big fan of Banksters, so finance never became a big deal in Detroit. When Finance became the way to siphon money out of the economy, Detroit didn't have the big suckers to get it's share. So it got sucked dry by Wall Street and the commodities markets.

[313WX]

None of those cities has really grown since the widespread use of air conditioning, unlike a vast number of warm-weather cities. There are a lot of people who prefer Houston's climate to Detroit's. I don't agree with them, but you have to recognize the phenomenon.

None of those cities may have grown at the rate cities in the southern and western US have [[granted, you have to consider when factoring in the growth rates of cities in the southern and western US, they pretty much boomed from relatively small population numbers in proportion to the already established northern/eastern US cities, and also they benefited from the massive increase in illegal immigrants as well), but none of them have declined like Detroit has either. At the very least, they've remained healthy cities.

Thus, my point was that it's silly to blame Detroit's decline solely on the weather, if at all quite frankly.

[iheartthed]

None of those cities has really grown since the widespread use of air conditioning, unlike a vast number of warm-weather cities. There are a lot of people who prefer Houston's climate to Detroit's. I don't agree with them, but you have to recognize the phenomenon.

But they also haven't been declining in population either in recent decades [[excepting Chicago).

[Jimaz]

... Also, people moved to Phoenix to get away from the pollens and such that were causing breathing problems, then they just brought all the green with them....

That is true. Most notably olive tree allergies.

Overall I still prefer Michigan.

[maverick1]

Henry Ford was not a big fan of Banksters, so finance never became a big deal in Detroit. When Finance became the way to siphon money out of the economy, Detroit didn't have the big suckers to get it's share. So it got sucked dry by Wall Street and the commodities markets.

I think this is more important than most people realize. If finance played a bigger role in Detroit the view of the city would be totally different economically.

[Bham1982]

Henry Ford was not a big fan of Banksters, so finance never became a big deal in Detroit. When Finance became the way to siphon money out of the economy, Detroit didn't have the big suckers to get it's share. So it got sucked dry by Wall Street and the commodities markets.

Uh-huh. That's the reason Detroit isn't a global center for finance. It's because "Henry Ford was not a big fan of Banksters".

And "Detroit" was basically saved by "banksters". The Wall Street bailout funds were partially redirected to bail out Ford, GM, and related suppliers, and unlike Wall Street, that was the only portion of the bailout where the American taxpayer was never made whole.

[jiminnm]

At best there were like 50,000 city employees in the 1990s. Assuming every since one of them left after the 2000 census, that still doesn't explain the 200,000 others who left as well, who were also very capable of leaving during the 1990s.
Just so we're on the same page:
209,000 people left the city in the 1950s
156,000 people left in the 1960s
310,000 people left in the 1970s
175,000 people left in the 1980s
76,000 people left in the 1990s
237,000 people left in the 2000s

Something I find peculiar about this is how consistent the raw population decline has stayed despite a shrinking overall city population. So each decade [[except the 1990s) there is a larger percentage of the city leaving, even though in theory you should be running out of people with the financial means to leave. I don't know what that says to you, but to me it says that something is going on in the communities outside of Detroit to make moving artificially cheaper than it probably should be.

I'm not sure that the 90s-2000s comparison is entirely reliable. 2010 was the first census in a long while that did not use population census estimates based on statistical sampling. Consequently, I suspect that the 2000 population was actually lower than what was finally reported [[and there was much discussion about that at the time).

[Wesley Mouch]

I truly believe weather hurts the rust belt quite a bit. Not that I think cities like Detroit made great decisions, but I'm not convinced a lot of successful Southern cities are really doing anything smarter. It's more or less, if you don't have the smarts to make it in the creative economies in cities like NYC or regions like Silicon Valley, you might as well at least live somewhere warm.

There's little doubt that Willis Carrier made the south what it is today.

Air conditioning made it possible -- but you can also look at this like sprawl. The south offered relief from a lot of the problems of older cities.

Once, southern California was the place. Now, California laments the loss of jobs to New Mexico.

Old places bring with them benefits -- but also lots of rules and regulation. Newer places are more innovative and nimble. The best thing for Detroit's future is nimble.

[nain rouge]

Thus, my point was that it's silly to blame Detroit's decline solely on the weather, if at all quite frankly.

The weather is a big deal in modern America. How do you think Miami got to be a top 10 metropolitan area? By cutting taxes and being "business friendly"? Miami had about a third of Metro Detroit's population in 1960. Now look at it. Once the interstate freeway system was established, the floodgates opened. There was a "Rust Belt diaspora".

Now, as we see with cities like Minneapolis, bad weather isn't a death sentence. But you have to combat it aggressively. There, they do cities better than Detroit, and they do suburbs better than Detroit - just look at the Mall of America. The last thing a rust belt city can do is rest on its past accomplishments.

[313WX]

The weather is a big deal in modern America. How do you think Miami got to be a top 10 metropolitan area? By cutting taxes and being "business friendly"? Miami had about a third of Metro Detroit's population in 1960. Now look at it. Once the interstate freeway system was established, the floodgates opened. There was a "Rust Belt diaspora".

Now, as we see with cities like Minneapolis, bad weather isn't a death sentence. But you have to combat it aggressively. There, they do cities better than Detroit, and they do suburbs better than Detroit - just look at the Mall of America. The last thing a rust belt city can do is rest on its past accomplishments.[/COLOR]

The bolded is key though.

Detroit could have done what Minneapolis and other northern cities have done to remain relatively healthy, weather notwithstanding.

[ghettopalmetto]

Back to the original topic of this thread. From a report to be released this afternoon--I know many sprawlpologists will find excuses for the status quo. Even more troubling for Detroit, however, is that barely anyone with political influence recognizes the status quo as a problem.

Let me know if any of this sounds completely unfamiliar. Emphases are mine.


LOCUS report warns Cleveland could lose ground on walkable development if sprawl goes unchecked

http://www.cleveland.com/architectur...incart_m-rpt-1

Washington, D.C. ranks highest in walkable development today, according to the report, with 43 percent of the metro area's development occurring in dense, walkable, bike-friendly and transit-rich neighborhoods.

The three biggest cities in Ohio will continue to see sprawl as the dominant mode of development in the future, the report predicts.

Cincinnati will drop from 20^th place today in the walkable development rankings to 25^th place in the next cyle, and Columbus will drop from 16^th to 27^th to become one of four metros with lowest ratings for walkable development, along with San Diego, Kansas City and San Antonio.

"This is not just a passing fad," he said. "We are beginning to see in the top ranked urban walkable metros, the end of sprawl."

Elected officials "are seeing that this can be a much more efficient model for growth and much more efficient for their tax base," [[researcher Christopher) Leinberger said. "You use less land and get more out of infrastructure."

The change is also occurring, Leinberger and Lynch said in the conference call, because the market – led primarily by the Millennial generation now between 18 and 34 years old - is demanding it.

"Companies want to be able to attract new employees and new employees want to be in these walkable urban places," Leinberger said.

In Ohio, the political fragmentation caused by home rule and the historical emphasis on automobiles as the main mode of transportation could cause Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus to lose ground economically, Leinberger said.

"Either you're participating in the future economy and the future means by which people want to live, or you're not," he said. "You're either in the game or not, and to a certain extend, that's a conscious choice."

[nain rouge]

Well, Ghettopalmetto, I agree with you. However, the "haters" are gonna say "but Houston... but Atlanta!" The truth is that those areas don't have as much of an urban legacy as Detroit and Cleveland. Those cities can invest fully in the suburban dream without leaving behind a massive wasteland of past urban developments.

[middetres]

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. And many other cities benefited from our hindsight to avoid some of the development mistakes that the Detroit region has made.

But the two things that stand out the most that, if Detroit had done differently, we would have a vastly different looking city than we do now are:

1. Detroit never should have expanded its water department beyond its borders. Any community that wanted city water had to become part of the city...simple as that. Columbus, Ohio demands and gets the same thing. Hence why it has continued to grow both in population and geography. Detroit came to this conclusion too late in the game. Precedent was established and they were actually forced by court order to extend their system into Genesee County.

2. Code enforcement should never have been let up on. I'm about as liberal and progressive as they come, but Detroit's City Council in the 50s and beyond were champions of the poor to the detriment of the rest of the city. I know it sounds callous, but if every policy you make is to help the poor and make the city responsive to the poor, that's all you're going to have left. Which is pretty darn close to where we find ourselves now. But, at the same time, people who abandoned their property should have been just as rigorously sought after to maintain their property or sell it.

Of course there are many other things that could have been done differently, but those two stand out to me.

On a state level, communities never should have been allowed to offer tax breaks to companies already residing elsewhere in the state. That's just musical chairs with no benefit to anyone but the community offering the tax breaks...until the next community comes along and steals their businesses too. Dumb, dumb, dumb! Home rule is the worst policy/constitutional protection in this state.

[middetres]

But coulda woulda shoulda doesn't address the situation now.

But I completely agree: direct future development in areas already served by existing infrastructure. We shouldn't be building more infrastructure when we can't even take care of what we got.