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

[iheartthed]

File this under common sense:

The Detroit Blight Removal Task Force recently released its report documenting more than 40,000 blighted structures in the city.
...
Unfortunately, although a tumor can be removed, blight is an ongoing process that will continue even if all its visible symptoms are temporarily eradicated. The hard truth is that even if we somehow erased, instantaneously, all blight in Detroit tomorrow, a year from now, we would have thousands of newly blighted structures littering the city.

Blight in Detroit is fundamentally the result of processes at work outside of the city’s boundaries. Since 1950, two-thirds of the city’s population has systematically been siphoned off by the region’s housing “disassembly line.” In the tri-county metro area, developers have in every decade since 1950 built many more dwellings — an average of more than 10,000 per year — than the net growth in households required. Developers figured that their new suburban subdivisions could successfully compete against the older housing stock. They were right. As households filled these new dwellings they vacated their previous homes, which other households decided to occupy because they were viewed as superior options to where they were previously living.

As this sequential moving up-and-out process continued, it inevitably vacated the oldest, least-competitive dwellings located in the least-desirable neighborhoods in the region. These places were overwhelmingly located in Detroit. Owners of these perpetually vacant properties could find neither tenants nor buyers. Thus they ceased paying property taxes or maintaining the structures and, eventually, abandoned them. Detroit’s blight is thus fundamentally a symptom of a speculative, uncontrolled residential development process in the suburbs.

To cure Detroit’s blight, Michigan must establish a metropolitan growth boundary, which would prohibit, for a specified period, new development outside of the existing urbanized footprint.

http://www.freep.com/article/2014060...Detroit-blight

[ndavies]

Yes, Instead of improving the conditions that are making everyone flee the city, Let's ignore peoples free will and force them to live where the government says they should live.

[[By the way that was complete sarcasm. If you fix the problems that are driving the middle class out of the city, you won't need artificial growth limits. Things like reducing crime, reducing tax rates, reducing development hassles and fixing the schools.)

[iheartthed]

Yes, Instead of improving the conditions that are making everyone flee the city, Let's ignore peoples free will and force them to live where the government says they should live.

Unless you're talking about the free will of developers to subsidize the costs of their racket onto unsuspecting townships, implementing sprawl control policies does not impede anyone's free will.

[aj3647]

Unless you're talking about the free will of developers to subsidize the costs of their racket onto unsuspecting townships, implementing sprawl control policies does not impede anyone's free will.

Ummm, isn't much of Detroit's recent development subsidized by the taxpayers?

[Detroitnerd]

Ummm, isn't much of Detroit's recent development subsidized by the taxpayers?

Only the big-ticket stuff downtown, via tax abatements, TIFF financing and sweetheart deals. But, again, it represents a transfer from the have-nots to the haves, from the poorest to the richest.

[Detroitnerd]

Yes, Instead of improving the conditions that are making everyone flee the city, Let's ignore peoples free will and force them to live where the government says they should live.

Oh, hogwash. People opposed to sensible development and regional planning always resort to imagery of the People's Soviet telling Frank Rizzo he has to move into the ghetto. We'll all be much better off when the generation that lived through that bussing stuff dies off...

Ignoring that false dichotomy, look at what a region in which policy is dictated by developers hath wrought. Why are developers totally in the driver's seat in this region? They want to build newer housing always on the greenfields at the periphery and saddle us with crushing collective costs to provide for these new areas, even as the tax base rolls downhill behind it. Good for them; not so good for the rest of us. Meanwhile, our "regional planning organizations" are just rubber stamps for big developers. Companies like Pulte decide where people are going to move over the next 10 years, and SEMCOG just draws a bull's-eye around it like it was supposed to happen that way.

Like it or not, we're all in this together. Maybe you think it makes sense to go to the shoe salesman and ask him if you need new shoes every week. He'll keep telling you you do.

And the alternative isn't to go shoeless by the dictat of the Housing Commisariat. That's just silly radio talk.

[DetroitPlanner]

Either that or develop more jobs, allow immigration. Growth boundaries however have inherent flaws. People seem to jump them making the sprawl worse as well as the need to expand infrastructure even more pronounced. It is better to stop all of the sub communities from competing against each other and work for common goals. Easier said than done though.

[Bham1982]

Hilariously bad idea, and totally disregards any concept of Econ 101.

You have an area that is inherently undersirable, with property values approaching zero. You have peripheral areas that are extremely desirable, with high property values. The idea that you make the crappy area nicer by making the nice areas crappier is absurd.

Obviously people will not abandon the idea of good schools, safe streets, reliable services, and nice housing, they will just move to beyond the growth boundary. The sprawl would grow worse, it would just be separated from older communities by a greenbelt, rather than being contiguous.

[FbO Vorcha]

Hilariously bad idea, and totally disregards any concept of Econ 101.

You have an area that is inherently undersirable, with property values approaching zero. You have peripheral areas that are extremely desirable, with high property values. The idea that you make the crappy area nicer by making the nice areas crappier is absurd.

Obviously people will not abandon the idea of good schools, safe streets, reliable services, and nice housing, they will just move to beyond the growth boundary. The sprawl would grow worse, it would just be separated from older communities by a greenbelt, rather than being contiguous.

The state has been providing quite an incentive to continue the suburban sprawl that has been occurring. Every time a suburb decides to expand, they build a crappy road, the state eventually provides funds for road expansions because of 'increased traffic flow' which causes even more expansion. Rinse and repeat, and you've got your devastated inner core. Stop improving roads in response to people moving out there, make them absorb the true cost of expansion, and they'll stop doing it. They moved out to 'The Country' let them try to drive on country roads. The resultant hideously long commutes will stop all this bullshit pretty quick, or if they expand the roads on their dime, the high cost of living out there will have the same effect.

[313WX]

lol at that last paragraph.

Better 60 years late than never I suppose...

[ghettopalmetto]

The arguments about "desirability" would make sense if the "desirability" of certain areas didn't fluctuate over time. We're supposed to believe that inner-ring suburbs were desirable in the 1950s, but for some mysterious reason, not so much anymore. We're supposed to believe that Romeo is "desirable" now, even though that hasn't always been the case. WHY? What factors are at work to alter the "desirability" of some areas over others? Is it simple free-market economics, or has the heavy hand of government tilted the equation?

I find it absurdly hilarious, however, that everyone who has commented on growth boundaries just *knows* that it won't work, without so much a comment on the Ann Arbor greenbelt [[or those in Oregon). I'm pretty sure that Pulte Homes et. al. don't need support of the general proletariat to continue raping the land for excessive construction of speculative vinyl-sided tract homes. We'll just ignore those surplus 10,000 homes per year, and pretend that everything is all the fault of the City of Detroit.

I think it's pretty well-documented that even in the Big Bad City of Detroit, there were "good schools, safe streets, reliable services, and nice housing" in the 1940s and 1950s. So obviously, people left for other reasons, yes?

[BankruptcyGuy]

I find it absurdly hilarious, however, that everyone who has commented on growth boundaries just *knows* that it won't work, without so much a comment on the Ann Arbor greenbelt [[or those in Oregon).

The Ann Arbor greenbelt was a miserable failure, enriching farmers to the benefit of no one, and paying for development that wasn't going to occur anyway. Taking $30MM and dropping over Ann Arbor via helicopter would have been a much, much better way to distribute that money.

[corktownyuppie]

I don't have all the answers to this. And certainly, I've been fine with the idea of picking the most sustainable neighborhoods in the city and re-allocating all resources toward making them successful. Greenbelts have mixed reviews, as per BankruptcyGuy. And I also don't believe that forcing developers to stop expanding won't necessary fix the blight problem in the city.

Howeva...

I do think that it would make sense to have some kind of tri-country partnership or consortium that would set some overarching policies about land use and sprawl.

And even if you are a total free market libertarian, then to be ideologically consistent, you can't support expansion in development while letting them off the hook and having them subsidize the costs of infrastructure and city services.

So many of our problems from roads to water to even police and fire could have been alleviated if we had chosen to build upward instead of outward. If you want to develop at 28 mile and Hayes, have at it....but you need to pick up the costs. Not just the houses, not just the roads, but even your share of increased police, fire, water, sewer, and every other civil service whose expenses will now have to increase.

And not just the up-front capital cost. The on-going operating costs of both the new development and some share of the operating costs of what you are leaving behind, too. Because you're not just paying for the cost of the new roads, but you're also leaving old roads behind on the backs of people who are living there. Assuming that you also need those new roads to connect to the old roads and for those old roads to still be functional, you should still have to pick up some share of that too.

[Hermod]

I don't have all the answers to this. And certainly, I've been fine with the idea of picking the most sustainable neighborhoods in the city and re-allocating all resources toward making them successful. Greenbelts have mixed reviews, as per BankruptcyGuy. And I also don't believe that forcing developers to stop expanding won't necessary fix the blight problem in the city.

Think it through. You are a township board in Green Spaces Twp. Farmer Brown had 40 acres that he wants to sell to Schmidlap Developers who want zoning for 80 half-acre home sites. You aren't getting anything from Farmer Brown in property taxes because he is agricultural. You will get a bundle in taxes from the 80 homes in Shmidlaps Golden Acres subdivision. You don;'t worry about schools because the Whatchamalit School District taxes and builds those and you don't worry about roads because your county and the state take care of that. Go Schmidlap and build those homes because we can use us some more taxes.

[shovelhead]

Think it through. You are a township board in Green Spaces Twp. Farmer Brown had 40 acres that he wants to sell to Schmidlap Developers who want zoning for 80 half-acre home sites. You aren't getting anything from Farmer Brown in property taxes because he is agricultural. You will get a bundle in taxes from the 80 homes in Shmidlaps Golden Acres subdivision. You don;'t worry about schools because the Whatchamalit School District taxes and builds those and you don't worry about roads because your county and the state take care of that. Go Schmidlap and build those homes because we can use us some more taxes.

And to add on that scenario, it pays a municipality to have real estate ownership turnover. Because each time a property sells, it is reassessed at the time of sale on the price as a basis for future taxation.

Conspiracy theory here, at least with one suburban municipality. That is why they are non responsive to residents concerns and complaionts but fall all over themselves when a developer expresses any interest in coming to town.

[iheartthed]

The Ann Arbor greenbelt was a miserable failure, enriching farmers to the benefit of no one, and paying for development that wasn't going to occur anyway. Taking $30MM and dropping over Ann Arbor via helicopter would have been a much, much better way to distribute that money.

Huh? Ann Arbor has had experienced quite a bit of infill development since the greenbelt.

[Danny]

Suburban development will stop anytime soon. As soon young professionals finish their business and have their first child, they will out of the city and out to greener pastures and into a bigger McMansion.

Log on to Google Maps and see what happen to Macomb Township.

[BankruptcyGuy]

Huh? Ann Arbor has had experienced quite a bit of infill development since the greenbelt.

It had absolutely positively nothing to do with the greenbelt, which, by the way, wasn't even a "greenbelt" but more like a "greenbeltbuckle" because, of course, there wasn't enough money to buy development rights in a huge belt around the city.

There is exactly zero evidence that new apartments in the City in any way replaced apartments in the townships surrounding Ann Arbor. And after the housing market recovered, single-family homes are still being built in and around the restricted belt buckle.

[nain rouge]

Also, I'd like to say that if you want to see a prime example of Detroit's former urban growth patterns, look at Midtown. Originally, it was farmland. Then it was a tony "suburb" for the rich, somewhat like Brush Park and Boston Edison. Finally, entire blocks were turned over to large, sprawling apartment buildings and hotels, quite a few of which you can still see today [[in various states of repair). That was a fairly typical model seen in many urban cities at the time, and you can immediately see that the apartments in Midtown were clearly intended for the middle class and above.

[Bham1982]

Also, I'd like to say that if you want to see a prime example of Detroit's former urban growth patterns, look at Midtown.

Midtown would be the worst possible example one could come up with for "typical" Detroit built form, as it's the biggest outlier anywhere in Detroit proper.

And, even then, Midtown was never anything like the older cities of the East, and was already a near-slum soon after development. It was desirable in the crazy 1920's boom and that's it. By the Great Depression it had entered a long decline.

[nain rouge]

Travel more, Bham. You'll see that in other regions, just because a bunch of suburban growth followed the initial urban phase of growth, it didn't mean the urban area had to become a forsaken zone. In fact, many regions that had urban cores historically still benefit heavily from attractive urban neighborhoods.

[Detroitnerd]

Hahaha. I'm enjoying this thread a lot. Nice job making your points, Bham.

[Bham1982]

Travel more, Bham. You'll see that in other regions, just because a bunch of suburban growth followed the initial urban phase of growth, it didn't mean the urban area had to become a forsaken zone. In fact, many regions that had urban cores historically still benefit heavily from attractive urban neighborhoods.

Thanks for the travel lesson, Rick Steves, but you completely missed the point.

I never claimed "suburban growth means the urban area becomes a forsaken zone". That isn't even [[in terms of causation) what happened in Detroit.

[nain rouge]

Here's a list of cities by population density in 1950: http://www.census.gov/population/www...0027/tab18.txt.

I looked through the list real quick, and Detroit was in the top 20 in terms of density. In fact, it looks like it was #15, although I may have missed a city or two [[and many of the cities were NYC sprawl in New Jersey). The average density for the top ten cities by population was 14,000 people per square mile. Detroit was at 13,000.

[nain rouge]

I still ask why Columbus sucks so much. I mean, if you like shopping malls and Max & Erma's and terrible suburban schlock housing within the city limits, I suppose it's pretty terrific. There's just no "there" there.

I'm not going to turn this into a discussion about Columbus, but I'd hardly fault the city for annexing its suburbs. The majority of the nice areas in metros like Detroit and Cleveland are no better. And as we see with Indy, annexation really is the only way for the typical Midwest city to bring investment back to the core.

Short North and German Village in Columbus are urban treasures. It's not all schlock.