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

[nain rouge]

Every city on earth was "predominately urban" in 1910. There was no sprawl or auto-oriented development back then. What's your point? Tokyo is the same as Clarkston today because neither had sprawl in 1910?

The HUGE difference is that Clarkston had a tiny population. That's way different than a city that had hundreds of thousands of people. Fact is, if you'd built up that level of urban infrastructure, you generally have an urban core today ASSUMING your region is STILL doing OK.

As a region, you have to work with what was built. Houston may not have a true urban core, but that's because it boomed later. In Detroit, meanwhile, we had a major American city of 1.85 million, with a population density of about 13,000 people per square mile. Now it's a giant hole of decay smack dab in the middle of it all. And that's the problem. Houston has no equivalent to that, and that's why it can get away with not having an urban core.

Detroit's urban core, meanwhile, was a vital part of its built environment.

I never equated density with slums; I wrote that, in Detroit, all dense areas were undesirable slums. As soon as people could move, they did move. Not my fault if you don't get it.

I get what you're saying, but I don't see how Detroit was as magically unique as you say. Developers don't go around purposefully building slums. All those apartments and duplexes in Detroit you call "undesirable" were once shiny, new, and in demand, like housing in any other booming urban city at the time.

[iheartthed]

Why was Detroit nothing like a Sunbelt city? It was extremely auto-oriented, dominated by single family homes and homeownership. In what way would Detroit not be a 1940's version of a present Atlanta or Dallas? Fast growing, sprawl everywhere, incredible economic growth.

It had a fraction of NYC's density, even though Detroit was fully developed at the time, and much of NYC was still empty. Even the peak wartime density, when households were incredibly overcrowded [[owing to the ban on wartime housing construction), the populaton density trailed that of other cities, and the built density was never close.

Please re-read what I said. Detroit's 1950 density was 50% of NYC's 2014 density. 1950 Detroit was denser than 2014 Chicago -- Detroit was nothing like a Sun Belt. Are you going to tell me now that Chicago was also like a Sun Belt city?

[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]

Please re-read what I said. Detroit's 1950 density was 50% of NYC's 2014 density. 1950 Detroit was denser than 2014 Chicago -- Detroit was nothing like a Sun Belt. Are you going to tell me now that Chicago was also like a Sun Belt city?

Chicago had significantly higher density than Detroit in 1940, so not getting why you think the two cities were similar in built form back then.

I can't think of a single reason why Detroit would not be a 1940's version of 2014 Atlanta. None. It was an outlier in every way back then, just like places like Dallas and Atlanta are outliers today. Chicago was not an outlier, and did not have Detroit's lower density, extreme population growth, extreme homeownership rate, and orientation towards single family homes.

[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.

[iheartthed]

Chicago had significantly higher density than Detroit in 1940, so not getting why you think the two cities were similar in built form back then.

I can't think of a single reason why Detroit would not be a 1940's version of 2014 Atlanta. None. It was an outlier in every way back then, just like places like Dallas and Atlanta are outliers today. Chicago was not an outlier, and did not have Detroit's lower density, extreme population growth, extreme homeownership rate, and orientation towards single family homes.

Detroit's population density was fully in line with major cities in pre-war America. I don't know what number you're looking at.

[Bham1982]

Detroit's population density was fully in line with major cities in pre-war America. I don't know what number you're looking at.

Detroit had lower population density than the biggest U.S. cities back then. NYC, Philly, and Chicago all were denser [[NYC obviously much denser).

I still have no idea why people think population density is a proxy for built form [[LA has denser contiguous urbanity than Chicago, anyone think LA is more urban than Chicago?) or why we need to look to 80 years ago to deal with Detroit built form today, but this whole thread is a cluster---- of nonsense.

[ghettopalmetto]

Detroit had lower population density than the biggest U.S. cities back then. NYC, Philly, and Chicago all were denser [[NYC obviously much denser).

I still have no idea why people think population density is a proxy for built form [[LA has denser contiguous urbanity than Chicago, anyone think LA is more urban than Chicago?) or why we need to look to 80 years ago to deal with Detroit built form today, but this whole thread is a cluster---- of nonsense.

Speaking of nonsense, maybe you can explain why it's perfectly okay to let the Michigan Sprawl Machine continue unabated?

[iheartthed]

Detroit had lower population density than the biggest U.S. cities back then. NYC, Philly, and Chicago all were denser [[NYC obviously much denser).

I still have no idea why people think population density is a proxy for built form [[LA has denser contiguous urbanity than Chicago, anyone think LA is more urban than Chicago?) or why we need to look to 80 years ago to deal with Detroit built form today, but this whole thread is a cluster---- of nonsense.

Seriously? Philly? Detroit and Philly peaked at nearly the exact same population and have nearly the exact same land area. There's probably no city in the country that matched Detroit more on paper than Philly in the mid-20th century.

[nain rouge]

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.

In your mind. It was outlier in the sense of what was to follow. No one is saying even the majority of Detroit was urban. The point was that it DID have an urban core of several 100,000 people. Nothing more, nothing less. So what if Midtown was a big part of that? Did it not exist?

Detroit also had tons of tall apartment buildings lining Jefferson, and there were heavily urban blocks in neighborhoods off both sides of Woodward all the way up to where I-94 is today. That we chose to disinvest in those communities and turn those areas into slums, as you put it, doesn't change the fact that an urban core was there.

Check out this photo of the Near East Side: http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...MC-X-416%5D416. As you get closer to Woodward, it becomes very urban. Now look at the view south: http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...-UND-1%5D416_1. As we know, Midtown was due west. About a decade later, someone was able to take this iconic photo of the area: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...troit_1942.jpg.

Sorry man, that's an urban core.

[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.

[Novine]

"It isn't a "straw man", it was the proposed justification for the concept--if we buy up development rights from this suburban land, we will draw people into the inner core. It is demonstrably false."

This conversation belongs on its own thread BG but your claim is simply wrong. First, as the population estimates demonstate, Ann Arbor has been adding population at the same time that other Michigan cities of the same size have had stagnant population numbers or losing population. In fact, Ann Arbor itself was losing population during the early 2000s. Second, the "inner core" development selling point for the Greenbelt was just one of the selling points for the millage. I doubt it was even the #1 concern for many voters in Ann Arbor. Many of them wanted to see sprawl constrained and they wanted to see agricultural lands preserved. The Greenbelt has achieved both. Third, the millage funds both park land acquisition and the purchase of development rights on farmland. It's not either-or as you imply in your comments.

Ann Arbor isn't Detroit. It's not a major urban city surrounded by multiple rings of fully developed suburbs. There's still active farming operations and large tracts of open space within a couple mile of the city limits. Ann Arbor's found a way to allow it to manage development within and outside the city, partnering with neighboring communities to direct development and respecting private property rights in the process. It's not the perfect tool for managing sprawl but it's worked better than anything else out there and there's not another community in Michigan that's been able to accomplish what Ann Arbor and the surrounding townships have done with this program. There's a small faction of people who continue to attack the concept but from what I can tell, it's people who are invested in perpetuating the status quo and sprawl development and would be opposed to anything that deviates from the standard model of suburban development.

[Detroitnerd]

Wait, developers can still make profits without dictating how the region will develop? According to Brooksie and Co., that's totally impossible in Detroitland!

[BankruptcyGuy]

"It isn't a "straw man", it was the proposed justification for the concept--if we buy up development rights from this suburban land, we will draw people into the inner core. It is demonstrably false."

This conversation belongs on its own thread BG but your claim is simply wrong. First, as the population estimates demonstate, Ann Arbor has been adding population at the same time that other Michigan cities of the same size have had stagnant population numbers or losing population. In fact, Ann Arbor itself was losing population during the early 2000s. Second, the "inner core" development selling point for the Greenbelt was just one of the selling points for the millage. I doubt it was even the #1 concern for many voters in Ann Arbor. Many of them wanted to see sprawl constrained and they wanted to see agricultural lands preserved. The Greenbelt has achieved both. Third, the millage funds both park land acquisition and the purchase of development rights on farmland. It's not either-or as you imply in your comments.

Ann Arbor isn't Detroit. It's not a major urban city surrounded by multiple rings of fully developed suburbs. There's still active farming operations and large tracts of open space within a couple mile of the city limits. Ann Arbor's found a way to allow it to manage development within and outside the city, partnering with neighboring communities to direct development and respecting private property rights in the process. It's not the perfect tool for managing sprawl but it's worked better than anything else out there and there's not another community in Michigan that's been able to accomplish what Ann Arbor and the surrounding townships have done with this program. There's a small faction of people who continue to attack the concept but from what I can tell, it's people who are invested in perpetuating the status quo and sprawl development and would be opposed to anything that deviates from the standard model of suburban development.

Let's just disagree on this one. This was sold to the Ann Arbor public as a way to force development into the city by buying up a ring of properties. I attended many public functions where it was presented that way, including to the Ann Arbor Chamber.

Ann Arbor's method for controlling development is huge demand, driven by the University no matter how much townies think otherwise, offset by asinine impositions of city officials [["you mean we can't demand affordable housing for a zoning change?" -- city official at a meeting I attended) and possibly the most violent NIMBY battalion ever assembled. There is balance, but it's not smart and more importantly, it has absolutely positively nothing to do with limiting development in the townships. As the housing market recovers, there will be more and more tract developments in the townships, notwithstanding the greenbelt.

[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.

[Bham1982]

Seriously? Philly? Detroit and Philly peaked at nearly the exact same population and have nearly the exact same land area. There's probably no city in the country that matched Detroit more on paper than Philly in the mid-20th century.

Philly is a smaller city than Detroit, and peaked with hundreds of thousands of more residents than Detroit's peak. They didn't have the same popularion or land area, ever.

And Philly isn't even a dense city. It's a rowhouse city, not an apartment city. It's like a North American UK city, like a bigger Manchester, rather than one with multifamily.

[nain rouge]

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.

Of course those weren't your exact words. They were mine. However, you were the one that said any density in Detroit was a result of overcrowded slums. You were also the one that admitted that, for at least a brief time, dense areas like Midtown were fashionable [[just in the "crazy 1920's", according to you). I simply the put the 2 and 2 together in your statements.

Fact is, you want to debate illogical points, but when someone takes your point to its logical conclusion, you claim words were put in your mouth. Please. You have to realize that doesn't fool anyone for long. It's poor technique.

. It's a rowhouse city, not an apartment city.

Uh, by American standards, a rowhouse city is dense. Compare it to any American suburb, or even many of our big cities. You love setting these crazy Manhattan-based metrics because it allows you to swat down the urban merits of almost any other city. Which takes away - in your mind - our right to complain, since nothing was ever urban anyway. Even though most of us would consider a rowhouse city urban.

And even if I do find an area like Midtown, you brush it off as an outlier. Um... what? You're rigging the rules at that point.

[iheartthed]

Philly is a smaller city than Detroit, and peaked with hundreds of thousands of more residents than Detroit's peak. They didn't have the same popularion or land area, ever.

And Philly isn't even a dense city. It's a rowhouse city, not an apartment city. It's like a North American UK city, like a bigger Manchester, rather than one with multifamily.

Are you purposely trolling or what? You're the one that mentioned Philadelphia and now you backtrack and say it's not even a dense city.

Detroit
land area: 139 square miles
peak census population: 1,849,568 [[1950)

Philadelphia
land area: 134 square miles
peak census population: 2,071,605 [[1950)

On paper the two could have essentially been the same city in 1950. The difference between the two was negligible.

[Bham1982]

Are you purposely trolling or what? You're the one that mentioned Philadelphia and now you backtrack and say it's not even a dense city.

Detroit
land area: 139 square miles
peak census population: 1,849,568 [[1950)

Philadelphia
land area: 134 square miles
peak census population: 2,071,605 [[1950)

On paper the two could have essentially been the same city in 1950. The difference between the two was negligible.

So a city with more than 220,000 residents than Detroit, in a smaller land area, has a "negligible" difference in population....

Who knew that a quarter million people were "negligible"? The entirety of downtown/midtown Detroit probably doesn't even have 10,000 people, yet everyone goes crazy for these areas, yet 25 times the population is a "negligible" population.

I have no idea why some people choose to resort to such weird twisting of history to come up with some crazy point that Detroit used to be this dense, transit-oriented utopia. If even at peak population, it was nowhere close in density to the other major U.S. cities, in a country that is the most sprawling on earth, then that's telling you something. Detroit was the sprawl king of cities in the sprawl king of countries.

[mwilbert]

Who knew that a quarter million people were "neglible"? The entirety of downtown/midtown Detroit probably doesn't even have 10,000 people, yet everyone goes crazy for these areas, yet 25 times the population is a "neglible" popularion.

I don't know what you consider "the entirety of downtown/midtown", but the 7.2 sq miles of greater downtown/midtown has about 30,000. And I think your argument is weak here--clearly Detroit and Philadelphia were broadly comparable in terms of density in 1950, 15.4k/sq mi vs 13.3k/sq mi just isn't that different.

The rowhouse city argument is also wrong. The supposedly densest city in the US, at midcentury, was Somerville MA, which had hardly any large apartment buildings at all, but a whole bunch of small, freestanding, multifamily houses, really close together.

[iheartthed]

So a city with more than 220,000 residents than Detroit, in a smaller land area, has a "negligible" difference in population....

Who knew that a quarter million people were "negligible"? The entirety of downtown/midtown Detroit probably doesn't even have 10,000 people, yet everyone goes crazy for these areas, yet 25 times the population is a "negligible" population.

I have no idea why some people choose to resort to such weird twisting of history to come up with some crazy point that Detroit used to be this dense, transit-oriented utopia. If even at peak population, it was nowhere close in density to the other major U.S. cities, in a country that is the most sprawling on earth, then that's telling you something. Detroit was the sprawl king of cities in the sprawl king of countries.

Yes, it is negligible. A 10% difference in population and a 5% difference in land area.

[Novine]

"Detroit was the sprawl king of cities in the sprawl king of countries."

Not really. Detroit expanded by over 50 sq. miles between 1920 - 1925. In the same time period, the city's population went from less than a million to over 1.5 million people. But that population growth mostly occurred within the pre-1920s city limits, save for a couple of exceptions like Brightmoor. As one can see from the density maps in the 1950s, even after the annexation areas of the 1920s had developed, the bulk of the city's population was concentrated closer to downtown with multiple census tracts having anywhere from 30,000 - 80,000 people.

[nain rouge]

I have no idea why some people choose to resort to such weird twisting of history to come up with some crazy point that Detroit used to be this dense, transit-oriented utopia.

Detrioit had a dense core by American standards. And even if it wasn't as dense a major Bangladesh city, it was without a doubt significantly denser than what followed. All you have to do is look at the density of cities like Troy [[or even Royal Oak) and compare it to Detroit at its peak to see the monumental differences.

You can set up all these random metrics with the city du jour as the base metric, but that basic truth remains. So what if Detroit wasn't quite as dense as Philadelphia? What does that prove? It doesn't prove, certainly, that Detroit was like Warren, Troy, or Novi. Simple stats prove such assertions are completely incorrect.

[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.