The massive size of Detroit

[boater4life]

I was reading an article a few months back about the city and it had some interesting facts about how big the city is. Obviously, we know Detroit is a big city and in the article it mentioned that within the city limits of Detroit, you could fit Boston, Manhattan, and San Francisco. I think that is pretty crazy and I was wondering, why is the city of Detroit so large? It almost seems like it is too big of an area for one city to take care of maintenance-wise etc. So, is Detroit too big of a city to maintain, and should it have been designed to be a smaller city?

[Jimaz]

Attachment 24826
Is that cheese I smell?

[rjlj]

Answers: Cheap plentiful land, lack of regional planning resulting in urban sprawl. In it's current state, yes. And in hindsite, yes.

I was reading an article a few months back about the city and it had some interesting facts about how big the city is. Obviously, we know Detroit is a big city and in the article it mentioned that within the city limits of Detroit, you could fit Boston, Manhattan, and San Francisco. I think that is pretty crazy and I was wondering, why is the city of Detroit so large? It almost seems like it is too big of an area for one city to take care of maintenance-wise etc. So, is Detroit too big of a city to maintain, and should it have been designed to be a smaller city?

[animatedmartian]

Detroit is the same size of Philadelphia. Detroit is half the area of the city of Chicago. Detroit is slightly bigger than Baltimore. Detroit is 1/5 the size of Los Angeles. What exactly is Detroit big compared to?!?! Two arbitrarily picked cities plus the borough of one?

[313WX]

Detroit once had ~2 million people covering all 138 sq. mi. of its area. As Detroit grew rapidly in the early 20th century from just under 1 million people, it annexed more land to keep up with that growth [[which is what happened in all major US cities during that time).

Since peaking at ~2 million people, Detroit has lost 2/3rds of its population. However, Michigan's Home-Rule laws and the US' civil rights voting laws will make it next to impossible for Detroit to shrink its land area to accomodate the decline in population.

[rex]

San Diego
LA - 468 square miles
San Antonio
Jacksonville
Indianapolis
Dallas
Fort Worth
Austin
Charlotte
Phoenix

All more populous than Detroit and atleast twice the area. Several are like 3 or 4 times larger in size

[thoro]

The problem isn't the size itself, the problem is the city has no money to service it's area. Whatever and whoever contributed to the tax base was told to "hit 8 mile and keep going". They did and now, there is no one paying for much of anything.....water, property taxes, food and etc. t's really no way to have a city run......or, much of anything for that matter.

[Honky Tonk]

The problem isn't the size itself, the problem is the city has no money to service it's area. Whatever and whoever contributed to the tax base was told to "hit 8 mile and keep going". They did and now, there is no one paying for much of anything.....water, property taxes, food and etc. t's really no way to have a city run......or, much of anything for that matter.

Two things. 1st, You're taking the phrase "hit 8 and keep going" totally out of context. 2nd, that [[out of context phrase) had little to do with Detroit's demise.

[Chicago48]

The city is TOO expansive and needs to shrink its borders. Like Dave Bing wanted to do. Bring everybody in closer, less vacant land. Make the city denser with people living next to each other.
Go to the eastside, around the Van Dyke-Mack to Freeway area. You will see one house sitting in a whole block. Very common.

Two things. 1st, You're taking the phrase "hit 8 and keep going" totally out of context. 2nd, that [[out of context phrase) had little to do with Detroit's demise.

[313WX]

The city is TOO expansive and needs to shrink its borders. Like Dave Bing wanted to do. Bring everybody in closer, less vacant land. Make the city denser with people living next to each other.
Go to the eastside, around the Van Dyke-Mack to Freeway area. You will see one house sitting in a whole block. Very common.

Bingo was clearly going senile, because you can't force people to live a certain way in a certain location.

But it's ok. More of us will be completely out of the city's hair soon enough...

[animatedmartian]

You also just can't unload land into the abyss because you feel like it. There's still an infrastructure that either has to be paid for or decommissioned that runs under vacant land. Some of those pipes lead into the suburbs and I don't think any suburbs are going to absorb vacant land just for fun.

[Honky Tonk]

The city is TOO expansive and needs to shrink its borders. Like Dave Bing wanted to do. Bring everybody in closer, less vacant land. Make the city denser with people living next to each other.
Go to the eastside, around the Van Dyke-Mack to Freeway area. You will see one house sitting in a whole block. Very common.

Oh I agree with that. Unless some miracle happens, Detroit is unsustainable the way it is now. It's just that not everybody left, and the City fell apart because they felt insulted by Coleman Young.

[DetroitPlanner]

Boater is trying to get your goat. Best thing to do is ignore him. He is not bringing up anything that is not common knowledge. Cities are all different sizes for all different reasons. Being that Detroit is a manufacturing city with some flipping huge parks, it should not be a surprise it is large.

[rex]

Pushers rip off artists and muggers were told to hit 8 mile not people with $. No one paying for anything is a bit exaggerated but just a couple years ago they were only able to collect on a little more than half the property tax. Thats a problem. About 50% delinquent on water bills. Food paid for with WIC is still paid for.

[thoro]

Oh I agree with that. Unless some miracle happens, Detroit is unsustainable the way it is now. It's just that not everybody left, and the City fell apart because they felt insulted by Coleman Young.

I'll give you a wonderfully appropriate Latin phrase..."res ipsa loquitur....the thing speaks for itself". Savvy business people, people who own skyscrapers, don't abandon their properties for an insult. It went way beyond that.

[Hypestyles]

There are too many municipalities throughout the state. Detroit could be merged with Wayne County and have a shared city/county government like in Denver Colorado.

[313WX]

There are too many municipalities throughout the state. Detroit could be merged with Wayne County and have a shared city/county government like in Denver Colorado.

The laws in place will make that a practically impossible feat.

First off, you're going to have to get the rest of Wayne County to agree with taking on Detroit and its problems, as Michigan's Home Rule Cities Act severely restricted the process of annexation.

Second, you're going to get a lot of bitching, moaning and groaning from the black electorate in the city of Detroit as their votes will be dilluted by the majority white population in Wayne County.

[EastsideAl]

So, is Detroit too big of a city to maintain, and should it have been designed to be a smaller city?

The city wasn't "designed", it grew organically across townships full of farmland as the city's population increased. During the really explosive growth years in the early 20th century Detroit annexed parcel after parcel of these townships, which were quickly being covered with subdivisions of new housing and businesses, until it reached its present size in 1926.

Perhaps seeing the city as it is today makes it hard to appreciate that most of the nearly-empty blocks you see now were once solidly covered in one house after another. Despite being primarily a "city of houses", at its population peak of nearly 2 million Detroit had a population density about the same as Philadelphia and much greater than Los Angeles.

[313WX]

The city wasn't "designed", it grew organically across townships full of farmland as the city's population increased. During the really explosive growth years in the early 20th century Detroit annexed parcel after parcel of these townships, which were quickly being covered with subdivisions of new housing and businesses, until it reached its present size in 1926.

Perhaps seeing the city as it is today makes it hard to appreciate that most of the nearly-empty blocks you see now were once solidly covered in one house after another. Despite being primarily a "city of houses", at its population peak of nearly 2 million Detroit had a population density about the same as Philadelphia and much greater than Los Angeles.

Detroit was a city that was notorious for its duplexes, or "two-family flats," similar to the ones you can still find in the Dexter/Davison neighborhood. That helped to boost the city's density as well..

Those made up a lot of the houses that were on these vacant parcels on the lower east side and SW Detroit...

[Honky Tonk]

Size doesn't matter, it's how you use the city.

[YounginDetroit]

How do you "Resize" the city the most vacant parts of the city are just outside of downtown area. The most dense parts of the city are he downtown area and the borders. The most vacant parts are lower Gratiot and Grand River and Far east Jefferson.

[thoro]

There are too many municipalities throughout the state. Detroit could be merged with Wayne County and have a shared city/county government like in Denver Colorado.

Jack Lessenberry proposed this some months back.. It makes sense, therefore, it'll never fly.

[Rolfsy]

How do you "Resize" the city the most vacant parts of the city are just outside of downtown area. The most dense parts of the city are he downtown area and the borders. The most vacant parts are lower Gratiot and Grand River and Far east Jefferson.

That's always the tricky part in talking to people who haven't been to the city much in the last 20 or so years. The euphamistic 'Inner City' region is the getting all the investment, the middle part is reverting to fields, and the border areas, which are often the 'normal' parts in expats minds, are being shredded by narco-economy. This is upside-down to what most people think of with Detroit.

But meanwhile Detroit, ever the scapegoat, is 'too big'. [[Not the 9-County parking lot around it)

[mikeg19]

Is the Detroit rightsizing plan eve nstill on the table in any way at all? It was Bing's baby and a lot of work went into it, but I don't recall Duggan ever talking about picking up that ball or modifying the plan.

It's hard to image Detroit ever filling its land area again. Providing services to the outlier areas isn't going to happen the way things are currently working. But you can't just call Warren or Grosse Point and tell them their the brand new owners of 25sq miles of property.

[jjw]

Detroit is the same size of Philadelphia. Detroit is half the area of the city of Chicago. Detroit is slightly bigger than Baltimore. Detroit is 1/5 the size of Los Angeles. What exactly is Detroit big compared to?!?! Two arbitrarily picked cities plus the borough of one?

Detroit sqmi - 138.7
Baltimore sqmi - 80.9