4 Soundbites to Heal Detroit and its Distressed Inner Cities

[Lowell]

No matter how robust its crown of leaves may be, a hollow tree is doomed.

Turn Redlines Green!

• Reward those living in our metropolis' distressed areas.
• Levelize by tax credit excess insurance and tax rates incurred by inner citiy living to where they are equal to or lower than the state average.
• Levelize public safety for distressed cities to where they are equal to or better than the state average.

Build that Wall!

• Draw a 'sprawl wall' line around the metro beyond which residential development is curtailed.
• Incentivize residential development in distressed areas inside the sprall wall.

Tear Down that Wall!

• Negotiate a European Union style treaty to allow free movement of people across the Canada / US border reducing border expenses and inducing tourism.
• Rebrand Detroit / Windsor as World’s Greatest International Metropolis.

Tear Down Those Walls!

• Unify metropolitan public services.
• Become a metropolis of neighborhoods, not separate cities.
• Bond with Windsor – Essex as much as federal laws allow.
• Become one city. Think as one city. Act as one city.

This is deliberately kept simple. Something needs to be done to keep our international metropolitan sprawlopolis from totally spinning apart and this my idea of a start.

Fire away!

[Parkguy]

Those are all great ideas, Lowell. Every successful metro area promotes itself, both formally and by informal word of mouth. We don't do that here.

[EastSider]

I think each suburban poster on this blog should petition his or her local city government to open a homeless shelter and pick up a dozen of the denizens of Cass Park. Start that letter-writing campaign!

[Stosh]

I think each suburban poster on this blog should petition his or her local city government to open a homeless shelter and pick up a dozen of the denizens of Cass Park. Start that letter-writing campaign!

Makes perfect sense to me. Then all of the suburban local city governments can claim to be a "distressed" area, qualifying for the offsetting grant money! They can do the same thing as school districts do, count day, then ship them back to Cass Park.

[EastSider]

I also think the suburban churches who pass out the food in Cass Park should be required to clean up after their damn selves.

[Russix]

As much as I think it would have been a good idea to define some sort development boundary for the metro area, I know this to be an impossibility. It has been going on for almost two centuries. A developer buys up a farmer's land and develops it. This literally started in the heart of downtown and has moved at a rate of two miles per decade ever since. In order to curb sprawl, you have to promote urbanization. In order to create the density to support urbanization, you have to build transit[[yes I know the T word again). Its the one thing we really screwed up badly in the region, and its blatantly obvious when you travel anywhere else. Tri-county transit tax, start building and don't stop till you have to really think hard about weather it would be better to get around by transit or car for the day, then you know you've got it.

[Red Devil]

Here's what we need to do: let's go with what's worked in the past. Cut the minimum wage back down to Henry Ford's $5 a day, and Detroit will be the new Guangdong!