Creating Density in Downtown

[Hermod]

Thanks to the Northwest Ordinance Act of 1789 or so, Oakland and macomb counties are laid out and were developed on the "township and section" grid system. As a result, mopst of the roads follow the section and half-section N-S and E-W straight lines. As a result, traffic is far less congested there than it is in other suburbs around the US. Also, with the dispersed locations of employment and shopping in the area, there is no gridlock where everyone is trying to get to and from the same place. We don't have three-quarters of the population trying to get into and out of downtown Detroit every day like you do in NY and DC. Detroit suburbs are far more sustainable and could survive even if you made 8-mile into a moat with no bridges.

[Bearinabox]

Detroit suburbs are far more sustainable and could survive even if you made 8-mile into a moat with no bridges.

Survive, maybe, at least in the short term, but some kind of life that'd be. All the culture is on the south side of the moat. You could build a new DIA/DFT, Orchestra Hall, Opera House, Fox and State, etc., but at tremendous cost for inferior results. You couldn't build a new Belle Isle at all, and the Redford Theatre in a different building would completely defeat the purpose. Besides, if you no longer had the city proper to take care of all the social problems, you'd have Sir Sir Guy in downtown Birmingham and Crackhead Sex On Fourth And Main photo-threads snapped from the balconies of those fancy new condos in Royal Oak.

[Pam]

Well, right now I'm living in an apartment about the size of your average McMansion broom closet. Obviously if I had a family I would move. What I'm saying is, my parents did a perfectly fine job raising two of us in a house somewhere shy of 1100 square feet, and it wasn't all that long ago. I never felt like I needed a bigger house than that, and I will probably look for a similarly-sized house if and when I find myself raising two kids.

Here are some folks who like tiny houses:

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/

[ghettopalmetto]

Detroit suburbs are far more sustainable and could survive even if you made 8-mile into a moat with no bridges.

The suburbs of Detroit are sustainable? Is that why MDOT doesn't have enough money to maintain the road system? Is that why there are always tax millages on the ballot for school funding? Is that why the lakes are closed half the season due to E. coli?--because of sustainability? Is sustainability the reason why the growth of the suburbs has only occurred to the detriment of the central city and inner-ring suburbs?

Is it "sustainable" when you increase your developed area by 50% with a population growth rate of 0%? When you spend money to construct new buildings and roads in greenfields while infrastructure goes underutilized in other locations?

I think you need a dictionary.

[iheartthed]

It's all relative. St. Louis & Cleveland were never as big as Detroit [[now or even in their heyday) and I don't believe it's possible for them to experience a popluation drop of 1 million [[unless they become complete ghost towns) and still rank as one of America's bigger cities.

Well, in that case, New York City lost more people in one decade than Detroit lost over 60 years. And Chicago has lost as many people as Detroit in a shorter amount of time.

[smudge pot]

All the culture is on the south side of the moat. You could build a new DIA/DFT, Orchestra Hall, Opera House, Fox and State, etc., but at tremendous cost for inferior results.

Think of it, guys, all you'd have to do is say "Sorry honey, but all them fancy-pants places is gone. Tell you what, why don't you and the gals come with us Saturday to the Tractor-Pull?"

[Detroitnerd]

Think of it, guys, all you'd have to do is say "Sorry honey, but all them fancy-pants places is gone. Tell you what, why don't you and the gals come with us Saturday to the Tractor-Pull?"

Some folks'll never lose a toe,
And then again some folks'll!

[Retroit]

The fact that more people are moving from the city to the suburbs than vice-versa is proof enough for me what type of "density" is preferable.

Detroitnerd: People have to want to live somewhere before federal incentives make any difference? Or people are drawn by federal incentives? The post-World War II migration pattern would suggest that there's a bit of truth to both arguments, don't you think?

Why would the post-WWII government want people to move out of the city into the suburbs? In my opinion, they didn't. It wasn't some "anti-city" philosophy. They simply wanted to provide housing and highways to accommodate the rising population. And it wasn't some "anti-density" philosophy". They simply wanted to provide the environment that most Americans wanted.

[Hermod]

The suburbs of Detroit are sustainable? Is that why MDOT doesn't have enough money to maintain the road system? Is that why there are always tax millages on the ballot for school funding? Is that why the lakes are closed half the season due to E. coli?--because of sustainability? Is sustainability the reason why the growth of the suburbs has only occurred to the detriment of the central city and inner-ring suburbs?

Is it "sustainable" when you increase your developed area by 50% with a population growth rate of 0%? When you spend money to construct new buildings and roads in greenfields while infrastructure goes underutilized in other locations?

I think you need a dictionary.

1. Most of the roads are county maintained. The trunk rods are state maintained and would exist even if the population of the counties was less and the population of the city was more. The state was going broke back in the fifties. It almost went bankrupt in 1962 except that GM paid their entire years taxes up front to bail them out.

2. You need millage increases when your school population is going up every year. You have to build new schools. When the population growth levels off, so will the need for more schools.

3. If all of the population lived cheek to jowl in Detroit, they would still put pressure on the lakes for recreational purposes. We used to go out to Elizabeth Lake when I was a kid around 1950 and it was pretty damn dirty then [[we just didn't know what e-Coli was).

4. Those "greenfields" were mostly "truck farms" which is a losing proposition these days. The days that a guy with twenty to one hundred acres of farm could make a living "truck farming" are long gone. Even in the fifties, the area north of 14 mile was just acres and acres of land gone to seed while the owner went to work in the plants.

5. The new areas of development are sustainable by the definition that they contain that which is necessary to function politically and economically [[more so than the semi-abandoned inner city). You can find a decent supermarket easier in Utica than you can in Detroit.

[casscorridor]

The fact that more people are moving from the city to the suburbs than vice-versa is proof enough for me what type of "density" is preferable.



Why would the post-WWII government want people to move out of the city into the suburbs? In my opinion, they didn't. It wasn't some "anti-city" philosophy. They simply wanted to provide housing and highways to accommodate the rising population. And it wasn't some "anti-density" philosophy". They simply wanted to provide the environment that most Americans wanted.

They absolutely did have an anti-city, anti-density philosphy. You may say that wasn't their intentions, but their actions show differently. The systematic undermining of the urban integrity of the city happened within a decade. The freeways, housing projects, urban renewal of massive areas of the city, new suburbs constructed and the streetcar tracks getting ripped out. This all happened at the same time, remember Also remember, the HUD [[I don't remember what it was called then) and the GI bill gave money specificly for suburban development, they mandated it. The federal government built the freeways, further subsidizing sprawl. Local municipalities changed their zoning laws to benifit sprawl developers. If they wasn't anti-sprawl, anti-density why was Lafayette Park and Elmwood Park built at such a spectacular level of sprawldom? It literally looks like a suburb, with a few towers mixed in between. It wasn't because people prefered suburban over city, it was because our cities became broken down, dirty places that we didn't take care of. So instead we built places not worth caring at all about-- the suburbs. Masses of people moved there because of economic incentive, and because quality of life indicators such as education, adequite housing, saftey, etc all were indicatin that suburbs were superior. Too bad they didn't have an indicator for pychological healty/sanity.

[Detroitnerd]

Why would the post-WWII government want people to move out of the city into the suburbs? In my opinion, they didn't. It wasn't some "anti-city" philosophy. They simply wanted to provide housing and highways to accommodate the rising population. And it wasn't some "anti-density" philosophy". They simply wanted to provide the environment that most Americans wanted.

Oh really? Then you've never seen Futurama.

http://www.rhizomes.net/issue8/futurama/index.html

Or maybe you're right and all this historical stuff is just made up by somebody. Yes, people wanted highways and stand-alone housing. Corporate America didn't smell money in it and bribe governments to build their dream-world and scuttle mass transit. And I'm sure the benign government had no ulterior motives whatsoever.

SARCASM WARNING SARCASM WARNING SARCASM WARNING

[Hermod]

They absolutely did have an anti-city, anti-density philosphy. You may say that wasn't their intentions, but their actions show differently. The systematic undermining of the urban integrity of the city happened within a decade. The freeways, housing projects, urban renewal of massive areas of the city, new suburbs constructed and the streetcar tracks getting ripped out. This all happened at the same time, remember Also remember, the HUD [[I don't remember what it was called then) and the GI bill gave money specificly for suburban development, they mandated it. The federal government built the freeways, further subsidizing sprawl. Local municipalities changed their zoning laws to benifit sprawl developers. If they wasn't anti-sprawl, anti-density why was Lafayette Park and Elmwood Park built at such a spectacular level of sprawldom? It literally looks like a suburb, with a few towers mixed in between. It wasn't because people prefered suburban over city, it was because our cities became broken down, dirty places that we didn't take care of. So instead we built places not worth caring at all about-- the suburbs. Masses of people moved there because of economic incentive, and because quality of life indicators such as education, adequite housing, saftey, etc all were indicatin that suburbs were superior. Too bad they didn't have an indicator for pychological healty/sanity.

I can see a whole list of "governments" I here. You had the feds, state, counties, city, and townships/cities in the counties. I doubt they all made a blood pact and set out to do eeeeevullll things to the poor city dwellers.

Freeways: [[engineer voice) Gee our city streets are getting congested. It is hard to get cross town since we really have radial roads superimposed on an irregular grid. Lets build Davidson [[prewar) and the Ford. Gosh, Woodward is so congested, lets build the Lodge to parallel Woodward and get some of the cars off Woodward. These were Detroit city ideas BEFORE Eisenhower was ever elected and proposed the Interstate system.

Housing Projects/Urban Renewal: [[progressive voice) We have some slums here in the city. Slums are bad and breeding grounds for crime. Lets build homes for the poor people and tear down the slums. If we build hi-rises, we can get more homes for the same amount of money. We will build Brewster.

New Suburbs Constructed [[real estate voice): Hey, Schmidlap Township. I just bought 20 acres from Farmer Brown. If you change the zoning to residential, I can build 40 houses on that land. You will get a lot more taxes from that land.

FHA and GI Bill: [[Congress voice) We need to encourage home ownership. Guys and gals, here are some ways to get into a house with little or nothing down. New houses [[city or country) are better because we need construction jobs to employ all of the de-mobilized soldiers.

No conspiracy, just a whole lot of people trying to "do the right thing".





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[Hermod]

Think of it, guys, all you'd have to do is say "Sorry honey, but all them fancy-pants places is gone. Tell you what, why don't you and the gals come with us Saturday to the Tractor-Pull?"

For those in Detroit that think that everyone north of 8-miles is Cletus Clodhopper:

The people that left Detroit and moved to the counties in a stream after WWII and in a flood after 1967 were not recent transplants from the Appalachians. They were not WASPs whose families came over on the Mayflower.

They were mostly 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation descendants of immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, and eastern Europe. They were primarily blue collar guys seeking a better life [[to include safety and security) for their families. Check out the Warren phone book sometime and look at the surnames.

When they lived in Detroit they sort of self-segregated [[Corktown, Poletown, the Belgian neighborhoods, Greektown). Area I grew up in was mostly German.

They were heavily Catholic. In 1950, there were as many football teams in the Detroit Catholic HS league as there were teams in the Detroit public HS league.

[Retroit]

casscorridor, could you tell me the difference between a single-family home neighborhood south of 8 Mile Road and a single-family home neighborhood north of 8 Mile Road?

You make it seem like it is a big difference. I suggest the suburbs are much the same as Detroit [[I'm speaking "density"-wise, not socially). The suburbs were and are merely an extension of the primary type of housing that you find in Detroit. The suburbs were built because Detroiters wanted to live in single-family homes and did not want to tear down the single-family homes in Detroit to build high-rise apartment buildings.

The highways do take people out of Detroit, but they also take people into Detroit. And I would suggest that they were built with the intention of bringing suburbanites into the city to work. In other words, they were built to preserve [[not destroy) the city.

[Bearinabox]

casscorridor, could you tell me the difference between a single-family home neighborhood south of 8 Mile Road and a single-family home neighborhood north of 8 Mile Road?

You make it seem like it is a big difference. I suggest the suburbs are much the same as Detroit [[I'm speaking "density"-wise, not socially). The suburbs were and are merely an extension of the primary type of housing that you find in Detroit.

Depends which suburb you're talking about. Places like Dearborn and Ferndale that were built up before World War II are very similar to a lot of Detroit neighborhoods. Places like Rochester Hills and Northville Township are absolutely nothing like any part of Detroit, and if you can't tell the difference I don't know what to say to you.

The suburbs were built because Detroiters wanted to live in single-family homes and did not want to tear down the single-family homes in Detroit to build high-rise apartment buildings.

If this were all there was to it, we'd have stopped building new houses once we had enough of them for everyone in the metro area who wanted one. We now have many more houses than we know what to do with, have for several decades, and we're still building. It's insane.

The highways do take people out of Detroit, but they also take people into Detroit. And I would suggest that they were built with the intention of bringing suburbanites into the city to work. In other words, they were built to preserve [[not destroy) the city.

We've discussed this at length on here. It's more complicated than that.

[Hermod]

Depends which suburb you're talking about. Places like Dearborn and Ferndale that were built up before World War II are very similar to a lot of Detroit neighborhoods. Places like Rochester Hills and Northville Township are absolutely nothing like any part of Detroit, and if you can't tell the difference I don't know what to say to you.

South of 14 mile, the arrangement of the housing subdivisions is very similar to Detroit outside of Outer Drive with "checkerboard" layout of streets. North of 14 mile, the stand alone subdivision with curving interior roads and one or two entrances from the main road. Farmer sells farm, developer builds stand-alone sub [[no thru traffic).

[Retroit]

You're missing my point, which is that the growth of lot size in the suburbs is merely a continuation of what started in Detroit. Near downtown, houses were built close together with no need for garages, driveways, street parking, etc., and around the edge of Detroit, you will find homes with those amenities.

If this were all there was to it, we'd have stopped building new houses once we had enough of them for everyone in the metro area who wanted one. We now have many more houses than we know what to do with, have for several decades, and we're still building. It's insane.

Most people that are blamed for Detroit's problems [[because of their departure) left when Detroit was fully occupied. Once people move out, you can't expect them to move back in. It's not like the people that built out in the suburbs had a plentiful supply of housing in the city. The city held less than 2 million at peak population. It is now over 4 million. So it is reasonable to expect that we should have a suburban area at least as large as Detroit. Can we agree on that, or is there no amount of suburbia that is tolerable?

[Bearinabox]

You're missing my point, which is that the growth of lot size in the suburbs is merely a continuation of what started in Detroit. Near downtown, houses were built close together with no need for garages, driveways, street parking, etc., and around the edge of Detroit, you will find homes with those amenities.

You lost me. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

Most people that are blamed for Detroit's problems [[because of their departure) left when Detroit was fully occupied. Once people move out, you can't expect them to move back in. It's not like the people that built out in the suburbs had a plentiful supply of housing in the city. The city held less than 2 million at peak population. It is now over 4 million. So it is reasonable to expect that we should have a suburban area at least as large as Detroit. Can we agree on that, or is there no amount of suburbia that is tolerable?

It depends what you mean by "suburbia." Obviously we need enough units of housing for everyone in the metro area, and I have no problem with the ones on the fringes being relatively low-density. Politically, I think it would make the most sense for the entire metropolitan agglomeration to be run by a single regional government, so I don't think there should be "suburbs" in the sense of fragmented little fiefdoms that don't cooperate with each other.

My main point, though, is that continuing to build new housing on the fringes now is insane, and should be strictly limited by some kind of regional land-use policy. There is plenty of low-density housing already for those who want it, and some of the lowest-density housing in the metro is in 1950s-era subdivisions in places like Southfield and Farmington Hills, not in the newest subdivisions in the furthest-flung exurbs. All the new stuff going up now is just duplicating what can already be found elsewhere, over and over and over, and throwing away the perfectly good infrastructure in the city and inner suburbs that was already paid off decades ago. It's incredibly wasteful, and we just don't have the resources to keep burning money like that.

[Retroit]

What if the boundary of the city of Detroit extended beyond the current populated area...would you be opposed to building in those unbuilt areas should a rising population ever require more housing? Or do we have to force people to live in denser and denser pre-existing areas?

How do you convince a suburbanite that they should buy a home in Detroit instead of one out in the suburbs? If you had two homes that were identical in every way and were the same distance from the nearest freeway, bus stop, grocery store, etc., which one do you suppose they'd pick? Can we expect people to live where they don't want to just because someone thinks density is good?

If we imposed some type of land-use policy that prevented the spread of the suburbs, what would prevent people from increasing the density out in the suburbs at the same time that they decrease the density in Detroit? The city of Detroit would still have the same problems that it has now.

[Bearinabox]

What if the boundary of the city of Detroit extended beyond the current populated area...would you be opposed to building in those unbuilt areas should a rising population ever require more housing? Or do we have to force people to live in denser and denser pre-existing areas?

This is such a crazy hypothetical that it's hard for me to imagine what I would think in that situation. If all our existing housing was occupied, and the population was growing, and our only unbuilt land was at the edges of the city, I suppose I would be in favor of building on that land. But again, those are all pretty big ifs.

How do you convince a suburbanite that they should buy a home in Detroit instead of one out in the suburbs? If you had two homes that were identical in every way and were the same distance from the nearest freeway, bus stop, grocery store, etc., which one do you suppose they'd pick?

Given all those hypotheticals, I don't suppose it makes the least bit of difference. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at with this question.

Can we expect people to live where they don't want to just because someone thinks density is good?

I don't know that anyone is advocating that, and I know for a fact I'm not. I do think that people who want to keep spreading out need to pay the true cost of that, instead of having it subsidized by everyone else. The result of that would be that it would make a lot less rational sense to live in the middle of nowhere, and so only the people who actually really wanted to live out there would do so. There wouldn't be subdivisions of McMansions going up in the middle of Livingston County that are in no way different from subdivisions in Sterling Heights. What we need to do is 1) improve the city to the point where it's a viable option for people who like city living, and 2) make it cheaper and easier for people to live there than in the middle of nowhere. People who want to live in the exurbs should have that choice, but it should come at a price, because it costs the whole region when too many people move out there.

What would prevent people from increasing the density out in the suburbs at the same time that they decrease the density in Detroit?

Again, I'm not sure I understand the intent of this question. Most suburbs have zoning laws that prohibit them from being built much more densely than they currently are. Actually, Detroit does too, but existing housing is grandfathered in, so a lot of it is much higher density than the current laws actually allow. If you tried to build a new house in a formerly-dense neighborhood like Poletown, you'd probably have to build it over two lots.

[Retroit]

Is it really more expensive to spread outward than upward? How much would all the high-rises cost to house everyone in a dense city? How much would it cost to build all the light rail and subways to move all the people? How much would the quality of life decrease for kids who can't ride their bikes around or play in the backyard? How much would health be harmed by all the noise and congestion?

A person who lives in a place like Manhattan lives more in "the middle of nowhere" than a person who lives in suburbia, in my opinion [[and I would argue in the opinion of the vast majority of metro Detroiters and Americans). The few people who like "dense" living are going to choose New York or Chicago; they are not going to come to Detroit.

[Bearinabox]

Is it really more expensive to spread outward than upward? How much would all the high-rises cost to house everyone in a dense city? How much would it cost to build all the light rail and subways to move all the people? How much would the quality of life decrease for kids who can't ride their bikes around or play in the backyard? How much would health be harmed by all the noise and congestion?

A person who lives in a place like Manhattan lives more in "the middle of nowhere" than a person who lives in suburbia, in my opinion [[and I would argue in the opinion of the vast majority of metro Detroiters and Americans). The few people who like "dense" living are going to choose New York or Chicago; they are not going to come to Detroit.

This post does not make sense.

[jtf1972]

I don't understand why people who like to live way out in the suburbs & want absolutely nothing to do with the city tend to have such a vile hatred for the city that they want absolutely nothing positive to occur in a place that they would never even have to see.

Why can't people see that there can be both city and suburb, and that a strong central city will actually benefit the suburban area as well?

[Zacha341]

Well stated. The style and type of home found in Ferndale and Dearborn is not the same as other suburbs [[Like Madison Heights or Warren), but much like homes in Detroit reflecting similar building time frames.

Depends which suburb you're talking about. Places like Dearborn and Ferndale that were built up before World War II are very similar to a lot of Detroit neighborhoods. Places like Rochester Hills and Northville Township are absolutely nothing like any part of Detroit, and if you can't tell the difference I don't know what to say to you.....

[Hermod]

I don't understand why people who like to live way out in the suburbs & want absolutely nothing to do with the city tend to have such a vile hatred for the city that they want absolutely nothing positive to occur in a place that they would never even have to see. Why can't people see that there can be both city and suburb, and that a strong central city will actually benefit the suburban area as well?

I don't think it is a matter of not wanting the city to be rebuilt. It is more a matter of not wanting to pay to rebuild the city. A lot of people in the suburbs loved the city and felt that they were "driven out".