Can a city improve with less residents, less tax base but more supporters?

[fryar]

Professor Scott, your posts are always a good and informative read.
Detroit has a regional competitive advantage with regard to having a viable urban corridor, being the center of it all, hosting many of the big-ticket cultural and sporting events - with regard to being a city, really. For the non-urban parts, I'm afraid I got nothing.

[Novine]

I've got to disagree with the Professor on part of this. Detroit is never going to win a competition of being a community that's the safest or cheapest or offers the best public services in the region. The suburbs have huge advantages over the city in these areas that the city will never overcome. But it doesn't need to either. People who are going to move to Detroit are not focused on moving to a city that's the safest or cheapest place to live. The people that are will likely never move to Detroit. Successful cities around the world are never the safest or cheapest places to live in their region. Why do you think Detroit can only succeed by beating the suburbs at their own game?

I agree on most of the other points about streamlining services, reducing costs, fixing the schools. But it's unrealistic to set goals that the city can never meet to attract people who will never move there. Instead, the focus should be on fixing those things that matter to people who live and work in big cities, like having a reliable transit system that serves the entire region. The other items you mention matter to the degree that they free up resources to allow the city to better itself in the areas that matter to people who live or would want to live in the city.

[English]

I've got to disagree with the Professor on part of this. Detroit is never going to win a competition of being a community that's the safest or cheapest or offers the best public services in the region. The suburbs have huge advantages over the city in these areas that the city will never overcome. But it doesn't need to either. People who are going to move to Detroit are not focused on moving to a city that's the safest or cheapest place to live. The people that are will likely never move to Detroit. Successful cities around the world are never the safest or cheapest places to live in their region. Why do you think Detroit can only succeed by beating the suburbs at their own game?

I agree on most of the other points about streamlining services, reducing costs, fixing the schools. But it's unrealistic to set goals that the city can never meet to attract people who will never move there. Instead, the focus should be on fixing those things that matter to people who live and work in big cities, like having a reliable transit system that serves the entire region. The other items you mention matter to the degree that they free up resources to allow the city to better itself in the areas that matter to people who live or would want to live in the city.

Exactly. Thank you for saying this. The differences between Detroit and the other "grand" American cities are:

1) No urban elite class tied to specific neighborhoods that others must pry out of their cold, dead hands.

2) Fewer post-WWII immigrant groups with enclaves within city limits.

Whenever I play "most dangerous city" or "most crappy school system" with my friends who hail from Chicago/LA/Philly/etc., I lose. Their most frequent observation about Detroit is "where are the people? Where are the cars? Where's the trains?" The only contest I usually win is "English's city is the most abandoned."

[Patrick]

I've got to disagree with the Professor on part of this. Detroit is never going to win a competition of being a community that's the safest or cheapest or offers the best public services in the region. The suburbs have huge advantages over the city in these areas that the city will never overcome. But it doesn't need to either. People who are going to move to Detroit are not focused on moving to a city that's the safest or cheapest place to live. The people that are will likely never move to Detroit. Successful cities around the world are never the safest or cheapest places to live in their region. Why do you think Detroit can only succeed by beating the suburbs at their own game?

I agree on most of the other points about streamlining services, reducing costs, fixing the schools. But it's unrealistic to set goals that the city can never meet to attract people who will never move there. Instead, the focus should be on fixing those things that matter to people who live and work in big cities, like having a reliable transit system that serves the entire region. The other items you mention matter to the degree that they free up resources to allow the city to better itself in the areas that matter to people who live or would want to live in the city.

The problem is that Detroit will have to continue streamlining services and shrinking the DPS year after year. It's almost like a managed withdrawal or wind-down. There won't be an and to the cutting if people keep leaving the city and they will keep leaving.

[DetroitDad]

The problem is that Detroit will have to continue streamlining services and shrinking the DPS year after year. It's almost like a managed withdrawal or wind-down. There won't be an and to the cutting if people keep leaving the city and they will keep leaving.

Yes, but tides change just as the moon cycles through phases, and the lines in the sand are inevitably washed away.

[fryar]

It's almost like a managed withdrawal or wind-down.

Yes, it's basically a managed withdrawal. A lot of people will be sad to see their neighborhoods go, but if the writing's on the wall, all you can do is respond intelligently.

I realize a lot of people are from around here and may have emotional ties to things, but I don't think it is justifiable to continue with the status quo. On this board, I have read that criminals are stripping and looting abandoned and foreclosed homes with very little delay, and in an organized fashion. I can only imagine the hopelessness it must engender in the people who live in those neighborhoods, or who are growing up there. It makes for a messed up frame of reference, a messed up view of what life is like. I can think of no feasible plan for overcoming these burdens, unless somebody on the outside wants to throw a couple billion dollars at the issue. I can only imagine that if you're 12 and living there, your whole family [[provided they still live in Detroit), including your grandparents, have witnessed decade after decade of decay and ruin, which of course does something unhappy to a person.

Basically, and this is going to sound comical [[except you're all already familiar with the idea), but why not let's have all of those folks move into apartments or smaller homes close to the DIA and such, is the main idea. I don't know that that generates a lot of jobs, though it might generate some, but it would be a sustainable situation that holds out the promise of things improving, despite the fact that you have fewer residents than in the 1950's and less of a tax base. The lower Woodward corridor has had so much successful development and money thrown at it, it's not going anywhere. It will continue to enjoy some basic level of city services, as a result of maybe an unhappy fact of life about the world. The point being, the police is a lot likelier to patrol the neighborhood, even if somewhere a house was foreclosed on [[said house now being more valuable, of course) than if the neighborhood is miles away from the nearest precinct and has been slowly reverting to wilderness.

Instead of everything around you going to heck all the time in a manner consistent with the life experiences of those around you.