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

[iheartthed]

Absolutely, that area is screaming for redevelopment and a controlled access environment would protect that area from surrounding crime areas. And, maybe someday there won't be a need for gates, but until then.......

Serious question: have you ever seen a major city revive itself through building gated communities? The United States of America has no shortage of examples of cities that have pulled themselves back from the worst of urban decay... And I can't think of a single one in which gated communities in the central city was the method of their salvation. In fact, they all seemed to do the exact opposite of building gated communities: they focused on improving transit, accessibility, and improving the vitality of the urban core.

Now I'm not saying that the perception of safety isn't an issue, but I am saying that it strikes me as ridiculous to believe that gated communities could possibly help Detroit.

[fryar]

What your talking about sounds kind of like a larger version of Riverview Towers, maybe moreso than Harbortown. If someone can get that organized, maybe on account of the river view, by all means. But it's quite hard to get that done.
What you're talking about also bears a pretty good similarity to a revitalized urban core along Woodward from downtown to midtown, minus the gates, once the M-1 project gets its act together.
I realize that there's a key difference, basically in terms of the gates, but if you're talking about 10,000+ people, that's kind of the scale you're looking at. Like Stuyvesant Town in New York or something.
I don't think that's real easy to pull off, and a smaller, perhaps more realistic version would basically be another Harbortown. I suppose maybe if these places with gatedness-appeal got together, they could arrange a private school for themselves that makes sense. But revitalizing the downtown-midtown corridor is so much easier, don't you think, since it can grow organically on a foundation that is already in place?
Just my 2 cents. I definitely appreciate the creative thinking, though.

[fryar]

To play devil's advocate, if it's something along Jefferson, like Harbortown is, why not? It wouldn't interfere with any ongoing development efforts, and you can always remove the gates later.

I understand that having a bunch of gated communities is not a model of urban development, but is that area really subject to urban development? I don't know, maybe it is, but it didn't look that hot a couple of years ago.

Conceivably, what if it's a mini-pretend-GP on the other side of Belle Isle? There's got to be land lying fallow there somewhere. Some kind of monster complex that houses 10,000+ people and has a bunch of stuff inside it that people can walk toward, maybe some piers or a beach...it could generate some property tax income, which probably beats nothing.

I can see where you guys are going with this, but it would be really hard to pull off, and it might not sell anymore at this point. The Book Cadillac, which is in the real city, is selling pretty darn expensive apartments.

[iheartthed]

To play devil's advocate, if it's something along Jefferson, like Harbortown is, why not? It wouldn't interfere with any ongoing development efforts, and you can always remove the gates later.

I understand that having a bunch of gated communities is not a model of urban development, but is that area really subject to urban development? I don't know, maybe it is, but it didn't look that hot a couple of years ago.

The Riverwalk? Why would you allow a handful of people to wall off access to the city's waterfront from the rest of the residents? And how exactly does this save Detroit anyway? Lack of gated communities aren't the reason people are fleeing the city. There are already several gated communities there!

[DetroitDad]

Contrary to popular belief, many of our more well-off suburbs with great police departments and neighborhood watch programs, still choose to employ private security at night, especially in business corridors.

The issue is that upper income areas will always be possible targets because that is where the opportunity for criminals actually is. Even with their self seclusion, state of the art security systems, and gated style, they still manage to be occasional targets. I don't think it will be any different in Detroit, and it will be a challenge to mix incomes the way an urban area should be. Before you do that, you better have a good support system [[temporary safety net and/or place of entry) for the poor and lower income folks, along with several easily identifiable ladders to better lives.

It also might help to figure out a way to stop sending our citizens to prison, essentially a college for becoming a better criminal. A commitment to education... no, scratch that, to sticking with individuals from the beginning to beyond college, should be the goal. We should be learning what our citizens dream of, and make it possible to accomplish right here in Detroit.

The sacrifice for all of us is that we will likely not see the results of our actions, and just have to understand that our actions create ripples through eternity the same way throwing a pebble can send ripples across a mill pond.

[fryar]

Just exploring the idea. And no, Riverwalk is a prize that should be extended as far as possible.
What's the deal with downriver of downtown? If those Riverview Towers, if that's what they're called, those high-rises behind JLA, decided to expand, would that interfere with anything?

[oladub]

Serious question: have you ever seen a major city revive itself through building gated communities? The United States of America has no shortage of examples of cities that have pulled themselves back from the worst of urban decay... And I can't think of a single one in which gated communities in the central city was the method of their salvation. In fact, they all seemed to do the exact opposite of building gated communities: they focused on improving transit, accessibility, and improving the vitality of the urban core.

Now I'm not saying that the perception of safety isn't an issue, but I am saying that it strikes me as ridiculous to believe that gated communities could possibly help Detroit.

Public transit is great in places where people aren't afraid of getting mugged walking home. "Improving the vitality of the urban core" is a cliche rather than a concrete idea. Additional residents and their money will help Detroit. Large gated communities are just one way to attract these new residents. Noone in their right mind is going to endanger their own kids if they can afford not to.

I've never even seen such an experiment attempted. Maybe no major cities have revived themselves, or at least improved their financial condition, doing this because none have done it. I'm curious. Name a few cities the size and financial condition of Detroit that have pulled themselves back from the worst of urban decay.

Mayor Bing and the Federal government are going to be spending $10,000 a house to tear them down. Then someone has to maintain the empty lots although Detroit can't afford to cut all of it's grass now. Detroit is 139 square miles. What if a one-half square mile area [[about 44 blocks, or 3,700' square) were set aside for such an experiment? Picture an area the size of St. Jean to Cadilac and Goethe to E. Jefferson becoming a thriving community of about 11,500 taxpayers with the need for building necessary housing, shops, schools, and businesses for that many people. It wouldn't, by itself, turn Detroit around but 10 or 20 such developments would make a great start. Just that amount of construction work would be a help and this could be done without holding out a hat for years hoping for federal dollars.

I hope some developers are reading this now. Deatroit real estate is cheap and Detroit has a Mayor who wants to start turning things around. Time to work out a mutually acceptable deal!

[JBMcB]

It addresses some of the financial issues and such. But it ultimately results in being disconnected from the city, like those Riverview towers

One of the main concerns preventing people from moving back into the city is safety. Gated communities address this concern cheaply. Whether or not the concern is valid, or if gated communities are actually safer is somewhat irrelevant, you need the perception of safety to get people to move back.

It can be a stop-gap measure as well - design the enclosed communities with points where they can be re-connected to the surrounding streets once crime gets under control.

It's far from a perfect solution, but it's cheap and easy to try.

[DetroitDad]

Public transit is great in places where people aren't afraid of getting mugged walking home. "Improving the vitality of the urban core" is a cliche rather than a concrete idea. Additional residents and their money will help Detroit. Large gated communities are just one way to attract these new residents. Noone in their right mind is going to endanger their own kids if they can afford not to.

I've never even seen such an experiment attempted. Maybe no major cities have revived themselves, or at least improved their financial condition, doing this because none have done it. I'm curious. Name a few cities the size and financial condition of Detroit that have pulled themselves back from the worst of urban decay.

Mayor Bing and the Federal government are going to be spending $10,000 a house to tear them down. Then someone has to maintain the empty lots although Detroit can't afford to cut all of it's grass now. Detroit is 139 square miles. What if a one-half square mile area [[about 44 blocks, or 3,700' square) were set aside for such an experiment? Picture an area the size of St. Jean to Cadilac and Goethe to E. Jefferson becoming a thriving community of about 11,500 taxpayers with the need for building necessary housing, shops, schools, and businesses for that many people. It wouldn't, by itself, turn Detroit around but 10 or 20 such developments would make a great start. Just that amount of construction work would be a help and this could be done without holding out a hat for years hoping for federal dollars.

I hope some developers are reading this now. Deatroit real estate is cheap and Detroit has a Mayor who wants to start turning things around. Time to work out a mutually acceptable deal!

This won't work.

Many people have some attraction to a more rural living arrangement in America, for many reasons that would make this post too long if discussed here. To many, a city is generally a environment that can easily overstimulate an individual. There is generally three types of people/reactions in a society [[city and suburbs).

1. Eunice The Over Enthusiastic Embracer; Generally, Eunice is the person who is powered and inspired by a city. They view the society and city as something they are amazed by, and eagerly want to be a part of it, or capture it's essence in some way [[art, business, community service, etc.).
2. Deal With It Dan; Dan has some issues with the city, it makes him feel lost, just another cog in the clock, or blade of grass in a field. Dan copes with city life, and resides in the city, but generally does not enjoy it in itself. Dan deals with his over-stimulation by withdrawing.
3. Run For The Hills Hank; Hank deals with the city by rejecting it outright, and tends to avoid it when possible, often living in the suburbs, since many small towns are now in about as bad of shape as many cities.

Dan will be your prime buyer of gated communities, since he want's to be secluded from the city, but still needs or wants to be nearby. Dan feels his home is where he feels most comfortable, and wants to withdraw himself and relax there. Eunice on the other hand, is the opposite, and views the home as uncomfortable and public places more like home. Hank on the other hand will not be moving into your gated community, since he already rejected the location.

I'm not sure we have enough Dans left for the type and size of communities you are suggesting. The other two groups will never embrace that living arrangement. My reason for thinking this is seeing what happened when smaller gated communities failed to attract enough residents before the current depression/recession.

[iheartthed]

Public transit is great in places where people aren't afraid of getting mugged walking home. "Improving the vitality of the urban core" is a cliche rather than a concrete idea. Additional residents and their money will help Detroit. Large gated communities are just one way to attract these new residents. Noone in their right mind is going to endanger their own kids if they can afford not to.

I've never even seen such an experiment attempted. Maybe no major cities have revived themselves, or at least improved their financial condition, doing this because none have done it. I'm curious. Name a few cities the size and financial condition of Detroit that have pulled themselves back from the worst of urban decay.

Mayor Bing and the Federal government are going to be spending $10,000 a house to tear them down. Then someone has to maintain the empty lots although Detroit can't afford to cut all of it's grass now. Detroit is 139 square miles. What if a one-half square mile area [[about 44 blocks, or 3,700' square) were set aside for such an experiment? Picture an area the size of St. Jean to Cadilac and Goethe to E. Jefferson becoming a thriving community of about 11,500 taxpayers with the need for building necessary housing, shops, schools, and businesses for that many people. It wouldn't, by itself, turn Detroit around but 10 or 20 such developments would make a great start. Just that amount of construction work would be a help and this could be done without holding out a hat for years hoping for federal dollars.

I hope some developers are reading this now. Deatroit real estate is cheap and Detroit has a Mayor who wants to start turning things around. Time to work out a mutually acceptable deal!

Your second paragraph should have been your first and only. There are no examples of cities that have walled themselves off and into success. And that's no fluke. End of story. Also "cliche" is not the opposite of "concrete". So if "cliche" works then so be it. Let Detroit be cliche!

[oladub]

iheartthed, I find that numbers work better than cliches. The numbers I used assume a population density of about twice that of Detroit when it had 1.6M residents. What we are talking about is a project possibly less expensive than RenCen but no one complains that RenCen has it's own security and only certain people are allowed in. Are the workers in RenCen 'walled in' ? If RenCen was turned into a condo and shop complex would you be worried that people who chose to live there would be 'walled in'? Why should you even care if those people make their own lifestyle choices? Are you the lifestyle police? How would having 10,000 new residents, construction jobs, and service jobs be worse than having crime, untended vacant lots, and unemployment?


You brought up 'improving transit, accessibility, and improving the vitality of the urban core'. Wasn't that what the People Mover was supposed to do for downtown? Then adding more People Movers should make downtown even more vital but where are you going to get the money? Detroit is broke, Michigan is broke, the federal government has to borrow from China to pretend it isn't broke. That is why some new ideas have to be tried that don't rely on begging bankrupt governments for cash.

[English]

This won't work.

Many people have some attraction to a more rural living arrangement in America, for many reasons that would make this post too long if discussed here. To many, a city is generally a environment that can easily overstimulate an individual. There is generally three types of people/reactions in a society [[city and suburbs).

1. Eunice The Over Enthusiastic Embracer; Generally, Eunice is the person who is powered and inspired by a city. They view the society and city as something they are amazed by, and eagerly want to be a part of it, or capture it's essence in some way [[art, business, community service, etc.).
2. Deal With It Dan; Dan has some issues with the city, it makes him feel lost, just another cog in the clock, or blade of grass in a field. Dan copes with city life, and resides in the city, but generally does not enjoy it in itself. Dan deals with his over-stimulation by withdrawing.
3. Run For The Hills Hank; Hank deals with the city by rejecting it outright, and tends to avoid it when possible, often living in the suburbs, since many small towns are now in about as bad of shape as many cities.

This is a great list! At my new job, we have all three types. I'm meeting a Deal With It Dan tomorrow... a resident of the Riverfront Towers. Finds Midtown/Lafayette/Corktown too risky to live in.

I'm definitely a Eunice, but why can't we have more attended apartment buildings here like the Park Shelton? I don't want to live behind a gate that takes my guests 15-20 minutes to get through [[Riverfront, etc.) but I also don't want to end up like the lady in the WSJ who bought near B-E and came home to find it stripped.

[fryar]

It's far from a perfect solution, but it's cheap and easy to try.

Yeah, I get that, that's why I picked up on the idea again after first dismissing it.

FWIW, I did take the skywalk between Millender and RenCen as an indication that this complex was supposed to let you not be part of the city if you didn't want to, but I have also moderated my view of it since on account of my having experienced a couple of Michigan winters.

I'm defensive about the lower Woodward corridor, because I think of it as concrete, with many of the pieces in place already. In my mind, it basically has already happened there. If you stick it right in the middle of that corridor, at least without some kind of retail frontage, you could break the continuity of that. The riverfront should always make sense for development, and as was mentioned, is in fact being developed by smaller gated communities already, so I guess its off the table. But if you want to range outside of that "T", be my guest.

You'll have political obstacles for sure. Isn't there a wall on Woodward up around 8-Mile that I read about in Origins, a wall that had been put up in not-so-ancient times to keep Detroit's black population out of the suburbs, more or less? This idea would lurch straight into that still-open wound.

And there is something questionable about the idea of building a faux mini-Hamtramck in order to attract people who don't want to live in Detroit to Detroit. But they may be out there, longing to be convinced that they can do so without sacrificing good schools or safe neighborhoods.

Or what about the undeveloped parts of the riverfront. Is anything happening downriver of Joe Louis Arena, behind the Riverfront Towers? Build something there, put in place a skywalk with a moving sidewalk to the People Mover, and open your school to the public as a private school.

I don't think this idea is awesome, it doesn't fill me with warm feelings, but in some areas, it probably couldn't hurt. Things are challenging.

[fryar]

Yeah, for me as well, I'm a Eunice. I don't want to live in the gated community myself. I want to walk out the door and be stimulated.

[fryar]

Speaking of Michigan winters, we had someone rotate through the Detroit office for 18 months from the Bangalore office. He ended up living in my building in downtown. Shortly after he arrived, he and I went out to the Indian movie theater in, what, Novi? We watched this subtitled Bollywood version of The Matrix called Krrrrish, which was fun. The cliche about jaw-dropping panoramic scenescapes held up as the young lovers danced through the meadows of some Himalayan valley. Krish ended up kicking butt in a Singaporean circus, but that's beside the point.

On the way back to the car, he makes conversation, small talk stuff, and asks me "so, when does the warm season start?" I think I just stared at him, completely befuddled, although nowadays I laugh heartily.

This was August, 2006. Little did he know what he was in for.

Vik, if you're out there, buddy, lurking, it is I, Fryar.

[Bearinabox]

You'll have political obstacles for sure. Isn't there a wall on Woodward up around 8-Mile that I read about in Origins, a wall that had been put up in not-so-ancient times to keep Detroit's black population out of the suburbs, more or less? This idea would lurch straight into that still-open wound.

The wall is actually a bit west of Woodward; it runs north-south between Birwood and Mendota, entirely within Detroit. The area from Birwood eastward [[on both sides of 8 Mile, interestingly enough) was settled by blacks back when it was still largely rural, and nobody much minded them being there because nobody really wanted the land for anything else. Then, as the city grew, a developer wanted to put in a new subdivision west of the existing black community, but knew the FHA would redline anything he built there since the demographic data showed the area to have a large proportion of blacks. So he built a wall to separate his new subdivision from the older black neighborhood, the FHA ignored the demographics on the other side of the wall and declared his subdivision sufficiently white for its residents to qualify for mortgages, and the houses all sold to nice, respectable white folks who weren't the least bit racist [[some of them probably even had a black friend!). Then a decade or two later the laws were changed so blacks could live west of the wall too, and white folks up and down Mendota left skid marks on the pavement.