"Right sizing"

[professorscott]

Am I stoned, or has nobody yet started a thread to discuss Mayor Bing's concept? It's not new, of course, the late City Ombudsman Marie Farrell-Donaldson first brought it up during one of Mayor Young's later administrations, if I'm remembering chronology correctly.

I appreciate the idea, I just wish we could be more honest about what we call it when we shrink on purpose. George Carlin [[I'm working with a lot of dead people tonight, I know) nailed this tendency of leadership to sugar-coat things to a ludicrous degree when he talked about the morphing of the military symptom "shell-shock" into "post traumatic stress disorder" and beyond.

The one cautionary tale about saving your city by shrinking it comes to us today from [[yes, the late) Winston Churchill: wars are not won by evacuations.

I'd be curious to see what the thoughtful DYers think about the whole thing.

Prof. Scott

[lilpup]

Devil's in the details - got to hammer those out yet

[professorscott]

Sure, of course, but a thumbnail sketch is available:

1. Encourage people [[how?) to relocate from areas deemed nonviable to areas deemed viable;

2. Reduce spending for services in the nonviable areas, how drastically is one of the details you mention;

3. Hopefully save enough money to IMPROVE services in the areas where lots of people actually live.

Remember, 900K people is not small potatos [[or is it potatoes? Where is Dan Quayle when you need him?) and represents just under 10% of the entire population of Michigan. It's reasonable for all of us to make an effort to better serve that enormous population.

Good luck to the Mayor; there will be lots of pushback on this, much of it uninformed nonsense.

[lilpup]

even know how many people would have to relocate?

[professorscott]

Well, first of all, let's rephrase that - if we are to take Mayor Bing's statements at face value, nobody would "have to relocate". So if we look instead for how many people would be encouraged to relocate, now we're at the problem of looking at details.

Let's say, for instance, that we decide a neighborhood is not viable if less than 1/5 of the parcels in the neighborhood are vacant lots or unoccupied homes. I'm just picking a number out of a hat. First of all, define "neighborhood" in terms of size; there's one detail. Next, somebody has to figure out which neighborhoods fit that criterion - and I assure you, nobody has the detailed information at hand.

So a big part of this job, early on, is to survey what we have. What is the population density of our neighborhoods? What shall we call "nonviable", and then, the great big detail, precisely what do we do about it?

We don't have the answers yet, but we should look into them. Of course, this will cost money, which comes from where? Another detail. But Mayor Bing, as a business exec by trade, ought to be good at driving this kind of process.

[English]

Barring a natural disaster, I can't see this happening for at least another 5-10 years. There isn't really much political will to work towards the change we need on the local, state, or national levels.

[Pam]

Am I stoned

I guess so.

http://detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?t=6741

[Searay215]

Barring a natural disaster, I can't see this happening for at least another 5-10 years. There isn't really much political will to work towards the change we need on the local, state, or national levels.

Another round of fires like we had the other day and I would say your time line could be shortened by a few years.

[bailey]

Sure, of course, but a thumbnail sketch is available:

1. Encourage people [[how?) to relocate from areas deemed nonviable to areas deemed viable;

2. Reduce spending for services in the nonviable areas, how drastically is one of the details you mention;

3. Hopefully save enough money to IMPROVE services in the areas where lots of people actually live.

Remember, 900K people is not small potatos [[or is it potatoes? Where is Dan Quayle when you need him?) and represents just under 10% of the entire population of Michigan. It's reasonable for all of us to make an effort to better serve that enormous population.

Good luck to the Mayor; there will be lots of pushback on this, much of it uninformed nonsense.

It's never going to work. No matter how much it's needed, no matter how much sense it makes in the long run. It. Will. Never. Happen. the plan is ridiculous rearranging of deck chairs on a doomed ship....hell the rearranging wont ever happen anyway because no one will agree on which chairs should move and will simply continue to argue until all are drowned.

The hundreds of thousands that need to move from desolate, de-populated areas of the city will never agree to be moved unless huge sums of money are thrown at them. But of course, there is no money to incentivize the move. Further, I would bet that many living in the populated and intact areas don't want those people moved near them anyway [[there is a reason they don't live next door to eachother now...why would that change?). And then of course, the various grape throwers will line up to protest and hurl epithets about a "trail of tears" and that this is just putting people on "reservations" . Further efforts are simply delaying the inevitable. pull the plug and go chpt 9.

[canuck]

What Detroit needs is 2 or 3 Nimitz-class carriers worth of investment in new infrastructure. It needs a plan which is what folks on this thread need to discuss, the only problem is we dont yet know what the plan is... Detroit is a national emergency that deserves all the care given to a liver transplant patient. It is jaundiced and broken and poor and all that, and it needs assistance from as high as it can get.

Once the main lines of a plan are introduced, I hope the details can be taken care of by the best urban planning minds. There have been many factors to aggravate the sense of disaffection toward Detroit. Abandonment, distrust of the black population in running affairs and taking over where others left in disgust. An unending series of bad decisions and misappropriations as in the Poletown plant neighborhood evacuation predisposes detroiters to disbelieve in any kind of progress. I think eminent domain will be used because Detroit needs to be redrawn. There will be painful moves but also positive ones if the mania for building tacky houses is replaced by smart
planning and ecologically minded construction. Maybe this civil-war distress, this Beirut-like split in the population bogs Detroit down in fear and stops it from engaging in reconstruction where places like Dresden and other european cities rose from the ashes because of their homogeneity?

I think that has a lot to do with it apart from a deep-seated inertia vis-à-vis civic and business authority.

I'm no planner but one thing I know is that street life is not what it can be in Detroit, that it si nowhere what it used to be. I am not against shooting for the good old days either. Throw in some urban farming as long as it isnt the Kellogg compound with miles of barbed wire fencing.
But more importantly, do the opposite of what all cities [[not just Detroit) have done in the past 60 years. Reframe commercial streets so people have access to short distance shopping, eliminate anything that distances shops from sidewalks. Creating an environment based on basic needs on a neighborhood level first will benefit both residents and businesses. The downtown has to eliminate as much as possible the need for driving and parking if it wants to recover lost ground. Why would the city not contemplate underground parking lots in order to reclaim property above ground. A concerted effort to attract small businesses on street level is paramount. That rule applies to all cities by the way. incentives and annual prizes to shops for good design and other attributes should also drive this effort, and so on and so forth...

[Detroitnerd]

My main problem with the so-called right-sizing plan is that it seems to be informed by the same old, top-down, 1960s-style attitude that has pervaded Detroit's government for too long.

• We will save the city by building up downtown; the neighborhoods are expendable.
• We need to cut deals with big players; mom-and-pop shops and homeowners are not that important.
• We must build a city of massive projects, big campuses, large industrial parks and glorious skyways and parking garages; bungalows and existing architecture are obsolete and embarrassing.
• Even though often showered with tax breaks, subsidies and nonprofit services, large organizations are central to revitalizing the city; individual citizens are costs, and their reckless decision to hang on in neighborhoods we don't want anymore threatens our ability to provide services.
• Since large organizations and huge projects are what matter, individual homeowners are obstructing economic growth in Detroit and must be cajoled into allowing us to flatten their homes.

Of course, all this flies in the face of the latest evidence. Let's look at the few neighborhoods that are making a comeback: Southwest Detroit and the mid-city area.

• Though many of the people in these neighborhoods may work downtown, they identify with a neighborhood: the place they shop, eat, drink, party, volunteer and pay taxes.
• While these areas have [[or have had) large employers in the old Detroit sense, these neighborhoods are typified by vigorous activity from mom-and-pop shops and conscientious homeowners, even though the city's attitude ranges from neglectful to hostile.
• These neighborhoods show an ability to capitalize on existing street grids, architecture and heritage, and even feel that large projects and 1960s style plans could hamper their neighborhoods' success.
• Individual citizens, even if they're the only ones holding down the block [[think Honest John's) are valued and rewarded; large players are sometimes seen as imposing heavy costs on the community, or even threatening it entirely [[e.g.: Fourth Street's ongoing war with MDOT over freeway expansion).
• With few incentives or subsidies, individual homeowners and entrepreneurs are creating economic growth and keeping up the neighborhood, in spite of, not because of, help from the city.
• Since these neighborhoods have most of the economic activity, entrepreneurial activity, young people moving in and other benefits, we'd do well to avoid hastily knocking down neighborhoods -- especially for large players who ask for much [[subsidies, free land, tax breaks) and give back only what they're required [[MGM's new garden, for instance).

I'd also add that the players behind this plan want to get the ball rolling now, because every new business in southwest Detroit and Midtown means another example why this is outdated, erroneous thinking.

OK, have at it.

[Hypestyles]

i just hope that urban detroit can rise above the undercurrent of political schizophrenia, allow bing the space to implement his plan for reimagining the city, without resorting to reflexive cynicism, assuming the worst, that it's a suburban land-grab, or equating urban farming with a "plantation", which creates an unnecessary racialized spin to redevelopment efforts. Prodding manufacturers to simply set-up shop on abandoned factory-grounds is not enough..
bing's team needs to be proactive in getting the facts out about this process, sticking to the facts and not getting overly emotional with the debate..

[canuck]

Agreed with your top down essay, Dnerd. This is what has happened to Detroit in the past, and it may be that the tradition continues on unimpeded by citizen's wishes for a better urban space. If popular involvement can keep the top down in check, then you may see some surprising results. Some effects of more involvement may in fact yield less so-called development. This may lead some to think that the status quo exists because Detroiters' reluctance to accept some projects are the main impediment to the city's rebound. But some things must be resisted. In Montreal, some big top heavy projects were brought down to smaller size because neighborhoods fought the steamrollers from the start. The Griffintown project was set at 1.3billion in a neighborhood near downtown where an expressway was built in the sixties. The land was cheap and the developer was about to build condo and office towers with a centralized shopping mall. Of course none of this looked remotely like a neighborhood and activists fought to bring it to a third of its initial plan. It is tempting to look for solutions in large scale equaling wide benefits but it is often bad judgement to do so. There are cities where expensive real estate diminishes possibilities for even middle income families to buy homes.
Vancouver is a pretty city, but it is ridiculously expensive.

A lot is at stake in redesigning the city, and as Hypestyle says, there isnt much room for letting cynics spoil the show. I think it is important to look at all the folks who manage good orgs and businesses in the city, get what they do right, manage to pass on their knowhow and just say yes to the good stuff and no to the massive-oppressive projects that may come along.

[fryar]

I think some fashion of this is a no-brainer, but of course you cannot have the government force people to move.

[cman710]

My main problem with the so-called right-sizing plan is that it seems to be informed by the same old, top-down, 1960s-style attitude that has pervaded Detroit's government for too long.

• We will save the city by building up downtown; the neighborhoods are expendable.
• We need to cut deals with big players; mom-and-pop shops and homeowners are not that important.
• We must build a city of massive projects, big campuses, large industrial parks and glorious skyways and parking garages; bungalows and existing architecture are obsolete and embarrassing.
• Even though often showered with tax breaks, subsidies and nonprofit services, large organizations are central to revitalizing the city; individual citizens are costs, and their reckless decision to hang on in neighborhoods we don't want anymore threatens our ability to provide services.
• Since large organizations and huge projects are what matter, individual homeowners are obstructing economic growth in Detroit and must be cajoled into allowing us to flatten their homes.

...

OK, have at it.

Detroitnerd, I think you made a very thoughtful post. Does a right-sizing plan have to be entirely top-down, though?

For example, how does right-size mean focusing on downtown at the expense of the neighorhoods? Based on what I have read, the point of right-sizing will be to strengthen the most healthy neighborhoods and encourage people to move there. Just given the demographics of the city, this will necessarily entail investing in some of the city's most outlying neighborhoods and encouraging people to move out of some of the inner city neighborhoods. Downtown would certainly be included in any such plan, but I do not think it needs to be at the expense of the neighborhoods.

Also, while large projects may result after right-sizing if land is consolidated, I think that would be a materially different process than what has occurred in the past. In the past, large projects were used as focal points of redevelopment projects [[an "If You Build It, They Will Come" approach). Large projects that result from right-sizing will provide potential benefits, but are not a reason for right-sizing. In fact, many large tracts of land may become greenspace or parkland.

Finally, I do not think that such a process needs to trample all over homeowners rights. Mayor Bing has stated that he does not plan forced relocations. I do think that some relocation must be encouraged, however, because the whole point of right-sizing is to reduce costs, make provision of services more effective, and promote healthier neighborhoods.

The question I would ask is the following: are you against any right-sizing at all, or are you opposed to right-sizing along the lines of past, failed development ideas? I can agree with you on the latter, but I do think some right-sizing is necessary and would improve the health of the city in the long-term.

[Claude G.]

Although this concept looks good on paper, the reality is that not everyone in a neighborhood is going to agree to be part of the relocation and there will be hold outs.

So now instead of having a neighborhood with 5-6 homes your going to have some with 1 or 2 homes. Then the people who do end up holding out, are going to demand huge sums of money to force them to leave.

Forcing people to relocate is not the ansewer, what the city needs to do is start going through neighborhoods and cleaning them up.

Instead of hiring demolition contractors to tear down abandoned homes and paying them top dollar, the city should buy their own demolition equipment and hire their own workers to do these demolitions.

At the same time, the city needs to change their process for demolishing abandoned property. Look at all the houses that burned a few days ago around 7 and Van Dyke. I drove by the other day and the neighborhood looks like a war zone, and there is nothing left of some of those homes.

What needs to happen is that as soon as the fire department, DTE, and the insurance companies finish conducting their investigation, they need to go in there with the bull dozers and start clearing out the homes that are beyond repair.

I would lay odds on it, 6 months from now the burned out homes are still standing....

[gazhekwe]

Pick two neighborhoods, one to build up, one to tear down.

Build new or rehab old houses in the first neighborhood.

Open applications for people in the second neighborhood to trade, even up, their house for one of the new or rehabbed homes in the first neighborhood.

There are a lot of variables, though, eligibility requirements for the people to get a new or rehabbed house, dealing with property ownership issues in both neighborhoods, and integration of the new people into the new neighborhood [[not in a racial sense, we don't need gang fights).

[Detroitnerd]

Detroitnerd, I think you made a very thoughtful post. Does a right-sizing plan have to be entirely top-down, though?

It's possible that if you had enough community input [[not mere "involvement" but real, substantive input, with real veto power), you could have a right-sizing plan that wasn't all top-down. But I'm pessimistic. If we had any systems like that in place, the residents would be clamoring for SERVICES, not for intelligent ways to abandon neighborhoods. In that sense, the whole top-down idea stands whole and complete. Instead of trying to build healthy urban tissue, like a cancer doctor who kills his patient by a million surgeries and amputations, the city fathers keep shearing away at precious urban fabric that can't be built anywhere today. I am encouraged by the stuff Canuck posted about Canadian examples, but I am not sure we could have that kind of involvement where communities get to say what happens. Instead, I picture a focus group where residents get asked a few questions and the administration does what it wants anyway, all under the pleasant fiction of "citizen buy-in." Some would say I'm cynical; I would argue I know the city leaders all too well. They know which side butters their bread.

For example, how does right-size mean focusing on downtown at the expense of the neighorhoods? Based on what I have read, the point of right-sizing will be to strengthen the most healthy neighborhoods and encourage people to move there. Just given the demographics of the city, this will necessarily entail investing in some of the city's most outlying neighborhoods and encouraging people to move out of some of the inner city neighborhoods. Downtown would certainly be included in any such plan, but I do not think it needs to be at the expense of the neighborhoods.

Nobody is proposing knocking down large areas of downtown. They are proposing knocking down some of the most distressed neighborhoods. I know some people who live in Brightmoor, and we have some people who hang on in tough neighborhoods, performing services instead of the city like one-man NGOs. What of their hard work maintaining a neighborhood? They don't have political pull like downtown landholders do, so they don't get the juice, they get the boot. And that's how you find a continuity that goes back to Cobo and that whole top-down thinking. We know what's best for this city. The alternative is never considered; that every tax break and subsidy for downtown has to be made up for by the residents who suffer strained services in the neighborhoods.

I didn't make up this paradigm of conflict; Detroit's leaders did.

Also, while large projects may result after right-sizing if land is consolidated, I think that would be a materially different process than what has occurred in the past. In the past, large projects were used as focal points of redevelopment projects [[an "If You Build It, They Will Come" approach). Large projects that result from right-sizing will provide potential benefits, but are not a reason for right-sizing. In fact, many large tracts of land may become greenspace or parkland.

That's what they say. But those of us who've been around these debates long enough start to grow weary. Anytime you see a plan for the future with a park, that's how you know it will be a parking lot. Anytime you see a plan with a farm, you can bet it will be a factory or industrial park. As the years go by, you understand that they are intent on pleasing the elite by catering to their short-term visions, not matter what PR ploy they use [[urban renewal, urban ag). You can bet your boots the worst of the SOS [[same old stuff) crowd is salivating at the prospect of free land and subsidies.

Finally, I do not think that such a process needs to trample all over homeowners rights. Mayor Bing has stated that he does not plan forced relocations. I do think that some relocation must be encouraged, however, because the whole point of right-sizing is to reduce costs, make provision of services more effective, and promote healthier neighborhoods.

And there's the rub. There's another reason that Bing is a spokesperson you can't believe. He wants to have large areas of the city cleared for some sort of redevelopment. What will that be? Farms? Factories? Something else? He won't say. Build it and maybe we'll save money. Maybe somebody will build something. Who knows? Let's just bulldoze our way into prosperity somehow, without serious studies or looking at numbers!

What's more, we're going to clear out lightly populated areas without forcing people to move. How in God's name do you do that? Oh, you can use your carrots for a while, but then out comes the stick. "These people are responsible for draining city services out of the neighborhoods that WORK!" Suddenly, conscientious homeowners who've held on in their neighborhoods are cost centers or strains on the budget. All while we keep showering big players with subsidies. See how they play us?

The question I would ask is the following: are you against any right-sizing at all, or are you opposed to right-sizing along the lines of past, failed development ideas? I can agree with you on the latter, but I do think some right-sizing is necessary and would improve the health of the city in the long-term.

Right-sizing -- really, that's a corporate term. We should call it what it is: retrenchment. There's not arguing about "should we do it?" It's been going on for years. And some people have found ways to live with it, adapt to it. What I worry about is the same top-down players suddenly finding a way to clear land for their big business cronies and real estate speculators. And that's the bottom of it; like many other residents of Detroit, I say, "I don't trust them. They want our land for themselves. And they want to give it to somebody else for free." Until those issues of trust, good government and real democracy are dealt with, I believe I shall oppose any effort to "guide" the retrenchment of Detroit.

[staticstate]

you guys ever play Sim City? you just click on the little bulldozer icon and then on the plots of land you want to get rid of. poof! you're right sized...

[Detroitnerd]

you guys ever play Sim City? you just click on the little bulldozer icon and then on the plots of land you want to get rid of. poof! you're right sized...

Yeah, Sim City is fun, until those alien saucers start vaporizing neighborhoods.

[wolverine]

Rightsizing was not supposed to be about relocating residents. The plan is about other strategies. Relocation would be the last resort action if someone was in serious jeopardy of not receiving services due to poor condition of roads and water lines around them or because their house was in dangerous condition.

The problem is, gullible people focused only on that detail, and it was the most celebrated point of the plan by the media.

The only people that will have their homes and businesses taken away from them are the lousy owners that leave vacant or burned buildings open to decay. I don't see how anyone could argue against taking those.

[BagAJellyDonuts]

Don't know if "right sizing" is a proper term.

The land isn't going to just go away.

Instead of this, why not just push for a concept that does seem to have a value. Representation by districts instead of the current mess?

[canuck]

I think wolverine is right about the fuss made around relocation and bulldozing of neighborhoods.
It is the one issue that people will lose sleep over. But there was a promise made that I cant imagine will hold in the long run about not relocating homeowners.

I also am in agreement with Dnerd's convincing scenario of power brokers vs homeowners and the cyclical shaft people keep getting. Corruption is the lubricant enabling said shaft. Notwithstanding Mayor Bing's apparent earnestness about Detroit's future, the city administration needs to be enhanced in a lot of ways. There has to be help from the federal government in order to avoid trusteeship and maybe the idea that Detroit's status as a major experiment in urban renewal can give it some traction. I think mr Renn whose article is mentioned in The Power of Detroit Branding thread does touch on something when he says there has to be a ministerial approach to incite popular participation in debates. More democracy, not less will help overcome some of the meanness that characterizes dirty politics.

In Montreal, Frank Zampino, the city's chairman of the executive committee resigned last year when reporters found he had spent a week vacationing on a contractor's yacht after signing a 356 million dollar contract for water meter installations on industrial buildings. Later, it was found that union leaders in the construction industry also patronized Tony Accurso's yacht in Fort Lauderdale. The unions gave grants and entitlements to Accurso's construction businesses
in order to keep the ball rolling for their members but also because a vast money laundering operation for the Hell's Angels Montreal chapter needed big cash spreads. Quebec's prime minister refuses to open a commission investigating construction industry corruption because his party cannot sustain the blow. The Quebec provincial police has ordered an investigative operation called "Opération Marteau" or Operation Hammer to look into collusion between the construction industry, civic administrations and organized crime. Meanwhile the mayor cancelled the water meter contract that would have amounted to 600 million according to new info, and now taxpayers will pay a penalty to said contractor for reneging to the tune of 34 million dollars. There are plenty more examples of this kind of thing here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Accurso
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zampino

[Detroitnerd]

Rightsizing was not supposed to be about relocating residents. The plan is about other strategies. Relocation would be the last resort action if someone was in serious jeopardy of not receiving services due to poor condition of roads and water lines around them or because their house was in dangerous condition.

Ultimately, though, you cannot examine the statements of Detroit officials without looking at the context of the last century. Since the 1920s, Detroit has been bulldozing houses, businesses, apartment buildings, all in the name of progress. Most often, the structures razed have forced the poor to relocate. And those who've benefited from these demolitions have often been very well-connected elite types. You simply cannot tell Detroiters that nobody will be relocated, that this will be a plan that benefits all. You simply will not be believed, even when it's true. Which isn't to say that Detroiters are wrong about mistrusting the city's motives; too often they are right.

[cman710]

I can acknowledge that the past should make us all skeptical of urban redevelopment plans. And even if Mayor Bing is earnest [[which he seems to be), that does not mean that future mayors/City Council member will be similarly earnest. Any plan involving allocations of resources or declaring winners and losers is susceptible to corruption. That said, I think we need to work to make any redevelopment process as open and transparent as possible, because sitting by and doing nothing will not help, either.