Leaving East English Village with sadness and affection

[Carey]

Ben Schmitt, a former Free Press reporter who specialized in crime, wrote this story about why he moved from his home near Cadieux and Mack to his hometown of Pittsburgh.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11002/1114667-109.stm

[Detroitnerd]

Well, I don't blame anybody for leaving. The only thing is, you really have to zoom out to see the real problem: A region that seems determined to never work together for its common good.

[detroitjim]

A region that seems determined to never work together for its common good.

WORK! Nebba happen ,Nebba happen ,Nebba happen .

[SWMAP]

What is the problem? Lack of regional thinking -that's the problem???

My good friend and neighbor over here in SW Detroit picked up her family and moved when a random bullet tore into her living room when her daughter was watching television just feet away.

I think appetites for crime and hatred of peace and order are the immediate problems. Good people leave when their children are risked.

[Detroitnerd]

What is the problem? Lack of regional thinking -that's the problem???

My good friend and neighbor over here in SW Detroit picked up her family and moved when a random bullet tore into her living room when her daughter was watching television just feet away.

I think appetites for crime and hatred of peace and order are the immediate problems. Good people leave when their children are risked.

There's the close-up view, sure. There you have a good, honest description of the problem facing the individual. "Zooming out" is optional -- but if the region is to survive, it is essential.

[SWMAP]

Did NYC need "regional thinking" to conquer crime problems? I am mystified about what regional thinking can contribute to solving Detroit's crime crisis?

I know about, for example, lack of transportation to jobs in the suburbs - but what will that do for uneducated and illiterate graduates of DPS? IAnd isn't the situation in the DPS a "Detroit" problem to solve? And how are Detroiters solving it - by division and lawsuits and allegiance to the old patronage formula, if you look at the school board.

I begin to think that Detroiters don't deserve much.

[Zacha341]

Read the article... and as I thought crime was the main deciding factor. You just get tired of it. It is crazy when you have to live right on top of it...

Ben Schmitt, a former Free Press reporter who specialized in crime, wrote this story about why he moved from his home near Cadieux and Mack to his hometown of Pittsburgh.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11002/1114667-109.stm

[Detroitnerd]

Did NYC need "regional thinking" to conquer crime problems? I am mystified about what regional thinking can contribute to solving Detroit's crime crisis?

New York City's regional identity crisis was essentially solved in the 1890s, when the five counties, comprising Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, were fused into one supercity, the City of Greater New York, which we now know as New York City. New York City has a pretty good track record of working together, of having some of the best urban, suburban and rural environments all within one city.

New York's crisis was at its worst in the 1970s and 1980s. It then began a long period where it poured money into upgrading its subways, uniting its many police forces, and upgrading parks and infrastructure. Did taxpayers out in rural parts of Staten Island complain about all this spending? But can metro Detroit's 100-odd governments undertake any such investment? While they're all carefully sitting on their dwindling tax bases? No.

So there ya go. New York was able to pull it together as a supercity and a region that respects it and recover. As for metro Detroit ...

[Detroitnerd]

Read the article... and as I thought crime was the main deciding factor. You just get tired of it. It is crazy when you have to live right on top of it...

Yeah, on the individual level, zoomed in all the way. And you can bet that within three miles is a place with almost no serious crime and people living happily without a care in the world. Just want to point that out.

Please return to the 50-year-long game of complaining about crime in the city, in what is still one of the wealthiest regions in the world.

[SWMAP]

NYC created one government 110 years ago. That's out for us. Next?

[Detroitnerd]

NYC created one government 110 years ago. That's out for us. Next?

Next? Well, here's what's next: Expect the city to deteriorate further into chaos, inner-ring suburbs to suffer worse crime, and finally second-ring suburbs to feel the pain. Maybe one or two "communities" -- think Novi -- will hang on if they build walls around it. Eventually, you'll have no city and no suburbs and a bunch of overbuilt, brownfielded counties rusting and rotting away because nobody could stay to fund 100-odd governments.

Really, if this region doesn't work together in some way, this is what you will get. And, yes, it will happen next.

[SWMAP]

I get the Armageddon picture. But I don't understand what you are propsing as the regionalization solution? Regionalize policing? Regionalize the schools? Regionalize recreation departments? or Regionalize water?

Do you think Detroiters want to regionalize any more than novi does/

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

Good people leave when their children are risked.

As much as I love or loved the city, I would never risk my wife or daughters to its mean streets and perverted urban existence, to them it will always be the place where Daddy grew up. Don't think me naive, I understand there is bad in all heavily populated urban environments but the ravenous spread of cancer in Detroit's once viable neighborhoods over the last 20 years is in my opinion a sigularly unique experience. This man storys only a stones throw from GP is telling.

[Gistok]

Sorry DN, but you're mixing urban flight with suburban cooperation. They're somewhat mutually exclusive.... although perhaps urban flight may be causing upticks in crime in nearby communities. Either that or the lowlifes are moving farther out from the inner city neighborhoods, and on past 8 Mile.

I live in SCS... and a month ago I had 6 SCS police cars in the street in front of my house at 2:15AM. It seems like there was a car parked across the street with 3 people inside. Someone called police, they were interrogated, and then arrested. Within 20 minutes a tow truck pulled up and took the car away. So in 25 minutes [[2:15 AM - 2:40AM) the problem was taken care of completely.

In Detroit... the police response time is what is causing more and more Detroiters to leave the city. Fnemecek keeps harping [[justifiably) on this topic repeatedly. You want suburban cooperation? When the criminals move their operations to the burbs... the faster response time provides a much greater chance of them getting caught.

Granted, there are many regional issues that need cooperation between the city and surrounding communities... but a lack of Detroit police response time does not appear to be one of them... that is a problem [[like the Detroit Public Schools) that the city needs to fix itself... or get state or federal funding for more officers.

[SWMAP]

And detroit needs to elect Judges that sre not so soft and biased against police and authority. The police can't do their jobs when everything keeps getting thrown away by the courts.

[iheartthed]

In Detroit... the police response time is what is causing more and more Detroiters to leave the city. Fnemecek keeps harping [[justifiably) on this topic repeatedly. You want suburban cooperation? When the criminals move their operations to the burbs... the faster response time provides a much greater chance of them getting caught.

Police are a reactive force. They do not prevent crime anymore than doctors prevent illness. People are not leaving the city because of police response times. How do you explain the hundreds of thousands of people who left Detroit when STRESS was in practice? Police response times have just become another symptom of the underlying problem of Detroit -- whatever that may be.

[Detroitnerd]

I get the Armageddon picture. But I don't understand what you are propsing as the regionalization solution? Regionalize policing? Regionalize the schools? Regionalize recreation departments? or Regionalize water?

It's a good question. When does regionalism begin to have meaningful, positive effects for the whole region? Our ostensible regional organization, SEMCOG, is basically a group that predicts our inevitable Armageddon as the member governments implement the policies that create it. That's clearly not good enough.

It comes down to everybody in the region sharing some stake in a region that works together. Some modest measures propose tax-sharing of NEW revenues in the region, so as not to loot any municipality's existing revenues but to share some of the revenues of the growth that is created for the good of the region.

Some cities will undoubtedly be looking at combining cash-strapped police, fire and schools, as our ability to pay for 100-odd departments and boards gets thinner and thinner. We are already seeing some of this.

As for combining actual governments to create a Greater Detroit, that would be a very tough sell. It would require changes to the state constitution. It would require majority votes in any cities that were to be combined with each other. It would have to be decisive, involving scores of governments, much like New York's reincorporation in the 1890s. It would have to include communities both rich and troubled in order to really work.

The ultimate goal would be to take this troubled region that has too long been exploited by the dividers, the real estate interests, the developers, and to turn it into a place that has a working central city, desirable suburban environments and some sort of greenbelt, whether it be recreational land or working farms. It could take 100 years, but it could happen. Eventually.

Anyway, as noted above, there are lots of other smaller steps we could take before considering something this drastic.

Do you think Detroiters want to regionalize any more than novi does/

I don't think enough people in metro Detroit understand that ALL OF OUR DESTINIES ARE TIED TOGETHER. We cannot build walls or move away and think that, simply because our immediate problems are solved, the region is healthy and viable.

[iheartthed]

I was reading an opinion piece this morning that cited a study about societies with high inequality. I'm copying an excerpt that I thought might have relevance to this discussion:

There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.

That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.

“If you fail to avoid high inequality, you will need more prisons and more police,” they assert. “You will have to deal with higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse and every other kind of problem.” They explore these issues in their book, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.”

The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies. For example, a long-term study of British civil servants found that messengers, doormen and others with low status were much more likely to die of heart disease, suicide and some cancers and had substantially worse overall health.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/op...rssnyt&emc=rss

[SWMAP]

And that's great to know - that the people on the bottom have a high rate of pathologies. But we are in the USA which has meritocracy in its DNA.

[Detroitnerd]

And that's great to know - that the people on the bottom have a high rate of pathologies. But we are in the USA which has meritocracy in its DNA.

Yup. Oh, wait ...

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

If I see that my neighbor who likes to play by the rules and gets ahead in life I should.

a) Throw a brick through his window.
b) Steal his Mini Van.
c) Create more hate and discontent because of my own personal lack of motivation or inability.
d) Learn from the example and try harder.

I really don't see how this applies in the decline of this mans neighborhood

[SWMAP]

Well, you can dispute, but at bottom, and in the minds and hearts of most Americans. if you work heard you will get ahead too. GWB may have gotten a legacy card but Obama with no legacy pass worked hard and proved that meritocracy still functions. My point is that worrying about some people's melancholy of soul [[which is sort of un-American) is not going to get Detroit out of this crisis of violence and crime.

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

[quote=iheartthed;211911]I was reading an opinion piece this morning that cited a study about societies with high inequality.

IMHO Inequality should be the driving force behind achieving [[earning) greater equality...via personal initiative

[Detroitnerd]

Well, you can dispute, but at bottom, and in the minds and hearts of most Americans. if you work heard you will get ahead too. GWB may have gotten a legacy card but Obama with no legacy pass worked hard and proved that meritocracy still functions. My point is that worrying about some people's melancholy of soul [[which is sort of un-American) is not going to get Detroit out of this crisis of violence and crime.

Well, the IDEA that the United States is a meritocracy is alive and well. Except that it isn't. And it is becoming less of one every day. The well-connected, the palm-greasers, the backroom-dealers, the old boys -- call them what you want, but they are calling the shots now. And the message they have for everybody else is pretty clear: You lose, suckers.

The game is rigged. And THAT is un-American as hell.

You want to talk about what's "American" and not, the "America" I knew well growing up is disappearing. Used to be nothing more American than little people. Forty years ago in this country, if you were debating an issue of public policy with a group of people, it wouldn't be long before somebody would ask, "How would this affect the 'little guy'?" Forty years ago, people saw themselves as a bunch of "little guys" trying to pay the bills and save for a better life. Where has that gone? The littler we get, the more we tend to frame policy in terms of "What if I became suddenly rich tomorrow?" It's ridiculous.

Anyway, not to derail the conversation. Just barbershopping a bit. On with the debate, good and loud, I'm sure.

[jtw]

Police are a reactive force. They do not prevent crime anymore than doctors prevent illness. People are not leaving the city because of police response times.

Huh? Police presence alone can prevent crimes from happening. And preventative visits [[physicals/checkups) can help doctors determine factors which might lead to illness and take effective precautionary measures.

Police [[and doctors) are both reactive when things go wrong, and preventative when they could go wrong.