Duh?: Only way to stop Detroit blight is to ease up on suburban development

[nain rouge]

Every city on earth was "predominately urban" in 1910. There was no sprawl or auto-oriented development back then. What's your point? Tokyo is the same as Clarkston today because neither had sprawl in 1910?

The HUGE difference is that Clarkston had a tiny population. That's way different than a city that had hundreds of thousands of people. Fact is, if you'd built up that level of urban infrastructure, you generally have an urban core today ASSUMING your region is STILL doing OK.

As a region, you have to work with what was built. Houston may not have a true urban core, but that's because it boomed later. In Detroit, meanwhile, we had a major American city of 1.85 million, with a population density of about 13,000 people per square mile. Now it's a giant hole of decay smack dab in the middle of it all. And that's the problem. Houston has no equivalent to that, and that's why it can get away with not having an urban core.

Detroit's urban core, meanwhile, was a vital part of its built environment.

I never equated density with slums; I wrote that, in Detroit, all dense areas were undesirable slums. As soon as people could move, they did move. Not my fault if you don't get it.

I get what you're saying, but I don't see how Detroit was as magically unique as you say. Developers don't go around purposefully building slums. All those apartments and duplexes in Detroit you call "undesirable" were once shiny, new, and in demand, like housing in any other booming urban city at the time.