Comments on: Retrofitting Detroit: Stop the sprawl

By: Retrofitting Detroit: Connect the dots | Rethink Detroit

Retrofitting Detroit: Connect the dots | Rethink Detroit — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:06:05 +0000

[...] is the last in a series on retrofitting metro Detroit for urbanism. Also see the first, second, and third. Willis Street in the Cass Corridor / Midtown Detroit. Courtesy of Andrew Jameson @ [...]

By: Retrofitting Detroit: Filling in the blanks | Rethink Detroit

Retrofitting Detroit: Filling in the blanks | Rethink Detroit — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:58:40 +0000

[...] is the third in a series on retrofitting metro Detroit for urbanism. Read the first and second. Downtown Detroit: The urban heart of the region. Courtesy of ifmuth @ [...]

By: Shannon Paul

Shannon Paul — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:36:49 +0000

Hi Patrick — I’m sorry to comment here like this, but I was hoping we might be able to connect via email. Please feel free to send your contact information to my gmail address included with my comment, or on Twitter @shannonpaul

Many thanks!

By: Cooper

Cooper — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:00:47 +0000

To be clear, I don’t think curbing suburban sprawl will magically repopulate the city of Detroit. The continous construction of new subdivisions at the region’s edge has certainly helped enable flight from older communities by depressing housing prices generally, but many people would have left regardless, even if it were expensive to do so. That’s how high the frustration level is.

Nor do I think urban redevelopment needs to wait for suburban sprawl to stop. We’re already starting to see incremental improvements both in Detroit and older suburbs, and I see real opportunity there. I just wanted to acknowledge upfront that if we build our older communities upward and our newer communities outward simultaneously, in a region with no population growth, something will have to give, and that something will be the middle areas of Detroit that are already mostly depopulated and some of the older inner ring suburbs that don’t have the historic assets or the vision to escape the downward pull from population loss.

By: Jim Meredith

Jim Meredith — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:30:04 +0000

For decades, now, Detroiters have found reasons (goals, excuses, prejudices, etc.) for leaving the city. And, more recently, the city’s leadership has provided many more. An interpretation of the Parcel Survey is that those who remain in the last standing houses on the block are mostly those who do not have choice.

Can “curbs” be effective without having a leadership and a civic culture that, instead of making so much about and of the city “less desirable,” focuses on what it is that will bring people back? What “curbs” will keep anyone with resources to stay (or make the choice to bring jobs here) in a city that, for example, has a school board that steals the future from your kids? What is the function of “curbs” when the Mayor has declared the intention to revert the city’s development to agriculture?

Are there more effective alternatives than controls that may be able to form a more effective social and governance foundation to achieve the physical objectives that you’ll address in your next two posts?

By: Retrofitting Metro Detroit for urbanism | Rethink Detroit

Retrofitting Metro Detroit for urbanism | Rethink Detroit — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 04:23:56 +0000

[...] Stop the sprawl. Metro Detroit’s population hasn’t risen in forty years, yet we keep subsidizing sprawl. It’s time to focus on redeveloping the city and retrofitting existing suburbs instead. [...]