What can be done to improve Detroit? (Lansing, Livonia: neighborhood, high school)

[waltlantz]

To actually create a POSITIVE suggestion.

Someone once highlighted efforts by Wayne State regarding education in detroit.

That is the foundation. Grassroots movement for education of it's predominantly black populace. I support gentrification as a suburbinite with a city fetish, but as an African American I have seen documents and evidence that it is a double edged sword, it pushes out lower income families.

Also, people have to be careful addressing the race card. The problem facing blacks in inner cities is two fold;

YES, there is too much dependency on welfare handouts and such. It is victimization and complacency, too many people are doing it and other people (black white or whatever) vote with their feet and move.

The ambivalence and at worst EMBRACEMENT of ghetto culture in America is a large impetiment to this. And IMHO, Blacks have to start really trying that image around in pop culture squares cause it does help perpetuate attitudes to at least a small degree. I am a black myself and respect rap/hip hop as musical movements. However, the idolization of the gang culture really has to go, and until we are really willing to tackle that ourselves it will be hard to get better PR.

THAT BEING SAID, that still doesn't excuse the idea of leaving a city to rot. Or of labeling all city dwellers as incompetent gang bangers who don't give two flying fits about their town.

Urban Blacks DO have many problems that as a community they bring upon themselves BUT there are many people who despite attempting hard work and honest living just can't make things any better. And they can't go out into the suburbs cause they don't have the money.

I take offense to this blanket spinning of blacks as low grade degenerate criminals. Part of that IS CHOICE YES. BUT it also has baggage and precedent of our history of second class citizens. We primarily worked and lived in low income areas, still got dealt a raw deal then in the 60s rioted.

Do I think that people OWE us something?, No that is silly, outbmoded thinking and I think black detroiters holding those notions are only holding themselves back. But the urban problems facing blacks are ones that occur the world over when a certain subset of people is barred from fully entering the mobile dominent society during history (due to racism, class-discriminatinon, etc.)

US urban policy has been heavily biased towards suburbs so naturally middle class suburban requests get more consideration.

There has to be some outside force to help engineer the revatilization of cities like Detroit IN TANDEM with grassroots organization and movements. After all, the process of city depopulation and suburbinization was CONSIDERABLY influenced by centralized government action (unfortunetly tied to it's racist past).

Just leaving a town to rot, is ugly disquisting waste. What there should be is a strong grassroots movement in the Detroit black community to explore it's ills and foster oppurtunity for education. THEN, we can work with local state and federal govenment to invest in the city.

[waltlantz]

Originally Posted by Frank the Tank

As I've said in some other threads, this is the catch-22 for Detroit. The reason why businesses don't want to move to Detroit is that it doesn't have the knowledge workers that they're looking for. At the same time, knowledge workers don't want to move to Detroit because they can't find the jobs that they're looking for. It's a chicken-or-the-egg problem - one group won't come if the other isn't there already, so if neither group is there, where can you start, particularly when there are a lot of other locales that already offer both? That's the unanswered question right now.

You have to truly look at it from the business perspective. If I'm starting a business, I've got to ask this important question: why should I take a huge risk by starting a business in Detroit if (a) I can easily find the talent that I want in places like New York, Chicago, LA, or San Francisco and (b) even if those cities are too expensive, I can go to places like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina that provide cost structures that are as low or lower than Detroit? Detroit needs to find a real retort to this that goes into hard business specifics as opposed to "charity" (i.e. "we really need help with all of the auto industry jobs being cut"). Otherwise, the current state of affairs will simply continue where Detroit is always skipped.

So, to all of you, if I'm this business owner that asks you the question above about Detroit, how would you answer?

To follow up, this is why locally what Detroit should investigate what DC is doing with it's school issue. I am a moderate liberal and generally intune with big city democratic ideals. But I have read of the excesses that teaching unions take and the toll it has on the inner city schools. I am all for public schooling, but heads need to be busted and roads cleared for DPS and all other big city schools to get back on track.

Detroit has people they need to invest in, so the only thing they can do is come up with RADICAL new options for the inner city school children.

[peter c.]

The city of Detroit is dead, and it has been for years. I've lived here for almost 30 years and it is the same story on playback. Corruption, greed, and filth. And the only people who pay for it are the unfortunate people who live there, and in the surrounding areas. Look at Kwame, all of the lives he touched in a negative way, the city council stricken with greed and scandal, all the way down to the school boards absolute neglectfulness of the education of our children, prepetuating the emaciation of our city. At what point is the powers that be become so destructful to the people that live here, do they be desolved? I say now!

[Cliffie]

My suggestions are these:

1) Make jobs plentiful, gainful and easy to get.

2) Then, and only then, make welfare even harder to get than it is now.

3) Build a sense of ownership and pride in neighborhood by making it easier for people to buy and fix up the many, many empty single-family homes in the city. Anmericans have zero respect for rental property they live in, and they deserve a shot at home ownership which gives them something for all the money they spend on having a place to live. Neighborhood associations and churches can have a powerful role in helping hook people up with their neighbors to fix up their own and each other's places.

4) Encourage the opening of small businesses right in the city, whether storefronts, e-businesses, daycares or what have you. People who cannot afford transportation still need to have jobs, and there is no reason they can't have jobs in their own neighborhoods. We have had too many problems from large-keestered businesses owned by out-of-towners. OK, technically the Ford family is in Detroit, but how seriously can you take the problems of most of your employees when they live in a family compound in the prettified next city over?

5) Three words: Reliable public transportation. This creates jobs right here and makes it easier for people to get to jobs that are not in walkign distance.

6) Pony up the money for decent public services, already. We need more firefighters, and many, many more police.

7) Fix the lousy, lousy, lousy school system so these kids have some chance at bettering themselves.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by Cliffie

My suggestions are these:

1) Make jobs plentiful, gainful and easy to get.

2) Then, and only then, make welfare even harder to get than it is now.

3) Build a sense of ownership and pride in neighborhood by making it easier for people to buy and fix up the many, many empty single-family homes in the city. Anmericans have zero respect for rental property they live in, and they deserve a shot at home ownership which gives them something for all the money they spend on having a place to live. Neighborhood associations and churches can have a powerful role in helping hook people up with their neighbors to fix up their own and each other's places.

4) Encourage the opening of small businesses right in the city, whether storefronts, e-businesses, daycares or what have you. People who cannot afford transportation still need to have jobs, and there is no reason they can't have jobs in their own neighborhoods. We have had too many problems from large-keestered businesses owned by out-of-towners. OK, technically the Ford family is in Detroit, but how seriously can you take the problems of most of your employees when they live in a family compound in the prettified next city over?

5) Three words: Reliable public transportation. This creates jobs right here and makes it easier for people to get to jobs that are not in walkign distance.

6) Pony up the money for decent public services, already. We need more firefighters, and many, many more police.

7) Fix the lousy, lousy, lousy school system so these kids have some chance at bettering themselves.

Good suggestions, but you have to start by cleaning out the entire city government. All of these issues require money. If you give money to the corrupt and incompetent city government that we have now, the money will just be wasted and/or go into someone pockets and you will accomplish nothing. So step 1 is to replace every council member and uper level adminstrator unless they somehow demonstrate that they car competent and honest (good luck sorting that out).

[fmax]

"RADICAL new options"

Un-incorporate the city.

Let the land mass naturally break up into sections and let those sections privately pay for city services they think they need.

[ckhthankgod]

Make DPS a district of magnet schools, with a district within a district model. Offer some type of trade or skill within the high schools as an alternative to those that aren't going to go to college.

Have major input from Wayne State, U of D and other institutes of higher learning to invigorate the immediate areas that they are in through education, employment and some form of neighborhood planning. Here's an idea that is in the process of being put to work in my city, with help from Syracuse University:Near West Side Story :: Near West Side Initiative, Inc. :: Syracuse, NY

Use many of the urban prairie areas of the city as parks, planned communities, retail or to sell such land to investors.

Use more community policing tactics in conjunction with the police department. Does Detroit have precincts? If not, that also might be a good thing to bring back to the city.

Anything else?

[Shrewsbury Road]

First Detroit needs to work with the police department to hire many more officers to patrol neighborhoods and especially school blocks. Second the mayor needs to raise district funding to improve the schools, raise the graduation rate, and make Detroit competitive again. Next the mayor needs to work to compete for the new industires Obama is supposed to start and re employ the citizens of Detroit. Afterwards a huge project should be done to rebuild Detroit's neighborhoods. Then they can rebuild the stores and businesses and people will follow.

[Vicman]

Put bear traps in abandoned buildings so that looters get caught red-handed and broken-footed.

Also the state of Michigan should establish Singapore caning as a punishment for some violent crimes.

I am serious about both of these suggestions; we need to show violent offenders and vandals that we mean business.

[phogstenjr]

My belief,

With the economy in the condition it is in well, I really don't believe Detroit can be helped. I suppose that one day Detroit will be managed by the state (it is just a matter of time).

I can honestly see Ford Motor Company going bankrupt. Most of the property Ford owns in Dearborn is put up for collateral for loans back in 2006. This money will be gone by year end and I highly doubt that the government will be in a position to give them a loan in 2010. I suppose Ford will manufacture all or at least most of its vehicles in other countries and export them back to the united states for sale.

The population of the state of Michigan will just have to get smaller (i.e., people will have to move to other states) before Michigan could get out of this recession/depression!

Just my opinion,

Paul