Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I had a friend that lived near Central street. His yard isn't very big, but when you add in the vacant lots on both sides he has quite a nice spread. Still in the ghetto, but he has some land.
The houses on both sides have burned down and cleared long ago.
I agree with you that the desire for large houses and yards played a part in the demise of Detroit. There is a related factor that I will add. Detroit is a car dominated place, and it was one of the first places in America to get expressways. Moving to suburbia became very very easy in Detroit with the automobile and good highways to get you there. The fact that Detroit was and is a racially polarized place accelerated this process. As Detroit declined and crime increased, more white people left creating a never ending negative feedback loop. When all the white people left, the more prosperous black people were not far behind. Whats done is done and that cannot be reversed. You say "a city of 700000 is not that bad" , and that is true IF AND ONLY IF order can be restored. IF Most of those 700000 are law abiding productive people then, yes I agree with you about smaller being a good thing. A Detroit of 700000 has space to offer, and that is the one asset the city will have to offer. Clean up the crime and corruption and all that space may make Detroit more attractive in the future.
If CA had the degree of white flight experienced in Detroit, we'd have a whole series of Detroits here. One thing, though, other than LA, OAK and SAC the POC here are more varied than in Detroit where it's most a case of AA. Maybe that was a factor, who knows.
Now, in any case, we may still have a string of Detroits here but for other causals. If we lose the last relics of jobs suitable for middle class people and the housing costs continue to be outrageous, there will be massive flight ... clear out of our metros if not the state. I should probably say when not if.
Urban cities across the country all lost significant population after the advent of the automobile. The government subsidized tons of expressways, which lead to suburban growth.
The trend back then was to move to the suburbs because it was cheap and easy. While most cities shed some people, most also bottomed out, except Detroit. Detroit didn't maintain a mass transit system that makes living in a city convenient and enjoyable.
What the 2010 census showed is that Americans are overwhelmingly migrating in two directions. There is a large group moving into dense urban cores (even Detroit). And, there is another large group moving further out into rural, exurban communities. The areas losing the most people are those that are typically suburban.
Detroit City has a lot of suburban-type neighborhoods. So, it makes sense that they will continue to decline no matter how nice the city becomes. Suburbs have all of the congestion of the city, but without being walkable. At the same time, they have none of the freedoms that a rural life provides, but merely the illusion of being "in the country." IMO, traditional suburbs are losing ground because they offer none of the benefits of either city or country. In a suburb, you can't walk to work, to the store, or to any entertainment spots like you can in the city. You also can't ride your 4x4, shoot your gun, or build a bonfire like you can out in the country.
I'm not saying that all suburbs are bad. Many in the Detroit area that are centered around small downtowns are extremely enjoyable places to live and raise a family. However, the suburbs comprised of nothing but enormous subdivisions and endless strip malls really don't have much to offer unless you actually enjoy bland, characterless architecture, traffic congestion, no proximity to city amenities, and no real freedoms that come with rural areas.
People always want to harp on Detroit being built like uninteresting, car oriented-suburbs, but you cannot attain a population density of 13,000+ people on single-family housing alone. The fact that during Detroit's population height, NOBODY lived downtown, but only in the neighborhoods demonstrates that maybe Detroit's neighborhoods weren't so suburban. If you really look at many of Detroit's older neighborhoods, where most of the housing was built before the 1930's, you will find many, many, many two-family flats, 3-family flats, 4-family flats, and small apartment buildings. A few neighborhoods, like the North End, Dexter-Davison, and Old Redford even have some examples rowhouse-type housing called apartment rows.
The Dexter-Davison neighborhood is a text-book example of the multi-family housing found in Detroit. Dexter Avenue was lined and (and a few still exist) with 2-4 story apartment buildings with first-floor retail spaces. The neighborhood streets are lined with single family houses, 2-4 family flats, with mid-rise apartment buildings placed at the end of blocks. All throughout the older westside communities you will find the ubiqitous two-family flat. In addition, even houses that looked like single family houses are/were actually 2 and 3-family flats.
(check out this fancy house with original leaded glass kitchen cabinet doors and original sconces in the bathroom. Would you guess from the street that it was a 2-family flat?)
Just because Detroit didn't have the romantized rowhouses/brownstones with no lawn in front doesn't mean it didn't have densely-populated neighborhoods with multi-family housing. Detroit had the population density of rowhouse cities like DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Look it up.
Also, ForStarters, most of Detroit's outer neighborhoods, with the exception of some of its northwestern fringe are built like pre-wwII suburbs with downtowns like Dearborn, Ferndale, Berkley, Royal Oak, Wayne, etc. Yet, these suburbs are not experiencing the steep population decline that similarly built neighborhoods in Detroit are. The city of Detroit had many mini-downtowns like Grand River-Lahser, Chene-Ferry, Jefferson-Chalmers, Vernor-Springwells, and many others.
^ I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but the point I was trying to make is that without some kind of transit system extending into Detroit's neighborhoods they have become very car-centric and suburban-like. This partly explains why people are leaving them as they can't compete with the suburban suburbs and they aren't "urban" enough to attract people who want to walk to stuff.
I didn't mean to suggest that Detroit isn't capable of high density with its housing stock. Clearly, it is (or was). A good example is Hamtramck which still has a population density of 11,000/sq. mile. There's virtually no rowhouses in Hamtramck, but tons of multi-family flats.
If you look at the census data, people are currently trending towards one of two extremes. On one hand, some are moving into densely-packed urban cores. On the other hand, some are moving out into very rural areas. Even Chicago is shedding people in its less dense neighborhoods that aren't transit friendly, but it is also gaining population in the loop. At the same time, the rural areas on the fringe of Chicagoland are also growing. The only areas that aren't growing are traditional suburbs.
All of the new development is occurring in either in the exurbs or in the urban core. Eventually, I suspect that many cities will look like a bull's eye, with the well-to-dos living in either the urban core or on the rural fringe, with the area in between in various states of decline.
If CA had the degree of white flight experienced in Detroit, we'd have a whole series of Detroits here. One thing, though, other than LA, OAK and SAC the POC here are more varied than in Detroit where it's most a case of AA. Maybe that was a factor, who knows.
Now, in any case, we may still have a string of Detroits here but for other causals. If we lose the last relics of jobs suitable for middle class people and the housing costs continue to be outrageous, there will be massive flight ... clear out of our metros if not the state. I should probably say when not if.
Not all of CA, but the LA area (even Orange County) has had a huge "white flight". Arizona, Nevada, Utah and the Seattle (WA) area are full of white arrivals from the LA area (and their children).
The LA area looks nothing like Detroit, of course, as the LA area is far larger, has totally different terrain and climate, still has a huge presence in entertainment, intellectual property, amusements, small manufacturing, etc. Those still in LA after the flight are far more diverse than what is seen in Detroit.
I see what you're saying, ForStarters, and to an extent I agree. Rapid transit along major corridors like Woodward, Grand River, East Jefferson, Michigan Avenue, etc. would definitely accelerate the investment and revitilization of the semi-urban neighborhoods in Detroit, along with other improvements like crime reduction.
But semi-urban suburbs like Ferndale, Royal Oak, Dearborn, Birmingham have been able to thrive despite the lack of rapid transit. In downtown west Dearborn, they built 3 or so mixed-used condo buildings in the mid-2000s and built a large parking garage
Last edited by usroute10; 09-10-2011 at 12:44 PM..
Reason: psssst
Most of these corridors already have rapid transit - buses! Any rail scheme that has to share the streets with automobile traffic would barely be more effective than buses. Really effective mass transit would be heavy rail - Elevated or Subway, which whisks people about on routes where the transit cars always have the right-of-way.
On many of these corridors, it is questionable whether it makes sense to invest in a mass transit lines that have little potential for success. Grand River today offers very few attractions, and, most of the neighborhoods along the corridor (small exceptions like Grandmont acknowledged) have residents that will not be using the system to go to work nor do high-end shopping.
Woodward is a better outlook, but still marginal (I see the CBD and the Cultural Center area developing along with a mass transit line, but there would be huge gaps with low ridership (from I-75 to Mack/MLK and from Grand Blvd to somewhere around Birmingham).
Only the Southwest sector has a nearly continuous zone of economic activity from downtown to the suburbs (small gaps through the railyards west of Livernois and through the industry along the Rouge River). This corridor is by no means upscale, but it is an area where local stores still do business and people are working for a living. maybe a good place to experiment with a "Curitiba-type" "subway with buses" system?
Not all of CA, but the LA area (even Orange County) has had a huge "white flight". Arizona, Nevada, Utah and the Seattle (WA) area are full of white arrivals from the LA area (and their children).
The LA area looks nothing like Detroit, of course, as the LA area is far larger, has totally different terrain and climate, still has a huge presence in entertainment, intellectual property, amusements, small manufacturing, etc. Those still in LA after the flight are far more diverse than what is seen in Detroit.
Those whites were replaced with Mexicans. If Canada was like Mexico, Detroit would probably be the size of Houston. And also LA wasn't all depending on one economy either.
Detroiter's are irresponsible in their decision making and are always looking for freebies.
But can you really blame them?
Schools for example, 50% of Detroit kindergartner students turn into illiterates. Detroit children spend years in school and make no net gain intellectually. Who is held accountable? - the citizens of Detroit reelect the same people who turned them into illiterates.
Who want's to live with illiterates?
What came first? The chicken or the egg? What causes what??
Detroiter's are irresponsible in their decision making and are always looking for freebies.
But can you really blame them?
Schools for example, 50% of Detroit kindergartner students turn into illiterates. Detroit children spend years in school and make no net gain intellectually. Who is held accountable? - the citizens of Detroit reelect the same people who turned them into illiterates.
Who want's to live with illiterates?
Good point , and I agree with you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
I would suggest that a big part of the downfall of the city is that the people running it were too dense, not the demographics. Densely populated cities can do very well. they do not attract families as often as suburbs do, but they can be very successful if well planned and managed.
So true, but the citizens of Detroit continually vote in these dolts. Vote better leaders in not criminals that will rob the place blind.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
