What can be done to improve Detroit? (Flint, Ann Arbor: city hall, university)

[SadieMirsade]

#028 – Lessons from Japan: How to Behave When the **** Hits the Fan (http://financialsurvivalradio.com/028-kunstler-japan/ - broken link)

[SadieMirsade]

"Remember: cities traditionally exist where they do because they occupy sites of geographical and strategic importance, such as Detroit’s position on a short stretch of river between two great lakes. Some kind of settlement will continue to exist in most of these places, but not in the form we’re familiar with. They will be urban in the traditional sense of the word: compact, dense, mixed-use, and composed of neighborhoods based on the quarter-mile walk from center to edge—the so-called five-minute walk, which is a transcultural norm found everywhere in pre-automobile urban communities. The pattern is scalable: one neighborhood is the equivalent of a village; several neighborhoods and a commercial district make a town; and many neighborhoods comprise an average-sized city."

"Detroit is so far gone, the argument goes, that the only conceivable use for all that abandoned real estate is to re-ruralize it. This speaks to our lack of confidence in architecture and urbanism per se, and leads to the current default remedy whenever our cities fail: tear things down in favor of green space.

Such thinking is the result of architecture’s decades-long inability to provide buildings worthy of our affection; municipal planners’ design ignorance and extreme reliance on traffic engineers; the environmental movement’s focus on wilderness, wildlife, and disdain for human activities;
Detroit is rotting from the inside out. The inside, the old city center, the part closest to the river, is destined to be the urban site of highest value in the future. Although it may never resemble the Detroit of 1960, we have the skills and knowledge to rebuild something of appropriate urban quality there again."

Back to the Future | James Howard Kunstler | Orion Magazine

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.p...s/article/6337

[crazynip]

Give every one of it's residents a bus ticket to the city of their choice and 500$ and then bulldoze just about all of it.

Invite only people back who have jobs and actually want to be a productive member of society.

[SadieMirsade]

The White House plan to revive struggling cities | SmartPlanet

[Eastern Roamer]

Originally Posted by CHICAGOLAND92

So, in your personnel view how can we fix the city of Detroit?
Please no good or bad views about Detroit no personal attacks Just ideas on how to fix Detroit

You should go back to pronouncing it like its original French name, like "DAY-twa". It sounds much better.

Detroit pronunciation: How to pronounce Detroit in French, English

[hiphopcr]

Originally Posted by SadieMirsade

The White House plan to revive struggling cities | SmartPlanet

How excited should I be about this?

[fmax]

More Welfare - That should do it.

LOL

[FlyiMetro]

Detroit is fun. People like dancing there.

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by hiphopcr

How excited should I be about this?

As excited as you've been about every other failed government program of the past 50+ years. Look at it this way: your wallet's a lot lighter.

[maclock]

Originally Posted by Retroit

As excited as you've been about every other failed government program of the past 50+ years. Look at it this way: your wallet's a lot lighter. [Emphasis added.]

On the bright side, that makes walking around easier, and walking is something that we're all going to have to get used to doing a lot more of when people can no longer afford to run their own cars because they're poor, because they're overtaxed, and because governments at all levels have allowed something once so great to be run into the ground.