[ParkerKnepp]

Hi! I'm a 21 year old and I've lived in the northern LP my whole life, now living in East Lansing for 4 years. My dad moved to grand rapids a few years ago and I used to date a girl from Dearborn, plus had a few friends east of Detroit, so I'd like to say I'm very familiar with the state. I've done a lot of research on other places in the US, and have made a few trips around myself. I want to ask everyone, what could Michigan do to improve the state?

The first thing is Michigan is mostly a destination state. Trucks that move products across the US don't typically have to go through Michigan. If someone from the east coast wanted to get to the west, they don't go through Michigan. To me, this makes michigan need a tourism factor. People need a reason to go to Michigan. The west part of the LP does that naturally with lake michigan having amazing beaches and dunes with cute touristy towns. The eastern and mid part of the state however doesn't have that natural beauty and need good cities to attract people. Problem is we don't have good cities. Saginaw, Flint, and parts of Detroit are quite ugly and filled with crime. The infrastructure of this state is so bad, the memes are true.

Here are a few things I would recommend to improve the state, increase the tourism and young people/families move here.

Bike-able cities: Bike Lanes and increase tunnels/overpasses to avoid car traffic and stops. Madison WI puts every place in Michigan to shame with something like this. Talking to locals, everyone bikes because it's faster and easier. Helps keep traffic lower AND improves health of the city. Win-win.

Fix the roads: Michigan needs to figure this out, doesn't make sense that Wisconsin and Ohio have amazing highways when we don't. I HATE tolls, but I think a 94 toll and 96 toll would make a lot of sense if that's what it takes.

Public transportation: I think we should be progressive and put in a high speed train system in Michigan. California started this, but was stopped by Trump. China has started to implement this, and in my opinion, it's the way of the future. start with one from Detroit to Lansing and GR, then connect GR to Chicago, then Detroit to up north and finally Grand Rapids to up north area. This could re-invigorate downtowns, make a trip from grand rapids to Detroit in an hour!

More Public transportation: We need better transit systems. The Detroit people mover is terrible compared to other cities that are similarly sized.

The role of certain areas: I'm currently studying horticulture, and new techniques are starting to be developed that will change that whole field. So the Traverse City and Grand Rapids areas are growing meccas, and need to stay that way.

Detroit role: Where a lot of Michiganders live. A true city with a wonderful downtown. I see urban gardens making Detroit/Flint special, with community growing facilities replacing food stamps. I know Flint has a program where if you buy produce it's half the cost, to incentivize inner cities to eat healthy. It would be even cheaper to setup an aquaponics facility in the hood that runs on a CSA share like program. I also see Detroit being a hub for tech startups, with incentives to keep growing companies in Michigan. Now is the time to push for this, since everyone is leaving California and New York and it doesn't matter as much where the company is located due to the push for everything being online.

Grand Rapids role: Biggest Farm Market scene due to being in the growing mecca. Art scene. GR already has good music venues. Honestly GR is the only decent city for a young person to live in along with the suburbs being pretty safe and having wonderful downtowns like the East GR gaslight district. The bike lanes need to improve and It would be wonderful for a train to the grand haven/holland area, but I don't think that's realistic.

Lansing Role: Now THIS is the fun part. When you look at most other states, they don't have the 3 major cites in a line, all an hour from each other. Most of the time, the cities are father away, or their are only two major sized cities. Lansing is one of THE most centrally located cities in America. Just about everybody is an hour away from it, minus up north. So I think Lansing should be a much better destination than it is now. We need a few things to get people to move here and for it to have it's own identity. I think LANSING should have Michigan's Adventure. Here me out. When the pandemic happened, I spent a long time learning about theme parks/waterparks. I don't know why I became so interested, but I learned a few things. First, how many people are employed by the park. Cedar Point employs 10,000 at least. Even 10% is huge, close to a new factory opening up. The 2nd reason is the tourism factor, how many people go to Sandusky or Wisconsin Dells, it's mind boggling how many people that attracts. Then finally the most important reason to move michigan adventure, is because it by far does the least amount of revenue compared to any cedar faire park. NO ONE from detroit goes to michigan adventure, they go to Cedar Point. You miss your main market. Right now michigans adventure is west michigan adventure, Lansing would be the perfect spot to move the park. It would cost a lot less than you think to move the park, and you could do it slowly.
More Lansing Role: The other thing we need is a casino. Michigan needs to be known for their casinos, but I feel like you could improve so much on the concept of one. Having a themepark and a nice soaring eagle sized casino would give people a reason to come here. The other thing is a festival. Lansing should be the Coachella of Michigan. There is so much cheap farmland outside of the city to put in a festival with a woody vibe, like electric forest, next to the theme park. Lansing needs to be the center for these activities for michigan's dynamic to actually make sense.
Traverse City Role: The tourism destination. The nature. Keep that how it is and improve the cities to be walkable and bike-able.

Okay this was a lot so I'll call it quits for now. In summary, Detroit should be a commerce hub with wonderful walking and biking and cheap produce for citizens, Grand Rapids should improve the farmers market and possibly add more public trans, and Lansing needs to be totally outfitted with the summertime destination vibe-A theme park, casino and huge festival. Please, let me know your thoughts on all of this!

[secondbreakfast]

I'm about to crush your dreams, but here are my thoughts:

Originally Posted by ParkerKnepp

The eastern and mid part of the state however doesn't have that natural beauty and need good cities to attract people. Problem is we don't have good cities. Saginaw, Flint, and parts of Detroit are quite ugly and filled with crime. The infrastructure of this state is so bad, the memes are true.

100% agreed there. There's not much that can be done about that short of massive investments in those cities. But that takes a lot of money that we don't have, or at least some people aren't willing to spend.

Originally Posted by ParkerKnepp

Bike-able cities: Bike Lanes and increase tunnels/overpasses to avoid car traffic and stops. Madison WI puts every place in Michigan to shame with something like this. Talking to locals, everyone bikes because it's faster and easier. Helps keep traffic lower AND improves health of the city. Win-win.

I would guess that the bikeable area of Madison, WI corresponds to the area around the UW campus, which we already have a parallel in the form of Ann Arbor. I wonder how many of those people bike in the snow. It also helps if you live very close to where you work. Biking to work isn't practical if you're going from Brighton to downtown Detroit.

Originally Posted by ParkerKnepp

Fix the roads: Michigan needs to figure this out, doesn't make sense that Wisconsin and Ohio have amazing highways when we don't. I HATE tolls, but I think a 94 toll and 96 toll would make a lot of sense if that's what it takes.

Again, money. Fixing the (damn) roads means raising taxes, which certain people won't like. Toll roads might work, though we don't have a major trade corridor like 80/90 in Indiana and Ohio.

Originally Posted by ParkerKnepp

Public transportation: I think we should be progressive and put in a high speed train system in Michigan. California started this, but was stopped by Trump. China has started to implement this, and in my opinion, it's the way of the future. start with one from Detroit to Lansing and GR, then connect GR to Chicago, then Detroit to up north and finally Grand Rapids to up north area. This could re-invigorate downtowns, make a trip from grand rapids to Detroit in an hour!

More Public transportation: We need better transit systems. The Detroit people mover is terrible compared to other cities that are similarly sized.

Yet again, money is the issue here. Transit is expensive and doesn't have the advantage of being able to "go anywhere" like cars do. This is especially a problem for trains going up north. There's no major city up there that would be an obvious destination (though Traverse City would be the most likely hub), and you would still need a rental car to go sight-seeing.

Originally Posted by ParkerKnepp

Detroit role: Where a lot of Michiganders live. A true city with a wonderful downtown. I see urban gardens making Detroit/Flint special, with community growing facilities replacing food stamps. I know Flint has a program where if you buy produce it's half the cost, to incentivize inner cities to eat healthy. It would be even cheaper to setup an aquaponics facility in the hood that runs on a CSA share like program. I also see Detroit being a hub for tech startups, with incentives to keep growing companies in Michigan. Now is the time to push for this, since everyone is leaving California and New York and it doesn't matter as much where the company is located due to the push for everything being online.

I've heard about Detroit being touted as the next tech startup hub since the time you were born. There already is a substantial tech presence here, it's just spread out across the suburbs. There's very little incentive for companies to go to Detroit proper, except for the low property prices. But there's a lot of cheap places in America that don't have Detroit's crime and dysfunction and a fully-remote tech company could just as well relocate to the middle of Nebraska.

Originally Posted by ParkerKnepp

Lansing Role: Now THIS is the fun part. When you look at most other states, they don't have the 3 major cites in a line, all an hour from each other. Most of the time, the cities are father away, or their are only two major sized cities. Lansing is one of THE most centrally located cities in America. Just about everybody is an hour away from it, minus up north. So I think Lansing should be a much better destination than it is now. We need a few things to get people to move here and for it to have it's own identity. I think LANSING should have Michigan's Adventure. Here me out. When the pandemic happened, I spent a long time learning about theme parks/waterparks. I don't know why I became so interested, but I learned a few things. First, how many people are employed by the park. Cedar Point employs 10,000 at least. Even 10% is huge, close to a new factory opening up. The 2nd reason is the tourism factor, how many people go to Sandusky or Wisconsin Dells, it's mind boggling how many people that attracts. Then finally the most important reason to move michigan adventure, is because it by far does the least amount of revenue compared to any cedar faire park. NO ONE from detroit goes to michigan adventure, they go to Cedar Point. You miss your main market. Right now michigans adventure is west michigan adventure, Lansing would be the perfect spot to move the park. It would cost a lot less than you think to move the park, and you could do it slowly.
More Lansing Role: The other thing we need is a casino. Michigan needs to be known for their casinos, but I feel like you could improve so much on the concept of one. Having a themepark and a nice soaring eagle sized casino would give people a reason to come here. The other thing is a festival. Lansing should be the Coachella of Michigan. There is so much cheap farmland outside of the city to put in a festival with a woody vibe, like electric forest, next to the theme park. Lansing needs to be the center for these activities for michigan's dynamic to actually make sense.

Regarding casinos, we already have plenty in Michigan and most are located either in Detroit or on reservations. FireKeepers casino is maybe 30 miles away from Lansing in Marshall, and there probably isn't enough of a market for another casino in Lansing (though your line of thinking may not be too far off here - Marshall is located about midway between Chicago and Detroit). But even then, we're competing against a lot of other states, and there can only be one Las Vegas.

Theme parks in the Great Lakes region seem to located near water. For example, Cedar Point is located right on Lake Erie while Michigan's Adventure is only a few miles from Lake Michigan. Lansing, meanwhile, is landlocked. So the Cedar Point comparison with Lansing doesn't hold water with me (excuse the pun).

Michigan already has many music festivals, such as the Faster Horses Festival (which you may have heard about in the news recently). It's only 20 miles from Lansing.

[Republic of Michigan]

The way to improve Michigan is to start off with a few steps:

1) Improve schools and increase the % of people who have earned college degrees and tech school apprenticeships.

2) Improve infrastructure.

3) Improve business regulations/tax structure.

4) Vigorously incentivize and attract investment and corporate presence.

5) Continue cleaning up Detroit and Flint. Offer incentives for people in depopulated areas to move out and discontinue services to these areas freeing up stretched resources. The areas can be turned into parks. (City airport area is an example)

6) Enact ordinances in major cities with architectural uniformity to improve aesthetics of our downtown areas.

7) Metro system (even if subsidized heavily by tax payers) in the Grand Rapids and Detroit area. Future urban planning can be based on it.

[Coldjensens]

"so I'd like to say I'm very familiar with the state."

You have a long way to go to become even remotely familiar with the state. Spend another ten years exploring and observing and then get back to us.

"The eastern and mid part of the state however doesn't have that natural beauty and need good cities to attract people."

This is incorrect. The northern part of the east side is extremely beautiful. Take a trip down the Au Sable river and get back to us, or camp along the dunes at the end of the Au Sable, or visit Oscota, or turnip rock, or. . . . There are even beautiful areas in the Detroit Metro. Have you ever visited Grosse Ile, Northville, Belle Isle, Kensington Metropark, Have you Kayaked the length of the Huron River? Biked through Hines park in the the fall? Ridden the rail to trail path between South Lyon and new Hudson and beyond? Did you know that people come from all over the world to visit Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford?

You need to do a bit more exploring and experiencing become making gross generalizations. The truth will not come to you on the internet.

Problem is we don't have good cities. Saginaw, Flint, and parts of Detroit are quite ugly and filled with crime. The infrastructure of this state is so bad, the memes are true.

While there are parts of Detroit that are ugly and crime ridden, those are not the parts where visitors go. The memes are misleading. Detroit has some of the best architecture and history of US cities. Downtown, midtown Eastern Market and to a lesser extent Corktown are vibrant, pretty and fun. Some of the buildings in downtown are especially stunning and it is hard to find anything like it anywhere. The redeveloped Riverwalk parks are beautiful and again very rarely paralleled in any US city. Belle Isle is beautiful since the State took it over and now rivals any downtown park in a major US city. Restoration of Belle Isle continues. They are also developing all of these areas rapidly and continuously. Ignore suburbanites who are stuck in their single visit to the city in 2002. Stop looking at memes and come visit the city. Spend a month here before making generalizations. You would be surprised to discover that Michigan does not have the worst infrastructure. In the more scientific studies, Michigan is not even in the top 10. In the more subjective polls or articles Michigan is at worst 9th or 10th. Detroit is a destination spot, we even have cruise ships that stop here. People from other states exclaim how terrific the City is. Our problem is with the perceptions of our local population who just cannot accept that the city is not the desolate place it was 15 years ago. There are even a number of nice bicycle paths in the City. Of course the practicality of bicycle use is limited by our weather.


Fixing the roads and infrastructure is a long endeavor. Doing what is needed is political suicide and we are lacking in politicians willing to sacrifice their careers to do what needs to be done. The repeated tax increases where the money has been taken for other things, or lost to graft and corruption have left the public with little appetite for more infrastructure taxes bills or utility bill increases. Michigan has been kicking the can down the road on infrastructure for fifty years and spending the money on other things. You are not going to catch up in one year, or in ten. However the first step s to generate the money. Are you willing to pay for fifty years of misdirected funding? What we need is a gas tax of about $2 to $3 a gallon. That will never happen. We may see some improvement in some roads, but it is not going to get significantly better unless the Federal Government steps in. However Michigan is not often very popular with the Federal government and our politicians do not seem to be very good at getting funding directed here. Our other infrastructure (sewers and water, dams, etc). are still being neglected. Our airports are in good shape though, especially DTW.

Public transportation: I think we should be progressive and put in a high speed train system in Michigan.

High speed rail seems awesome in theory, but in practice it is not very successful. It costs a huge amount to install and does not get the use needed to recover the cost. There really is not that much need for people to go from Detroit to Lansing or grand rapids. Telecommunications (internet) is quickly eliminating the need that there is. Not much in Lansing other than the state government and MSU. Very little need to visit either for most people. I am not sure Grand Rapids wants and even bigger flood of people from Chicago. The Chicago invasion is quickly destroying the natural beauty and relaxed lifestyle of the Northwest corner of the state. Also driving up prices to the point where locals are having to move inland and north. The health and appeal of a place is not all about the numbers of people crowding into the area. There is a reason people from Chicago are flooding into SW Michigan for vacations and vacation homes. Unfortunatley they are bringing with them what theya re trying to get away from.

"More Public transportation: We need better transit systems. The Detroit people mover is terrible compared to other cities that are similarly sized."

This is true. You left out the Q line, which is also terrible. Outside of Manhattan, every city in the USA needs more public transportation. A few cities have made some progress in this regard (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago). At least Detroit now has scooters and electric bicycles. Otherwise we have basically nothing. Even our taxi service is terrible.


"Detroit role: Where a lot of Michiganders live. A true city with a wonderful downtown."

Yes! here you are finally describing Detroit Correctly. Did you come and visit between writing the paragraphs?

"I see urban gardens making Detroit/Flint special,"

Urban gardens are cute, but not the answer to anything Do some research into the places that have opens and then closed in Detroit. Cities are not the place for farming. Urban gardens and back yard gardens make a nice hobby and may supplement some people's diets a bit, but they are not the answer to anything. Flint ont he other hand seems ot be a lost cause. You may eventually see Flint eradicated and turned into farmland - if it is not too contaminated and riddled with underground obstructions to do so.

"I also see Detroit being a hub for tech startups, with incentives to keep growing companies in Michigan. Now is the time to push for this, since everyone is leaving California and New York and it doesn't matter as much where the company is located due to the push for everything being online."

Hence the lack of need for trains. Detroit is already pushing for this, as is Oakland county. Of course every other city is doing so as well. Detroit is a better place for manufacturing start ups. We play to our strengths. One of hte unique things about Detroit is the availability of every kind of manufacturing process you can imagine. Anything that can be done to a piece of metal, can be done here. Some of that is high tech, some is low tech. It is an advantage that no other city has. We do not have the things that tend to attract lots of high tech start ups (nice weather, free money, fashion and trendiness mecca). Tech start ups have an amazingly high failure rate in the first five years. they may not be the best businesses to attract after all. Other cities are already realizing that. Also the art movement that every city thought they could use to turn tings around, and casinos too. None of these have been the answer for most cities. You have to play to your strengths not attempt to copy other cities with strengths that you do not have. Detroit has a great work force with a good work ethic. More high quality universities, especially in Engineering, per capita than pretty much anywhere (with a few exceptions), amazing historic architecture, and unparalleled manufacturing and processing capability.

"G Honestly GR is the only decent city for a young person to live in along with the suburbs being pretty safe and having wonderful downtowns like the East GR gaslight district. "

You need to learn more about Detroit. Do you know which US City has more theater seats than anyplace East of the Mississippi except Broadway in New York? Do you have any idea how many music venues there are in Detroit? Have you need to the theater district or the stadium district, or Greektown, or Campus Martius on a Friday? Do you know how many young people now live in downtown, midtown, corktown eastern market and absolutely love it here? Have you seen how fast a new or newly reconditioned apartment building or condo sells out? Clearly you are nto very familiar withthe better Detroit suburbs either. Detroit offers the best variety of different types of suburban living that you can find almost anywhere (a few exceptions, but very few).

"So I think Lansing should be a much better destination than it is now."

This is very true, Lansing is a dull city with no real reason to visit except MSU. The capitol is moderately neat to see, but in an hour you are pretty much done seeing everything Lansing has to offer. An amusement park may be helpful if properly located. A casino is not the answer. Casinos add little to nothing. Casinos draw people into the casino, not into the city.
Tis is a mistake often made in cities. The renaissance center in Detroit is a good example. You need things that draw people into the City, not into the building. Governments like their tax money, but otherwise they are of little benefit to a city. For a time, nearly every city thought the answer to urban decay was casinos. Now many many cities have them and they discovered they are not the answer to anything. theme parks are the same. Cedar point is a very successful theme park. Did it turn Sandusky into a thriving and lively city? Ask people you know who go to Cedar point whether they can tell you anything at all about Sandusky.



Traverse City Role: The tourism destination. The nature. Keep that how it is and improve the cities to be walkable and bike-able.

Tourism is gradually ruing TC. Compared ot a decade or two ago, it is no longer the cute bayside city. It is filled with Kitschy places like put put golf and souvenir shops, mystery spots, and chintsy cheaply built and ugly hotels. TC is not completely ruined, but it is getting there quickly. Having nearly ruined TC, the tourists and tourist developers are starting to look at other nice places like Petosky.

Detroit is commerce hub with wonderful walking and biking and cheap produce for citizens,

Get to know your state a bit better, especially its primary City. Avoid falling prey o water cooler gossip and memes, or internet videos and propaganda. Get out and see things for yourself. Meet people. Learn not to generalize.

Those are m comments in response.

[EckyX]

There are a few chicken and egg problems, and some more fundamental structural problems. I'll bring up just a few:

-Detroit's (and many of Michigan's poorer cities') low home prices mean tax rates need to be very high in order to pay for infrastructure. Unfortunately, this stifles anything gaining value in the city. Due to Michigan's tax laws, property taxes cannot increase more than a certain percent each year unless a home is sold, meaning when someone buys a house, taxes often skyrocket. I'll give an example:

I picked a random "expensive" (for Detroit) home in Detroit on Zillow. Literally the first one I picked. Asking price, 350,000. Tax assessed value, $80,000. Yearly taxes, $5,400.

If that home sells for asking price, and is taxed at the same rate, the new owner will be paying almost $24,000 per year in property taxes. That's literally 10x what I pay for my home in another state, which is only valued a around half of what that home is.


-Suburbs are (nearly) inherently unsustainable by the taxes charged. Michigan is basically the home and ground zero for car-centric sprawling suburbs. Basically how it works is, your property taxes anywhere are not high enough to keep the water, power, and road infrastructure up to date. Most of these items have a ~30 year lifespan. When a city builds a new development, it can (and usually does) get a large grant from the federal government to pay for building the infrastructure. Cities often use part of this grant to pay for fixing infrastructure of older developments. This, unfortunately, leads to a pyramid scheme where cities build more and more suburban developments to pay for the unsustainable ones they have. Now, take a city or region and give it negative (or even zero) population growth. I'm sure you can see the problem.

What it boils down to is, if everyone paid property and local taxes equal to what's needed to support local infrastructure, suburbs would be entirely unaffordable in lower income and property value areas, and nearly unaffordable even in more affluent areas. Large, successful cities take on most of the tax burden for supporting suburbs, and Michigan doesn't have any of these anymore. Detroit's existing infrastructure was built to support 4x as many people as now live there, and those people remaining have to foot the bill for all of it.

I could probably go on all day with other structural issues, but I need to get back to work.

[Nattering Heights]

Many Canadian truckers passed through Wisconsin and Michigan as they drove across Canada, before covid. They may eventually resume that route. The water that isolates Michigan from some traffic also brings it shipping traffic. As fuel costs rise, automobile traffic decreases and disappears, and roads become rubble, the lakes will still be lakes. Sailing ships will be slower and smaller, but lake traffic will keep trade alive in Michigan. And refugees of drought and fire will be coming here in massive waves. We really don't need help in attracting more people.

[Bondurant]

Always amused when millennials and politicians toss out "let's build rail" with no thought as how much it will cost nor how it will be funded. No one in my family in Grand Rapids opines for a train to Grand Haven or Holland.

[sheerbliss]

Originally Posted by Bondurant

Always amused when millennials and politicians toss out "let's build rail" with no thought as how much it will cost nor how it will be funded. No one in my family in Grand Rapids opines for a train to Grand Haven or Holland.

I made some of the same observations, along with the need to make cities appealing to more than just 18-25-year-olds. My post was deleted. Apparently those are "old impressions" and I "need to do some research."

[censusdata]

Michigan is a fairly high tax state but without the things needed to be high tax an successful: either extreme high skilled concentration of jobs (N CA or NYC) or outdoor amenities found no where else (S CA, Seattle). Michigan has some wonderful natural areas but not to the point that masses of rich people move there like Colorado. If Michigan had same tax structure as Tennessee it would be doing much better.

Other than Grand Rapids all Michigan cities have major issues from the demise of their dominate industry, automobile manufacturing. Most population growth occurs in metro areas and only Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor are growing robustly.

[Retroit]

I'm amazed that there are still people who think that increasing the population is a good thing.