Right-sizing the Rust Belt

The New York Times reports on proposals to "right-size" the city of Flint. Since the 1960s, the city has lost nearly half its population, and a third of those remaining are in poverty. To restore density and make city services more efficient, the County Treasurer would like to shrink the city's footprint by shutting down the city's least populated blocks and neighborhoods. “Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” he says. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”

As I've written before, Youngstown, Ohio, has already adopted a plan to right-size the city as its population drops. Many believe Detroit should do the same, though it's a matter of considerable debate. Also sure to spark debate are mayoral candidate Dave Bing's recent remarks to the Detroit News's editorial board on rebuilding Detroit's vacated land:

Estimating there are about 70,000 parcels of vacant land citywide, Bing said his first priorities are to clear land near and around schools, churches and senior citizen complexes. He would eventually create areas similar to what people have come to expect in some suburban communities. "A lot of people who moved out of the city are middle-class people, and I don't think a lot of them feel we've got the communities they like to live in," Bing told The Detroit News editorial board. "Wouldn't it be great if we could look at some of this vacant land to build a city within a city?

"It would be great to have a city like Birmingham in the city or to have a (place) like somewhere in Grosse Pointe so that those middle class people have an option to come back."

Something tells me Bing will have some explaining to do.

Jobs, please

Rochelle Riley has a telling column on a Renaissance High and Harvard grad who chose to move back to Detroit but can't find a job in his field of choice, urban planning and development. The point here is pretty obvious. In a state rapidly losing population and half of its own college grads, shouldn't local businesses and agencies do everything they can to recruit and retain the local talent that actually wants to stick around? Yes, Detroit has a small, thriving do it yourself culture, and young entrepreneurs regularly kick off cool new businesses and non-profit projects, but let's be honest, that path is for the courageous few. Something needs to be done to keep the other 95% in town, starting with a clear path to whatever good, steady employment remains in our post-auto economy.

City going full circle

I'm still not sure what I think of the Hantz Group's plans to bring full-scale commercial farming to Detroit. There just aren't enough details yet, though this web chat with Matt Allen answers a lot of questions.

On the plus side, a large farm will put vacant land back to use, generate tax revenue for the city, and draw positive publicity from around the world. Best yet, it could help break the stigma that mars Detroit's abandoned lots. Most of this vacant land would be fairly easy to build on (red tape and taxes aside), but developers don't even consider it because of its fallen history. Vacant land in Detroit is just presumed worthless. A successful reuse project could change the perception of Detroit's vacant lots from an albatross to an opportunity.

Now for the caveats, mostly based on speculation:

• A third of the city's land is vacant, but most of it isn't contiguous. Will a farm displace people? By what process and for what compensation? In the web chat, someone asked if "people [would] be asked to move or relocated, or would the farm just go up around them? " Matt Allen responded, "... both. Our intention is to have the area inside the farm site empty."

• How much tax revenue will it really generate? When asked, Allen wrote, "well that is to be determined but we cant pay 81 mils, we are at the point where that is being discussed along with other issues." That is to say, Allen wants a special lower tax rate for the farm -- "an ag rate." Will other businesses get to pay this new lower rate or just them?

• What about pesticides and other runoff? Allen says MSU Extension is partnering with the farm to monitor the environmental impact, but it's worth worrying about. This won't be an organic farm. Allen says they'll be using "conventional ag methods" -- and conventional agriculture methods are toxic.

• How will the farm be secured? Are we talking cornstalks surrounded by barbed wire? This could look great or look terrible depending on the measures they take.

• And what about Matt Allen? I don't advocate guilt by association, but he is Kwame Kilpatrick's former Press Secretary after all (and he's been publicly arrested for domestic abuse). That does invite a certain level of scrutiny.
  

In short, I eagerly await their business plan.

Save Michigan Central Station

As most know by now, City Council has voted to demolish Detroit's most iconic landmark, Michigan Central Station, and if the mayor's request is approved, federal stimulus funds will pay for it.

We need to save this structure. Yes, it's in bad repair. Thanks to the neglect of its owner, billionaire Matty Moroun, the building is a shell of its former self, torn apart by scrappers and the elements. No, no one knows what to do with it. The size of the structure, its distance from downtown, and the prohibitive cost of rehabbing it have so far killed all the proposals to save it. Yet it should be left to stand.

MCS is a national landmark, a Beaux Arts marvel, and an icon of Detroit -- broken down, abandoned, but still beautiful. It embodies the history of the past century and should remain as a testament to those times. Ideally, MCS would be rehabbed, but even as a ruin, it will draw interest and attention for decades, like the ruins of old Europe. Perhaps, as a Detroit Yes poster suggests, just the facade could be saved and serve as the centerpiece of a renovated Roosevelt Park. Regardless, preserving some or all of this historic structure will be better for Detroit than the certain alternative -- another rubble-strewn, vacant lot.

Remember, nothing will replace MCS, not for many years. Many say the station stands in the way of new development, but there are no viable plans to reuse the space. Once destroyed, the lot will join the network of urban prairie spreading across the city. And at what expense? The city will not only lose its history and sense of self, it will waste its federal stimulus dollars, not on creating jobs, as they're meant to do, but on permanently destroying the urban fabric. This money should go toward creating the next economy, not destroying the remnants of the industrial past. Knocking down MCS is a mistake we'll long regret.

7/17 Update: Read about the volunteer effort to clean up and save Michigan Central Station.

Unexpected good news

To my surprise, the News is reporting that plans to build an $80-million outdoor mall at 8 Mile and Woodward are proceeding. Yes, the project has already been delayed for two years, and today is April Fools' Day, but if the developers are to be believed, construction could actually begin as soon as next month. If constructed, the Shoppes at Gateway Park would be the largest commercial development built in Detroit in fifty years.

The mall would also mark a major transformation of the corridor. While the neighborhoods to the west (Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest) are among Detroit's most affluent, the area just south and east of the proposed mall is as desolate as any in the city, with vacant lots and burned out homes outnumbering occupied dwellings. What's more, the major anchor of the area, the State Fairgrounds, is being shut down by the state. So the new mall will truly be a turn of events.

The change we're stuck with

What a day to stop the presses. As the New York Times rubs in, Detroit's dailies ended home delivery on one of the heaviest news days of the year. General Motors and Chrysler will be forcibly restructured by the White House, L. Brooks Patterson wants to steal the Auto Show, Michigan State made the Final Four, and the fact that both papers stopped home delivery is itself national news.

As the headlines make so evident, Detroit has never needed its journalists more, but the recession is putting one paper after another out of print or out of business altogether. The casualties so far include Flint, Saginaw, Bay City, and Detroit, whose papers have all cut daily delivery, and the Ann Arbor News, which closed outright. If the economic downturn lasts much longer (and it's likely to last quite awhile), there may be no newspapers left standing to tell us about it.

Non-profits retrench

This weekend the New York Times ran an article on Detroit's struggling non-profit sector. Charities across the region are on the brink of fiscal collapse just as they're needed most, and Detroit's major foundations -- like Kresge, Skillman, and Hudson-Webber-- don't have the funds to save them all. As a consequence, non-profits are being forced to cooperate, combine, or close. Even the symphony and the opera may be forced to share an orchestra to cut costs.

History repeats itself

The New Yorker's George Packer points out this passage in a history of the twenties published in 1931:

The suburban boom itself did not begin to languish in most localities until 1928 or 1929. By that time many suburbs were plainly overbuilt: as one drove out along the highways, one began to notice houses that must have stood long untenanted, shops with staring vacant windows, districts blighted with half-finished and abandoned ‘improvements’; one heard of suburban apartment houses which had changed hands again and again as mortgages were foreclosed, or of householders in uncompleted subdivisions who were groaning under a naively unexpected burden of taxes and assessments.

Eerie, isn't it?

He also links to Sweet Juniper's haunting photo essay, "School's Out Forever," published recently in Vice Magazine. Definitely worth a look.

State takes over Pontiac's finances

According to the news, the state is appointing a manager to run Pontiac. Flint was state-run from 2002 to 2006, and other declining urban areas, Hamtramck and Highland Park included, have suffered the same fate. Local leaders have been unable to close deficits that keep growing every year as population and tax revenue declines.

Could Detroit be next? Not likely. The politics would be brutal. But the state has taken control of Detroit Public School's finances for the second time, and the city itself is facing a $300 million deficit -- the latest in a series of chronic, growing deficits that have no easy solution. Every tax hike drives more residents and businesses away, but so long as the city's population continues to slide, the city will continue to have less revenue each year to provide services to the same size area. This is an equation for disaster -- day by day, dollar by dollar.

Habitat switches to demolition

The New York Times has a report today on how Habitat for Humanity is now knocking down more homes in Saginaw than it's building. In partnership with the city, the group is paying low-income workers to dismantle dilapidated homes and recycle anything salvageable. In essence, the city is co-opting the scrappers, letting Habitat take the valuables instead and use the profits to finance new home construction. Still, it's awfully ironic to see Habitat workers wielding sledge hammers.

Bridge Watch

Last night the U.S. Coast Guard got more public input than it was anticipating when 500 people showed up to comment on the environmental impact of Matty Moroun's proposed new bridge. This could be a big setback for Moroun, who boldly went ahead and built on-ramps to the unapproved bridge without waiting for public comment or federal approval.

Send in the artists!

When people hear homes are selling for $100 in Detroit, they momentarily dream of a great deal. Then they see a picture of the property -- burned out, scrapped, and rotting in a dying neighborhood -- and the dream is dashed. Luckily for the city, some artists find that image irresistibly romantic -- and the price can't be beat. The Detroit News has a profile today of a group of artists who are eagerly buying up derelict property just north of Hamtramck. (A local novelist first wrote about them in Sunday's New York Times.) I wish them the best of luck, and I hope they bring their friends!

Capturing the beauty in Detroit's decline

Time Magazine has some gorgeous photos of Detroit's ruins. They are the work of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, two talented French photographers who show great respect for our post-industrial landscape. Check out their website for more, including shots of East Germany for contrast. I'm stealing just one; please follow the links for more:


Hat Tip: Detroit Yes!

Paging the Joshua Generation

In November, the New Yorker published a terrific article on race and the presidential campaign, calling President Barack Obama the foremost member of "The Joshua Generation" -- a new wave of black leaders, like Cory Booker in Newark and Patrick Deval in Massachusetts, whose appeal transcends race. The Breakthrough, Gwen Ifill's new book, has a similar argument, pointing to black leaders who "rely more on pragmatic political coalitions than on racial solidarity."

I think it's time the Joshua Generation makes itself heard in Detroit. The last two weeks have proven, yet again, that politicians across the region suffer from 1967 syndrome -- the delusion that nothing has changed in forty years. Detroit's City Council almost seems to take it as a badge of pride.

Exhibit A: The Cobo Veto. Not only did the Monica Conyers-led Council veto the region's best hope for fixing Cobo and saving the Auto Show, they did it singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" to the region's permanent embarrassment.



Exhibit B: The Leno "Snub". Today, Jay Leno announced a free show at the Palace for anyone unemployed in Michigan. I'm not a fan of his, but it's a great gesture, and I'm glad he's doing it. Not Councilmember Martha Reeves. No, no, no. If it's not in the city limits, she doesn't want it at all. Here she is making an ass of herself on WDIV. Note the refrain: "Auburn Hills isn't Detroit." I got news for you: Yes, it is. No one outside of Southeast Michigan gives a damn whether you're from the city or the suburbs. We're just Detroit. Get some pride and let it rest.

Light rail to run *next year*

The proposed light rail line between Downtown and New Center will be operating by late 2010 (says the Free Press). Realistically, the project will be delayed until at least early 2011, but that's still exciting news. Hopefully this privately-funded project will be integrated with DTOGS, the city's own plan to extend mass transit up and down Woodward and eventually the other main arteries of the city. The 2010s will be the decade that mass transit returned to Detroit.

On the foreclosure crisis

The New York Times Magazine has an epic piece on the foreclosure crisis. The focus in on Cleveland, but you could substitute the word Detroit and never notice the difference. The whole Rust Belt is struggling with an unprecedented glut of abandoned homes, and the rest of the country's on notice.

Foreclosures are a problem all over the country now, but Cleveland got to this place a while ago. Cities, old and new, are looking at what’s occurring in Cleveland with some trepidation — and also looking for guidance. Already places as diverse as Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas and Minneapolis have neighborhoods where at least one of every five homes stands vacant. In states like California, Florida and Nevada, where many of the foreclosures have been newer housing, there is fear that with mounting unemployment and more people walking away from their property, houses will remain empty longer, with a greater likelihood that they will deteriorate or be vandalized. ... “Cleveland is a bellwether,” Immergluck says. “It’s where other cities are heading because of the economic downturn.”

There's an election, I guess

Prediction: More Detroiters will buy paczkis on Tuesday than vote. For those who do both, Mary Kramer of Crain's Detroit has a thoughtful post on the candidates and the issues. I, too, wish someone would run on her five-point platform:

1. End corruption.

2. Fix the schools.

3. Elect council members by district.

4. Offers primers on business and public policy to city officials.

5. Build regional mass transit.

A grassroots look at the city

Do yourself a favor, and read this wonderful post on Sweet Juniper. The author walks us through the stops of a tour he just gave to a Time Magazine reporter, showing a side of the city that too few ever see, not just nationally but locally. This is the Detroit that fascinates and inspires me, and I wish more people would get a chance, or rather, take the chance, to experience it.