<p>“In fairness, he did include a map in the article. A broad map, but a map. Haha!”</p>
<p>Thanks for pointing that out too UCB. The map in the article doesn’t even list Birmingham on it. Just another example of poor journalism and lazy effort. Nothing unusual these days unfortunately.</p>
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What do you think should be done with land and dilapidated resources of Detroit proper?</p>
<p>“What do you think should be done with land and dilapidated resources of Detroit proper?”
That’s for people in detroit proper to worry about</p>
<p>There are many people who think it would be best to divide Detroit into manageable areas. The downtown area, and then a few smaller areas that could best make their own decisions for their neighborhoods with their own funding resources. Too many residents of Detroit are completely neglected and deserve to have some power in their own neighborhoods.</p>
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<p>I don’t know, I hear people are trying to farm on it. </p>
<p>Dividing Detroit up might help. It could help spark some innovation.</p>
<p>There’s 2 main initiatives aimed at trying to improve Detroit (and Michigan’s economy in general)</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Dan Gilbert’s plan to revitalize downtown via private funding (<a href=“Dan Gilbert’s Quest to Remake Downtown Detroit - The New York Times”>Dan Gilbert’s Quest to Remake Downtown Detroit - The New York Times). This has actually been reasonably successful already and has gotten companies around Detroit metro setup offices downtown and certain brands like Twitter to setup offices as well…and actually enticing young professionals to live in certain parts of Detroit again.</p></li>
<li><p>A push for venture funding in Detroit (and Michigan in general). Detroit Venture Partners is probably the most famous one out of these but there’s also InvestMichigan (+ a slew of state backed funds) as well as UMich’s new initiative to earmark a small portion of its endowment for investments (this is separate from the Venture Funds operated by the Zell Lurie Institute). </p></li>
</ul>
<p>While this pales in comparison with states like California where a lot of VC activity is concentrated, the recent uptick in VC activity the past few years makes Michigan one of the few states where VC activity is increasing (the VC sector has been declining for quite a few years now) and pushed Michigan into the top 15ish states in terms of VC activity. For comparison, Michigan was around 25 a decade ago.</p>
<p>The bankruptcy proceedings will be painful but I think it was a necessary step and will actually help the city re-invent itself in the coming decades.</p>
<p>Sigh, Bearcats, someday you will see the broader connection among things, such as:
</p>
<p>Yes you did, sunshine. You were born into it – you’ve just been led to erroneously believe that there’s this invisible magic bubble called higher SES that protects you from it ;)</p>
<p>And that folks, is precisely the problem here. Nobody wants to honor the contract. I was raised to believe in the contract, and sometimes even I don’t want to honor the contract, particularly where there’s corruption and idiocy involved…but at the end of the day, we’re on this ship of fools together.</p>
<p>Those familiar with the pragmatics of regionalized service delivery, its inherent economy of scale, and other central tenets of urban planning that the rest of the world seems able to wrap its head around will recognize that Detroit is simply the canary in the coal mine of a declining and economically partitioned society. Across the country, some cities are beginning to understand that a vibrant core does in fact stimulate the quality of life and inherent local economy and that it IS in our best interest to find ways to support urban centers whether or not we chose to live there. </p>
<p>While Bearcats and his pals in the IB and Wall Street worlds don’t mind a bit raking in the bucks from hapless service sector employee pension funds that actually fuel the freaking stock market, the same group also seems to prefer to vilify those socialist-leaning Rousseau-types who natter on about social contracts and such or the poor sods who’d like to have retirement funds promised to them after a lifetime of work ;)</p>
<p>However, the chatter about pension funds is just a right-wing ruse to shift the conversation from what’s germane here.</p>
<p>What’s germane here is that over the last several decades the fraction of governmental funding produced via taxes payed by America’s corporate citizens has eroded to abysmal percentages, while at the same time, agenda-laden locals pander to the great unwashed whine for “no new taxes” and as such have actually managed to DECREASE the tax rate paid in Michigan over the last 20-30 years. </p>
<p>So, a zero-based tax budget, or in the case of Michigan, NET DECREASES IN TAX REVENUE YEAR AFTER YEAR, ultimately erodes infrastructure to the point where nobody wants to live there. It creates a structural deficit that eventually compounds and amplifies the shortages due to in particular the rising costs of healthcare provisions in the public sector.</p>
<p>At the same time, the very communities to which the “white flight” occurs would not have been possible were it not for the urban center and its origins. No Birmingham without Detroit! </p>
<p>Core services such as water treatment, sewage, and additional infrastructure including highways and once-upon-a-time-employment, originated in the cities. Backwater township politicians far prefer to cheaply extend city infrastructure to foster development and at the same time boast proportionately lower taxes on equalized value.</p>
<p>That’s pretty much why funding at the fed and state level should be CMA/regionalized, as should service delivery, including educational services, core infrastructure, and IMHO, governance. First off, to a degree, such urban planning benefits from economy of scale (although in some cases there can be diseconomies of scale). Secondly, a uniformity of service provision would help relieve the urban brain drain.</p>
<p>While I myself live outside my particular city (though my company does pay city taxes however) and while for that matter I am content to drill my own well and pay for my own septic (yes, I am THAT far out ;)) I have no more desire to see “my” city suffer the way it’s suffering now that when I lived there. While I still own property in the city, even if I didn’t, I would still not want to see what I am seeing now.</p>
<p>And yet this continual erosion of the tax base in Michigan, the continued corporate welfare handouts, the ceaseless whining about taxes when folks in these parts wouldn’t know a high tax rate if it hit them over the head… frankly, it just makes me sad.</p>
<p>UCBChem, you asked what locals think. I think there are some in Michigan, and in the Detroit area, who believe in “theory” what I do and who would enjoy that article. However, I doubt they’re native, or in the majority. </p>
<p>(I live on the other side of the state, but kicked around Detroit a fair good deal in the past. It’s a hard city to give the love, let’s just say. It’s not really done a lot to get its head out of its a** and its embarrassingly corrupted.)</p>
<p>My opinions are a tad loftier in the broad sense, however, because I’ve enjoyed living in vibrant cities where service delivery has to some degree been consolidated – Toronto, Montreal, etc. There, it’s “suburban” communities that are kind of “ugh” and the higher property values are actually in the city proper ;)</p>
<p>I’d love to see Detroit transform itself. I’m not convinced it’s neighboring communities are willing to either identify with the city (you saw how quick rjk was to distance birmingham from the boundary ;)) or participate in a regional recovery. But theoretically, they should.</p>
<p>I’m just not optimistic that we all can overcome our “not in my back yard” attitudes in time.</p>
<p>I, too, lived “over there” for a while and now live “over hear or up here whatever.” I’m not too interested in what happens to Detroit. I WAS interested after I moved from south Boston during it’s urban renewal to Detroit but realized how corrupt Detroit was and how little interest the city was in listening to anybody. I left there for Minneapolis and their wonderful 10% club and urban renewal only to return to Detroit in the late-eighties to realize that Detroit was still corrupt and in far worse shape even than the city was 7 years back. I had the dubious pleasure of again returning for a long week in bleak January over a number of years to “live” in the Ren Cen and work in crumbling Cobo in the mid 2000s. No thanks, I have no interest in bailing Detroit out…might have back in the 80s, but not now. i have to agree that it’s totally up to the suburban neighborhoods to “fix” Detroit but I highly doubt they will…as you say they are ever so quick to distance themselves…</p>