Planning a research trip to Detroit - was wondering if any Archinect members from that area can make some recommendations.
am looking for pointers about the rougher parts of town and the bohemian 'quarters' (or the equivalent thereof). where are the effects of urban flight most apparent? where are students and young artists/designers settling? prelim reading has yielded plenty of leads, but it's always enlightening to talk to residents or previous residents...
other stuff good too - nice to get a good meal while on the road. cool neighborhoods, etc.
The russel industrial center is where there are a lot of artists studios, its near eastern market. As for the rougher parts I would say around corktown is an experience and the outer rim helps to visualize the depressed housing crisis. Its pretty much all depressing.
Germantown (the east side) was the roughest part of the city when I was growing up...
I'd check out the Heidelberg Project... plus there are some really nice areas of the city - Mies's Lafayette Park, the area around the state fair grounds... Greektown is too touristy...
Cass Corridor used to be where all the hipsters lived about 10 years ago...
russell industrial is not near eastern market; it is three miles north of the market. it is right off of 75 at the clay street exit. you can't miss it from the highway. eastern market is worth visting though. the main street through eastern market is russell st. if you go to eastern market, get brunch at the russell st. deli; for dinner, go to roma, great old skool italian. the area that has been getting national attention for artists moving in is just north of hamtramack. it's not the safest area, and there's really not much there other than $500 houses. southwest detroit (mexicantown) is much more vibrant. many detroit artists and musicians have been living there for years. house prices depending on where you are range from a few thousand to $40,000-$80,000 for a very nice place. the main drag is vernor. google clark park area (home of the hotel yorba). if you want to see the most stark contrast between wealth and blight. drive east on jefferson to alter road. it is the road that separates detroit from grosse pointe. other neighborhoods worth visiting are boston edison, indian village, university district, and rosedale.
this topic has been discussed at length in other threads. do a search.
comb - i heard that the other day on NPR; i'm bringing my savings with me and figured i'd pick up a couple of bachelor pads while i'm in town
to - thnx for the book rec
fidler - was hoping you'd chime in; i've seen yr posts here regarding Detroit; most troubling was from middle of '07:
"as a detroiter, i personally find the ruinseekers irritating. detroit is actually a functioning city with a lot going on right now"
well, i wouldn't say i'm coming just for the ruins, but....yes i'm interested in seeing the 'carnage'. hope that doesn't turn you off too much as your input is deeply appreciated.
i'm coming to terms with the ruinseekers. i understand that is the main attraction of the city for a large number of tourists. i would just caution that much of what has been written and observed about the city is incredibly reductive. i have not seen much work related to the city that goes beyond a thin chronicling of its decay. wherever your research takes you, i offer that as a bit of a challenge. good luck with your project and enjoy your trip!
if your on the east side... go to 'lunch box deli' on cadiuex and mack.. then hit up cadiuex cafe for some feather bowling
'mudgies' deli in corktown is also a good eat....
if you are into the night life/music/etc.... some clubs/bars to hit up... the 'works' on michigan ave, corktown tavern, all near the old tiger stadium..... then 'proof' on woodard along with 'oslos' that serves sushi....
jafidler- I feel the same way about the writing about Detroit from academic architects... What do you think about Wayne State's urban studies dept? should johnszot try to get a meeting with a prof there?
maybe detroit could be the new home of a new creative diaspora. with cheap cheap housing thousands of new creative class homesteaders could relocate to detroit rebuild it and they will come. arts, music architecture and design via the internets, a reengineered revitalized auto industry with id and bfa and mfa's on the assembly line rather than mixes frappacinos (although there will be those too) it could become the artistic equivalent of salt lake city.
the thing is that you don't even have to seek out the ruins in detroit. last time i was in town (just a few months ago) i ate & drank at several different spots in just a couple of days that had excellent views of blight & emptyness.
personally, i think that the best way to experience the city (other than the marathon) is to enter via the amtrak train. if you fly into DTW then you could probably catch the train in either ann arbor or dearborn.
windsor, ontario also provides some interesting perspectives on detroit. it's waterfront offers great view of the skyline. and although the detroit suburbs seem to stretch endlessly to the north of the city, if you drive just a couple of miles outbound of windsor, stop & look back, then it almost appears as if the skyscrapers are rising right out of the prairie (maybe a bit like dallas or denver).
heading outbound on fort street (southwest detroit) is also pretty interesting. it's all industrial with virtually no residential on the entire stretch. the southwestern quadrant of the city includes a number of notables. old communities like delray (what's left of it), zug island, kronk street, mexican town and even the fort wayne historic site. this part of town also brushes up against ford's river rouge factories and i've always been a bit surprised at how seemlessly the industrial sites seem to transition into greenfield village, ford museum & dearborn.
of course, eastern part of town has it's moments too. one of the least expected surprises is the series of canals running perpendicular to the waterfront. check out harbor island street near alter road, for example.
but for me, probably the square mile or so of land in downtown is my favorite...plenty of bars...and all lovingly connected by the drunk-friendly people mover.
it's either cold and miserable or hot and humid. when manufacturing finally completely tanks there, the only reason to be there because the environment is nice. and frankly, there's much better places across the US than michigan.
it's either cold and miserable or hot and humid most of the year pretty much everywhere in the US except for about 4 states. michigan more or less looks like pretty much everything east of the mississippi to me. by that logic there isn't any reason why boston, chicago, or new york wouldn't be exactly like detroit. the problem with detroit doesn't have anything to do with location.
boston and new york have the sea. that's a particularly big thing considering if you're going to be running a service-driven economy that's not locational-based business.
New York and Boston also don't have the problems of being cities with "deep" freezes and can operate year around.
i guess you're right. the 5 million people in the detroit metro area will all eventually leave because the deepwater port freezes in the winter, although it's in a service-driven economy that isn't locational-based. that must have been the problem all along these last 50 years. that also does a great job of describing the urban plight of other failing midwestern ports cities, like milwaukee, chicago, and toronto.
the great lakes are far nice than the sea. as part of an international border and being surrounded by the world's largest fresh water supply, detroit actually occupies a pretty solid strategic location. it probably ranks as being slightly colder than boston & new york, but on the other hand i would describe chicago as being more brutal during the winter.
detroit's only real "problem" is a lack of bodies.
we had a pretty cold winter with quite a lot of snow, though i will say the way the ice crashes up in these beautiful pale blue layers on the east tip of belle isle is one of my favorite parts of winter in detroit.
oh, by the way, john, if you didn't get lost in all the snow talk. jerry herron at wsu is a great resource on local history and planning. also as toaster said, it might be worth giving the dcdc at udm a call. they have done many projects in the city (and i know many of them personally!).
Detroit winters? not as bad as New England winters - unless you live in western michigan or the UP...
that giant burger - considering Michigan has the second most diverse agriculture industry in the country (behind California) - you got to really wonder why Michiganders don't eat more local veggies and fruits.
What I meant by locational-based is there is nothing that ties industry or the economy to where it is at. I think Michigan's only extant resource is timber and the immense amount of biodiversity that forests in michigan have [wouldn't necessarily be advocating sprawl if trees are your claim to fame].
The location of Detroit sucks-- not only is shipping complicated by ice in the winter months... the saint lawrence is an expensive boat trip that has size constraints. Combined that with the failing railroad [ironic that the rail industry was pivotal for Detroit's economy which produced the things that completely butchered it].
You could argue history. But this point become rather moot because the farthest you could make it up the Saint Lawrence River was Montreal before the finished the locks in 1862 and widened considerably in 1959. But before major shipping was even possible, when Detroit picked up steam when the US was still relatively virgin in the west and the southern US lacked the infrastructure seen in older european settlements.
This is the problem with Detroit is physically it has no reason to exist. For everything manufactured in Detroit, everything has to be imported there first. Geologically, it's in a crap shot area with no significant geological structures than part of the pre-cambrian shield-- great if you want, er, uh granite.
Detroit kind of killed itself. It produced the products that was the antithesis to what it was... a high-density, urban work camp. When it decentralized and started to suburbanize, it primarily lost it's competitive economic edge. It started to emulate the economically unstable and economically inflexible building patterns that were necessary for automobiles.
While suburban tax benefits and flat level factories increased profits, the overhead of having thousands of workers driving to a single place offset the benefit gained by such a practice.
You combine this with the simple fact of who showed up in the midwest (the south) and you have a powderkeg ready to bust.
michigan had some of the largest deposits of copper and iron ore (now mostly depleted) although there are harder to get at deposits remaining. michigan does have what much of the world and in the near future what much of the usa will need most. i.e. water. and it ain't gonna be free.
Toasteroven: Right about the time of the start of the decline of the rust belt, they found equally as huge deposits of copper and iron ore in the Southwest.
The other issue is that the ore they were mining in Minnesota/Michigan is taconite [I love that word because it makes me think of taco bell]. It is dirty, low-quality and not a particularly desirable ore to be processing a mining. In either event, The Rust Belt consumed far more iron and steel than it could every put out and changing trends in the 1950s and 1960s saw more and more aluminum and manganese being used in car parts.
The Rust Belt not only bombed because of new deposits found stateside but globalization and foreign investment ended in higher-quality [and cheaper!] iron being produced by Japan, China, India and Brazil.
Kind of hard to support your own industry when you don't even use your own metal and haul bauxite over from Ghana an ocean away?
r and h, that is the absolute weirdest explanation of detroit's decline i have ever heard.
the auto industry itself was the city's rise and fall. if you can pinpoint two events specifically, they would be the inception of the national highway system and the 1967 riots. detroit was never a "high density, work camp," just the opposite in fact, that's why it sprawls all the way to 8 mile. the suburbs were merely an extension of that, and the riots provided the dividing line between "us" and "them." before 1967, they were still building fairly nice houses within the city sprawl. after '67, the neighborhoods evaporated.
the "location" and "natural resources" arguments don't jive with history in my view.
i feel like michiganders eat quite a bit of local food. i remember going to plenty of farmer's markets when i was growing up in the saginaw valley. having later spent time in ann arbor & detroit, again, i found local markets to be very popular. i remember visiting cow farms, potato farms, etc of friends & family. uncle would bring over a sack of potatos from his. the state is literally dotted with corn festivals, cherry festivals, cucumber festivals, etc during the summer time.
by comparison, my current life on a tropical island is almost exclusively dependent upon imports. one of the more surreal moments was finding faygo soda here (from michigan) but that's a bit of a digression.
as far as the timber industry is concerned, that peaked about 130 years ago after they clear cut nearly the entire state. it left behind plenty of opportunities for farmland though and that has been one of the significant industries that has quietly existed in the shadow of the 20th century auto boom. bottom line is that michigan has ample farms and access to fresh water, i.e., some of the most basic necessities to life.
You can literally watch Detroit's urban collapse. What I meant by high-density work camp was that before the 1960s... the density of people made it a 'resource' to have thousands of people show up to work without the infrastructure required to move thousands of people [walkability is the explanation here]. When people in the city got rich, this fell apart when you add in cars.
How can you be a model industry if your workers don't enjoy the products you produce? This is the paradox. If Detroit would have just said "no" to an automobile-oriented lifestyle, it could have worked to keep and preserve that people- and labor-oriented "resource." The National Highway System aggravated this but the city was "destroyed" before the race riots of 1967.
When your entire population resides within 6 square miles, you can accomplish anything. But sometime between then and now, the city went from having the center of population within those 6 square miles to 143 square miles.
Now, being an auto factory that requires thousands of people, how are you going to move those thousands of people, pave thousands of parking spaces for them, pay the real estate tax on thousands of parking spaces and house thousands of people in thousands of individual houses? Time this problem by hundreds of factories. And you can see why everyone ran away from it.
Yes, they tried to let workers enjoy the wealth which ever way they pleased. Yes, they tried to make the city family friendly. Yes, they tried to do a lot to show people that you can make money in manufacturing. The problem? Industrialized areas can never do this. Industrial areas need high density, need cramped housing, need access to thousands of people instantaneously and people need to accept that the environment can really only support an environment that is there to make money. If you want to enjoy the wealth created by heavy industry, start acting like Londoners!
Michigan is a shitty place (sorry!) filled full of shitty people (double sorry! [but not sorry for the Southerners compelled to preach their awful way of life some place else]) that no one wants any part of. This is why Phoenix exists, this is why they pipe water in from thousands of miles around to the Imperial Valley, this is why people will pay $3,000 a month to live in San Fran, this is why people choose and this is why people in New York will happily let the city tax them to death on centralized district heating.
There isn't much of anything but fresh water and a lot of piss poor city management in Michigan. Hell, one growing season a year? Florida has five!
California four!
There is nothing in the current theory of economic development [not economics] that suggest that Detroit should even exist at all.
"This is why Phoenix exists, this is why they pipe water in from thousands of miles around to the Imperial Valley, this is why people will pay $3,000 a month to live in San Fran, this is why people choose and this is why people in New York will happily let the city tax them to death on centralized district heating"
rockandhill, i can't stop laughing. have you ever been to the midwest? michigan is a shitty place (sorry!) how do you quantify that? the thing that's so shockingly misleading about those maps - the only quantifiable information you've referenced - is that they only show historical population distributions in the inner city. most of those people didn't move to california, they moved to royal oak, pontiac, sterling heights, and novi. there are so many things i could pick apart in your posts that i don't even know where to begin. what you are arguing essentially is that detroit has no economic resources whatsoever and thus no reason to exist. while completely untrue, i still fail to understand how your arguments apply to chicago, toronto, or minneapolis, or even ann arbor, madison, indianapolis or grand rapids. the urban blight in detroit has become a poster child for the entire state of michigan and much of the rest of the midwest as though there isn't anything more to the equation than: i lost my job because i'm a blue-collar worker and everyone knows there's only blue-collar workers in michigan and all the blue-collar jobs are gone; due to the weather, the interstate highway system, and the lack of resources (except of course for the biomass) there is now nothing left to do but move to a warmer climate. has it occurred to you that a lot of midwesterners live there because they actually like the winters there? that they enjoy snowmobiling, skiing, and snowshoeing? or maybe they like the summers there? they like the sandy beaches, sailing, kayaking, hunting, or drinking sangria at dominicks? maybe not everyone wants to live in a state of 30 or 40 million people?
I quantify that by pointing out that every single boom city... well except for Grand Rapids... is not in Michigan. It's completely subjective whether a place is good or not-- but the objective part dictates that no one wants to be there!
How many people from Detroit moved back to the south? By the number of people with Michigan plates registering in other states says something. It says that people are leaving. Has it occurred to you that the state sucks and the numbers up until very recently have been showing that? The whole point of having a city is the city. Cities die without people to walk on their streets, work in their factories or sling drinks to suits. That's kind of the point that I was making is Detroit is not a city without it's inner city.
Can't pull carts out of mines without expendable tiny ponies!
Because Chicago is in a different state with a different planning methodology? Because Toronto is in a different country? Because almost all the other cities diversified in a way that promoted some kind of economic gain? Why hasn't St. Louis completely failed? Because they found niches they can be proud of?
It's a case by case basis. Numbers show that the midwest isn't the greatest place and that people have found something outside of swedish ancestry, casseroles and lutheranism to be a part of.
But I've only been to Chicago and sorry, the only time I'm in the midwest is when I'm flying over it on my way to Jackson Hole to go skiing in summer [on a mountain with a summit taller than 100'] time followed by a little afternoon bouldering and trout fishing. Plus, the only escalator in all of Wyoming is at Jackson Airport [I believe it doesn't work]! That's low-density excitement!
I've spent about 5 years worth of time in Detroit and other parts of Michigan; it can indeed be pretty shitty.
But I've spent over 20 years in Phoenix: it's far shittier these days than Detroit is. Not as an urban ruin, but as a festering mass of conservative entitlement and misguided consumption.
On the whole, though, I guess I'd rather live in Phoenix again if I had to choose one or the other: when it comes to cold weather, I'm a big whiny baby.
some folks like the grittyness of the urban fabric.... others just like to visit and have an installation then leave just to go back to their other state and say 'i did something positive in detroit' yaddy yaddy yaddy
some folks do leave and some stay......some also come back
the talent that comes out of detroit is on the upper scale of things. most people that have lived in/near that city don't get impressed easily so it's alot harder to get that 'shine'. you can be from detroit and visit other cities and when asked where your from, and you say 'detroit', you get that special handshake and a higher level of respect (at least on a street level).
it's sort of funny also that people are soooo quick to ride on the nuts of detroit but yet are quick to tell the city to fuck off...... sure the city has issues but all in all, it's an urban city that fell from it's glory days.
to each his/her own........
there's a lot of opportunity in detroit.... it's just a matter of mobilizing
hot Detroit action
Planning a research trip to Detroit - was wondering if any Archinect members from that area can make some recommendations.
am looking for pointers about the rougher parts of town and the bohemian 'quarters' (or the equivalent thereof). where are the effects of urban flight most apparent? where are students and young artists/designers settling? prelim reading has yielded plenty of leads, but it's always enlightening to talk to residents or previous residents...
other stuff good too - nice to get a good meal while on the road. cool neighborhoods, etc.
thanks in advance.
... yes, that's the actual number reported.
Sounds to me like the entire city's "the rougher part of town"
The russel industrial center is where there are a lot of artists studios, its near eastern market. As for the rougher parts I would say around corktown is an experience and the outer rim helps to visualize the depressed housing crisis. Its pretty much all depressing.
Interesting link (from the recent editor's picks):
http://www.flypmedia.com/issues/23/#1/1
Germantown (the east side) was the roughest part of the city when I was growing up...
I'd check out the Heidelberg Project... plus there are some really nice areas of the city - Mies's Lafayette Park, the area around the state fair grounds... Greektown is too touristy...
Cass Corridor used to be where all the hipsters lived about 10 years ago...
a great book you might want to check out: the origins of the urban crisis
russell industrial is not near eastern market; it is three miles north of the market. it is right off of 75 at the clay street exit. you can't miss it from the highway. eastern market is worth visting though. the main street through eastern market is russell st. if you go to eastern market, get brunch at the russell st. deli; for dinner, go to roma, great old skool italian. the area that has been getting national attention for artists moving in is just north of hamtramack. it's not the safest area, and there's really not much there other than $500 houses. southwest detroit (mexicantown) is much more vibrant. many detroit artists and musicians have been living there for years. house prices depending on where you are range from a few thousand to $40,000-$80,000 for a very nice place. the main drag is vernor. google clark park area (home of the hotel yorba). if you want to see the most stark contrast between wealth and blight. drive east on jefferson to alter road. it is the road that separates detroit from grosse pointe. other neighborhoods worth visiting are boston edison, indian village, university district, and rosedale.
this topic has been discussed at length in other threads. do a search.
comb - i heard that the other day on NPR; i'm bringing my savings with me and figured i'd pick up a couple of bachelor pads while i'm in town
to - thnx for the book rec
fidler - was hoping you'd chime in; i've seen yr posts here regarding Detroit; most troubling was from middle of '07:
"as a detroiter, i personally find the ruinseekers irritating. detroit is actually a functioning city with a lot going on right now"
well, i wouldn't say i'm coming just for the ruins, but....yes i'm interested in seeing the 'carnage'. hope that doesn't turn you off too much as your input is deeply appreciated.
check out 'delray' in southwest detroit...
cruise along trumbell and see the old tiger stadium that is %75 gone.
notice all the parking lots in downtown detroit
take woodward from downtown up to the suburbs then grad something to eat on 9mile
cruise up gratiot and michigan ave.
hang out around wayne state university
check out the old train station
go to eastern market
cruise up the 'lodge/m10 and 75' expressway
i'm coming to terms with the ruinseekers. i understand that is the main attraction of the city for a large number of tourists. i would just caution that much of what has been written and observed about the city is incredibly reductive. i have not seen much work related to the city that goes beyond a thin chronicling of its decay. wherever your research takes you, i offer that as a bit of a challenge. good luck with your project and enjoy your trip!
also go to belle isle
check out the river walk.
if your on the east side... go to 'lunch box deli' on cadiuex and mack.. then hit up cadiuex cafe for some feather bowling
'mudgies' deli in corktown is also a good eat....
if you are into the night life/music/etc.... some clubs/bars to hit up... the 'works' on michigan ave, corktown tavern, all near the old tiger stadium..... then 'proof' on woodard along with 'oslos' that serves sushi....
/typos are regular when i post\
jafidler- I feel the same way about the writing about Detroit from academic architects... What do you think about Wayne State's urban studies dept? should johnszot try to get a meeting with a prof there?
oh - and the Detroit Community Design Collaborative at the University of Detroit Mercy might also be worth looking up.
maybe detroit could be the new home of a new creative diaspora. with cheap cheap housing thousands of new creative class homesteaders could relocate to detroit rebuild it and they will come. arts, music architecture and design via the internets, a reengineered revitalized auto industry with id and bfa and mfa's on the assembly line rather than mixes frappacinos (although there will be those too) it could become the artistic equivalent of salt lake city.
the fidler - thnx guy
mhc - feather bowling?
vado - good idea, but i'm waiting for the bottom to fall out of the Manhattan real estate mrkt so i don't have to move.
the thing is that you don't even have to seek out the ruins in detroit. last time i was in town (just a few months ago) i ate & drank at several different spots in just a couple of days that had excellent views of blight & emptyness.
personally, i think that the best way to experience the city (other than the marathon) is to enter via the amtrak train. if you fly into DTW then you could probably catch the train in either ann arbor or dearborn.
windsor, ontario also provides some interesting perspectives on detroit. it's waterfront offers great view of the skyline. and although the detroit suburbs seem to stretch endlessly to the north of the city, if you drive just a couple of miles outbound of windsor, stop & look back, then it almost appears as if the skyscrapers are rising right out of the prairie (maybe a bit like dallas or denver).
heading outbound on fort street (southwest detroit) is also pretty interesting. it's all industrial with virtually no residential on the entire stretch. the southwestern quadrant of the city includes a number of notables. old communities like delray (what's left of it), zug island, kronk street, mexican town and even the fort wayne historic site. this part of town also brushes up against ford's river rouge factories and i've always been a bit surprised at how seemlessly the industrial sites seem to transition into greenfield village, ford museum & dearborn.
of course, eastern part of town has it's moments too. one of the least expected surprises is the series of canals running perpendicular to the waterfront. check out harbor island street near alter road, for example.
but for me, probably the square mile or so of land in downtown is my favorite...plenty of bars...and all lovingly connected by the drunk-friendly people mover.
Vado, the problem with detroit is location.
it's either cold and miserable or hot and humid. when manufacturing finally completely tanks there, the only reason to be there because the environment is nice. and frankly, there's much better places across the US than michigan.
it's either cold and miserable or hot and humid most of the year pretty much everywhere in the US except for about 4 states. michigan more or less looks like pretty much everything east of the mississippi to me. by that logic there isn't any reason why boston, chicago, or new york wouldn't be exactly like detroit. the problem with detroit doesn't have anything to do with location.
location is great.... it's the political powers and government along with being a 1 industry area that turned it to the way it is now
boston and new york have the sea. that's a particularly big thing considering if you're going to be running a service-driven economy that's not locational-based business.
New York and Boston also don't have the problems of being cities with "deep" freezes and can operate year around.
i guess you're right. the 5 million people in the detroit metro area will all eventually leave because the deepwater port freezes in the winter, although it's in a service-driven economy that isn't locational-based. that must have been the problem all along these last 50 years. that also does a great job of describing the urban plight of other failing midwestern ports cities, like milwaukee, chicago, and toronto.
the great lakes are far nice than the sea. as part of an international border and being surrounded by the world's largest fresh water supply, detroit actually occupies a pretty solid strategic location. it probably ranks as being slightly colder than boston & new york, but on the other hand i would describe chicago as being more brutal during the winter.
detroit's only real "problem" is a lack of bodies.
boston and new york don't have houses for a dollar or an industrial base for a new manufacturing renaissance. bring a coat or don't come.
i think this song is about hot Detroit action...
we had a pretty cold winter with quite a lot of snow, though i will say the way the ice crashes up in these beautiful pale blue layers on the east tip of belle isle is one of my favorite parts of winter in detroit.
oh, by the way, john, if you didn't get lost in all the snow talk. jerry herron at wsu is a great resource on local history and planning. also as toaster said, it might be worth giving the dcdc at udm a call. they have done many projects in the city (and i know many of them personally!).
just saw on the news that grand rapids minor league baseball team's concession stand will be offering a five patty burger that contains 4800 calories.
some detroit ish...... education
vado, that is what's wrong with michigan...
yeah but if you finish the burger you win a free house in detroit.
no one in grand rapids would ever go to detroit for any reason...
if you make your trip around the end of june/beginning of july you should check out the rosa parks transit center, it will be open by then
thats why no one has finished one yet boss.
This is the burger...
grand rapids sucks
hey republicans gotta live somewheres.
Detroit winters? not as bad as New England winters - unless you live in western michigan or the UP...
that giant burger - considering Michigan has the second most diverse agriculture industry in the country (behind California) - you got to really wonder why Michiganders don't eat more local veggies and fruits.
shuellmi
how's that coming? are you still working on it?
What I meant by locational-based is there is nothing that ties industry or the economy to where it is at. I think Michigan's only extant resource is timber and the immense amount of biodiversity that forests in michigan have [wouldn't necessarily be advocating sprawl if trees are your claim to fame].
The location of Detroit sucks-- not only is shipping complicated by ice in the winter months... the saint lawrence is an expensive boat trip that has size constraints. Combined that with the failing railroad [ironic that the rail industry was pivotal for Detroit's economy which produced the things that completely butchered it].
You could argue history. But this point become rather moot because the farthest you could make it up the Saint Lawrence River was Montreal before the finished the locks in 1862 and widened considerably in 1959. But before major shipping was even possible, when Detroit picked up steam when the US was still relatively virgin in the west and the southern US lacked the infrastructure seen in older european settlements.
This is the problem with Detroit is physically it has no reason to exist. For everything manufactured in Detroit, everything has to be imported there first. Geologically, it's in a crap shot area with no significant geological structures than part of the pre-cambrian shield-- great if you want, er, uh granite.
Detroit kind of killed itself. It produced the products that was the antithesis to what it was... a high-density, urban work camp. When it decentralized and started to suburbanize, it primarily lost it's competitive economic edge. It started to emulate the economically unstable and economically inflexible building patterns that were necessary for automobiles.
While suburban tax benefits and flat level factories increased profits, the overhead of having thousands of workers driving to a single place offset the benefit gained by such a practice.
You combine this with the simple fact of who showed up in the midwest (the south) and you have a powderkeg ready to bust.
Rockandhill:
What about the massive iron and copper deposits in the upper peninsula? why do you think they call the region "the rust belt?"
michigan had some of the largest deposits of copper and iron ore (now mostly depleted) although there are harder to get at deposits remaining. michigan does have what much of the world and in the near future what much of the usa will need most. i.e. water. and it ain't gonna be free.
Toasteroven: Right about the time of the start of the decline of the rust belt, they found equally as huge deposits of copper and iron ore in the Southwest.
The other issue is that the ore they were mining in Minnesota/Michigan is taconite [I love that word because it makes me think of taco bell]. It is dirty, low-quality and not a particularly desirable ore to be processing a mining. In either event, The Rust Belt consumed far more iron and steel than it could every put out and changing trends in the 1950s and 1960s saw more and more aluminum and manganese being used in car parts.
The Rust Belt not only bombed because of new deposits found stateside but globalization and foreign investment ended in higher-quality [and cheaper!] iron being produced by Japan, China, India and Brazil.
Kind of hard to support your own industry when you don't even use your own metal and haul bauxite over from Ghana an ocean away?
Doesn't Japan (or China) buy most of our scrap metal?
r and h, that is the absolute weirdest explanation of detroit's decline i have ever heard.
the auto industry itself was the city's rise and fall. if you can pinpoint two events specifically, they would be the inception of the national highway system and the 1967 riots. detroit was never a "high density, work camp," just the opposite in fact, that's why it sprawls all the way to 8 mile. the suburbs were merely an extension of that, and the riots provided the dividing line between "us" and "them." before 1967, they were still building fairly nice houses within the city sprawl. after '67, the neighborhoods evaporated.
the "location" and "natural resources" arguments don't jive with history in my view.
i feel like michiganders eat quite a bit of local food. i remember going to plenty of farmer's markets when i was growing up in the saginaw valley. having later spent time in ann arbor & detroit, again, i found local markets to be very popular. i remember visiting cow farms, potato farms, etc of friends & family. uncle would bring over a sack of potatos from his. the state is literally dotted with corn festivals, cherry festivals, cucumber festivals, etc during the summer time.
by comparison, my current life on a tropical island is almost exclusively dependent upon imports. one of the more surreal moments was finding faygo soda here (from michigan) but that's a bit of a digression.
as far as the timber industry is concerned, that peaked about 130 years ago after they clear cut nearly the entire state. it left behind plenty of opportunities for farmland though and that has been one of the significant industries that has quietly existed in the shadow of the 20th century auto boom. bottom line is that michigan has ample farms and access to fresh water, i.e., some of the most basic necessities to life.
Jaf, http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/maps/Det-historical-popdensity.pdf
You can literally watch Detroit's urban collapse. What I meant by high-density work camp was that before the 1960s... the density of people made it a 'resource' to have thousands of people show up to work without the infrastructure required to move thousands of people [walkability is the explanation here]. When people in the city got rich, this fell apart when you add in cars.
How can you be a model industry if your workers don't enjoy the products you produce? This is the paradox. If Detroit would have just said "no" to an automobile-oriented lifestyle, it could have worked to keep and preserve that people- and labor-oriented "resource." The National Highway System aggravated this but the city was "destroyed" before the race riots of 1967.
When your entire population resides within 6 square miles, you can accomplish anything. But sometime between then and now, the city went from having the center of population within those 6 square miles to 143 square miles.
Now, being an auto factory that requires thousands of people, how are you going to move those thousands of people, pave thousands of parking spaces for them, pay the real estate tax on thousands of parking spaces and house thousands of people in thousands of individual houses? Time this problem by hundreds of factories. And you can see why everyone ran away from it.
Yes, they tried to let workers enjoy the wealth which ever way they pleased. Yes, they tried to make the city family friendly. Yes, they tried to do a lot to show people that you can make money in manufacturing. The problem? Industrialized areas can never do this. Industrial areas need high density, need cramped housing, need access to thousands of people instantaneously and people need to accept that the environment can really only support an environment that is there to make money. If you want to enjoy the wealth created by heavy industry, start acting like Londoners!
Michigan is a shitty place (sorry!) filled full of shitty people (double sorry! [but not sorry for the Southerners compelled to preach their awful way of life some place else]) that no one wants any part of. This is why Phoenix exists, this is why they pipe water in from thousands of miles around to the Imperial Valley, this is why people will pay $3,000 a month to live in San Fran, this is why people choose and this is why people in New York will happily let the city tax them to death on centralized district heating.
There isn't much of anything but fresh water and a lot of piss poor city management in Michigan. Hell, one growing season a year? Florida has five!
California four!
There is nothing in the current theory of economic development [not economics] that suggest that Detroit should even exist at all.
"This is why Phoenix exists, this is why they pipe water in from thousands of miles around to the Imperial Valley, this is why people will pay $3,000 a month to live in San Fran, this is why people choose and this is why people in New York will happily let the city tax them to death on centralized district heating"
thats stupid if you think about it......
rockandhill, i can't stop laughing. have you ever been to the midwest? michigan is a shitty place (sorry!) how do you quantify that? the thing that's so shockingly misleading about those maps - the only quantifiable information you've referenced - is that they only show historical population distributions in the inner city. most of those people didn't move to california, they moved to royal oak, pontiac, sterling heights, and novi. there are so many things i could pick apart in your posts that i don't even know where to begin. what you are arguing essentially is that detroit has no economic resources whatsoever and thus no reason to exist. while completely untrue, i still fail to understand how your arguments apply to chicago, toronto, or minneapolis, or even ann arbor, madison, indianapolis or grand rapids. the urban blight in detroit has become a poster child for the entire state of michigan and much of the rest of the midwest as though there isn't anything more to the equation than: i lost my job because i'm a blue-collar worker and everyone knows there's only blue-collar workers in michigan and all the blue-collar jobs are gone; due to the weather, the interstate highway system, and the lack of resources (except of course for the biomass) there is now nothing left to do but move to a warmer climate. has it occurred to you that a lot of midwesterners live there because they actually like the winters there? that they enjoy snowmobiling, skiing, and snowshoeing? or maybe they like the summers there? they like the sandy beaches, sailing, kayaking, hunting, or drinking sangria at dominicks? maybe not everyone wants to live in a state of 30 or 40 million people?
I quantify that by pointing out that every single boom city... well except for Grand Rapids... is not in Michigan. It's completely subjective whether a place is good or not-- but the objective part dictates that no one wants to be there!
How many people from Detroit moved back to the south? By the number of people with Michigan plates registering in other states says something. It says that people are leaving. Has it occurred to you that the state sucks and the numbers up until very recently have been showing that? The whole point of having a city is the city. Cities die without people to walk on their streets, work in their factories or sling drinks to suits. That's kind of the point that I was making is Detroit is not a city without it's inner city.
Can't pull carts out of mines without expendable tiny ponies!
Because Chicago is in a different state with a different planning methodology? Because Toronto is in a different country? Because almost all the other cities diversified in a way that promoted some kind of economic gain? Why hasn't St. Louis completely failed? Because they found niches they can be proud of?
It's a case by case basis. Numbers show that the midwest isn't the greatest place and that people have found something outside of swedish ancestry, casseroles and lutheranism to be a part of.
But I've only been to Chicago and sorry, the only time I'm in the midwest is when I'm flying over it on my way to Jackson Hole to go skiing in summer [on a mountain with a summit taller than 100'] time followed by a little afternoon bouldering and trout fishing. Plus, the only escalator in all of Wyoming is at Jackson Airport [I believe it doesn't work]! That's low-density excitement!
By the way, the map I linked to includes Grosse Pointe. So you couldn't define that anything else than "historic Detroit."
Suburbanism destroys manufacturing based economies!
I've spent about 5 years worth of time in Detroit and other parts of Michigan; it can indeed be pretty shitty.
But I've spent over 20 years in Phoenix: it's far shittier these days than Detroit is. Not as an urban ruin, but as a festering mass of conservative entitlement and misguided consumption.
On the whole, though, I guess I'd rather live in Phoenix again if I had to choose one or the other: when it comes to cold weather, I'm a big whiny baby.
detroit has a love/hate relationship...
some folks like the grittyness of the urban fabric.... others just like to visit and have an installation then leave just to go back to their other state and say 'i did something positive in detroit' yaddy yaddy yaddy
some folks do leave and some stay......some also come back
the talent that comes out of detroit is on the upper scale of things. most people that have lived in/near that city don't get impressed easily so it's alot harder to get that 'shine'. you can be from detroit and visit other cities and when asked where your from, and you say 'detroit', you get that special handshake and a higher level of respect (at least on a street level).
it's sort of funny also that people are soooo quick to ride on the nuts of detroit but yet are quick to tell the city to fuck off...... sure the city has issues but all in all, it's an urban city that fell from it's glory days.
to each his/her own........
there's a lot of opportunity in detroit.... it's just a matter of mobilizing
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