Is Detroit fixable? How would you fix it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Snarky sarcasm aside, please... if you had free range as an emergency budget manager of the city of Detroit, what would you do to balance its budget and revitalize the city?

Burn it down. All of it. Seriously; in its current physical state it can't be saved and its very existence makes a mockery of America. In its place, build a new city (well, city core or whatever) based largely on what the inhabitants would like. You would have to do it in stages, I guess. Because the city is actually underpopulated there shouldn't be much of an overspill, which means that everyone who wants to live in the new city will be able to. Also, if there are any buildings worth saving (and I doubt that; Detroit was always an ugly city), the move them (brick-by-brick) to some warehouse or other on a temporary basis.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course the suburbs should move back into the city, but that's never going to happen, thanks to the lovely racist sentiment still en vogue in the suburbs.

It also won't happen because they are (in reality) part of Detroit. The 'city' is really just one huge slum district of a large urban creature. It's like it exists to prove Lewis Mumford right about the Necropolis or something.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think the best idea is to create Urban parks out of the low density neighborhoods, and once you take out the bad parts hope that the land will be in demand again 20 or 30 years.

The whole 'city' is 'bad parts'. And it will never be in demand again because it is an urban wasteland.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well the Central Buisness district is still there. So you could try building around that

But you can't because the CBD is effectively a just a colony of the outside world (and a massive, massive failure as a piece of so-called 'urban renewal'). Urban growth never 'naturally' flows out from that kind of place anyway. Besides, blight spreads.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We have young people.

Most of the young people in Detroit are armed, barely literate, unemployed, unemployable and on crack. And no one from the outside world would want to move there. Of course, I suppose you could use it as a sort of gulag for hipsters.

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On what planet does the Detroit CBD have an 'attractive' building stock? It is also very clearly not doing well as a service centre for the city, which is the whole point of a city centre.

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Because they are pointless and because they have failed. Burn them down. Only a cleansing fire can save Detroit now.

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Hahahaha. The city is falling to bits. The houses are unfit for human habitation. You can't fix the bloody place until you fix that.

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No, the problem is that the city is effectively an inhabited ruin. But the core problem is also different; industrial decline. In any event, the tragedy (and so the problem) isn't really Detroit itself, but the people that live there. No one should have to live in a ruin. But all you care about (or so it seems) is the protection of glass-and-concrete penises.

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That's even less rational than me believing that my team - Sunderland - will win the Premiership.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It wouldn't work anyway. Detroit has sh!tty governance (of course) but sh!tty governance is a by-product of the wider fatal crisis.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Muon2, housing in Detroit is literally close to free. I don't think many places can make that claim.  The trick is to make the place, or larger swaths of it, livable for those not destitute (who are just trapped) or criminals. 

Making it livable would actually involve making the housing cost substantially more than present because one reason for the almost free housing is the fact that most of it is not fit for human habitation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Muon2, housing in Detroit is literally close to free. I don't think many places can make that claim.  The trick is to make the place, or larger swaths of it, livable for those not destitute (who are just trapped) or criminals. 

Making it livable would actually involve making the housing cost substantially more than present because one reason for the almost free housing is the fact that most of it is not fit for human habitation.

Yeah, but still the ability to either buy a property that is fit or buying one that isn't and throwing a good chunk of money in it will keep Detroit's housing stock extremely cheap for a very, very long time.

Detroit doesn't have a housing stock; it has a collection of ruins in which people (regrettably) live. The city, as defined by its official boundaries, is dead and can't be saved. The old planning jargon for such places was 'obsolescence', and it captures the problem pretty well. Of course that was a term that was only ever applied to specific districts, whereas with Detroit...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is not fit for habitation are the streets and the schools, more than the houses. It is a hood issue, not a Jimmy Carter habitat for humanity issue.

These things are all related.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I do find the incredible faith here in half-baked piecemeal boilerplate (whether partisan or the classic American delusion of 'good government' as a solution to anything) solutions to be quite sweet. Even if there is the crazy logic of a Khrushchev-era Soviet planner lurking (to your surprise, not doubt, as well as mine) lurking, surreally, in the background.

The notion that Detroit doesn't have an overabundance of dilapidated housing stock as well is absurd. They have an abundance of both. So in the future if Detroit ever halts its decline and starts growing again there will be cheap options in both well maintained property as well as a large quantity of even way cheaper fixer upper property. And if a lot of places get torn down to be replaced with apartment complexes, condos, or new homes that's fine too.

Detroit certainly has houses. It's just that no one in their right mind would ever want to live in one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is wrong with you? First your post about good governance and Khrushchev make no sense relative to my post.

Well, I wasn't just replying to your post. There is a very American delusion that 'good government' can solve serious structural problems, and I find it sweet. As though all the death of Detroit could somehow be halted if its local government was corrupt. Awww... bless. As for Khrushchev, well, I thought that was obvious (given that this is a political forum) but evidently not. Khrushchev was noted for 'hare brained schemes', the best known of which was the Virgin Lands fiasco (but there were so many others). Reading this thread, it's hard not to be reminded of that. Which is, I admit, a little bit surprising. But then Nikita Sergeyevich did say that he would be a Tory if he were British. So maybe he'd be a Republican if American.

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I think it's fairly clear that I was only thinking of Detroit city.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, this thread has veered off track.

Much like Detroit itself, no?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, this thread has veered off track.

Much like Detroit itself, no?

This thread is still fixable. It would  be more like Detroit if the mods hijacked the good parts off to another Forum and filled this one with viruses.

Indeed, indeed. We somehow need to destroy the economic base of this thread as well. Any ideas?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Once again, only with fire. And perhaps the sword.