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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Mon Jan 14, 2013 8:51 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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One city. Two possible futures.
If Detroit does nothing to alter its course, the future looks bleak.
Almost certainly, more people would leave. Businesses would continue to shutter. All the city services -- garbage pickup, streetlights, 911 response times -- would grow spottier.
And the city's inventory of vacant land -- already roughly 100,000 vacant residential lots -- would continue to swell.
• GRAPHIC: Detroit Future City neighborhoods
But that dystopian outlook is just one possible future. There's another, and this second future could be more upbeat.
The new Detroit Future City report, released last week to great fanfare, gives glimpses of this possible future in maps, graphs, data and images. If the report's hundreds of recommendations get carried out in full, Detroit could become a greener, healthier and more prosperous city. There could be jobs for all who want them, and a smoothly running transit system to let city residents get to those jobs.
• GRAPHIC: Detroit before and after Future City plan
"You can almost close your eyes and imagine what the city would look like in 50 years if every recommendation is followed," said Will Wittig, dean of architecture at the University of Detroit Mercy.
In this more positive Detroit, residents will be growing more of their own food and generating more of their own energy on land once overgrown with weeds.
And, perhaps most significant, the world will be looking to Detroit as the globe's best example of a post-industrial city that figured out how to reinvent itself.
As Toni Griffin, the New York-based urban planner who headed the technical team that wrote the Detroit Future City plan, put it, "Detroit can become an innovative model for urban living."
Which future is more likely? That's up to Detroiters and the choices they make. But it is possible to at least offer images of what these rival versions would look like. And the goal of Detroit Future City, Griffin said, is to provide "real clarity" about what an improved Detroit would look like.
First, to glimpse what the "do-nothing" future may be like, visit any of Detroit's more abandoned districts today. The empty blocks west of the Coleman A. Young International Airport, or some of the mostly demolished blocks in the Brightmoor district on the far west side, show what 50 years of white flight, disinvestment and failed public policies create.
The more positive future can also be glimpsed in parts of Detroit today. The thriving mixed-used district of Midtown, the commercial activity along West Vernor in Mexicantown, and the robust apartment and condominium markets of the Gold Coast along the east riverfront -- these illustrate the denser, mixed-use character of much of what Detroit Future City hopes to create elsewhere in the city.
The first big difference in this future Detroit is that parts of the city would be much more densely developed than they are today. That's because, under Detroit Future City, resources would be targeted at the most vibrant districts to strengthen the areas that have the greatest potential for growth.
"Moving to a situation where more people live in higher-density areas and fewer people live in lower-density areas (a more efficient distribution) is a critical step in reducing the financial problems faced by service providers and end users," the report says.
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The fundamental challenge for economic development strategy and growth is not a matter of the physical scale of the city, as is often claimed, but the lack of employment density," it says.
So business and commercial districts would be enhanced with greater work-force training funds, more flexible transit options and new residential development.
Detroit's residential neighborhoods, meanwhile, now mostly filled with single-family houses, would see a greater range of options, including attached townhouses and multi-family buildings.
"To be viable and sustainable, Detroit's neighborhoods now need to provide a wide choice of housing types," the report says.
And what of the "blue-green" landscape discussed so prominently in the report? One of the virtues of the Detroit Future City report is that it gives so many illustrations of what these suggested new uses may actually look like.
So, in discussing what an "urban/green district" may look like, there it is on Pages 244-245 of the report. The "current" view shows many gaps in the urban landscape that by default become parking lots or dumping grounds for trash. Then the image 50 years out shows that the gaps have been filled with trees that form "carbon forests" along freeways to soak up pollution, while greenways lace through the revitalized neighborhood.
It's part of what Detroit Future City calls "a canvas of green" -- stately boulevards, open green space, urban woodlands, ponds and streams and new uses of natural landscapes to clean the air, restore ecological habitats and produce locally sourced food.
"Detroit actually has the opportunity to lead the region in creating a new urban form, becoming a model for other North American cities," the report says. "Here, in the midst of tremendous challenge, is the opportunity to transform the city's form and function in new and exciting ways."
Or consider the new "blue" infrastructure envisioned by the report: A series of ponds, lakes, swales and other water features that would capture rainwater before it runs into the city's overburdened sewer system. Turn to Page 133 in the Detroit Future City report, and there's a rendering of flooded fields in what once was a residential district.
Interestingly, not even Detroit Future City envisions a Detroit with a significantly larger population than it has now. Nobody is predicting a return to the nearly 2 million people Detroit recorded in the 1950 census.
The Detroit Works Long-Term Planning team that produced Detroit Future City predicts that Detroit will continue to lose people for years to come before stabilizing around 600,000 to 615,000 perhaps 20 years from now. Detroit had 713,777 people in the 2010 census.
But as the report emphasizes, the quality of life for all Detroiters is more important than actual numbers. Detroit can be a great city of 600,000 or a dysfunctional city with more or fewer residents.
This may be a good point to emphasize what the Detroit Works teams tried to hammer home last week. Detroit Future City is not a "plan" in the usual sense, with specific lines on a map showing what will happen where. Rather, the report offers a framework, a series of imperatives and strategies that should guide thinking in years to come.
Nor are the concepts in Detroit Future City exactly new. City planners have been talking about urban farming and other "blue" and "green" infrastructure for several years now. Detroit alone has hundreds of community gardens, and a network of greenways is already under construction in part in Detroit.
As for creating a new "blue" infrastructure, St. Paul, Minn., ripped out a failing shopping center in the 1990s to create a wetlands on the site.
But if Detroit Future City is a compilation of a lot of ideas current in urban planning circles today, it also marks the first time that so many innovative ideas have been gathered together in one place and applied to a real-life city.
"It became clear that 'if we did nothing,' the quality of life and businesses in Detroit would continue to decline," the report says.
Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher99@freepress.com |
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Mon Jan 14, 2013 8:59 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Other cities' grand plans fizzled without community support
January 9, 2013 |
By JC Reindl
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
As Detroit officials consider acting on a new plan that would focus future resources on highly populated areas and offer incentives to residents to move out of largely vacant ones, they should study Youngstown, Ohio, as a cautionary tale.
In the early 2000s the city produced its highly praised "Youngstown 2010" plan, a land-use framework that envisioned some parts of the city being allowed to become or stay vacant. The stated motive was to create a smaller but better city.
A major steel-producing center, Youngstown lost more than half its population after the mills began to close in the 1970s. The plan was widely hailed internationally as the first attempt by a major city to plan for downsizing. But it was never implemented in a major way because of a lack of city resources. Attempts to use incentives to get residents in distressed areas to move failed because of lack of interest from the residents
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Detroit Future City, a framework of ideas to be released in full this morning, suggests creating denser areas of the city where people already live and work so that city resources can be used more efficiently. And it also would allow other less-populated areas to be turned into farms, apple orchards, retention ponds and other uses.
• GRAPHIC: Maps showing potential Detroit employment districts, "blue and "green" areas
• RELATED: A plan to save Detroit: Report calls for a smaller, stronger Motor City
So how does Detroit Future City avoid the Youngstown fate?
Achieving community-wide support could be the key factor, Courtney Kashima, president of the Illinois Chapter of the American Planning Association, said in an interview Tuesday.
Kashima also said the ideal scenario would be to have all future planning ordinances and policies in the city based off the new guiding document.
• RELATED: Ambitious project called a move in the right direction
• RELATED: Funds to improve hospital area called 'beautiful idea'
"The biggest difference between plans that sit on the shelf and plans that actually make a difference rests with the elected officials, the staff and the citizens," she said. "It's really up to the local leaders, whether they're formal leaders or informal -- it could be neighborhood groups or clergy -- who say, 'This is our plan, and we're going to implement it.' "
Robin Boyle, a professor and chairman of urban planning at Wayne State University, said the outcomes for major city plans have been mixed. He referred to the 1909 Burnham Plan for Chicago, responsible for the acclaimed lakefront parks and improved roadways.
• RELATED: Ideas to reinvent Detroit: Build up trees, wetlands; rethink street lighting
• EDITORIAL: Detroit Works offers a blueprint for taking charge of shrinking city
"The Chicago plan did result in a sort of cultural coming together around the ideas," Boyle said. "On the other hand, if we look at many other examples, the impact of plans has been less than remarkable. That's because people don't get behind them." |
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Mon Jan 14, 2013 9:06 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Tom Walsh: Kresge Foundation puts up money so Detroit Future City plan won't gather dust
January 10, 2013 |
By Tom Walsh
Detroit Free Press Business Writer
You've got to hand it to Rip Rapson, Laura Trudeau and the Kresge Foundation for stick-to-itiveness in their quest to help ignite the resurrection of America's most abandoned and blighted major city.
Wednesday's pledge by Kresge of $150 million over five years to the Detroit Future City strategy is the latest huge cash commitment in a decade-long intensification of the foundation's focus on the city where retailer Sebastian Kresge in 1899 founded what would ultimately become Kmart.
It has not been an easy journey:
• When the Kresge Foundation spearheaded an ambitious plan in 2002 to revive Detroit's riverfront, the RiverWalk was built. But grander plans for upscale condos and trendy retail along the waterfront stalled in the economic crash of 2008-09.
• When Kresge promised $35 million and joined private backers Dan Gilbert, Roger Penske and others in 2008 to kick-start a light-rail line on Woodward, it sounded great. It's still a promising idea, but there's no shovel in the ground yet -- and one wonders how long no-nonsense guys like Gilbert and Penske will tolerate the bureaucratic delays.
• When Kresge and other foundations took active roles in Detroit Works' effort to reimagine what has become a less-densely-populated city, there was predictable push back from some elected leaders and community activists about outsiders' influence on the city's future.
• And now, as the Detroit Future City strategy plan is unveiled, the city is virtually broke. Later this year, Detroit will elect its next mayor and City Council -- but those elected leaders may be powerless, under the thumb of an appointed emergency manager or a bankruptcy judge. Nobody knows.
"There's work that needs to go on, no matter what's happening at City Hall," Laura Trudeau, Kresge's senior program director for Detroit projects, told me Wednesday. "If it's hard, we're going to steel ourselves and keep moving. ... We're trying to combat the idea that this will be just another plan that sits on the shelf."
In the years preceding 2002, Trudeau said Kresge targeted only about 10% of its philanthropy toward its hometown.
That ratio started to rise with Kresge's $50-million pledge in December 2002 to transform Detroit's riverfront from industrial wreckage to public use and greenspace with construction of the RiverWalk and removal of the old cement silos.
When Rip Rapson became Kresge's president and CEO in 2006, he doubled down in Detroit. Now, about 20% of Kresge's grants are aimed at Detroit.
Kresge pledged $25 million of the $100 million pumped into the New Economy Initiative during recent years, aimed at reviving the region's entrepreneurial mojo. Kresge and other foundations also helped fund foreclosure prevention and response when the nation's economy was unraveling in mid-2008.
Rapson was a leading advocate of the Woodward Avenue light-rail project now known as M1 Rail, where corporate backers including Gilbert, Penske, Compuware's Peter Karmanos and the Ilitch family joined an effort to raise $125 million in private money. Kresge's $35-million pledge is the largest donation.
Both the M1 Rail and Detroit Future City projects have been "way more complicated than we expected," Trudeau said, admitting that "we might not have started them if we knew that at the outset. But today we're so glad we did."
Foundations, she said, "have the ability to bridge those cycles, those economic upticks and downturns, and we have the ability to sustain work through political cycles and election cycles."
No matter how Detroit's fiscal crisis and 2013 elections play out, she's confident that Detroit Future City will be an important playbook.
'The quality of the plan," Trudeau said, "is such that nobody who comes in to lead the city can overlook it."
Here's hoping she's right. |
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Mon Jan 14, 2013 9:17 am |
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